JIMMY WEBB (the song’s composer): “A friend of mine named William F. Williams, who was at [radio station] KMEN in San Bernardino, was using this hot air balloon for promotions in the San Bernardino area. He and I were just kind of hanging out, and he took me up a couple of times. The first time was in a hot dog stand! (Laughs.) And that very day, he and I started thinking about doing a film about hot air balloons. . . . just because they were so colorful and so big and so different. . . He said, and I give this to my friend, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a title.’ And I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Up, Up and Away.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s good, I like that.’ I was still going to San Bernardino Valley College, so that afternoon I sneaked into a practice room and I wrote ‘Up, Up and Away.’ So the next time I saw him, I said, ‘Well, I’ve got the music for the film.’ As it turned out, there never was a film made. But I really think that if we had made one, we would have had a success:’

     Several years later: “I was rehearsal pianist for the Fifth Dimension while Johnny Rivers was at the San Remo Song Festival [in Italy]. The Fifth Dimension was sort of his pet project [authors’ note: they recorded on Rivers’ Soul City label], and he left me in charge. I brought this song into rehearsal one day, and the group decided they wanted it. So we started rehearsing it. When he got back from San Remo, I think we were all a little nervous, you know, wondering if he was going to be angry with us that we’re off working on this piece of material and he’s never really heard it. But he liked it -- he not only liked it, he said, ‘That’s the name of the album; the first album’s gonna be “Up, Up and Away.” ’ And so it just worked out nicely for everybody.”

     The first hot air balloon was flown on November 21, 1783 -- over a century before the Wright brothers' successful "hop" in a plane -- in Annonay, France.