Category: Superstars of Easy Listening

Sadie’s Song

On By jbIn Forgotten 45, Superstars of Easy Listening15 Comments
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(Pictured: Hall of Fame songwriter Johnny Mercer.)

Here’s one last story inspired by James Kaplan’s Frank Sinatra biography, although Frank himself isn’t involved much. 

Like other people in other times and other places, Sadie Vimmerstedt, a fiftysomething widow in Youngstown, Ohio, was interested in the lives and loves of celebrities. Sadie had been outraged when Frank Sinatra threw over his wife and the mother of his children for actress Ava Gardner in 1950, and felt vindicated when Gardner divorced him in 1957. The latter gave her an idea for a song. A good song, too, not that rock ‘n’ roll junk the kids liked. Trouble was, she was no songwriter. She had only one line: “I want to be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart.” She thought that “When Somebody Breaks Your Heart” would be a good title. But what to do with the idea?

Isn’t it obvious?

Sadie took a couple of sheets of paper from an old desk calendar and wrote to the most famous songwriter in America, Johnny Mercer. By 1957, Mercer had won two Oscars, created famous Broadway musicals, helped found Capitol Records, and wrote or co-wrote many entries in the Great American Songbook: “Fools Rush In,” “Blues in the Night, “Skylark,” “That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” “Autumn Leaves,” and many others. Sadie did not know Mercer’s precise address, so she put “Johnny Mercer, Songwriter, New York, N.Y.” on the envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. The post office didn’t know Mercer’s address either, but it figured that ASCAP, the songwriters and publishers’ association, would. So the letter was forwarded, and ASCAP sent it to Mercer.

Johnny Mercer sat on the letter during a couple of fallow years in the late 50s, finally writing Sadie back to apologize for the delay, at about the time he started writing new songs again—a period during which he’d write two more Oscar winners, “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” He incorporated Sadie’s suggested line into a lyric, but changed her proposed title to “I Wanna Be Around.”

Sources vary on exactly what happened next. Sinatra biographer James Kaplan says Mercer told Sadie he would not have the song recorded until he found the right singer for it. But it’s possible that if Mercer said that, he was just being polite. According to Mercer biographer Gene Lees, Mercer’s son-in-law said the songwriter thought that the song “stunk.” Mercer told a song plugger named Phil Zellner that it was “the worst song I ever wrote.” But Zellner heard something in it, and he placed it with Tony Bennett. However it happened, Bennett premiered the song on October 1, 1962, singing on Johnny Carson’s first Tonight show. In the winter of 1963, “I Wanna Be Around” went to #14 on the Hot 100, higher than Bennett’s previous hit, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

When he finished the song, Mercer told Sadie he would give her a co-writing credit and 10 percent of the royalties. When the song hit, he upped her royalty to 50 percent. “I never expected any royalties,” she said. “[The song] was his to do with what he wished.” Toward the end of 1963, Sadie Vimmerstedt opened her mail to find a royalty check in the amount of $50,000—and money would keep flowing in for the rest of her life and beyond. She also became a Grammy nominee when “I Wanna Be Around” was nominated for Song of the Year, and she attended the awards banquet. She traveled to Cleveland and Cincinnati for radio interviews and to New York for a TV show, and she was even asked for her autograph from time to time. All the while, she continued to work as a cosmetologist. The demands on her time caused her to write Mercer at one point and say, “I’m getting tired of show business.” The two apparently maintained a correspondence for years. Mercer once said, “She’s just the cutest thing.”

Johnny Mercer died in 1976; Sadie Vimmerstedt died in 1986. Tony Bennett celebrated his 94th birthday earlier this month. And while “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” will always be Bennett’s best-known song, “I Wanna Be Around” is probably #2 or #3, and his version is definitive. Sinatra recorded it with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1964.

(Be sure to read this comment from Sadie’s grandson, with some additional information.)

A Business Plan

On By jbIn Superstars of Easy Listening6 Comments
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(Pictured: Frank Sinatra, Jr., on stage in 1964.)

Here’s another story involving Frank Sinatra, mostly from James Kaplan’s massive biography.

Twenty-four-year-old Barry Keenan had been a financial and real-estate wunderkind in southern California, but thanks to a disabling car accident, a painkiller addiction, and a divorce, he needed money. So he laid out a meticulous business plan, determining that his best route to success would be a kidnapping. He would invest the ransom in real estate and the stock market, and the profits would get him back on his feet. Within five years, he would return the ransom to the victim’s family, with interest.

He decided that the best potential victim would be a high-profile entertainer’s child, and he had a target in mind: 19-year-old Frank Sinatra, Jr., who was just starting his career as a singer. (Keenan had attended high school with Frank Jr.’s older sister Nancy, and he had even visited the Sinatra home.) On the night of December 8, 1963, Keenan and an accomplice, another classmate named Joe Amsler, snatched Frank Jr. at gunpoint from his dressing room at Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe.

Keenan and Amsler were, honestly, fuckups. They left a gun behind at the scene. They delayed making their ransom demand because they were afraid to talk to the elder Sinatra on the phone. (A third man, John Irwin, older and with a gravelly voice, was recruited to the plot, and he made the calls.) They told Sinatra to go to a gas station and wait for a call with further instructions, but then made several calls before Sinatra could arrive, befuddling the attendant, who—quite rightly—could not understand why somebody kept calling for a famous entertainer who’d have no reason to be there. Imagine the attendant’s reaction when a car squealed to a stop and a man jumped out saying, “My name is Frank Sinatra. Have I had any calls?”

The kidnappers asked for $240,000. Sinatra asked why such a small amount—didn’t they want a half-million or a million? But $240,000 was the precise amount Keenan had calculated in his business plan. Sinatra’s bank arranged the ransom, mostly in small bills. When it was together, an FBI agent asked the bank president how he was supposed to carry it. “Go buy a valise,” the president said. When the agent got to the store, he was $15 short of what the valise cost. So he went back to the bank and was given bills from the ransom money to complete the purchase. Then the kidnappers sent Sinatra on a wild-goose chase to various pay phones before telling him where to drop the $239,985, and how he would get Frank Jr. back. Which he eventually did, on December 11.

In February 1964, the kidnappers went on trial, where Keenan’s lawyer floated a theory she had developed and Keenan approved, knowing it was untrue: that the kidnapping was a publicity stunt to boost Frank Jr.’s career. After making that assertion in open court, a second one followed: there was a “fourth defendant,” a successful singer. Not Frank Sinatra, Sr., but Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean, another high-school classmate of Keenan’s. Keenan had previously hit him up for money, and it was revealed that he’d shown Torrence his business plan in advance.

(The morning after the kidnapping, Keenan actually called Torrence to tell him that “somebody” had kidnapped Frank Jr.. “I never thought he’d do it,” Torrence said later. “I thought somebody else must’ve heard his plan.”)

Torrence and both Sinatras testified at the trial, where the hoax defense quickly fell apart. The defendants were convicted; Keenan and Amsler received maximum sentences, later reduced. Two defense attorneys were eventually indicted for conspiracy and suborning perjury, but the charges were dropped.

Because Frank Jr. was uninjured, and because Irwin released him before his co-conspirators secured the money, suspicion lingered that Frank Jr. had staged the whole thing. Gossip columnist Rona Barrett would put the accusation in print as late as 1974. The Sinatra family believed the whispers hurt Frank Jr.’s career. His sister Tina wrote in a memoir, “Frankie was utterly blameless, but he couldn’t unring the bell.”

Keenan was found mentally ill at the time of the kidnapping, so he spent only about four years in prison. After his release, he went on to become the millionaire real-estate developer he had always hoped to be. In 1988, Keenan told People magazine that he would sometimes bump into Frank Jr. at events and parties in Los Angeles. “We do not speak,” Keenan said. “I respect his space.”

Frank Sinatra, Jr., died in 2016. Coming in the next installment: the story of a song. 

A Very Good Year

On By jbIn Superstars of Easy Listening, TV5 Comments
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(Pictured: Frank Sinatra talks with Walter Cronkite.) 

Maybe once a year I read a book so good I am literally sad that it ends. This year it was James Kaplan’s gigantic two-volume biography, Frank: The Voice (2010) and Sinatra: The Chairman (2015). If you choose to read it, pack a lunch: there’s something like 1800 pages between the two volumes. This week’s posts are all inspired by the book.  

By 1965, Frank Sinatra was firmly entrenched as America’s #1 pop star, Non-Elvis Division, his career revitalized since his Oscar for From Here to Eternity in 1954 and a string of classic albums. For Sinatra’s 50th birthday that year, CBS News planned a documentary on his life and career. Producer Don Hewitt very badly wanted him to sit for an interview with Walter Cronkite, but Sinatra famously hated reporters. Hewitt got him by telling Sinatra that if he spoke to Cronkite, he would be occupying “the same seat Dwight Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson sat in.” The appeal to Frank’s ego—that the special would treat him as if he were a president of the United States—was enough. Not only did he agree to the interview, he permitted the CBS crew to film him recording “It Was a Very Good Year.” And in fact, CBS News crews followed Sinatra around for six months.

CBS had done other profiles of serious artists, such as Pablo Casals and Isaac Stern. Sinatra believed his would be the same kind of reverent retrospective on the performer and his art. But in October, when Walter Cronkite came to Sinatra’s home to film the interview, there were fireworks. Cronkite asked about his hot temper. With anger flashing in his eyes, Frank insisted that he had grown “gentler” in recent years, a claim belied by a montage of newspaper headines about his confrontations with reporters and photographers. Then Cronkite asked about Sinatra’s Mafia connections, which caused Sinatra to bolt.

Hewitt followed him into a bedroom, where Sinatra claimed he’d been promised there would be no Mafia questions. Hewitt said he’d never agreed to that.

“I ought to kill you,” Sinatra said.

“With anyone else, that’s a figure of speech,” Hewitt said. “But you probably mean it.”

“I mean it,” Sinatra replied. Hewitt fled the house, and Sinatra withdrew his consent for the special. The New York Times explained that he “objects to stress on matters not related to his profession.”

Somehow, an agreement was reached, and Cronkite was permitted to ask about the mob, although what he got in response wasn’t much: “I do meet all kinds of people in the world because of the natural habitat from day to day in theatrical work and nightclub work, in concerts, wherever I might be, in restaurants, you meet all kinds of people. So there’s really not much to be said about that, and I think the less said the better, because it’s—there is no—there’s no answer.”

Sinatra (which you can see in its entirety here) aired on November 16, 1965, with a script written by Andy Rooney. In addition to the Cronkite interview and the studio footage, Sinatra sang several songs, including one at a prison (highlighted among his many charitable works), and was seen hanging out with family and friends in his favorite saloon. Afterward, TV critics panned the show as a puff piece for not asking hard questions about the Mafia or anything else, including his colorful love life, which currently starred Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior, who would soon become his third wife. Variety called it “an unmitigated rave for Frankie Goodfellow, star performer, tycoon with a heart of gold, family man (yet), and all around ball-haver.”

In December 1965, “It Was a Very Good Year” hit the radio, eventually reaching #25 on the Hot 100 and #1 on Billboard‘s Easy Listening chart—the very recording that Sinatra had made on the night CBS cameras were in the studio. And although Sinatra had been a pop star for 25 years by then, his greatest period of sustained singles chart success began with that song. In a 55-week period between June 1966 and June 1967, Sinatra would occupy the #1 spot on the Easy Listening chart for 22 weeks with five different singles: “Strangers in the Night,” “Summer Wind,” “That’s Life,” “Somethin’ Stupid,” and “The World We Knew.” Two of them, “Strangers in the Night” and “Somethin’ Stupid,” a duet with Nancy, would also go to #1 on the Hot 100. For a man who had just turned 50, it was indeed a very good year.

In the next installment: Sinatra’s life was filled with capers, none stranger than one that temporarily cost him $239,985.

Your Mother Should Know

On By jbIn Superstars of Easy Listening, TV7 Comments
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(Pictured: the King Sisters with some of the rest of the family.)

I cannot say how anybody else’s blogging process works, but mine frequently goes like this: I’ll see something and think, “Hmm, that might be interesting to write about.” Sometimes I follow through right away, but more often, I don’t, and the idea vanishes. When I do follow through, however, it’s often because I saw the same thing again in some other context a day or two later. And that is why you are reading this:

You need to be relatively elderly for the King Family to ring a bell. They came out of California in the 1930s as the Four King Sisters, who had been performing with other family members since they were children. In the late 30s, they were featured singers with Horace Heidt’s big band, and later with the band led by Alvino Rey, who was Louise King’s husband. Between 1941 and 1945, they charted a few singles under their own name, although the records tended to be competing versions of songs that were more popular by other artists. They also appeared in several movies. By 1953, the group had expanded beyond the sisters and was being billed as the King Family. In 1958, their album Imagination got a Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus.

The King Sisters had appeared on Alvino Rey’s TV show as early as 1953. In 1963, Yvonne King pitched ABC on a variety series for the family. The network didn’t bite at first, but when a 1964 appearance on Hollywood Palace generated thousands of fan letters, ABC gave the King Family a special and eventually, a weekly series, beginning in January 1965. In its two seasons, The King Family Show would include 39 family members ranging in age from seven months to 79 years. Four of them spun off into a group called the Four King Cousins, who became regulars on the Kraft Summer Music Hall in 1966. (The show’s head writer was a guy named George Carlin; one episode included another up-and-comer named Richard Pryor. Read about it here.) The family’s 1967 Thanksgiving and Christmas specials were big hits, and were repeated annually for years thereafter. They got another brief weekly series in 1969, but their main presence on TV was in specials, which ran through 1974.

Apart from those hit singles in the early 40s, the Kings’ only other chart appearances came in 1965, when two albums made the Billboard chart on the strength of their TV show. The more successful, The King Family Show!, went to #34 in a 16-week run.

By the dawn of the disco era, the King Family was no longer the kind of thing that drew big network numbers, but they remained a popular concert attraction for a few years. They played Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985. Their last performance was at Yvonne King’s funeral in 2010. Marilyn King, the last of the original sisters, died in 2013. The Four King Cousins were still performing occasionally as recently as 2016.

The King Family dropped stones into the pop-music pond that are still creating ripples. King Cousin Tina Cole became a regular on My Three Sons toward the end of the 60s. Alyce King’s son, Lex De Azevedo, was a successful composer, arranger, and bandleader. (I first learned of him at the elevator-music station, where his orchestra provided custom music for the programming service we used.) Luise King’s grandsons, Win and Will Butler, are members of Arcade Fire. Several King Family specials have been released on DVD. The family has a website and a YouTube channel, as well as a presence on social media. Christmas With the King Family was revived by PBS in 2009, and is still being repeated annually on the GetTV diginet.

A half-century ago, if a comedian wanted an easy punch line lampooning A) square white-bread Americans or B) large families, the King Family was sitting right there. (Although as regards wholesomeness, all those brothers and sisters and cousins implied that the patriarchs and matriarchs of the King Family were horizontally bopping as enthusiastically as the hippies were.) Nevertheless, in the chaos of the late 60s, the King Family presented an oasis of old-fashioned entertainment, where rock ‘n’ roll lifestyles did not intrude and longhairs did not agitate for anarchy. Its appeal to the Silent Majority is easy to understand.

A clip from the 1965 premiere of The King Family Show, introduced by Bing Crosby, is here. A 1966 performance of “Yesterday” by the King Sisters is here. The Four King Cousins perform a 1969 medley keyed to the Beatles’ “Your Mother Should Know” here. The opening of the 1967 Christmas special is here.

Something Better to Do

On By jbIn Record Charts, Superstars of Easy Listening3 Comments
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(Pictured: Olivia Newton-John, on the radio.)

(Warning: we are going full chart geek today. It maybe ain’t for everybody.)

Commenting on my post about Roger Whittaker recently, reader Wesley observed that Whittaker’s 1975 hit “The Last Farewell” was one of 24 consecutive adult contemporary hits to spend a single week at #1. But the streak (from Ringo Starr’s “Only You” during the week of January 11, 1975, through Michael Murphey’s “Wildfire” during the week of June 14) is actually part of a more impressive one. In the period between July 27, 1974, and October 11, 1975, 47 songs were #1 for a single week. Seven lasted two weeks. Only “I Honestly Love You” and “Please Mr. Please” by Olivia Newton-John managed three.

I chose the July ’74 to October ’75 period because there was never a time in that period with back-to-back multiple-week AC #1s. In June and July 1974, Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown,” “You Won’t See Me” by Anne Murray, and “Annie’s Song” by John Denver spent two, two, and three weeks at #1 AC. Not until October 1975 did it happen again, with ONJ’s “Something Better to Do” (another three-week #1), “The Way I Want to Touch You” by the Captain and Tennille, and Simon and Garfunkel’s “My Little Town.”

(This may be easier to visualize by looking at the list of Billboard #1 AC hits, which you can find here.)

Some of the songs that made #1 AC during the 24-in-a-row stretch were enormous Hot 100 hits, including #1s “Please Mr. Postman,” “Best of My Love,” “Have You Never Been Mellow” (more ONJ; adult-contemporary stars didn’t come bigger in the mid-70s), “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Others were not. Neil Diamond’s “I’ve Been This Way Before” and “My Boy” by Elvis each made the Top 40, at #34 and #20 respectively, but “99 Miles From L.A” by Albert Hammond and Don McLean’s “Wonderful Baby” barely rippled (#91 and #93).

The same approximate period was fickle on other charts. From July 1974 to October 1975, 47 songs hit #1 on the Hot 100, and all but 12 of them were #1 for a single week. During a 12-week stretch early in 1975, there was a different #1 every week. In both 1974 and 1975, 35 different songs hit #1, which is still the all-time record. So “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tennille, which stayed on top for four weeks in the summer of 1975, was clearly several orders of magnitude bigger than any other record of the time. Not even Elton John, red-hot as he was in this period, could come close; “Philadelphia Freedom” managed two weeks. The act that got closest to C&T territory was Tony Orlando and Dawn, who kept “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” on top for three weeks.

The R&B singles charts were similarly busy. From December 1974 to March 1976 (another period marked off with back-to-back multiple-week #1s), I count 54 #1 songs. Seven of them managed two weeks at #1 in that period. The only one to last three weeks was “Fight the Power” by the Isley Brothers.

What about the Billboard country chart? Finding strings of single-week #1s is practically redundant. For almost two decades, single-week #1s were far and away the norm.

1973: 35 #1 hits
1974: 40
1975: 43
1976: 36
1977: 30
1978: 31
1979: 33
1980: 43
1981: 47
1982: 47
1983: 50
1984: 50
1985: 51
1986: 51
1987: 49
1988: 48
1989: 49

In a generation of enormous volatility, Waylon Jennings doing six straight weeks at # 1 with “Luckenbach, Texas” and Dolly Parton doing five with “Here You Come Again,” both in 1977, is reeeeeeally something. And as you see, the chart would get even wilder in the 80s. In December 1979 and January 1980, two songs would do three weeks at #1 back to back. After that, to January 1990 and the coming of Billboard‘s methodology-changing BDS system (which monitored what stations actually played instead of relying on the historical practice of what stations said they played), only three songs total would spend three weeks at the top: “My Heart” by Ronnie Milsap and “Lookin’ for Love” by Johnny Lee in 1980, and “Forever and Ever, Amen” by Randy Travis in 1987.

And there’s more:

—Between February 1980 and January 1990, there were only three instances when multiple-week #1s occurred back-to-back on the Billboard country chart.

—Between January 1985 and the coming of BDS in 1990, out of 250 #1 hits in the period, only 11 lasted two weeks at the top, and only Randy Travis made it for three.

I’d like to thank Wesley, a longtime reader and frequent commenter, for sending me down this particular rabbit hole. I did not know until recently that Wesley is the author of The Billboard Book of Adult Contemporary Number One Hits (among other titles), a book that is somehow not in my library but certainly should be. And if you have read this far, it should probably be in yours also.

English Mist

On By jbIn Forgotten 45, Superstars of Easy Listening8 Comments

If the name of Roger Whittaker isn’t familiar to you, see if the TV compilation spot up there, from the early 90s, refreshes your recollection of that kindly looking English gentleman, with an impossibly resonant voice and perfect diction, who made the sort of music your mother or grandmother would have liked.

Whittaker’s life story is kind of interesting. He was born in England but grew up in Kenya after his parents moved there for the more salubrious climate. He served in the Kenyan army during the late 50s, then moved back to England to attend university. At the same time, he began a singing career, and landed a record deal in 1962. He recorded throughout the 60s, finally cracking the UK charts with “Durham Town” in 1969. “New World in the Morning” was an easy-listening hit in the States in 1970. He became popular in Scandinavia and Germany, and recorded a long streak of albums in phonetic German.

In 1975, Whittaker’s American label released a 1971 recording, “The Last Farewell.” There must have been something in the air late that spring and into the summer: it’s hard to imagine “The Last Farewell” becoming a pop hit in any other season. It got a boost from WSB in Atlanta, after the program director’s wife heard it on a Canadian station, possibly CKLW, which was one of the first to chart it. After hitting #1 on Billboard‘s Easy Listening chart, it became a Top-10 hit on Top 40 stations not just in Detroit but in Philadelphia, Dayton, Houston, Columbus, Denver, Boston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Hartford. At WLCX in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, it was #1 for five weeks in June and July, stayed in the station’s Top Five for four weeks after that, and ended up #2 for the entire year. On the Hot 100, it peaked at #19 for the week of June 21, 1975, doing a total of nine weeks in the Top 4o and 15 on the Hot 100. It went to #2 in the UK. Around the world, “The Last Farewell” moved something like 11 million copies.

For the next several years, Roger Whittaker was an easy-listening star in America, with six more chart hits, including a reissue of “I Don’t Believe in If Anymore,” which made the Easy Listening Top 10 in 1975 after being a relative stiff in 1970; “Durham Town” got an American release late in ’75 and made #23. He charted six albums: The Last Farewell and Other Hits was the biggest, making #31 on the Billboard 200. Although he never charted after the early 80s, he was a consistent seller, and claims to have received over 250 gold, silver, and platinum awards. It’s easy to understand how mail-order compilations like the one in the ad at the top of this post might have found a very rabid, loyal audience: ultra-familiar songs, most of them very romantic, quietly sung in a traditional and completely unthreatening way.

Roger Whittaker retired from performing in the early 00s, but he has continued to record a little, most recently a German-language album in 2012. (No more phonetic singing; after his earlier success in Germany, he learned the language.) He lives in Ireland now and is still among us at age 84.

When I got to the elevator-music station in the late 80s, “Durham Town,” “New World in the Morning,” and “The Last Farewell” were in the library. They’re maybe not your cup of tea and maybe not mine, but they were surely somebody’s. Although in the summer of 1975, “The Last Farewell” was my cup of tea. The introduction of it—that lush, rich, orchestrated thing. (Cable TV viewers got very familiar with it in the late 70s and early 80s; WGN-TV in Chicago used it for station IDs several years running.) That very romantic lyric—brave sailor stoically leaves his beloved to fight a war and hopes he won’t get dead and can return to her one day. And Whittaker’s voice, which certainly doesn’t sound like anyone else’s. I liked it, and I still kind of like it now, on those rare occasions when I hear it.

Though death and darkness gather all about me
And my ship be torn apart upon the sea
I shall smell again the fragrance of these islands
In the healing waves that brought me once to thee
And I should I return safe home again to England
I shall watch the English mist roll through the dell
For you are beautiful
And I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell