Margaret Whiting
NYC, NY
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I never realized
when I was a little girl learning how to sing that the man who was helping me
was one of the top lyricists in the business. He knew the magic of writing a
very special lyric -- or appreciated a good lyric written by Alan Lerner,
Irving Berlin or Larry Hart. He was a natural, and taught me a way to
demonstrate lyrics. For example, as the head of Capitol Records, he was our
A&R man in the beginning.
And he found me
a song that he was in love with by two writers, Johnny Blackburn and Karl
Suessdorf, who wrote a very poetic song about the charms of Vermont. Johnny had
heard that song and thought it was a natural for me. I naively asked him,
"How can I sing a song about a place I've never been to?". He said
"I haven't either, but we'll use our imagination." So he had me
imagine the four seasons, and what each season would be like there.,the warmth,
the chill, what it was like to ski there, the smell of maple syrup. All these
things conjured up a place with great memories that helped me sing the song.
The song, of course, was "Moonlight In Vermont," and became a
signature song for me, After it became a hit for me, he would come and hear me
sing and say, "Do the song that hasn't got a rhyme in it. " I think
it's the only hit song ever written without a rhyme in the entire lyric.
Johnny had the
ability to intuit what songs should be sung by what singer. He had to write a
love song for Fred Astaire to sing to Leslie Caron, Astaire came to Johnny in a
tizzy. "My audiences will think I'm an evil old man seducing a young. girl
if I don't have the right lyric." Johnny knew what Fred meant, and wrote
the unusual and charming `'Something's Gotta Give."
Johnny was
writing for Warner Brothers Pictures with my father, Richard Whiting. It was
for the film "Ready, Willing and Able," and the producer, Jerry Wald;
told them they had to have a special kind of a love song that Dick Powell had
met and fallen in love with. He told Johnny to write at least ten sets of
lyrics, because the secretary would read the first set back to the writer and
then Ruby Keeler would receive the letter he sent, and she would have another
lyric to sing to her girlfriends would read the letter back with another set of
lyrics. The letter went on and on, with several other people reading. when it
finally came to ten, they thought it was enough, The boys went to the studio a
few days later and read all the lyrics of the song. Not being content, the
producer asked for five more Johnny had a temper, said "That's enough, I
can do no more," and stalked out. The next day Johnny received a gift from
my father in his mailbox. It was a Webster's Dictionary," with the words
"Don't give up so easy." That song was "Too Marvelous for
Words."
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