Hal Saunders: songwriter, playwright, printmaker and more

Hal Saunders (1904-1991) was born James Hallett Saunders in Armidale NSW. He was a prolific songwriter who made a name for himself writing radio serials from the mid-1930s before going into the music business in the 50s and 60s. He was also a visual artist specialising in etching and printmaking. 

On his retirement from Festival Records in 1965 (noted in Billboard and Cash Box), Saunders was referred to as a producer, composer, arranger and musical director. That is a good start, but it leaves out lyricist, adapter, jingle-writer, scriptwriter, A&R man, pianist and bandleader. 

Michael Looper has tracked Saunders' job titles at Festival from 1954 to 1960: musical director, musical consultant in charge of local recording activities, recording supervisor and assistant A&R manager. He was a prominent office-holder and advocate in songwriters' associations including APRA in the late 40s-early 50s. 

Women's Weekly 6 June 62 [source]

Anyone who digs into the history of Australian popular music will come across Saunders' name in songwriting credits. In 1949, when he was President of The Australian Composers and Songwriters' Association, the Sydney Morning Herald called him Australia's most prolific songwriter who had copyrighted about 1,000 songs from the previous 15 years.¹ He often worked behind the scenes, for example when he produced Lucky Starr's hit I've Been Everywhere (1962) without any credit on the label. 

In the first half of the 1960s he wrote and (mainly) co-wrote for the latest crop of young pop stars at Festival. Frequent among his collaborators were influential Festival A&R man Ken Taylor and the multi-talented Franz Conde, at this time time a musical director at Festival. 

With Taylor, Saunders wrote or arranged for Vic Sabrino, Johnny Devlin and Ray Melton. With Conde, there were a lot of adaptations: traditional children's songs, a Christmas EP for Noeleen Batley, and an EP of traditional celebration songs for Col Joye. 

As an adapter, Saunders also contributed to Jimmy Little's hit version of the old gospel song Royal Telephone (1963), and he wrote the English lyrics for Noeleen Batley's Little Treasure From Japan (1964) from the Japanese song Konnichiwa Akachan. April Byron, Judy Stone, Patty Markham, Noeleen Batley, and Lana Cantrell all recorded tracks with credits to Hal Saunders as writer, co-writer or adapter.

It is hard to say where Saunders contributed as composer or lyricist in his collaborations, but he was capable of either. 

As a pianist in the 1930s he had led a swing quartet, Hal's Vagabonds, for at least one gig in Northern NSW, and his job descriptions at Festival included arranging and musical direction. Besides, his solo compositions confirm that he could write lyrics and compose music. 

As for lyrics, when Peter Scriven produced Tintookies (1956), his well-known marionette musical for children, Saunders wrote the book and the lyrics. 

For Nex'Town (1957), a musical devised and produced by Scriven, Saunders co-wrote the music and lyrics. His collaborator on Nex'Town, Iris Mason, later co-wrote the music for Saunders' own work for marionettes, Tales From Noonameena: an Operetta for Children (1973), staged at the opening of the Sydney Opera House. 

Saunders' ability as a lyricist is unsurprising. He had started earning a living as a writer for Sydney radio during the 1930s when he wrote advertising copy and lyrics for jingles, but he went on to become one of the top radio playwrights in the country. 

Nov 1935 [full story]

He is often identified with his popular serial The Black Spider (1935), a mystery set in Sydney that was first aired on 2KY, later on 3XY and other stations. A novelisation was published by Magpie Books in 1945.

A Sydney newspaper story in November 1935 announces the final episode of The Black Spider, but plugs a forthcoming comedy by Saunders, Gambler's Luck, as well as his Sunday morning adventure serial Jack Strong's Gold Reef. A few weeks later 2KY was airing Saunders' true-crime-based serial Sydney's Crime Sheet (early 1936), apparently commissioned in response to a similar show on another station.

This activity signalled a boom time for Australian radio that would last into the 1950s, an era when Australian variety and drama dominated programming. As Will Newton puts it in an overview of the period, I have always thought that Australian radio drama came into its own thanks, largely, to Hal Saunders. 

Away from the performing arts, the Australian Prints + Printmaking website has information about Hal Saunders, a print-seller, printer, printmaker, publisher, and writer, noted for his etchings. 

A reader might not guess that this is Hal Saunders the A&R man or the writer of The Black Spider, but the connection is made clear in a February 1937 Wireless Weekly article. Saunders talks about a medical crisis that forced him to abandon an earlier career in the legal profession. After recovering, he studied Art, and in 1928 he "toured New Zealand on behalf of the Commonwealth Government with paintings and etchings by Australian artists".

At the time of the Wireless Weekly article, Saunders had just written Hotel Revue, a musical comedy for radio with music by pianist Cliff Arnold. 

Saunders says he "brought along half a dozen melodies" to the first meeting with Arnold but confessed his "knowledge of music was non est". Perhaps this meant that he lacked knowledge of musical technicalities, or perhaps he was being modest, or just building a narrative. Whatever the explanation, by December of 1937 he knew enough to handle the piano in Hal's Vagabonds, and by 1954 he was a musical director at Festival Records. 

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1. It is hard to verify the reporter's figure of about 1,000 songs in 15 years, but a song every 5½ days or so seems doable. Besides, Saunders' voluminous output as a radio playwright shows that he had the drive and ability to work quickly and prolifically.

Sources
• Many newspaper and magazine articles at Trove.com.au, Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchives.com, so allow for reporters' errors and recycling of promotional material. See links in the text and email me for more.
• Discographic data at 45cat.com, 45worlds.com and Discogs.com.
• Nancy Bridges, Wonderful Wireless (1983) pp 48-50
• Will Newton. "Wonderful World of Wireless: Golden Years of Radio", Sutherland Shire Historical Society Inc Quarterly Bulletin, February 1993
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The Black Spider premières, October 1935 [source]

   To-night at 6.45. the first episode in “The Black Spider,” a 2KY mystery thriller, will be presented. Written by Hal Saunders, 2KY Playwright, “The Black Spider,” is a gripping story of crime and murder set in and around Sydney. The ingenuity of "The Black Spider" and his gang tests to the utmost the skill of Inspector McMillan and his colleague. Martin Purlow, the famous detective.  Besides the intense and exciting action which permeates the whole of this story, the author has introduced a generous splash of mystery, which makes it safe to assume that right until the final episode the true identity of "The Black Spider" cannot even be suspected.  In the presentation of this original all-Australian serial. 2KY is definitely making radio history, for this is the first occasion on which a serial of this type has been featured by any Australian broadcasting station. Included in the cast are: Dan Weldon, George Jennings, Harry McDonald, and Sylvia Post Mason.

February 1936: Sydney's Crime Sheet [source]

September 1940: The Secret of Smokyville [source]

Only in Oz (18): Johnny Burnette - Big Big World (1961)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

18. Johnny Burnette - Big Big World
(Fred Burch - Gerald Nelson - Red West)
USA 1961
London single (USA) #F-55318
London single (Australia) #HL-2164

US Charts: #58 Billboard, #49 Cash Box
Australian charts: #38 Sydney, #19 Melbourne (Ryan), #14 Melbourne (Guest), #37 Brisbane | #37 Australia

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Not a dramatic case of Only in Oz, but the lower reaches of Australia's Top 40 do beat the lower reaches of Top 60 Billboard and Top 50 Cash Box. 

Johnny Burnette

Johnny Burnette's three biggest hits Dreamin' (1960), You're Sixteen (1960), and Little Boy Sad (1961) all charted at least Top 20 in the US, the UK, Australia, and NZ but Australia is the only one where Big Big World made Top 40. 

In 1961 I was listening to Melbourne radio, so I remember Big Big World as well as Burnette's better-known songs. Depending on the chart compiler, Big Big World charted in Melbourne at #19 (Gavin Ryan) or #14 (Tom Guest). (For a plunge into the metaphysics of retrospective charts see my post Toppermost of the poppermost: the charts.) 

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Big Big World evokes the feeling of searching for one person among millions and being defeated by the vastness of the city. 

In Snuff Garrett's production the elements meld perfectly, all contributing to the final effect: composition, arrangement, performances. There are no jarring distractions.¹  

I admire the way the story is told economically, in colloquial language, without any wasted words. It takes place in two locations, an apartment block - Nine one, 27th Avenue - and a phone box. 

At the apartments, where the searcher tells them he is just looking for a friend living in Apartment 10, he has no luck: You say she's gone. Please, how long has it been?

In the phone box, the futility of his quest is brought home to him when he consults the telephone directory. 

Joneses, Joneses
Oh, I see, page 19 to 23

Big, big world can be unkind
The phone just took my last dime

I love the sound of Joneses Joneses. Every "s" has a /z/ sound, setting up a nice percussive effect with the repetition.  

This is a song of numbers: the address and the apartment number (Nine one, 27th Avenue... Apartment 10), the pages of Joneses (19 to 23).

I assume the numbers that open the song - Nine one, 27th - were carefully chosen, as they are perfect. 

I am reminded of that much-repeated story about the comedy writers on Sid Caesar's TV show deciding which number on a roulette wheel would be funniest. (The final choice was thirty-two). 

Big Big World isn't comedy, but I can imagine a similar process going on for Nine one, 27th, as well as for the numbers of the telephone directory pages 19 to 23.

Clearly, the rhythm of the words is a factor. And although the selection might have been intuitive, I wonder whether the result has something to do with the repeated sounds in nine one twenty-seven: the /n/, the short "e" (/e/) and the /w/?

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The composers of Big Big World are Gerald Nelson (1935-2012), Fred Burch (c.1932- ) and Bobby "Red" West (1936-2017).

Red West was a long-time associate of Elvis Presley from high school days, and a member of Elvis's entourage. He worked successfully as a bodyguard, stuntman, movie extra, actor, songwriter and artists' agent. West would be the most visible of the three writers of Big Big World, partly through the Elvis Presley connection, but also through his many appearances in films, sometimes uncredited but also credited alongside some well-known names. 

There are 138 Red West compositions listed by BMI at Songview. He wrote or co-wrote several songs recorded by Elvis including Separate Ways (1972, #20 USA) and If You Talk In Your Sleep (1974, #17 USA). He co-wrote I'm A Fool which charted for Dino, Desi & Billy (1965, #17 USA) but was first released by Rick Nelson (1964).

Gerald Nelson and Fred Burch were frequent collaborators. They were both from Paducah, Kentucky, where Nelson was in The Country Gentlemen, later known as The Escorts.  

 

Nelson and Burch started writing together when Burch was at the University of Kentucky in 1958. Their composition Tragedy charted for Thomas Wayne (1959, #4 USA), The Fleetwoods (1961, #10 USA), and Bryan Hyland (1969, #56 USA). A version by Paul McCartney appeared as a bonus track on a later reissue of Red Rose Speedway.

         Fred Burch

Fred Burch* was a prolific songwriter based in Nashville where he was a staff writer for Cedarwood Publishing Co. He collaborated, for example, with Marijohn Wilkin on Jimmy Dean's P.T. 109 (1962, #8 USA, #29 Australia). 

Jan Crutchfield was Burch's co-writer on Perry Como's Dream On Little Dreamer (1965, #25 USA). Crutchfield was also from Paducah, and he was in The Country Gentlemen-Escorts with Big Big World co-writer Gerald Nelson. (Jan Crutchfield's brother Jerry, also a notable songwriter, was also in the group.)

Strange, recorded by Patsy Cline (1962, #97 USA), was a Fred Burch - Mel Tillis composition. Tillis was also contracted to Cedarwood Publishing and they wrote several songs together.

It didn't surprise me to read in the archives that Burch was a "student of journalism" who studied English at university before turning to professional song writing. Clearly, at least one writer who knew their way around words had a hand in Big Big World, and as a songwriter Burch seems to have specialised in lyrics. 

For example, it was Burch who started off Tragedy with some lines of verse.² Local press in Paducah (1962) gives him credit for being the lyricist of P.T. 109 and numerous other songs including Big Big World,³ although in the Tennessee press Burch himself acknowledges co-composer Marijohn Wilkin's role in polishing the lyrics of P.T. 109.⁴

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Selected sources, further reading:
1. I wrote something similar about Snuff Garrett's production of Gene McDaniels - It's A Lonely Town (Lonely Without You). That post also has a list of some of Garrett's notable productions.

2. "Burch, Helms on High Road": background on Burch & Nelson and the writing of "Tragedy", The Tennessean, Nashville, 12 November 1961.
3. "P.T.109... Former Paducah Man Writes Hit Song", The Paducah Sun, Paducah, Kentucky, 3 June 1962.
4. "PT 109: How It Came About", The Tennessean, 20 May 1962.

Item of interest:
"Composers Take Cruise": songwriters Marijohn Wilkin and Fred Burch with Wilkin's husband and son on a cruise trip to Paducah on the Wilkins' houseboat,  The Leaf-Chronicle, Clarksville, Tennessee, 7 August 1961.

*Don't confuse Fred Burch with Don Burch who wrote The Shields' hit "You Cheated" (1958) or John Burch who wrote Georgie Fame's "Preach And Teach" (1964) and "In The Meantime" (1965).

Just Out of Reach: The Stewart Family on KLCN Blytheville

"Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)" by The Stewart Family was the original version of the song. Written by V.F. 'Pappy' Stewart, it was released in 1951 on Bill McCall’s Los Angeles label Gilt-Edge. The group also had records issued on affiliated label 4 Star.

Dozens of other versions of the song, many by major artists, have been released since early cover versions by Faron Young (1952, B-side on Capitol) and by Bonnie Lou (1953, B-side on King). The Originals website lists a selection of 15 versions, and Cover.info lists 55.

Bunny Walters charted #21 in New Zealand with his version in 1970, hence my interest in it.

Pappy Stewart in 1976 (local news story).

The Stewart Family was a real family, a country and gospel group led by Virgil F. “Pappy” Stewart (1907-1988), a Blytheville, Arkansas soybean grower and the composer of Just Out Of Reach, .

The Stewarts were one of several family musical groups in the area at this time. They were part of a thriving country, hillbilly and gospel music scene nurtured in the 1930s and 40s by local radio stations like KLCN in Blytheville and KOSE in nearby Osceola. 

In 1970, Blytheville journalist Jim Branum noted that KLCN has done as much for country artists than any other station its size in the nation, and acknowledged the prevalence of family groups amongst hillbilly artists.

The Stewart family worked a farm, but they were also musicians, and they married musicians, and they had neighbours who were musicians. The names of Stewart family and friends appear in the line-ups of multiple groups on local radio, and at local events like the National Cotton Picking Contest. 

Some of these artists cut some records on minor labels, but Pappy Stewart’s extraordinary success with Just Out Of Reach, and his connection with the music stars who recorded it, is an outlier in a mainly localised industry.

Pappy, his two daughters, and his sister appeared regularly on KLCN Blytheville from 1934 after they convinced the station to give them a regular 15-minute segment. They toured extensively around the region until 1953. The band broke up as the daughters began raising families of their own.

The family was billed at local events as Pappy Stewart’s Family or Pappy Stewart And His Famous Family. For a gig in Charleston, Missouri in October 1945 they were advertised as “Pap Stewart And His Arkansas Cowgirls of Radio Station KLCN, Blytheville“.

In 1951 the line-up was Pappy Stewart (guitar), his daughters Bethyl (fiddle and vocals) and Janet (bass violin), his multi-instrumental sister Baba Howard (mainly accordion) and Bethyl’s husband Buddy Brown.

Baba had also been heard on KLCN in Don & Baba Howard & Their Smiling Hillbillies (clearly along similar lines to Don Howard and His Smiling Hillbilly Gang and Donald Howard and His Smiling Hillbillies, also spotted in the archives).

Also touring with the Stewarts during this period were Wilma Scott and Don Whitney.

Wilma Scott was from Blytheville too, and had been in the Burdette Girls Quartet with Bethyl, Janet and Baba Stewart in the early 1940s. Don Whitney (1926-1985), from nearby Osceola, also worked solo, on stage as Arkansas’ Biggest Hillbilly and on several discs on the 4 Star label. He was a disc jockey at KLCN Blythedale and at KOSE Osceola where he became general manager.

Apart from Just Out Of Reach, Pappy Stewart was a prolific songwriter who had a number of other songs recorded by other artists including Patsy Cline. Many of the songs in the family’s repertoire were written by Pappy or his sister Baba.

When interviewed in 1976 for a profile in Blytheville’s Courier-News, Pappy Stewart was 68 years old and had been married to Gladys for 50 years. He was long retired from professional music and happily living and working on his farm. His sister Baba, who was much younger than Pappy, died in Blythedale in 2013, aged 87.

I’m just a country boy. I’d rather farm as do anything. I’m doing what I want to do.

Pappy Stewart to Jack Weatherly, The Courier-News, 1976

National Cotton Picking Contest 1949

This content was first published at my website in my history of Just Out Of Reach. See there for selected sources.

The Juanita Banana phenomenon

The Peels - Juanita Banana
(Tash Howard - Murray Kenton)Arranged & conducted by Charlie Fox.
A Howard-Smith Production
USA 1966
Karate single #522
Stateside (UK) single #513
Karate single in Australia (pictured) released through Astor

Juanita Banana is a comic song about a Mexican banana grower's daughter who makes it as a singing star in the big city [lyrics]. When "Juanita Banana" sings the chorus it is an operatic caricature, a worked-over version of Caro Nome, an aria from Giusseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

The title echoes Chiquita Banana, the 1944 jingle about the cartoon mascot of the United Fruit Company, the international banana trader that evolved into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

I first heard Juanita Banana when it was excerpted on a novelty record by Dickie Goodman, Batman And His Grandmother (1966). This was a cut-in or break-in record (a distant ancestor of the mashup), where a comedian would do a commentary as, say, a news reporter and snippets of current songs would be inserted to fit in with the story.

Although Juanita Banana has been reissued on the likes of 25 All Time Novelty Hits and Definitive 60s, Vol. 1 it never was a national hit in the USA, UK or Australia. Even on the sprinkling of regional US and Canadian charts posted to ARSA the best it manages is #16 at WIXY in Cleveland, and 30 Years of Canadian Charts has it peaking at #29.

So much for the Anglo world, where it seems to be one of those songs that has stuck in the memory longer than its initial popularity justifies. The extraordinary thing about Juanita Banana is the number of times it has been recorded in non-English-speaking countries. Even the Peels' original version was popular in The Netherlands, where it charted at #13.

When I started writing this post, I was going to compile a definitive list of versions, but I've given up that idea: the more I search, the more I find.  Instead, here's a partial list. Some of the exact years are hard to pinpoint, but I believe these are all from the 60s. [Update 2012: See Phil Milstein's recent post at Probe which includes a downloadable .zip file of 21 Juanita Banana versions and related tracks.]

The Peels (USA, 1966)
Henri Salvador (France)
Billy Mo (Germany)
Luis Aguile (Spain, by Argentinian singer)
Quartetto Cetra (Italy)
Het Cocktail Trio (Netherlands)
Mal Sondock (Germany, by US singer-deejay, 1966)
Georgie Dann (Spain, by French singer, 1966)
Los Beta (Spain, 1966)
J. R. Corvington (Argentina)
Los Tres Sudamericanos (Paraguayan group; on Spain's Belter label)
Raymond Boisserie (France, 1967)
Marcello Minerbi (Italy, 1966, #9 Austria)
German Moreno (Phillipines, 1968: he also appeared in a 1968 film called Juanita Banana. Details at IMDb are sparse.)
The Monks (single on Vogue. I don't think these are the Yanks in Germany we love so much, but a French band with J. C. Pelletier.)
Jean Bonal Et Son Orchestre (France)
Teddy Martin & His Las Vegas Boys (France?)
The Reels (Spain: not the Aussie band)

A completist would also include Huanita Banana:

7 Mladih (Yugoslavia, 1966)
Radmila Mikic Miki (Yugoslavia, 1967)

That's it for me, but if too much still isn't enough, feel free to browse the 41 000 hits at Google for "juanita banana" (and nearly 1000 for "huanita banana").

How about the small print?

The Mad Music Archive identifies co-writer Tash Howard as the
producer who put together The Peels, a studio group (not surprising, somehow), and gives some background about the business end of the song's publication.

Tash Howard (c.1941-1977), originally a drummer, had changed his name from Howard Tashman.¹ He has 147 compositions listed at BMI, including a follow-up single Juanita Banana Part 2 and (with Charlie Fox) its B-side Rosita Tomato on Karate #533. Between the two Juanitas was Scrooey Mooey on Karate #527, another Tash Howard song (registered title: Screwee Mooey) .

Murray Kenton has eleven songs in his BMI repertoire, the US Copyright Office gives his real name as Morris Temkin and that's about all I know. Howard's co-producer, Smith, is a mystery to me.

Arranger and conductor Charlie Fox is not Charlie Foxx of Mockingbird fame, but he does seem to be the songwriter and film composer Charles Fox, whose repertoire includes Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly, Jim Croce's I Got A Name and the Happy Days theme (all with lyricist Norman Gimbell).

You can read about Charles Fox's distinguished career at the Songwriters' Hall of Fame which - alas! - offers no further insight into his contribution to Juanita Banana.



The Peels - Juanita Banana.mp3
Verdi - Caro None from Rigoletto.mp3
(Maria Callas 1952 - excerpt)
Dickie Goodman - Batman And His Grandmother.mp3
(Juanita first heard at 21 secs.)Henri Salvador - Juanita Banana.mp3 (French)
Billy Mo - Juanita Banana.mp3 (German)
Luis Aguile - Juanita Banana.mp3 (Spanish)

Update: For more audio, including versions, other Peels songs, and related tracks, all in a downloadable zip file, see Phil Milstein's May 2012 post at Probe.
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Footnote: 1. For confirmation that Tash Howard was born Howard Tashman, see the comment below from Holly, who adds some background about the co-writer and producer behind Juanita Banana. (Also mentioned at the Joey Powers page of Harry Young and Larry N. Houlieff.)Not-to-be-confused-with Dept: There is also a London Indie/Pop/Rock singer called Tash Howard (see her MySpace). Tash Howard is also a character played by Barry Van Dyke in an episode of The New Dick Van Dyke Show.... But now I'm getting silly (unless the naming of the character is some kind of in-joke). Oh, and this 21st Century Seattle band called The Peels is not the Juanita Banana group.

The US Copyright Office shows that in 1990 the copyright of Juanita Banana by Tash Howard & Murray Kenton (Morris Temkin) was transferred to Gary Knight aka Harold Temkin who, as Gary Weston, co-wrote Vacation, the 1962 Connie Francis hit (see BMI repertoires). Further research, anyone?
Thanks to Josef Danksagmüller for Marcello Minerbi version alert.

The small print: Ed Goldman, writer of Billy You're My Friend

Last month I wondered about the writer of Billy You're My Friend, Gene Pitney's minor hit from 1968. It's one of those unique songs that you never forget, the one-off that comes out of nowhere and leaves you with few clues about its background story.

A couple of days ago Ed Goldman emailed me, after he'd read my post.

Ed tells me he wrote Billy You're My Friend when he was a piano major at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He’d worked in music publishing as a staff songwriter, usually working with a regular lyricist partner, but when producer Bob Schwartz was looking for a song for Gene Pitney, “a single that would bring him more into what was then the current style”, Ed ended up writing both words and music himself.

This is how it came about, as Ed tells it:

My partner at the time and I had interested a producer at Musicor Records in a kind of poetic, Sergeant Pepper's type tune called Poor Richard, which I demonstrated on the piano, improvising a fugue-like break.

The producer, Bob Schwartz, loved it, but it was already published by another company. He said Gene Pitney was going into the studio in a few days… and he wanted something in the style I had demonstrated on the piano.

The next day I sat down with my lyricist, but we couldn't see eye to eye (or ear to ear) on anything that day. I already had most of the tune and the first verse of the lyric, but he didn't relate to it, and he wasn't coming up with anything either, so I finished it on my own and brought it to Bob the next day.

Bob said, “That's it!” and went on to bring in an arranger... Joe Scott to soup up the break and arrangement into this big orchestral sound. He billed it as 'symphonic rock' and the record was made about a week later.

Although he was quite excited about the finished product, Ed comments on the interpretation and arrangement:

I felt to a degree that the song was made too grandiose for what it was, and who Gene was as a song stylist. My feeling about the song was that it was a kind of chamber piece that first expressed the innocence and trust a young man had for his best friend, then the anger he felt when he discovered that both his friend and girlfriend had betrayed him.

Ed Goldman’s heart was in jazz and the classics, and for many years he played piano around the New York area before returning to Juilliard in the 90s to study composition and orchestration. He has written music for TV soap operas and advertising jingles, but he now concentrates on writing and recording in his home studio, putting down all the parts himself - and he still writes his own lyrics. Ed’s current projects include a Broadway show, a CD of his own songs, and recordings of classical piano pieces including his own compositions.

On the uniqueness of Billy You’re My Friend, Ed comments:

My approach to that song, and most of those I wrote, was to be true to what the song itself seemed to want to say, even if I sometimes had to transcend pop songwriting conventions to do so. This is what I believe gave the song its individualistic flavour.

As a compulsive reader of the small print on record labels, I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have heard from (E. Goldman) and to be able to write about him here.

At last: the Nick Lampe story

In his professional musical career Nick Lampe sang in a 50s doowop group, toured with Alan Freed, hung out with Dion and Kenny Rankin in Manhattan, recorded an album at Muscle Shoals and, incidentally, put a single onto the charts in Melbourne, Australia. After that, he quit the business, headed for the mountains for a while, and ended up studying for a degree in Psychology. For years now he's been a social worker with disabled people in New York.

Nick Lampe's full name is Nicholas Lampariello. He is a New Yorker, born in Brooklyn, whose musical career goes back to the mid-50s, when he first appeared in the doowop group The Bop Tones on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour.

Out of those early TV appearances came the release of a Bop Tones single on Ember, I Had A Love (an original by the four group members) with the B-side (Be My) Pussy Cat (1958). The Bop Tones toured with Alan Freed, the original rock’n’roll disc jockey who put on shows packed with current singing stars.

(Brian Lee, at doowop site ColorRadio.com, tells me The Bop Tones were from the Bensonhurst-Coney Island section of Brooklyn and the other members, apart from Nick Lampariello, were Bob Kutner, John Ench and Dave Antebi.)

Later, in the 60s, Nick Lampe appeared at The Improvisation and The Scene in Manhattan, in off-Broadway shows, and on the Steve Allen and Pat Boone TV shows. Among his friends and colleagues at this time were Richard Pryor, Richie Havens and two of his mentors, Kenny Rankin and Dion Di Mucci, both credited as spiritual advisors in the notes to Nick's 1970 album It Happened Long Ago.

After heading for Los Angeles, where he appeared at The Troubador, Nick tried his luck with local record companies and was signed to Atlantic. In 1970 he recorded his solo album of original songs for the Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama. Flower Garden was the opening track, and it was the single that charted in Melbourne, released in Australia on Atlantic through Festival Records (above).

Nick left the music business for a mixture of artistic and personal reasons.

He had complained to Atlantic chairman and producerArmet Ertegun when he heard the finished version of his album, which added strings and chorus to his six-piece studio sessions. Nick believes his “art had been bastardized with bubblegum”, but that’s how it was released.

In the end, Nick and his first wife moved to the mountains of Northern California with their young son (he appears with Nick on the album sleeve of It Happened Long Ago, right). At this time, Nick’s wife was attempting to recover from the devastating effects of marijuana that had been covertly laced with PCP. During this period, Nick supported his family by playing in bars and on street corners in San Francisco, and later at Lake Tahoe, the Californian ski resort.

Eventually, Nick Lampariello remarried, moved to British Columbia to study for his BA in Psychology, and became a counsellor to victims of abuse.

Nowadays Nick works with disabled children in New York, helping them to develop essential life skills. He says: I don't make much money but I get a lot of love… I'm called Uncle Nicky by some 150 individuals who at one time may not have been able to speak: can't put a price on that. Musically I lead worship for three ministries and consequently I am always involved with music.

I still have my guitar, an old Martin D-18. It's about forty years old and is my love...

(Source: Nicholas Lampariello, by email.
Thanks also to Robert Thompson)

Shelley Pinz (Rochelle Pinz)

A first cousin of Shelley Pinz emailed last week to tell me more about the New York songwriter, poet and psychotherapist, born in 1944, who died last year.

As a songwriter Shelley Pinz is probably best known for the Lemon Pipers' 1968 hit Green Tambourine, written with her frequent collaborator Paul Leka. They wrote some follow-ups in a similar vein, including Rice Is Nice, Jelly Jungle (Of Orange Marmalade) and Pink Lemonade. This was was when Pinz and Leka were writing pop songs for Buddah, the Kama Sutra label's spin-off, and they continued writing together into the 70s.

In Australia, two other Shelley Pinz songs surfaced through local cover versions in 1968. She and Paul Leka also wrote You Are The One I Love, originally by Adam's Apples [listen], covered here by The Groove, and she co-wrote Happy Without You (this time with Kenny Laguna), originally by The Sound Judgment [listen] but remembered in Australia as a classic oldie by The Strangers. Both songs charted in Melbourne - the base city of both bands - and in Brisbane.

As Rochelle Pinz (using her full given name), Shelley Pinz was a psychotherapist specialising in the use of music, art and poetry. She held a Masters degree in social work, and in the late 90s she published a volume of poetry and lyrics, Courage to Think. WoodstockLive has some notes about this (although the audio link didn't work for me).

The best account I’ve found about Shelley Pinz the songwriter is in her own words from 1999 at StocksandNews.com (archived page), where she recalls how she got into the business while she was still a poetry-writing college student.

She tells about the inspiration for Green Tambourine, just before meeting with Paul Leka in the Brill Building precinct of New York:

In early Spring, 1966, while standing in front of the Brill Building I watched a man holding a tambourine begging for money. I wrote a poem about him and called the poem, 'Green Tambourine.' I added it to my lyric collection…. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man in front of the Brill Building, holding a tambourine begging for money. I remember writing the lyric, ‘watch the jingle jangle start to shine, reflections of the music that is mine. When you toss a coin you'll hear it sing. Now listen while I play my Green Tambourine’ as if it were yesterday..; in the 60s, on the streets between Seventh Avenue and Broadway there was a magic one could only imagine.

Green Tambourine was a worldwide hit (#1 USA, Top 10 UK & Australia, #3 NZ), but Happy Without You and You Are The One I Love would be better known in Australia than in the US. The American originals are obscurities, although the Adam's Apples recording of You Are The One I Love has been given new currency by the Northern Soul movement.

Shelley Pinz is listed at BMI under four variations of her given name: Rochelle, Shelley, Shelly and Chele, but ‘Shelley’ seems to be the preferred spelling as a songwriting credit.

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Update 7 March 2020:
Essential reading!
JCM, another friend of Rochelle 'Shelley' Pinz, has emailed his memories of her:

❝ I was in my mid teens in Atlantic beach when i and a friend met 'Shelley' ..we would shovel her snow & she'd invite us in and make us herbal tea. Some days, we'd stop by & say hello, she'd make us tea.. we were kids...to me, why not? I came from an abusive home and was out on streets most days/nights alone...i had music in my blood from early on and was just getting really into guitar and sound engineering (i was head audio visual student tech in hs by this time). She had even showed me her early patent designs for some really innovative electronic musical devices/interfaces way before they came into what we would probably refer to today as our DAWs. She was ahead of her time too. On some occasions, i'd go knock on her door during the day or even evening and she would invite me in and she knew i loved music and had ambitions and she'd let me noodle on her guitar and piano and we'd talk music and my dreams of becoming a musician, songwriter, and have my own studio someday. Just for me, she took me out for a surprise one night; i mustve been 17ish... i wont lie, she was the most BEAUTIFUL woman i ever saw ..secret crush on her i always had! She had the warmest face, the loveliest smile; i can still see it. Oh, the surprise, she took me to my first REAL recording studio! I was floored! I got the bug! Another time, we went to a friend of hers in the west end of long beach who had a recording studio...she told me to bring my guitar, which was an ovation deacon/breadwinner that i still have and play. I played as best i could then on a song part and left it at that. I was a nervous wreck then and didnt know nothing but loud and distortion. I have many fond memories of her; she asked to call her Rochelle. rather than her professional name(s). I know she had pictures of me shoveling her snow and some other in warmer times. i moved out on my own at 19 and sadly lost touch. When i finally did try and find her, i think she had moved by that point in time. As i grew up, becoming an audio visual engineer, sound engineer, multi instrumentalist, leader of my own long island hard rock band, i tried to find Rochelle. To no avail. Gave up looking. Then my day job was a computer engineer and the internet and this thing called a search engine came into being! Some time later, still involved with music, i looked for Rochelle again; this time, I succeeded, but sadly, the reply i got was that she had passed on. I CRIED.. she was SO KIND to me. Those years earlier, she told me what she saw, to keep going and never give up. I never gave up. I went searching for her to thank her, to show her what I became. Now with my own recording studio and putting out my own music. During a recent mixing/mastering session on a song, one that i put everything into, i dont know why, but at some final moment of working on this song, at the end of it, in a brief spot at the end, i just blurted out, in song voice, jubilantly, 'I DID IT'. It stayed in the recording. When that moment happened, I couldnt help but think of how proud Rochelle would have been to see what became of me. the song has nothing to do with her or about her; its actually a warewolf song. But i was so proud of hearing it when it was finished that i put in the songs liner notes, 'For R.Pinz, thank you'. I wish i could thank her, see her smile again, that beautiful glowing face. I'd blush like the teenage love struck boy i was in 1976/77. If I could, Id have said, 'Thank you Rochelle for inviting me into your home, inspiring me so much; I always wanted to let you know how much those little things you did musically for me set me on my musical journey. You never knew how important those times were to me; they were EVERYTHING.' I miss you. I wish i had a picture of her for my studio. If anyone ever comes here, if you have any pictures of her, please contact me. NO, i'm not a loon, she was very pivotal to my future and would like a picture of her for my studio wall because one should be hanging in it; I owe it to her memory.

Thank you Rochelle,

JCM ❞

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Adam's Apples - You Are The One I Love.mp3

The Sound Judgment - Happy Without You.mp3

Label scan from Margaret G. Still, thank you.