Field Notes from a Songwriter's Centennial -- Part II

How long does it last?
Can love be measured by the hours in a day?

September 24th is the centennial birthday of my late father, the songwriter
Carl Sigman (1909-2000), who wrote nearly a thousand songs, including "It's
All In The Game," "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story," "Ebb Tide," "What Now,
My Love," "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)" and "Arrivederci, Roma." In the second of two parts, I offer some not altogether random notes on the years 1959-2009.

When my dad awoke to the '60s, it dawned on him that the times they were
a'changin'. Determined to keep writing hits, he got in on the girl-group
craze with The Angels' heavenly "Till" and had a Top 5 smash with Brenda
Lee's heart-wrenching "Losing You," produced by Nashville legend Owen
Bradley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yf8TpILBCc

In 1964, at the height of Beatlemania -- by which time songwriters who
didn't smoke pot and perform their own material were becoming an endangered
species -- Beatles producer George Martin conjured a U.K./U.S. chartmaker
with 21-year-old Liverpudlian Cilla Black's (nee Priscilla White!) stirring
recording of Carl's "You're My World," one of my all-time favorite tracks.
Helen Reddy's tepid reprise of the song was a tepid hit 13 years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1CjES_wJIw

What do Mel Torme, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Pussycat Dolls have in
common? Skipping decades from the '60s through the '80s to 2005, they all
recorded "Right Now," my dad's collaboration with jazz great Herbie Mann.

A friend recently sent me three sublime CDs comprising 28 versions of Van
Morrison performing "It's All In The Game" live in various stages of
inspiration and inebriation.

Frank Sinatra committed over a dozen of my dad's songs to vinyl, and sang
at least another half dozen in recorded radio broadcasts. His versions of
"I Could Have Told You," "A Day In The Life Of A Fool" and "The World We
Knew" are definitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsbzC5AaEp8

But even Frank didn't always get it right. His swingin', finger snappin'
interpretation of Carl's most despairing song, "What Now, My Love" -- in
which the singer pleads, Now that you've left me how can I live through
another day? -- isn't quite, well, suicidal enough. You're better off
listening to Sonny & Cher's jangly 1966 hit, or heartfelt versions by
Shirley Bassey, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland or Miss Piggy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB5ga-dRpx4

Once, at a dinner party, a woman remarked that Carl's love songs were so
deep they could only have been inspired by his wife, Terry. Carl, who could
never ever tell a lie, replied, "No. Actually, they're just songs."

In the '50s Carl wrote "Answer Me, My Lord," and Frankie Laine quickly took
it to No.1 in the U.K. But the U.S. publisher thought the lyric was too
religious, so my dad substituted "Love" for "Lord." The resulting charttoppers by Vaughn Monroe and Nat Cole on these shores paved the way for the song's 56-year journey from croon (Bing Crosby) to pop (Petula Clark) to doo wop (Harptones) to country (Marty Robbins) to R&B (Impressions) to rock/soul (Johnny Rivers) to art rock (Bryan Ferry) to jazz (Pharaoh Sanders). Opera superstar Renee Fleming even recorded it a couple of years ago and sang it last season on Elvis Costello's cable TV show, "Spectacle," with Bill Frissell on guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bY1unOjt7w

And two of the greatest popular music geniuses of our time have included
"Answer Me" in their repertoires: Bob Dylan often performed it in concert
in the early '90s -- playing the entire melody on guitar before singing a
note -- and Joni Mitchell gave it a lush, gorgeous treatment in 2000.

Carl Sigman-Peter DeRose's "A Marshmallow World" has been a
Christmas/winter perennial for decades and still gets new recordings every
year. Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Brenda Lee sang it early on and Darlene
Love knocked it out of the park for the Phil Spector Christmas
Album in the '60s. In recent years, Los Straitjackets, Regis Philbin/Steve Tyrell, The Cheetah Girls, Kristin Chenoweth/John Pizzarelli and Raul Malo have added their voices, and last season even conservative commentator Mark Steyn joined the snowball fight with an affectionate take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfirH7DQqU

A friend of my parents would tell music directors on cruise ships he was Carl
Sigman, whereupon my dad's songs would get played and the faux Carl would
take the bows and soak up the kudos.

When Phil Spector's wall-of-sound treatment propelled the Righteous
Brothers' "Ebb Tide" to the Top 5 in 1965, my high school social life
turned a corner: several cheerleaders actually became aware of my
existence. When Lenny Welch sang it at my senior prom two years later, he
either called me up to the stage or didn't, depending on whom you ask and
what substances they'd consumed. I prefer to think he did, but couldn't
swear to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_VBRw2AL-A

Inexplicably, hundreds of German and Eastern European rock bands have produced
note-for-note covers of Louis Prima's gloriously demented rendering of
"Buona Sera," which floored my dad, who thought he'd written a sweet,
simple love song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h_oVKHwEPQ

Paramount chief Bob Evans nixed my father's original lyric for the movie
theme from the 1970 weeper "Love Story" because he thought the last two
words in the line, "A moment's richness in the mystery of time ...so Jenny
came" were too, uh, sexually suggestive. Livid, Carl paced the living room
floor of our Great Neck home, unable to come up with an alternative. In
frustration, he turned to my mom and said, "Where do I begin?" She
recognized the perfect fit of those words with the opening notes of the
melody, and you know the rest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_FklOwMyoE

When both were in their '80s, Carl got a call from the aforementioned
Frankie Laine, who was convinced that all the "Festival of the Bulls" theme
needed to become a smash hit was a Carl Sigman lyric. My dad's immediate
reaction was pure Michael Corleone: "Just when I think I'm out of it, they
pull me back in." He relented and wrote a pretty decent lyric, but
Frankie's dream of a four-legged bookend to his classic "Mule Train" hasn't yet
materialized.

As 89-year-old Carl was wheeled into a Long Island operating room for heart
surgery, he quipped, "Aorta be in pictures."

Not long before he died, my father awoke from a dream in which he had
written lyrics to Frederic Chopin's immortal "Revolutionary Etude." After
breakfast, he sat down at his desk and transcribed the words to "Unmask
Your Heart." (Note to Mr. Buble or Ms. Keys: I have a nice demo...) And
that was his swan song, a collaboration -- across the oceans and the
centuries -- with as gifted a tunesmith as this world has seen.

Follow Michael Sigman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/majorsongs

Comments

[CarolLee]

PART TWO OF COMMENT:

Back to youtube to hear whatever versions I could find on there -- I love Elvis' and Shirley Bassey's. That database is really a treasure -- I feel like I have so many more great songs to discover, one at a time.

Also, Michael, I want to tell you too how much I enjoy your writing. I enjoyed what you wrote about your dad so much, so I looked up your previous Huffington Post articles and read those as well. Your writing is so effortless, your intellect so evident, your vocabulary is so extensive (more than once I had to open the dictionary), plus you're funny! I hope you plan one day to write a book as it would be a great read, no matter the topic!

I hope I don't come across as a gushing super-fan. My compliments are sincere and I've always been of the mindset that if you appreciate something about somebody you should tell them. I'm just pleased because I love good music and I love good writing, and I found good music and good writing, in the same family. You've definitely inherited your father's gift -- your writing is lyrical and enjoyable.

Again, Happy Birthday to your dad. It's so good that you're keeping his legacy alive. I know he is so proud of you!

Sincerely, Carol

[CarolLee]

PART ONE OF COMMENT:

Happy Birthday to the late great Carl Sigman!!

Michael, as I mentioned in response to part one of this article, I was not familiar with your father prior to that article, although I knew and loved some of his songs. I cannot tell you how much I now have come to enjoy learning more and more about your father's music. What a great talent!

Since I read part one, I've been having a lot of fun searching on youtube for various versions of your dad's songs -- I'm going to find the versions I love most and then see if I can find them on iTunes or on CD and compile them onto a Carl Sigman greatest hits CD.

I've listened to several versions of Ebb Tide on youtube and my favorite so far is Lenny Welch, so it was fun to hear that he performed it at your prom! I've always loved Billie Holiday's version of Crazy He Calls Me, but I found Jackie Wilson's version on youtube and now I love that as well.

I looked at majorsongs.com at the database which lists who has recorded what song, and I'm enjoying finding new songs on there as well (well, new to me, that is!). I had never heard of What Now, My Love? but I saw on your database that many, many people have recorded it, so I thought it must be a great song if that many people have sung it.

[shawnak]

What a lovey combo of pop music and memoir. Thanks for sharing your archives.