The Making of a Songwriter Few American lives in the 20 th or early 21 st centuries have remained untouched by the works of the great popular songwriters. Popular music has proven to be considerably more than an adornment to everyday life; it has become a barometer of taste, personal philosophy and social thought for millions of people. The listening choices made by countless individuals have reflected and sometimes influenced their ideas about fashion, politics, social relationships and perhaps mostly importantly their emotional responses to the events of their everyday lives. Over the last several decades, popular music became not just a mere embellishment to the emotional life of the people who experienced it but a prompter and shaper of that emotional life. While thousands of composers and lyricists contributed to the common repertoire of western popular music on various levels of sophistication, and hundreds might be said to have made significant contributions, there is a small, select group of popular music composers and lyricists who stand above the rest in terms of the enduring quality and quantity of their best work. In the first half of the 20 th century, this list includes Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern (working with various lyricists including Oscar Hammerstein II), George Gershwin (working extensively with his brother Ira as lyricist), Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers (working primarily with lyricists Larry Hart and Hammerstein). In the second half of the century, John Lennon and Paul McCartney (working both collaboratively and individually), Elton John, Stevie Wonder and the songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King must be considered to be among the most significant. While some of these are known as much or more for being performers as for being
2 songwriters, each has made distinctive contributions to the popular song repertoire, contributions that transcend a particular performance or the interpretation of a particular performer (including their own). Early Life and Musical Training Any examination of the lives of the great popular songwriters of the twentieth century quickly reveals that there is no common source for the unique form of creativity that both composers and lyricists have possessed. There is neither a central wellspring of inspiration nor any predictable patterns in respect to circumstances of birth, background, education, training or career profile for the great composers or lyricists. The great songwriters of the 20 th century emerged from a wide variety of economic and social backgrounds and life circumstances, some of them quite colorful and others rather mundane. One of the most colorful early backgrounds belongs to Irving Berlin who, along with his father, mother and siblings, immigrated to the United States in 1893 to avoid religious persecution only to huddle in poverty for years in the Lower East Side Jewish ghetto of New York City. While Berlin s father was unable to pursue his career of cantor in New York, he passed on his love of music and the skill of his voice to Irving who, inspired by the singing waiters in the ubiquitous taverns, left home at the age of fourteen to try to earn a living with his voice. Devoid of significant piano skills, he eventually managed to secure a job as a boomer, a vocal song plugger who was paid to spontaneously erupt into song with the newest would-be hits of the day during the intermission of a movie or theatre performance. From there, Berlin used his largely untutored musical abilities and wits in equal proportion to make his way up the ladder of success, eventually landing a job with a ragtime publishing firm.
3 Despite his reputation as one of the most prolific tune-writers who ever lived, Berlin was notoriously limited in his technical abilities. He learned to play piano by picking out melodies on the black keys (playing almost exclusively in the key of F-sharp major) and, while his pianistic skills were to improve in later years, he never achieved any significant performance ability on the instrument. His primary songwriting technique involved dictating melodies to his musical secretary and picking out the harmonies from options provided by this musical assistant. Circumstances were somewhat different for George and Ira Gershwin, although Moisha Gershowitz, his Jewish father, had emigrated from Russia at about the same time as the Berlin (originally Baline ) family. The family settled first in Brooklyn, moving soon afterwards to the East Side where George in particular was an active participant in the rough and tumble street life of the district. Still, the family was relatively secure financially and, like many Jewish families from the period, surrounded themselves with music as much as possible, exposing both George and Ira to recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan and other light classical music at an early age. As soon as possible (1920), the family acquired a piano for which the younger brother, George, immediately showed a remarkable propensity, although he was not provided with formal lessons until he turned twelve. Nevertheless, George s mother, also a pianist, remained highly interested in George s music education and he was subsequently enrolled with a series of piano teachers. The third of these, Charles Hamblitzer, was particularly taken by his young student s talent, referring to the fourteen-year old George as a genius in letters to his sister. However, Gershwin was by no means merely an accomplished technician; he also showed a penchant for creative improvisation and melodic elaboration that veered into
4 the popular idioms of the day. Nevertheless, Hamblitzer insisted on grounding the young man in the classical repertoire and Gershwin was frequently in attendance at classical concerts even as he continued his interest in the popular music of the day. Young George was particularly smitten with Russian classical composers with whom he felt a strong sense of identity, more clearly so than in respect to his Jewish ancestry. Gershwin s next teacher, Edward Kilenyi, a music degree candidate at Columbia University, provided George with his first systematic training in harmony and counterpoint, employing the standard textbooks of the day. But George s interest in popular music remained strong and his music notebooks from the period contain occasional sketches for his earliest popular songs as well as free exercises in harmony and orchestration. Despite the apparent conventionality of young Gershwin s training under Kilenyi, his teacher s distinctive theories about harmony and part-writing were to make a significant and long-lasting impact on George s compositional style. Gershwin also studied briefly with Rubin Goldmark, a student of Dvorak who was firmly established in the highest echelons of New York s classical music world and who later served as a mentor for the young Aaron Copland. But Gershwin did not find Goldmark s approach particularly inspiring, and their time together seemed to have produced little if any permanent mark on George s musical personality. While Gershwin was arguably one of the most thoroughly musically-educated among the early 20 th century popular songwriters (and the only one to handle many of his own orchestrations in his more ambitious projects), Gershwin nevertheless continued to feel a strong need to improve himself through formal musical education in later years. Even after his list of musical accomplishments was formidable, Gershwin occasionally
5 expressed insecurity about his knowledge of harmony and musical form and sought instruction from others, most notably Joseph Schillinger, the inventor of a formulabased approach to composing, whose influence was particularly strong in George s symphonic and classical works and his later songs. Gershwin also studied briefly with American experimental composer Henry Cowell and twelve-tone composer Wallingford Riegger with less apparent impact on his musical style. Still, while Gershwin sought the guidance of classically-oriented teachers and was later to become famous for his attempts to synthesize classical music with popular music and jazz, his earliest intentions were not to compose classical music but rather to bring the sophistication of the classical tradition into the popular music he loved. Gershwin s ability as a pianist served him well as he negotiated through New York s music industry for the next few years and by 1918 he graduated from serving as a song plugger for one publisher to serving as a bona-fide staff composer for the publisher T. B. Harms, Inc., a position from which he was able to launch his songwriting career. Jerome Kern s situation parallels Gershwin s in some respects but shows a number of distinctive features as well. His parents were Jewish-German emigrants who, after modest beginnings, managed to establish a comfortable middle class existence. Jerome s mother was an avid and skilled pianist who encouraged him in his musical interests (particularly his piano study) and took him to a Broadway show for his tenth birthday. The musical theatre proved to be a great delight for Kern, especially the operettas of the American Victor Herbert, and he soon came to the decision that a life in the theatre would be his goal. Jerome s skill at the keyboard provided him with an entrée into various musical opportunities and, as a high school junior, he was given the unusual
6 honor of assisting the seniors in creating a class show. But, now firmly committed to his new career, he quit high school to study music briefly in Heidelberg, Germany (although he was apparently not formally enrolled at the University there). After an abortive career in business (encouraged by his father), Jerome secured an entry-level position with a publisher with whom he placed some modest piano pieces. Seeing the need for continued formal instruction, Kern enrolled at the New York College of Music to study counterpoint, harmony, and composition. But Kern s strongest interest remained in music theatre and he soon moved to a different publishing house, T. B. Harms, where he was to eventually buy a partnership. From that base, Kern quickly broke into the musical theatre world, working with various lyricists to compose individual songs for American producers who interpolated them into imported British musicals. Meanwhile, Kern waited impatiently for the opportunity to write an entire score of his own. A descendant of Jewish Russian Jewish émigrés, Richard Rodgers life parallels Kern s to a great extent. His family was wealthy, his physician father an enthusiastic musical amateur and his mother a talented amateur pianist who encouraged her son s musical endeavors. Like Kern, Rodgers showed his musical abilities early. He started playing piano at the age of six and was writing his own tunes, harmonizing them by ear, at the age of nine. He resisted formal piano lessons but was an avid composer from any early age, copyrighting his first song at the age of fifteen. His parents were fond of musicals and often purchased sheet music of the hit songs of the day. Rodgers poured over it eagerly with Victor Herbert s music quickly becoming became a favorite. But his parents had
7 more elite tastes as well and Richard was also taken to the ballet, Metropolitan Opera and various classical performances. But Rodgers, like Kern and Gershwin before him, was most drawn to Broadway. Rodgers later recalled being particularly taken with an early musical by Kern and being aware that music theatre was on the verge of a revolution, one in which he very much wanted to participate. 1 In 1917, Rodgers was also impressed by the Columbia College varsity show and he himself began shortly thereafter to become involved in major amateur productions. Rodgers enrolled himself at Columbia and, shortly thereafter, met lyricist Larry Hart, who shared an enthusiasm for Kern s music. The two agreed to collaborate and things developed quickly for the duo, one of their songs being interpolated into a Broadway musical. Then, on the strength of their contribution to the 1920 Columbia University varsity show, the duo was presented with the opportunity of writing their first Broadway show (although many of the Rodgers and Hart originals were eventually dropped from the show before it opened in New York). While no further professional opportunities presented themselves for four years, the two continued to write amateur shows for the college and other organizations. Meanwhile, Rodgers enrolled at the Institute for Musical Art (which later became Julliard) to study harmony with Percy Goetschius, one of the most famous music theorists of his day. Finally, in 1925, he and Hart were asked to write a score for a new musical sponsored by the Theatre Guild and the career of Rodgers and Hart was up and running. College musicals were also to eventually play an important role in the success of Cole Porter, who was born to wealthy parents in Peru, Indiana, and grew up in very different circumstances than the New York composers with whom he was to compete for decades.
8 While the young Porter may have the lacked the cosmopolitan experiences of those composers, Cole s parents were preoccupied with supplying the young man with all the requisite social graces, including music. Young Porter was given private instruction in French, violin and piano, attended the opera in Chicago, and traveled to Paris after his senior year in prep school. He eventually went to Yale, where he majored in French and minored in music, becoming well known for his contributions to college musicals. After graduation, Cole enrolled in Harvard Law School, shortly thereafter moving to the liberal arts program where he took two courses music appreciation and basic harmony. These experiences provided him with a solid grounding, but by no means a thorough technical training in music. Porter was given the opportunity to write his first Broadway show, See America First in 1916, but the show failed miserably and, almost a year later, Porter sailed to Paris. Porter tried his hand at Broadway again in the somewhat more successful Hitchy-Koo of 1919 and, while living in Paris, enrolled at the Schola Cantorum, one of France s most prestigious music schools, to study harmony and orchestration. While Porter did not study long, he like Gershwin did produce a composition in the classical style of the day a ballet entitled Within the Quota, in 1923, one year before Gershwin s famous concert work Rhapsody in Blue. But while Porter could boast of classical training and, at one point after the initial success of his ballet, may have considered focusing on the classical style, Porter nevertheless required technical assistance in later years, and employed a musical secretary. While Porter notated the lyrics, melody and a sketch of the harmonic structure to support the melody, his musical secretary, Albert Sirmay, devised the original piano arrangements in which the songs were published and is likely to have made embellishments in the harmonic structure from time to time.
9 Porter s break came in 1927 when he was contacted to write the score for Paris, a musical that was to be a vehicle for a well-known French actress of the day. Porter rose to the occasion, producing some memorable work and his career quickly began to take off. Whereas the independent songwriters associated with Tin Pan Alley and musical theatre were the key figures in the creation of popular music in the first half of the century, the situation began to change in the second half as performers who wrote their own material increasingly dominated popular music. But the change was neither immediate nor complete. Even as the first echoes of rock & roll reverberated through the popular music industry in the mid- and late 1950s, canny publishers began to strategize about how to manufacture songs tailored to the teen market. Aldon music, owned by Donald Kirschner and Al Nevins and associated with the so-called Brill Building style (so designated because so many of the publishers of the period were housed in or around New York s Brill Building), proved to be among the best at the game. Employing a stable of composers much as the major Tin Pan Alley publishing houses of 1920s had, Aldon Music saw itself as carrying on that older tradition, insisting on high standards of professionalism and craftsmanship in its approach, while turning out songs that would appeal to the average teenager. Aldon s staff composers were assigned to write songs in specific styles that often had to be tailored to the needs of specific performers. The publishing house was successful at supplying songs to a number of individuals and groups ranging from the increasingly archaic balladeers such as Steve and Edie Gormet to the popular teen idols such as Bobby Vee and the girl groups such as the Shirelles, and the Cookies. Perhaps the most
10 successful songwriting team to labor for Aldon music paired up lyricist Gerry Goffin with composer Carole King, then husband and wife. Although King showed an early interest in music, playing piano by the age of four and leading her own band while still in high school, she attended Queens College to major in education. There she met Goffin, who was pursuing a degree in chemistry. Inspired by the popular songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and songwriting friends such as Neil Sedaka and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (also a highly successful songwriting spousal team), the two quickly agreed on a personal and professional collaboration and Sedaka helped them to get a position with Aldon. The first Goffin- King song, Kid Brother was surprisingly successful, being recorded as a B side by one of the singers associated with the publishing house. But the duo s next fifty songs failed to make an impression on Aldon producer Don Kirshner and went unrecorded. It was not until Goffin and King produced the poignant Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? for the Shirelles that their career began to gain momentum. Like Carole King, Londoner Elton John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight) embraced the piano at an early age, managing to win a scholarship to the prestigious Royal Academy of Music junior program at the age of eleven. But while this program urged the western classical music tradition on its young charges, Elton s interests remained fixed on popular music and he secured a position as a hotel pub pianist at the age of sixteen. His repertoire at that point consisted mostly of the ballads of the day, but Elton also composed witty songs about the pub s regular patrons. John performed in other contexts as well, playing with the band Bluesology as early as 1961 and later linking with then- British pop star Long John Bauldry.
11 John s career as a songwriter began much like Goffin and King s. Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin began working together in 1967 after having both responded to an ad in the New Musical Express. They auditioned successfully for publisher Dick James and the two of them were hired to turn out as many as ten songs a day in the designated style of various major performers of the period. However, this was no elbow to elbow collaboration of the sort that had characterized the relationship of Goffin and King and the other Brill Building songwriting teams of the period or the best-known songwriting teams from the first half of the century. Although Taupin and John were to become fast friends, they always worked separately, the lyrics completed in advance with the composer making few if any adjustments. After a few false starts, fame came to Elton John as a performer with the album Elton John and the songwriting team of John and Taupin soon became one of the most successful and respected of the 1970s. Stevie Wonder (born Steveland Judkins or Morris) matured with almost miraculous speed as a performer, being described as a vocal and piano prodigy at the age of seven and acquiring significant skill on harmonica and drums shortly thereafter. He was introduced to Barry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records and, by age twelve, had a recording contract, a major album, Twelve-Year Old Genius and a hit single. By the age of twenty, he was writing or co-authoring most of his songs and occasionally contributing to the repertoire of other Motown artists. The exact nature of these early collaborations remains murky. His songs are often co-credited to some of the regular Motown songwriters in the mid-1960s and Stevie s precise contribution is unclear (not unusual in Motown s collaborative system).
12 When he turned twenty-one, Wonder s contract with Motown records expired and he decided to take some time off, enrolling briefly at the University of Southern California where he studied music theory. Upon his return to the Motown fold, Stevie negotiated terms that gave him almost complete artistic control over his recordings and he continued to compose widely in a variety of styles. Neither John Lennon nor Paul McCartney received formal instruction in music in their early years growing up in Liverpool, although McCartney s father, who played occasionally in dance bands, may have given Paul a few tips now and then on piano. Lennon s father, Alfred, was an amateur banjo player who taught John s mother, Julia, how to play a few simple songs on the instrument, and Julia well may have instructed her John in turn, since he is reported to have use banjo chord fingering when he first picked up the guitar. Lennon was to have no formal training in music beyond those early halfhearted attempts although, by the late 1960s, he would receive an education of sorts in the philosophy and techniques of avant-garde music from New York artist Yoko Ono. Nevertheless, despite his relationship with Yoko Ono (including his later involvement with some of her avant-garde work) and his participation in some of the Beatles experimental endeavors in the late 1960, Lennon held doggedly to his image of himself as a natural musician, unspoiled by too much musical learning or sophistication. With the spirit of experimentation in the air in the late 1960s, McCartney would also make his own personal attempt to familiarize himself with the music of some avant-garde composers. But McCartney never became fluent in the use of musical notation, even in the 1980s and 1990s when his interest in writing concert music came to a peak with his Liverpool Oratorio.
13 Influences The great American songwriters working early in the century were exposed to a reasonably consistent list of influences, although their reaction to those influences remained diverse. Composers like Berlin, Kern and to a slightly lesser extent Porter, came of age musically shortly after the turn of the century when the most famous American role models were Victor Herbert and George M. Cohan, and the frothy British theatre music descended from Gilbert and Sullivan dominated the stage along with Viennese and German operetta and more subtle influences from the minstrel show, vaudeville, and ragtime. Ragtime was to have the largest influence on Berlin, although Kern relied on its rhythmic formulas from time to time in the early years. Gershwin became a solid ragtime performer in his early years, but the distinctive rhythmic vitality of his music reflected the emerging hot dance styles of the 1920s more than the increasingly out-of-date mannerisms of classic ragtime. Kern, who wrote frequently for the British stage and was often called upon to interpolate songs into operettas in the Viennese and German style (such as the popular works of Rudolf Friml) was perhaps most touched by the old-world lyrical style represented by that tradition. But Richard Rodgers too was taken by the elegant waltzes of Herbert and the middle European operetta style, both of which echoed through his style intermittently for years to come. The catchy vaudeville-based simplicity of Cohan s rousing tunes and straightforward, often jaunty lyrics made the most direct impact on Berlin s music, although it seemed to resound through the occasional early (and usually inconsequential) Kern song as well. Even some of Gershwin s early songs occasionally smacked of the minstrel show or
14 vaudeville circuit with their snappy rejoinders and patter-like repeated lines as in the composer s Swanee. Dialect songs of various sorts, including the frequently racist Coon or Mammy songs were prevalent at the beginning of the century and the early musicals would still occasionally contain scenes designed to exploit that style. Dialect songs, particularly Yiddish ones, were an important part of Berlin s repertoire as late as 1910, with one of his songs playing a big role in the elevation of Fanny Brice to early century superstardom. Perhaps surprisingly given the background of several of the composers referred to above, the use of melodic or harmonic materials that could be thought of stylistically Jewish was rare. Ironically, it was in Cole Porter s music, particularly his moody, minor key laments, that some critics and commentators have found the most obvious references to Jewish music. Porter had, at one point, made an apparently half-joking remark to Richard Rodgers about his plan to write Jewish music in order to secure hits, but Rodgers came to take the remark seriously and later noted that Porter was the one who had written the most enduring Jewish music for the music theatre, despite the fact that he was an Episcopalian millionaire among so many Jewish composers. 2 The 1920s Jazz Age was to have an impact on each of the five composers, although in many cases that influence played itself out more in the emulation of the new hot dance crazes (about which Kern was far from enthusiastic) and a more raucous orchestration of the songs (done by professional arrangers rather than by the composers themselves in most cases). One would not expect the improvisatory element of jazz to play a major role in the composition of popular song, but the melodic/harmonic essence of the blues that underlies much of the authentic jazz of the period seems to be relegated
15 to a fairly minor role in the music of all of the composers except Gershwin. Although a number of composers in the first half of the century wrote songs incorporating the term blues into their title, relatively few other than Gershwin and Harold Arlen employed on a regular basis blues-related melodic gestures (in particular the harmonic clashes caused by flatted thirds and sevenths of the so-called blues scale ) or blues-derived harmonies in contexts that resembled the typical usage of those same devices in authentic African-American blues style of the period. The eclectic Irving Berlin would sample blues-like elements from time to time in his stylistic meanderings and Cole Porter would draw upon the insistent repetition of some blues-like motives in some of his songs. But it was primarily Gershwin, in both his classical works and songs, who would make the language of the blues an important part of his regular vocabulary. Not surprisingly, the theatrical context in which individual songs were to be presented also had a significant influence on both their musical style and their lyrics, increasingly so as the newer and more sophisticated musicals demanded that the songs be more completely integrated into the plot. While Irving Berlin achieved a reputation for producing high quality individual songs based on universal themes that could exist as stand-alone Tin Pan Alley products or be incorporated willy-nilly into just about any early musical, Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers and Porter came to put more focus on tailoring songs to particular dramatic or stylistic contexts. Kern s many interpolated songs were generally designed to be at home in their surroundings, whether a witty English comedy that emphasized rapid, patter-like melodic lines or a Viennese-style operetta that demanded a more languidly lyrical approach. And, when a distinctive dramatic or narrative theme was involved, both the composers and lyricists had to adjust accordingly.
16 Kern s Showboat, while making little if any attempt to evoke authentic black music, nevertheless prompted Kern to adopt a new musical vocabulary, one that was able to lend great dignity to simple melodic and harmonic structures. And when Rodgers and Hammerstein tackled Oklahoma! and Irving Berlin took on Annie Get Your Gun, there is no question that the folksy dramatic context for both productions brought about some significant stylistic readjustments in music and lyrics. Songwriters working in the second part of the century had a selection of music influences to draw upon that was almost as broad as those available to earlier songwriters but very different in nature. The direct influence of the English and Viennese operettas was now absent. The vogue for ragtime had long since passed into history as had the jazz age dances of the 1920s and 1930s. Even the formulaic swing band repertoire of the late 1930s and 1940s was considered somewhat archaic by the early 1950s, and the songs of the Golden Age Tin Pan Alley composers such as Berlin, Gershwin and Porter no longer dominated the tastes of popular music consumers as they had in the past. Those songs had been replaced in the public s attention by an eclectic assortment of less imaginative, less sophisticated ballads and novelty tunes which had in common with the earlier Tin Pan Alley style only the typical 32-bar form and, at times, a mawkish sentimentality also found from time to time in the Golden Age (although seldom in the work of the major songwriters). By the mid-1950s, however, a dramatic change was in the air as American teenagers, feeling the need to express their individuality, began to embrace African-American music as never before. By 1954, occasional songs by black rhythm & blues artists began to sneak into the pop charts. Soon thereafter, a handful of white performers with country &
17 western backgrounds began to forge a synthesis between R&B and C&W, giving birth to rockabilly, manifest in such diverse performers as Bill Haley and the Comets and Elvis Presley and the other pioneers working for Sam Philips and Sun Records in Memphis beginning in 1954. But as rock and roll emerged whether in the guise of rockabilly or the R&B-tinged style performed by artists such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard the songwriters who had considered themselves to be in some way the inheritors of the old Tin Pan Alley tradition sometimes found themselves in an uncomfortable position. For one thing, the new mode of popular music put the emphasis much more on the distinctive and highly individualistic style of the performer rather than on the song itself, a trend that had begun to show itself in the late 1940s as more emphasis began to be put on the big band vocalist than either the big band itself or the band s specialized repertoire. While most listeners in earlier decades would have enjoyed differentiating between the styles of Cole Porter and George Gershwin, the emphasis now was on differentiating between the distinctive styles of the performers. Furthermore, it was unclear just how much the emerging rock and roll artists needed new material or what the nature of that new material might be. Many of Elvis Presley s early songs were just jumped-up versions of well-known country & western songs or reinterpretations of established R&B songs. The R&B-styled soloists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard relied primarily on their own originals based closely on the urban blues of the late 1940s and early 1950s, although Berry proved to be a master of retooling the typical blues lyrics to appeal to white adolescents. Of course the Tin Pan Alley style did not disappear immediately or completely; songs from the 1930s and 1940s
18 sometimes found their way into the repertoire even of R&B specialists like Ray Charles (e.g., Georgia on My Mind ) and Fats Domino (e.g., My Blue Heaven ) or the smoother R&B vocal groups such as the Platters (e.g., Twilight Time ). But the appetite for new songs in the old Tin Pan Alley style lessened dramatically in the mid-1950s and some professional songwriters whose expressive range was linked to that older tradition found themselves adrift and unwanted. But while this dramatic sea change proved to be a harbinger of doom for some songwriters of the old school, it was a call to opportunity for a new breed of songwriters who were conversant with both the Tin Pan Alley tradition (or at least the vestiges of that tradition) and the new R&B-based traditions. When, as the late 1950s yielded to the early 1960s, it became increasingly clear that not every rock & roll performer competing for the public s attention was capable of composing his or her own songs, professional songwriters like Leiber and Stoller and the Brill Building composers moved quickly to plug the gaps with material that frequently combined the rhythmic intensity of the new R&B-influenced rock & roll with the tunefulness and lyrical charm of traditional Tin Pan Alley material. The best of these songwriters, such as Goffin and King, were able to draw from different musical influences in different proportions depending on the type of artist for whom their work was intended. While writing for the black girl groups popular in the early 1960s, the emphasis tended to be on rhythmic energy and a gospel-like interaction of lead and background vocals. When writing for one of the Teen Idols in the same period, the emphasis was on a plaintive lyricism based on a simplification of the old Tin Pan Alley ballad in combination with lyrics that celebrated teenage love without appearing to condescend. There were exceptions to this pattern, of course: Goffin &
19 King s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, written for the girl group, the Shirelles, is an extraordinarily sensitive ballad with unusually insightful lyrics for the period, showing that the new breed of professional songwriters in the late 1950s and early 1960s could at times cross genres with the same mastery as the composers and lyricist of the Golden Age. Also coming of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s both as performers and songwriters were John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles. Both were susceptible to a range of influences at least as extensive as those available to the Brill Building composers and both showed the same ability to merge and synthesize these stylistic elements into new genres. The older Tin Pan Alley style was to have the greatest influence on Paul McCartney, perhaps sensitized to its virtue through his acquaintance with his father s dance band repertoire. McCartney s affection for the adult ballads of the 1940s was authentic and continued to be expressed periodically throughout the 1960s (and beyond) in such songs as Yesterday and Michelle. Even the English music hall style found a place in McCartney s heart, although it was expressed primarily in novelty numbers over the years (e.g., When I m Sixty-Four and Your Mother Should Know ). Perhaps the earliest style to make an impact on both Lennon and McCartney as performers was skiffle, the homemade folk music style fashionable in England in the mid- and late 1950s. Skiffle songs, many of them adaptations of well known folk songs, were melodically simple and guileless and based on rudimentary and repetitive rhythmic patterns. While Lennon and McCartney probably engaged in free variations on some of the familiar tunes that made up most of the skiffle repertoire, both looked more to early
20 rockabilly and rhythm and blues songs as models for their earliest songwriting attempts. Elvis Presley proved to be the first enduring performance model for the Beatles with both Lennon and McCartney imitating aspects of Presley s vocal delivery and the Beatles incorporating some Presley songs into their early repertoire as the group began its transformation from a skiffle band to a rock & roll band. But Presley was not primarily a composer and his direct influence on Lennon and McCartney s earliest original songs remained minimal. Rhythm and blues-styled rock & roller Little Richard also provided a performance model for Paul McCartney in particular. Paul s vocal impersonation of Little Richard s raucous, gospel-influenced style played a large part in the Beatles performing repertoire as early as the late 1950s and continuing for some years after that. There are relatively few of Lennon or McCartney s original songs that are directly modeled after Little Richard s (the l965 song I m Down being an exception), but his falsetto squeals did play a distinctive (if occasional) role in some Lennon and McCartney songs from 1963 and 1964 such as She Loves You. Chuck Berry s influence, particularly on John Lennon, was probably more pervasive and enduring. Berry s hits from the mid- and late 1950s often featured repetitive, chantlike melodies focusing on a central pitch that may well have served as a source for a number of Lennon melodies in the 1960s and even the 1970s when Lennon was recording as a solo artist. The so-called uptown rhythm and blues style, to which the Brill Building songwriters were major contributors, also had a major impact on the compositional style of Lennon and McCartney. The Beatles compared themselves to girl groups such as the
21 Shirelles on more than one occasion and Lennon and McCartney both expressed their admiration for the songs of Goffin and King, and recorded their own version of Chains (not necessarily one of Goffin-King s finest). Both Paul and John tried their hand at writing songs in the uptown style, focusing on a gospel-inflected style that eschewed the standard blues progression for a more varied, often more pop-sounding harmonic framework as in Lennon s All I ve Got to Do. Still, the influence was a passing one and the uptown style never became a primary source of inspiration for either songwriter in the long run. Rockabilly artists from the mid- and late 1950s such as Carl Perkins (of whom lead guitarist George Harrison was particularly fond) had a considerable effect on the Beatles performance style and repertoire, but it is difficult to pinpoint any pervasive influence of the rockabilly style on the majority of original songs by Lennon or McCartney, although the former appears to have drawn elements from that style occasionally as late as the mid-1960s and rockabilly was often a pervasive influence on Ringo s occasional compositional efforts. The popular folk style, as presented in the late 1950s and early 1960s by groups such as the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, made relatively little impact on the Beatles original songs in the early 1960s, although there are glimmers of that style in the mid- 1960s (as in McCartney s I ll Follow the Sun ) and Bob Dylan s style can clearly be heard on both the music and lyrics of Lennon s You ve Got to Hide Your Love Away in 1964. A year later, both folk music and country & western music became major sources for the Beatles revolutionary album Rubber Soul.
22 Psychedelic music, expressed most clearly in the use of harmonic drones, non-western sounding scale patterns and stream of conscious lyrics with colorful, fantastic imagery became a significant influence for the Beatles in the mid- and late 1960s, although its impact on the songs of Lennon and McCartney was somewhat short-lived. Coming to age musically in the 1960s, Elton s John s songwriting influences match those of the Beatles to some extent, but focus more on the light, tuneful gospel style that also influenced the uptown rhythm and blues and Motown styles in the early and mid-1960s. The light gospel style can be heard most clearly in the piano accompaniments and chord progressions of several early Elton John songs and even Bernie Taupin s lyrics sometimes suggest the influence of gospel music in such songs as Take Me to the Pilot. The sensitive, nuanced and somewhat sentimental melodies of the then-emerging singer/songwriter movement also had an impact on John s evolving style in the 1970s, just as Taupin s lyrics sometimes echoed the themes of romantic disappointment that are equally typical of that style. While the songs of John and Taupin came under fire by critics in the 1970s for demonstrating a limited expressive range, both the composer and the lyricist also showed an ear for parody and satire that links them to McCartney and, to a lesser extent, Lennon in the late 1960s. The most obvious source for the style of the young Stevie Wonder is the frenetic rhythm and blues style represented by the hard-driving riff songs of Ray Charles (e.g., What I Say? ). But Wonder s taste was eclectic almost from the beginning, not only in his choice of performed material (a decision that is influenced sometimes significantly by his producers at Motown Records) but in the range of styles he exploited as he turned more and more to his original songs as primary recording material.
23 Gospel music was a strong influence on Stevie through the 1970s as were other distinctly black music styles like the strongly rhythmic funk tunes that emerged in that period (heard so clearly in Superstition ). But the light, lyrical melodies descended from the older Tin Pan Alley tradition continued to play a major role in Wonder s songwriting (e.g., My Cherie Amour, Isn t She Lovely? and others), through to the mid-1980s. Styles and influences, training and background all make a contribution to the artistic identity of a songwriter. But the same influences and background can be shared by any number of composers and lyricists who never manage to produce work of extraordinary merit. In the end, the only absolutely essential ingredient of a successful career as a songwriter or a songwriting team is in the possession of unique talent the quality of their inspiration and their craftsmanship over the course of a career. Terence J. O Grady The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay