“Ol’ Blue Eyes,” Frank Sinatra, introduced “Everything Happens to Me” in 1941 with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, and their rendition rose to number nine on the charts.

Composer Matt Dennis became acquainted with Dorsey through his friend, vocalist Jo Stafford. He went to see her perform with the bandleader at the Hollywood Palladium in December, 1940. Stafford introduced Dennis to Dorsey, who asked to hear some of his tunes. Dorsey liked what he heard, remarking, “They’re wonderful! How would you like to write for me? We’ll record them.”

Although Dennis had music for the tunes, they needed lyrics. One evening, while playing a nightclub gig in Los Angeles, Dennis was approached by Tom Adair, who asked if he could write a song with him. Adair was answering phones for the power company in Los Angeles and writing poems in his spare time for the Saturday Evening Post but had already written lyrics to one of Dennis’ numbers, “Will You Still Be Mine?” Dennis was elated with Adair’s sophisticated lyrics and asked him to write words for his other compositions, “Everything Happens to Me” and “Let’s Get Away from It All.” Dorsey recorded all of them in February, 1941.

“Everything Happens to Me” was the first of Dennis’ compositions recorded by Sinatra and Dorsey. In an interview for the 1995 Sony CD set Frank Sinatra: The Best Of The Columbia Years 1943-1952, Dennis said, “Sinatra had such a natural sound to his voice. I think his renditions of my songs are just fantastic--he knew my style and sang them much the same way that I’d sing them. How could there be anyone to make me sound better?” Sinatra would record a number of Dennis’ tunes, and his 1953 recording of “Angel Eyes” made the charts.

Adair’s lyric is a study in self-deprecation, written about a person for whom everything goes wrong. The rain ruins a golf game, the upstairs neighbor complains about the noise from a party, then there are measles, mumps and missed trains. On a live recording from the Tally-Ho Club in Los Angeles, Dennis includes some pithy lyrics describing the pitfalls of working in a nightclub: “I try to sing a song and then the conversation flows, so I sing a little stronger and then the Waring mixer goes, then to top it off somebody has to blow his nose.” When Dennis passed away in 2002, NPR’s Fresh Air radio host Terry Gross included this version in her tribute to Dennis.