Official USA 2014 Tour

[Yorkie]

The song was not initially a hit in the United States, where it sold fewer than 1,000 copies because the ABC Records head Larry Newton did not like the song and therefore did not promote it,[citation needed] but was a major success in the United Kingdom, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart.[1] In the US, the song hit #116 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Chart. It was also the biggest-selling single of 1968 in the UK where it was among the last pop singles issued by HMV Records before becoming an exclusive classical music label.[4] The song made Louis Armstrong the oldest male to top the UK Singles Chart, at sixty-six years and ten months old.[1] Armstrong's record was broken in 2009 when a cover version of "Islands in the Stream" recorded for Comic Relief – which included the 68-year-old Tom Jones – reached number one in that chart. Tony Bennett did go on to cover "What A Wonderful World" several times, as in 2003 with K.D. Lang, paying homage to Bennett's friend Armstrong.

So, I completely confused the song but as it happens it seems to be much more appreciated by the discerning British public than it was back in the USA!!!

[TullyBascombe]

I recall Wonderful World being widely popular in the US even in the late 60's, but it was originally more appreciated by the older generation the "Silent Majority" than by the young. The younger generation bought the majority of records. The song got most of its air time on variety TV shows and more conservative radio stations.
This was the era of under the table pay-offs of disc jockeys in the US. If a record company wanted to ensure a recording's success they paid disc jockeys on the more popular stations to play it more often. That's hundreds, perhaps thousands of stations, across the country each getting a pay off. Promoting a record could be very expensive. Not promoting it would usually ensure its failure. So it may not have been so much a matter of the lack of discernment by the American public as the agenda of the ABC Records.

[Yorkie]

I'm sure most of you have seen it already but Libera posted the tour blog yesterday

USA Tour Blog