The ABC's of MOR

The Composers

Cahn, Sammy I love Sammy Cahn's lyrics, but I also dislike Sammy Cahn. Why? He writes songs that are so good and long lasting. And, they're so simple. I don't mean to make it sound bad, it's just that he says the most beautiful things with words that everybody knows.

He can write almost anything as evidenced by the fact he wrote the words to the music for the movie, "The Odd Couple," and was also called upon to write the words to Jimmy Van Heusen's music for a birthday song for the "Monitor" radio program.

Hefti, Neal I don't have enough space to list all of the songs written by Neal Hefti, but if I did you'd be going through many pages of great familiar music.

Just some of his music: The Odd Couple, Harlow, Cute, Batman (TV with Adam West), and Lil' Darlin.'

One of the songs from the movie "Harlow," starring Carroll Baker, was Girl Talk. It was used as the story showed women talking. Later on, Bobby Troup (who wrote [Get Your Kicks on] Route 66) added lyrics to the song. I read one person's opinion who thought that the song was demeaning to women. To me, it has always been a love song when the guy says go ahead and do what you want to do just save time for us.

Russell, Bob and Bobby Thank goodness for the Internet. Way back when I always thought Bob Russell and Bobby Russell were the same person. Little did I know that they are two different people, both are great songwriters, and they are NOT related to each other.

Bob wrote the English lyrics for the song "Brazil," co-wrote the lyrics for "Frenesi," the lyrics for "Maria Elena," and wrote the song, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." Bob and co-writer Quincy Jones were nominated in 1969 for an Academy Award (R) for the title tune to "For Love of Ivy."

Bobby wrote, among others, "Sure Gonna Miss Her," "The 1432 Franklin Pike Circle Hero," "As Far as I'm Concerned" (from the film "The Grasshopper"), Little Green Apples," "Honey," and "Saturday Morning Confusion."

As I said, thank heavens for the Internet because I would have been confused more many years to come!

Williams, Pat I present the early work of Pat Williams, now known as Patrick Williams, from three albums. The soundtrack of the movie, "How Sweet It Is!," a movie starring James Garner and Debbie Reynolds; one track from an album I don't have at my fingertips to identify; and, his first album, "Shades of Today."

Every track on the "Shades" album is in the music library because the original compositions and the arrangements of the rest of the tunes are that good. As a matter of fact when the promotional copies of this album was sent out to radio stations the record company discovered that somebody in every station was taking the album for their own personal collection. New promotional copies had to be sent out to each station.