Back in 1954, when producer Sam Phillips released his newest Sun Records discovery, a young boy from Tupelo, Mississippi with the unlikely name of Elvis Presley, singing a raw, charged and tremendously soulful version of Bill Monroe’s classic “Blue Moon Of Kentucky,” he assumed Monroe would be offended. He was wrong. Not only did Monroe [...]

He told me years ago that he was more interested in what he discovered than what he invented. It seemed like a fine line to draw, so I asked him what the distinction is in his mind between discovery and invention. “You just have no idea that that’s a thought that you had,” he said. [...]

A true living legend of songwriting, Jimmy Webb’s been crafting amazing songs, many of which have become cherished standards, for some forty years. And he’s still doing it. A brand new Webb album, Just Across The River, featuring duets with many luminaries (including Jackson Browne, Michael McDonald, Glen Campbell, Vince Gill, Billy Joel, Linda Ronstadt [...]

Walter Donaldson is most famous for composing “My Blue Heaven,” “Makin’ Whoopee,” “My Mammy” (Al Jolson’s theme song), and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” The son of a piano teacher, he was among the most prolific hit songwriters of the 1920s. Born in Brooklyn on February 15, 1893, Donaldson never studied music formally, but took [...]

If the test of a great song is how good it sounds as recorded in several styles by many different artists, the song “Love Hurts” is an undeniable classic. Whether performed in dramatic rock-operatic style by Roy Orbison, in a heartbreak duet by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, or as a heavy-metal anthem by Nazareth, [...]

“What if I don’t have anything to say?” she asked, when consenting after many years to an interview. I promised her that wouldn’t happen, but she was genuinely worried, as Laura Nyro hadn’t spoken to the press—or really participated in the machinery of the music industry—for more than a decade. Burned like many of our [...]

He’s written the words to many of America’s most cherished standards, starting with the classic “Stardust,” with music by Hoagy Carmichael, a song which he said he knew “in his gut” was important. Other standards to which he concocted the lyrics include “Deep Purple,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Stars Fell on Alabama,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Moonlight Serenade” and [...]

“A song just doesn’t come on,” she said. “I’ve always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.” At the same time, she acknowledged that the source of songs was often mysterious: “No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.”

A friend and contemporary of George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans had much in common with his famous friend…

Tom Waits couldn’t have become Tom Waits without Weill…

“Play slowly until you catch the swing…”

His songs were meant to be sung, and they were sung by the best.