Jun 202014
Gerry Goffin.
As you surely know by now, lyricist Gerry Goffin, half of the legendary Brill Building songwriting team with ex-wife Carole King, died yesterday at 75 years old. I’ve got nothing profound to say other than the obvious things: he wrote many excellent songs, 75 is too young to die, he was a great…man. I especially love “Up on the Roof,” which captures the sound of the city the way rock ‘n roll songs rarely do these days.
The guy (co) wrote some fantastic songs. Oh, and “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love”. I’m towards the end of the first installment of Mark Lewisohn’s Big Beatle Bio, which makes it clear, not that it wasn’t before, just how enamo(u)red Lennon and McCartney were of Goffin & King.
I’d like to mention here–although this is Rock Town Hall and not Jazz Town Hall–that another Great Man, truly someone whose work I love and revere, Horace Silver, also died this week. In rock circles I suppose he’s best known as the guy from whom Steely Dan lifted the piano riff (played by my man Michael Omartian) in “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”; they took it from his 1965 classic “Song for My Father” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_hLk6dWgnc No credit given that I’ve ever seen. Anyway, Silver played with or led so many great groups in the 1950s and 60s–I think his records are among those that so-called non-jazz people would like since he wrote such great melodies and hooks. Another of his more popular numbers, Senor Blues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8jFGFwOm7k Hope you enjoy.
I continue to remain stunned at the number of unbelievable songwriting teams from the 1960s. I’m not considering the performers, like Lennon-McCartney; I’m just talking about the professional songwriters, who clocked in each day and wrote hit after hit. When you see the lists of songs by these teams you gotta shake your head.
Goffin-King, Bacharach-David, Barry-Greenwich, Mann-Weil, Pomus-Shuman, the Motown teams, the Philly teams.
Don’t tell me it wasn’t a golden age…