175: In the Still of the Night

How Good It Is

After this many episodes, it gives me a moment of “Huh, isn’t that interesting” when I start writing the post for an episode and discover that I haven’t covered a song from that particular year before. In this case, that year would be 1956.

In retrospect, that shouldn’t be a surprise, given that we’re reaching waaay back into the early days of the Pop music era. But it’s still a fun little statistic, regardless.

“In the Still of the Night” was originally “In the Still of the Nite,” partly because they didn’t want this song to be confused with a 1936 song written by Cole Porter and recorded several times over the years. The other reason is that it was a little bit of a trend to spell “Nite” like that. (See also The Dells’ “Oh What a Nite”.) Later on the spelling changed to the more conventional style, and you’d often see “(I’ll Remember)” tacked on. Why it’s “I’ll remember” and not “I remember”, I have no idea.

This wasn’t relevant to the broader story, but in 1986 Ronnie Milsap recorded a song called “Lost in the Fifties Tonight”, where he recounts some fond memories from listening to this song. As part of the chorus he actually sings a few bars of this song. That song went to #1 on the Billboard Country Chart and earned Milsap a Grammy for Best Country Male Performance.

And finally, I didn’t promise this during the episode, but here’s the song from the Trivia Question (go listen to the episode first!):

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This link doesn’t have any actual video to it, but do a search and you’ll catch a lot of fun videos associated with the song. You won’t even mind hearing it repeatedly because it’s a genuine banger.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.

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