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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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