An interesting post by Mark Steyn (as always...) at the weekend: "America's so-called government shutdown* got me thinking. What do government officials do when they're not governmentalizing? Well, some of them write hit songs."...that got my attention:
"...who is the only successful candidate on a national ticket to write a big hit song? A song so big it features in the plot of the novel cited above - Summer Blue by Floyd Skloot - not to mention a bunch of movies, including Diner and She's Having A Baby. It's the only American Number One and British Number One to be written by a Nobel Peace Prize winner... ...A song so popular, it's been in and out of the charts pretty much every few years for six decades. A song so versatile it's been recorded by Bing Crosby, Van Morrison, Dinah Shore, UB40, Liberace, Barry White, Merle Haggard, Elton John, Lawrence Welk, Donny and Marie Osmond, Louis Armstrong, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Sammy Davis Jr, Phoebe Snow, Isaac Hayes, and the Gaylads."
WOW. Well, if you haven't already read Mark's piece, it was this man and here's Cliff's version.
* Re the shutdown, all I can say is don't get your US news from the BBC.
2 comments:
Proustian moment! "It's All In The Game" was on the first LP (it's that long ago) that I bought for Janis after we started going out in 1982 - Cliff Richard's 'Love Songs'. The cover photograph was actually taken on Southbourne prom and I listened to that album, on a cassette tape, travelling home from her house in the summer of '82, alternating with ABC 'Lexicon of Love' and The Jam 'The Gift'.
I like those in reverse order: Jam, ABC, Cliff (unfortunately a distant third)
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