#Mort Shuman

[rolloroberson]

“Sweeter than wine

Softer than the summer night

Everything I want, I have

Whenever I held you tight…” - Pomus-Shuman

[themoonsaid]

– doc pomus and mort shuman, 1959

[genevieveetguy]

I can't accept the proximity of my face and my vagina.

A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille), Catherine Breillat (1976)

[france-cinema]

Mort Shuman et Dominique Labourier dans La Lune d'Omaha téléfilm réalisé par Jean Marbœuf le 26 octobre 1985.

[guessimdumb]

Camille "Lil" Bob - Stop (1969)

Howard Tate recorded the definitive version, but Camille “Lil” Bob’s rendition’s got that NOLA soul bounce.  Written by Jerry Ragovoy and Mort Shuman

[famousdeaths]

Mortimer Shuman was an American singer, pianist and songwriter, best known as co-writer of many 1960s rock and roll hits, including "Viva Las Vegas". He also wr...

Link: Mort Shuman

[filosofablogger]

♫ Save The Last Dance For Me ♫

It’s been over four years since I played this one by The Drifters … time for a redux, yes? This song tells the story of a couple at a dance. He tells his wife that she is free to dance and socialize with other men throughout the evening, but she should not forget that she is going home with him. Inspiration for the song came from a very personal experience. The songwriting team of Doc Pomus and…

[transpondster]

Nilsson, in the released version with band and orchestration, covering Save The Last Dance For Me

[the story goes that Nilsson was drinking way too much by this point and had blown out his voice during the making of the ‘Pussy Cats’ album, and the change in his voice between the demo version and this version is clearly audible, although the singing on this version is still excellent]

[wornoutspines]

The Wheel of Time (S2 Review) | The Show that Required The Ring Of Power's Budget.

After a great finale and a season re-watch I have some thoughts on S2 of The Wheel of Time.

#TheWheelOfTime #TwitterOfTime #SeasonReview #WheelOfTime #TVAdaptation #Review #TVTwitter #PrimeVideo

My journey into The Wheel of Time‘s world really started with the series Rafe Judkins created, I read “The Eye Of The World” before the Season One premiere but the TV series prompted my reading of the first book at the time. Even if Robert Jordan‘s books were sitting on my TBR for some time. The same happened with this season, I read “The Great Hunt” before the Season two premiere. What brought…

[hooked-on-elvis]

"I Met Her Today" (1961-1965)

Recorded on October 15, 1961 at RCA’s Studio B, Nashville · Release date: July 19, 1965 · Album: Elvis for Everyone! (compilation)

MUSICIANS Guitar: Jerry Kennedy, Scotty Moore. Bass: Bob Moore. Drums: Buddy Harman, D.J. Fontana. Piano & Organ: Floyd Cramer. Saxophone & Clarinet: Boots Randolph. Accordion: Gordon Stoker. Vocals: Millie Kirkham, The Jordanaires.

Illustrative pictures · (1) On Sunday afternoon, July 30, 1961, Elvis appeared at Weeki Wachee Springs Park in Florida, on the west coast where he was then filming "Follow That Dream"; (2) Elvis on movie set Frankie and Johnny June 10, 1965.

RECORDING SESSION · BACKSTORY Soundtrack Recordings for Mirisch Company’s "Follow That Dream" July 2, 1961: RCA’s Studio B, Nashville One thing seemed certain to the Colonel: It made sense to go into the studio for another singles-only session. The June 25 session proved that Elvis and his band could focus their attention better when they were all trying to cut a hit single; increasingly, too, scheduling was becoming a problem, and between the two Mirisch pictures there would only be time to arrange a short session. Once Freddy [Bienstock] understood the Colonel’s goal, he knew exactly where to turn for hit material — to his hot new team, Pomus and Shuman. Having gotten three cuts on the last session was more than enough motivation to propel the songwriters into action. Mort Shuman had a simple formula for writing hits — “Chorus, break, and gimmick” — and the two had noticed that Elvis was drawn to first-person songs; in no time, then, they came up with a stranger’s tale, a gimmick, and a Phil Spector – produced demo. The song, “Night Rider,” was just the kind of rocker Freddy was looking for, and he sent it off to Elvis along with two Tepper and Bennett compositions, “Just For Old Time Sake” and “For The Millionth And The Last Time,” as well as two others (“Ecstasy” and “You Never Talked to Me”) and the promise of “a couple of real strong songs in the next few days.”

RECORDING OF "I MET HER TODAY" Studio Sessions for RCA October 15, 1961: RCA’s Studio B, Nashville The “real strong songs” Freddy had mentioned in his note were two brand-new Don Robertson ballads. Elvis’s careful phrasing suggests that he’d done serious preparation on the first, “Anything That’s Part Of You,” but that didn’t stop him from working hard on it, running through six takes as Floyd Cramer worked to duplicate the slip-note fills Robertson had played on the demo. Years later Elvis would tell audiences that “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” was “probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard,” but he never portrayed abandonment more convincingly than on this cut. Among Elvis’s recorded ballads perhaps the only competition comes from some of the other Robertson songs recorded in 1961 and ’62. The second of his contributions, “I Met Her Today,” told a more hopeful story, but it proved harder to get right. After a promising first take Elvis paused to correct some problems with the song’s challenging octave-and-a half leaps, but as soon as he’d mastered that, band mistakes began to multiply. After twenty takes the group’s concentration had worn thin, and they agreed to stop, leaving take eighteen as the master. But the recording lay unused for four years until RCA resurrected it for Elvis For Everyone.

Excerpts: "Elvis Presley, A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions" by Ernst Jorgensen. Foreword by Peter Guralnick (1998)

LYRICS Don Robertson/Hal Blair I told you that some day If you kept on being untrue Somebody else would come along And release me from you You'll be glad to know now Your fickle world Can have its own way For it finally happened I've met her today I used to think I just couldn't live A day without you In spite of the thousand doubts and tears That you put me through All at once I don't care as much for you I'm sorry to say For now there's another I met her today How I treasured each smile, each kiss You gave to me now and then Well, you needn't be kind to me now Oh no, not ever again Just when the last bit of pride in me was gone Someone heard me pray And sent me my angel I met her today I met her today

[kvetchlandia]

Kai Mort Shuman Paul Simon and ARt Garfunkel Performing at the Bitter End, Greeenwich Village, New York City 1964

[julio-viernes]

"Shakin´ All Over" de Johnny Kidd & the Pirates - una de las primeras grandes canciones del rock and roll británico, un auténtico tótem- es básicamente "Little Sister" de Elvis.

¿O es al revés? Miren que escuché veces y más veces las dos, y hasta hoy no me había percatado de su parentesco.

"Shakin´ All Over" es anterior, junio de 1960, "Little Sister" es de agosto de 1961.

¿Tal vez se fijaron en ese éxito autóctono UK los laureados compositores Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman? Es muy posible, lo cierto es que una está al lado de la otra, son canciones hermanas.

[get-back-homeward]

This one record effectively launched the “girl-group sound”—R&B with beat, rhythm, melody and harmony—and no musical force beyond rock and roll was ever as crucial to the Beatles’ development. The Shirelles were four 19-year-old black girls from Passaic High School in New Jersey who came under the wing of Florence Greenberg, the mother of one of their school friends; Greenberg owned her own independent record label, Scepter, based ten miles from Passaic, in New York City. The tapestry of the American music business was already enhanced beyond measure by the creative partnership of blacks and Jews, and a bright new chapter opened with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” the greatest teenage love song of the period and the first record by a black female group to top the US charts. Greenberg ran Scepter Records from an office at 1650 Broadway and West 51st Street. Her choice as Scepter’s in-house producer was Luther Dixon, 29, a black singer-songwriter-arranger; “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” was written by a composer partnership new to those who studied record labels: the husband-and-wife pairing of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, 21 and 18, words and music respectively. They numbered among an array of talented young songwriting teams who arrived each day at the same building to work for the publishing company Aldon Music. Each pairing, and a piano, were squeezed into neighboring cubicles in a modern Tin Pan Alley scenario—a Teen Pan Alley. Almost all the songs that lit up the first half of the twentieth century were written in similar circumstances twenty-three blocks south of here—tunes for musicals, films, dance fads and hits; now they were being written for seven-inch vinyl discs and the teenagers who bought them.

At 1650 Broadway, and in offices at the Brill Building across and farther down Broadway at 1619, it seemed everyone was the child or grandchild of European Jews.† There was Goffin and King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield, writing songs for producers like Phil Spector and Jerry Wexler. Sedaka sang the numbers he and Greenfield wrote, but otherwise the pairings created a host of classy compositions for different performers. Often these were black girl-groups, urban teenagers who’d honed their voices and harmonies by singing gospel music in church. And they were girls singing to girls, a revolutionary departure in pop music.

Gender didn’t stop the Beatles (or other Liverpool groups) singing these numbers—a good song was a good song and that was enough for them. John grabbed “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and Paul and George took the backing vocals, and while there’s no recording of them doing it, several say it had extraordinary power and tenderness, like another “To Know Her Is to Love Her.” To the Beatles, to John and Paul especially, the composer credit Goffin-King would become nothing less than trademark of quality, sufficient in itself to make them listen to or buy a record, and rarely were they disappointed.

Then they flipped the record over and discovered the B-side, a song called “Boys.” This wasn’t Goffin and King’s work but almost entirely the creation of Luther Dixon, who cowrote, arranged and produced. Dixon was the creator of the Shirelles sound that the Beatles loved—another name for them to sleuth on record labels. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” works beautifully with strings, “Boys” is big-beat R&B, the backing singers up front. That’s how the Beatles did it. John sang lead and Paul and George gave full support, the two of them leaning in toward the microphone, laughing and harmonizing bop-shoo-op-abop-bop-shoo-op into each other’s faces, or sometimes, on appropriate occasions, bobwooler-abob-bobwooler. If they realized it was a girls’ song about boys, it didn’t matter. While several Liverpool groups did “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” the Beatles were one of only three to sing “Boys.” King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes did it, and so did Rory Storm and the Hurricanes: it became the latest specialty number in Ringo’s popular nightly Starrtime! spot—and he didn’t change the gender either.

—Tune In, Ch. 18 (January to March 1961)

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow | The Shirelles (1960)

[edc-blog]

Songs You May Have Missed #749

Original Cast: “Madeleine” (1968) From the 1968 Off-Broadway revue Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, for which French songwriter Brel himself provided music and French lyrics, which were (brilliantly) translated to English by Eric Blau and cast member Mort Shuman, one of only four vocalists featured in the musical. The original Off-Broadway production lasted four years,…

[guessimdumb]

Dion DiMucci - Troubled Mind (1963)

In 1963, Dion moved from Laurie records to Colombia records, and began pursuing a more bluesy sound. Here's a very cool Doc Pomus-Mort Shuman composition that he recorded.