Category: Biography Publisher: Veni Vici Books
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 165
Copyright: January 2013
ISBN-13: 9780988018907
Price: $7.77 (eBook)
A collection of the author's lyrics written over 60 years with background on the music industry of the '50s & 60's
A collection of lyrics, including some sheet music, of the many songs written by the author over a period of over 60 years plus anecdotal background on the circumstances surrounding the writing of the songs, the recording of them and on the music industry of the 1950s and '60s in particular. Some of the songs were recorded by Paul Simon, Carl Perkins, Fred Neil, Eddie Fontaine, Lillian Briggs, etc.
Excerpt
About “Will We Meet Again?”
It was 1956. I was working as a copywriter at Benton & Bowles in New York, grinding out TV commercials for Tide, Grape Nuts breakfast cereal and others. Joe Feagins, a youngster from Wichita, looked after our media room. We met, got chatting and discovered that he wrote music with ease but struggled with lyrics while I wrote lyrics with ease but often struggled with music.
He wanted me to hear a new melody he’d written. We had a little music room with a piano. Joe played his melody. I loved it.
I had become aware of the drama lived out by some of our secretaries who saved their pennies for 50 weeks for their two-week vacation where they hoped to meet their prince charming. More often than not, of course, the prince had a fling in mind while the girls sought a lifetime connection. I covered this hypothetical girls’ dilemma in the lyric. Joe’s melody was so inspiring; I wrote the lyric in a few minutes.
One of our secretaries walked in at that point and we played it for her. She broke up in tears, “It’s the story of my life,” she sobbed.
I recorded a demo with Ginny Gibson, a wonderful singer. Two years later I was about to record a hard-driving rock song with Lillian Briggs and we needed a B-side for the record. I showed Lillian a briefcase filled with music and she picked this one. It wasn’t really right for her. It was rangy and Lillian had a narrow range. She was best on hard rock. But she insisted.
She had a little trouble in the session and I suggested she handle it like a jazz song, improvising a bit, cutting the top and bottom while sliding around in the middle. She did just fine.
Atra Baer in the New York Daily News wrote in her review, “Who says they don’t write songs like they used to anymore?” Then she quoted a line from the lyric that she particularly liked: “Can Holiday romance keep burning when it’s snowing?”
That gave me a good feeling. It helped me overcome anger over the cheats at the record company who gave me phony sales counts. More on Lillian Briggs and that other song later.
Joe came to me another time with a song he’d written that he wanted “fixed.” He didn’t like his lyric and asked me to write a new one. It was a spirited up-tempo melody he had, something that would work with sleigh bells for a Christmas ditty.
But I heard something in the melody that I wanted to explore and I then asked him to play it very slowly. That changed the entire character of the song. It now had soul, a jazz soul, and, again, I banged out the lyric in a matter of minutes because the melody inspired me.
I call that one Wintertime in Maine.
Will We Meet Again?
Will we meet again
when this vacation’s over?
Will you love me when
the summer sun is gone?
Can Holiday romance
keep burning when it’s snowing?
And will I stand a chance
when wintry winds are blowing?
Will we meet again
or are you just pretending?
Will you love me when
this kiss is memory?
Although we’re having fun,
The fun will soon be done,
And then I fear you’ll run..
Or will we meet again?
Wintertime in Maine
I feel my heart ache
when the first snowflake
lands beneath my window pane,
Guess I’m homesick for
the wintertime in Maine;
That’s where hearts are warm
while the frosty storm
Sings its icy old refrain,
How I miss the spell
of wintertime in Maine.
Caught in city traffic lights
I yearn for home
And I ask myself these nights
“Why did I roam?”
So I’ll have to see
if I’ve got the fee
For a ticket on a train
Cause I’m heading for
The Wintertime in Maine.
Robert Burns' first daughter was Elizabeth. Her story and the five descendants Scottish lives are recorded here with the Bard's message today as ever in need. Al Quida listen: Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that. That Sense
