thumb|right|Bart Howard, circa 1990
Bart Howard (born Howard Joseph Gustafson; June 1, 1915 – February 21, 2004) was an American songwriter and pianist. He is best known for writing the jazz standard "Fly Me to the Moon".
Biography
Early life and career
Bart Howard was born on June 1, 1915 in Burlington, Iowa. His parents were musical; both played piano, and his father played guitar and the mandolin. During Prohibition and the Depression, his father was also a bootlegger, which paid for young Howie's piano lessons.
At the age of 16 Howard left home to be the pianist for the dance band that toured with the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. In Los Angeles, where he had gone hoping to write songs for the movies, he played for the female impersonator Ray Bourbon.
In 1937 Howard moved to New York City to accompany Elizabeth Talbot-Martin at the Rainbow Room. In 1938 Carstairs brought Mabel Mercer to New York for Mercer's first engagement there, and introduced Howard to Mercer on the day Mercer arrived. Carstairs' friend Marlene Dietrich encouraged Howard to offer Mercer his song "If You Leave Paris", which Mercer sang in her debut at the Ruban Bleu nightclub, the first time one of his songs was sung in New York.
Howard was also active in the revues which were part of 1950s New York's cabaret scene. He contributed "Let Me Love You", "Take Care of Yourself" and "This Is the Day" to 1952's Curtain Going Up, which despite its title closed in Philadelphia. "My Love Is a Wanderer" was in John Murray Anderson's Almanac in 1953, though it was cut after opening. Howard's "Perfect Stranger" and "Upstairs at the Downstairs Waltz" were performed in Take Five (1957), "Everybody Wants to Be Loved" in Pieces of Eight (1959) and "Thanks to You (I'm a Brand New Woman)" in Dressed to the Nines (1960), all presented by Julius Monk at Upstairs at the Downstairs. In 1961 "So Long As He Loves You" was in Fourth Avenue North at the Madison Avenue Playhouse.<!-- The latter reference provides the location of Curtain Going Up --> Howard never reached Broadway: a musical with Sam and Bella Spewack about the life of Gertrude Lawrence, for which Howard wrote songs including "Beware of the Woman" and "Who Besides You", was never completed. Kaye Ballard recorded it for the first time that year. Peggy Lee recorded it in 1960, then gave it wide exposure on The Ed Sullivan Show on October 16th of that year. The song gradually became better known by its first line, as "Fly Me to the Moon", and Lee convinced Howard to officially change the song's title. In 1962 and 1963 Joe Harnell's bossa nova instrumental version of the song became a big hit and won a Grammy. In 1963 and 1964 Count Basie and Frank Sinatra performed versions of the song rearranged by Quincy Jones from Howard's 3/4 waltz time into the now-familiar 4/4 swing time. Income from the song supported Howard comfortably for the rest of his life.
Later life
In 1959 Howard was earning enough money from recordings of his songs to no longer need to work as an M.C. When, on stage at the Blue Angel, he heard an audience member exclaim "My God, is he still here?", he thought "That's it! I'm quitting!", and did. He said, "[...] we could no longer book the right acts anymore because they were all on television". "The clubs closed, the music changed, and so did I". and on a 1990 album.
Howard died February 21, 2004, at age 88, in Carmel, New York. He was survived by his partner of 58 years, Thomas "Bud" Fowler, and a sister, Dorothy Lind of Burlington.
Howard's songwriting idol was Cole Porter, and the sophistication of his songs brought comparisons to Porter's, The singer Anita Ellis said, "I like Bart's songs better than [Stephen Sondheim's ...] Steve's are much harder. Bart's can become part of you. He leaves room for that to happen."
Excluding his one attempt at a musical, Howard wrote only standalone songs that could be about anything he wanted, none that had to serve a theatrical plot, and almost always about love.