by Lawrence Bush on May 11, 2012
Songwriter Burt Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri on this date in 1928. His best-known hits, written with lyricist Hal David, include “Blue on Blue” (Bobby Vinton), “The Look of Love” (Dusty Springfield), “Baby, It’s You” (The Shirelles), “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney), “What the World Needs Now Is Love” (Jackie DeShannon), “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and numerous songs written for Dionne Warwick. Bacharach was a graduate of Forest Hills High School in New York and McGill University in Montreal. He has had seventy Top Forty hits and won three Academy Awards, eight Grammys, one Emmy, and the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Several of his numbers have become jazz standards. His memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart, is scheduled for publication this autumn. To watch him play “Close to You” with Barbra Streisand in 1971, click here.
“That is why all the girls in town/Follow you all around./Just like me, they long to be/close to you.” —Burt Bacharach and Hal David
by Lawrence Bush on May 9, 2012
“Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley and the Comets, was released on this date in 1954. (To see them playing it, click here). The first rock and roll song in history to reach number one on the Billboard charts, it was written two years earlier by Max C. Freedman and James Myers (credited as “Jimmy De Knight”), Jewish Tin Pan Alley songwriters — although several sources, including members of the Comets, claimed that “De Knight” had little or nothing to do with the song’s creation. Milton Gabler (also Jewish) had signed Bill Haley and the Comets to Decca Records just the month before. “Rock Around the Clock” became the theme of the film, Blackboard Jungle, the following year. Ultimately it was the best-selling 45 rpm single of all time, according to the Guinness Book of Records. In 1958, Mickey Katz and his orchestra recorded a version called “K’nock Around the Clock.” You can read everything anyone could ever want to know about “Rock Around the Clock” by clicking here.
“We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock, ’til broad daylight.
We’re gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.” —Max C. Freedman
by Lawrence Bush on March 7, 2012
Dorothy Fields, who wrote lyrics for more than 400 songs for Broadway and Hollywood, became the first woman among inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on this date in 1971. The daughter of vaudeville comedian Lew Fields (of Weber & Fields fame), Fields got going at the age of 23 by teaming up with Jimmy McHugh to write “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby,” “Exactly Like You,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” She also teamed up with Jerome Kern to write the songs for Swing Time (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), one of which, “The Way You Look Tonight,” won a 1936 Academy Award. Fields had a 50-year career that hardly flagged. Among her other hit Broadway songs are “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Big Spender,” and “Pick Yourself Up.”
“Nothing’s impossible I have found/for when my chin is on the ground/I pick myself up dust myself off/Start all over again.” —Dorothy Fields
by Lawrence Bush on October 12, 2011
Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famer Paul Simon was born in New Jersey on this date in 1941. His parents were Hungarian immigrants, both musicians, who moved to Kew Gardens, Queens shortly after his birth. Simon began singing together in harmony with his friend Art Garfunkel at Forest Hills High School at the age of 13. After recording a song or two with Garfunkel, he spent the years between 1957 and ’64 writing and recording more than thirty songs with a variety of musicians. On October 19, 1964, Simon and Garfunkel released their first album with Columbia Records, with a song, “The Sounds of Silence,” that became a number-one hit. They recorded four more successful albums before splitting up in 1970. Paul Simon then began a remarkable career as a smart, philosophical, storytelling songwriter and a rhythmic, sophisticated musician who has incorporated many elements of world music into his creations. In 1985, he recorded his Graceland album in South Africa with accompaniment by Ladysmith Black Mambazo; in 1989, he recorded The Rhythm of the Saints in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2007, Simon was the first recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the U.S. Library of Congress. He has also won thirteen Grammy Awards. Ever since his early success, Simon has sponsored music education programs for children and mentored several teenage musicians.
“We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune.” —Paul Simon
Songwriter Burt Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri on this date in 1928. His best-known hits, written with lyricist Hal David, include “Blue on Blue” (Bobby Vinton), “The Look of Love” (Dusty Springfield), “Baby, It’s You” (The Shirelles), “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney), “What the World Needs Now Is Love” (Jackie DeShannon), “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and numerous songs written for Dionne Warwick. Bacharach was a graduate of Forest Hills High School in New York and McGill University in Montreal. He has had seventy Top Forty hits and won three Academy Awards, eight Grammys, one Emmy, and the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Several of his numbers have become jazz standards. His memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart, is scheduled for publication this autumn. To watch him play “Close to You” with Barbra Streisand in 1971, click here.
