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When Johnny Duncan penned the romantic and dramatic 50's million-seller "My Special Angel", he was not writing about some torrid love affair - he was actually putting his baby girl to bed, and was singing those immortal words "You are my special angel/Sent from heaven above" to the latest addition to his family!
(Contributed by Helen Vaughan, London, UK)
A 50's tunesmith, none to impressed with Otis Blackwell's reputation as a songwriter, kept shaking a coke bottle until it blew - and then challenged Otis to come up with a song about it! It took Blackwell about a minute to do just that - the song "All Shook Up" became a million-seller for Elvis Presley.
(Contributed by Morris Welch, Los Angeles, California, USA)
Many patriotic Americans probably believe that the "Star Spangled Banner" penned in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, is as American as apple pie. Indeed it is, being based on an older Yankee song "Adams & Liberty", but do you know that. "Adams & Liberty" was itself lifted note-for-note from "To Anacreon In Heaven" by English writer John Stafford Smith? And where was the Copyright Office then when J S Smith needed them? You may well ask.
When network chiefs originally saw the pilot for the long-running TV series, "Gilligan's Island", they passed on it saying that each week the story of how these particular men just happened to be on this island, would have to be explained all over again - and that this would create too long an introduction to each programme. So Sherwood Schwartz who had created the show, asked the moguls for 24 hours to think up a solution - eventually coming up with the idea of encapsulating the explanatory introduction into a theme song. Then, faced with a final network meeting, Schwartz was forced to stay up all night penning the song, before performing it live - without backing - to the network executives next morning. They bought the show on the strength of his performance - and the real kicker was - up to that moment, Sherwood Schwartz had never written a song in his life.
Everybody knows that the Beatles' "Lovely Rita" was a real live person - a London traffic warden in the swinging sixties. But did you know that two of rock's legendary fictional characters were anything but fictional? Mean ole "Clifton Clowers", the main character in the classic country song "Wolverton Mountain" was the real-life uncle of songwriter Merle Kilgore, while "Ollie Vee" (whom we always thought was a man!) in the Buddy Holly song "Rock Around With Ollie Vee", was a real live black lady, living on the farm owned by songwriter Sonny Curtis's dad.
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