by Ben Yagoda
“they managed to jam the airwaves”: Ibid., 4196.
“A few years ago”: Ibid., 4219. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Indian Love Call” were Harbach compositions.
“That was a good song”: Ibid., 4912.
“This is a BMI number”: Ibid., 4180.
ASCAP’s advantage was even greater: Ibid., 4221.
“From your reading the program logs”: Ibid., 4691.
“Can you give us the call letters”: Ibid., 4962.
“despite an apparent attitude of prejudgment”: Bob Chandler, “Celler Winds Probe with No Major Net Monopoly Findings, but Trouble Is Still Looming on D. of J. Front,” Variety, October 3, 1956, 32.
“What do you think is going to happen”: Pastore, 16.
“the animal instinct in modern teenagers”: Ibid., 108–9.
“Senators present listened in chill silence”: “‘Payola’ Hit at BMI Inquiry,” Billboard, March 24, 1958.
“I don’t like rock and roll too much”: Pastore, 10–11.
“a gratuitous insult to thousands”: Ibid., 141–42.
“If you attack country music”: Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, 427.
“Well, I tried to get into ASCAP”: Pastore, 448.
“I started writing my own material”: Ibid., 497.
“I . . . found that the welcome mat”: Ibid., 524.
“the extensive, if not prolific, affidavits and briefs”: Schwartz v. Broadcast Music, Inc., 180 F. Supp. 325 (S.D.N.Y. 1959).
“No matter how phrased”: Ibid., 332.
However, the following March, Sylvester J. Ryan: Ibid., 455.
“We’ve entered the era”: “Rackets Infest Music Industry, Says Nat Cole,” Variety, March 25, 1959, 57.
“The very general method”: “Okeh Distribution Shifted to Indies in Two Markets,” Billboard, October 4, 1952, 23.
“relatively small fry”: New York Times, November 20, 1959, quoted in Kerry Segrave, Payola in the Music Industry, 104.
four deejays in Norfolk, Virginia: Kingsport, Tennessee, News, November 26, 1959, via newspaperarchive.com.
“What they call payola”: Segrave, Payola in the Music Industry, 112.
“going to school and giving the teacher a better gift”: Ibid., 129.
“junk music, rock and roll stuff”: Ibid., 39.
By 1955 . . . half of all record revenues: Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 184.
“the tunes got slower”: Joseph Lanza, Elevator Music, 72.
“reliance on strings without the jazz feel”: Ibid., 74.
“Slower, more hypnotic time signatures”: Ibid., 69.
“like the sound of pissing”: William Henry, The Great One, 141.
“Have found phenomenal 19 year old boy”: www.johnnymathis.com.
“the rock wave was cresting”: Rosemary Clooney with Joan Barthel, Girl Singer, 171.
“What we have been witnessing”: Arnold Shaw, “Upheaval in Popular Music,” Harper’s, May 1959, 82.
“the movie business, and by extension the movie-music business”: Jon Burlingame, e-mail to author.
By 1960, albums had surpassed singles: Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 198.
“Instead of fearing payola”: Abel Miller, “Jockeys Relearning ‘Diskmanship’ As Payola Probe Helps to Clear Air of Rock ’n’ Roll ‘Drivel’: Mitch Miller,” Variety, March 9, 1960, 59.
“the wheel” was “starting to turn”: “Music Biz’s Classy Comeback,” Variety, March 16, 1960, 1.
“knock rock ’n’ roll out of the musical box”: Mike Gross, “FM Throws Block at Rock,” Variety, August 16, 1961, 43. In 1961, “long-hair” was still a derisive epithet for classical music.
“Her clear-lighted voice poured”: “Sibyl with Guitar,” Time, November 23, 1962.
“greatest ever preponderance”: Albin Zak, I Don’t Sound Like Nobody, 230.
“bands called the Byrds”: Tony Bennett with Will Friedwald, The Good Life, 179.
selling a total of 13 million copies: Andre Millard, America on Record, 234.
Number of Broadway musicals: IBDB.com.
“In today’s musical”: Quoted in William McBrien, Cole Porter, 363.
“nothing has given me”: Ibid., 374.
“the last musical he had really enjoyed”: Wilfrid Sheed, The House That George Built, 90–91.
“At the moment, there’s nothing”: Murray Schumach, “Composer Tells of Movie Abuses,” New York Times, August 10, 1961, 17.
“In the past four years”: John S. Wilson, “36 Years on the Hit Parade,” New York Times, March 21, 1965, X13.
“to hear this new music”: Clive Davis, Clive, 36–37.
VIII. Fly Me to the Moon, 1939–1965
Gershwin, Arlen, Robin quotations: Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, 93, 153, 110.
“virtually the only artists to keep performing”: Will Friedwald, Stardust Memories, 355.
In 1954 . . . Howard wrote a haunting song: “Product of 20 Minutes: A Million-Dollar Song,” New York Times, December 19, 1988.
“never possessed a great voice”: Stephen Citron, Jerry Herman, 36.
“Everything I learned”: James Haskins, Mabel Mercer, 114.
“When Frank listened to the playback”: Peter J. Levinson, September in the Rain, 113.
Granz hatched the idea—“for kicks”: Tad Hershorn, Norman Granz, 171.
“I thought of jazz and popular song”: William Zinsser, Easy to Remember, 186.
“performed a cultural transaction”: Frank Rich, “Journal: How High the Moon,” New York Times, June 19, 1996.
“had no hit records and was virtually forgotten”: Bill Simon and Paul Ackerman, “Too Much of a Good Thing Possible with Those Old Standards: Abundant Record Versions of Old Songs Raise Saturation Problems,” Billboard, March 2, 1957, 1, 22.
“I heard and saw jazz’s”: http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/03/interview-george-avakian-part-3.html.
“As you may know”: Sheldon Harnick to Carolyn Leigh, Leigh. Leigh responded in kind two days later, praising Harnick’s skill with comic songs: “You are a source of inspiration and wonderment to me. Having noted your success with songs that tickle people’s imaginations and make them laugh, I thought to try my hand at them too. The results have been edifying: what you arrive at through sheer talent, I shall only be able to skirt the eddies of through hard, hard work and successful mimicry. Yet I love the theatre, and what you do is so important to musical comedy that I shall go on using your work as an example to follow.
“So you see; you can’t let us down. As for your ballads—it’s utter nonsense that anyone with your talent can write a weak one. You simply underestimate your own capabilities—so let’s hear no more foolishness on that subject.”
“I was tearing my hair out”: Thomas Vinciguerra, “The Elusive Girl from Ipanema,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2012.
Epilogue: Do You Believe in Magic? 1957–1965
In 2000 . . . Mojo asked . . . ten best songs: Jonathan Gregg, “So, What Are Your Ten Best Songs of All Time?,” Time, July 12, 2000.
“R&B is an adult music”: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Hound Dog, 181.
“moving closer to pop in style and content”: Bob Rolontz, “R & R Recedes Slowly; Still Packs Punch; Ballads Gain,” Billboard, November 24, 1958, 3.
“The office was a house in Goodlettsville”: Interview with Hank Cochran, Country Music Foundation Oral History Project, July 3, 1991.
“The things they’re writing”: Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, 110.
“The money one earned from writing”: Eljah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 242.
“he wanted to make R&B more appealing”: Leiber and Stoller, Hound Dog, 179.
One morning Go
rdy found out: Gerald Posner, Motown, 150–51.
“That was the first time”: Burt Bacharach, Anyone Who Had a Heart, 53.
“After I did that session”: Ibid., 75.
“We take three days to two weeks”: Quoted in Kal Rudman, “David & Bachrach [sic] Profile: Part 1,” Billboard, August 8, 1964, 14.
“special kind of grace and elegance”: Bacharach, Anyone Who Had a Heart, 74.
“Dionne could sing that high”: Ibid., 78.
“Each was barely big enough”: Carole King, A Natural Woman, 90.
“He wore his ambition like a topcoat”: Leiber and Stoller, Hound Dog, 170.
“I yelled over the phone”: Marc Myers, “The Song That Conquered Radio,” Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2012.
“carrying my reel-to-reel tapes”: Jimmy Webb, Tunesmith, 345.
“I had to pull over”: Marc Spitz, “Still Tingling Spines, 50 Years Later,” New York Times, August 16, 2013.
Billboard declared it a “modern standard”: Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll, 233.
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