Barry Manilow may have written a song called 'I Write The Songs' but he never, because i wrote hundreds of them including seventy-three U.S. and fifty-two UK Top 40 hits so unlike Barry, people mostly liked mine.
I never set out to be a song writer, i hated piano lessons and wanted to be an athlete but i seemed to have a bit of flair for it which is why when i began a two year stint in the Army in 1950, and the North Korean's who we were fighting at the time were not intimidated by someone who could play the piano's treble clef line on a sheet of music with their left hand, i was told to not shoot at anyone and instead was plonked in the army bases playing the piano.
The Army is not usually a hot bed of musical talent, but it was there that i met singer Vic Damone and following our discharge, i spent the next three years as his pianist for Damone and various other singers including wife number 1, Paula Stewart.
I then landed a plum job working with Marlene Dietrich at her nightclub shows and then on her World tours and i particularly enjoyed touring Europe but no so much America who never really much cared for me.
When i released my first solo album with me singing the best known songs i had written for other people, it tanked because they obviously preferred the other version rather than the one's i had created.
I met Hal David who had Van Gogh’s ear for music while i was to lyric writing what Colonel Sanders was to chicken preservation but together we were brilliant and once Perry Como recorded 'Magic Moments', we were off and running with (They Long to Be) Close to You, I Say a Little Prayer, Walk on By, Always Something There to Remind Me, and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.
While working with the Drifters, i met a backing singer called Dionne Warwick and asked her to sing a couple of songs Hal and I had been writing and over a period of the next 10 years, she had racked up a string of 39 consecutive chart hits.
Between 1956 and 1975 we had written over 230 songs together for the pop market, motion pictures, television, and Broadway and made stars of the likes of Dionne Warwick, Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones.
We were one of the most successful teams in music history and then me and David fell out over payment of the the songs we had written for the film 'Lost Horizon' and he sued me and Warwick then sued us both for breach of contract as we were not supplying her songs anymore but the rise of Disco and then Punk kind of meant our kind of songs were not 'cool' anymore and we were being edged out of the music scene anyway.
I did carry on writing with people like Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crowe and even Dr Dre and had a last hurrah with a song about getting lost between the Moon and New York City for the Film Arthur and i did pop up in a couple of films but nothing recaptured my hey day.
I died of natural causes at my home in Los Angeles aged 94 but probably my greatest achievement was being married to Angie Dickinson for 16 years, usually the only way a piano player can get a beautiful blonde on his arm is to have her tattooed there.
The Army is not usually a hot bed of musical talent, but it was there that i met singer Vic Damone and following our discharge, i spent the next three years as his pianist for Damone and various other singers including wife number 1, Paula Stewart.
I then landed a plum job working with Marlene Dietrich at her nightclub shows and then on her World tours and i particularly enjoyed touring Europe but no so much America who never really much cared for me.
When i released my first solo album with me singing the best known songs i had written for other people, it tanked because they obviously preferred the other version rather than the one's i had created.
I met Hal David who had Van Gogh’s ear for music while i was to lyric writing what Colonel Sanders was to chicken preservation but together we were brilliant and once Perry Como recorded 'Magic Moments', we were off and running with (They Long to Be) Close to You, I Say a Little Prayer, Walk on By, Always Something There to Remind Me, and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.
While working with the Drifters, i met a backing singer called Dionne Warwick and asked her to sing a couple of songs Hal and I had been writing and over a period of the next 10 years, she had racked up a string of 39 consecutive chart hits.
Between 1956 and 1975 we had written over 230 songs together for the pop market, motion pictures, television, and Broadway and made stars of the likes of Dionne Warwick, Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones.
We were one of the most successful teams in music history and then me and David fell out over payment of the the songs we had written for the film 'Lost Horizon' and he sued me and Warwick then sued us both for breach of contract as we were not supplying her songs anymore but the rise of Disco and then Punk kind of meant our kind of songs were not 'cool' anymore and we were being edged out of the music scene anyway.
I did carry on writing with people like Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crowe and even Dr Dre and had a last hurrah with a song about getting lost between the Moon and New York City for the Film Arthur and i did pop up in a couple of films but nothing recaptured my hey day.
I died of natural causes at my home in Los Angeles aged 94 but probably my greatest achievement was being married to Angie Dickinson for 16 years, usually the only way a piano player can get a beautiful blonde on his arm is to have her tattooed there.
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