The Sinatra recording was a Top 30 single on the U.S. he recorded it for his career comeback album September of My Years. Sinatra called Gordon Jenkins and told him he wanted him to make an arrangement with plenty of strings and maybe an interesting instrument like the oboe could be used as well.

In a 2009 interview, Drake said that in 1965, Frank Sinatra had heard the song on his car radio as he was driving home in the desert and immediately pulled over in the middle of the night to a gas station and pay phone. Shane recorded it for the album Goin' Places and other folk performers covered it. He wrote the words and music for ' It Was a Very Good Year' in 1961, when a publisher friend told him that Bob Shane of the folk music group the Kingston Trio would be in the publisher's office the next morning, and the publisher asked Drake to write a song for Shane to sing solo. It has also been recorded by many other artists including Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley. Among his best known songs is ' I Believe', the first hit song ever introduced on television, which was written for and introduced by Jane Froman on her television show in 1953, and became a number-one hit for Frankie Laine, holding the record for number of non-consecutive weeks spent at number one in the UK. Besides composing music and lyrics for dozens of pieces he was also a television producer and worked with performers including Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle. ĭrake wrote the lyrics for ' Perdido', composed by trombonist Juan Tizol, a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra, and first recorded (by Ellington) in 1944. His elder brother, Milton Drake, also became a songwriter, with work including ' Java Jive' and ' Nina Never Knew' and his younger brother Arnold Drake, became a writer for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and others, as well as an author and playwright. The son of Jewish immigrants Max Druckman and Pearl Cohen, he attended Townsend Harris High School in the borough of Manhattan, New York, graduating in 1935, and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in social science from the City College of New York in 1940.

Born in New York City, Drake had his first song published at age 12, in 1931.

Edwin drake