by Steve Dorff
Once again: never give up on a song you really believe in!
As for Paul Williams and me, in addition to a song called “Double or Nothing,” which we wrote as a duet for Kenny Loggins and Gladys Knight for the Rocky IV movie, we have written some wonderfully poignant songs together, of which I am extremely proud.
I will continue to not give up on them, either.
I must say that, after leaving Garrett Music, I did start to enjoy having a staff of song pluggers at Warner/Chappell after Chuck Kaye, who had left Irving/Almo to take over as CEO, brought me over there. I also loved the writer/publisher connection I had with Ira Jaffe, both at Famous Music and then later for a brief time at NEM. Ira was a great song man, and he could smell a hit as soon as he heard one.
I often debated with my son Andrew the value of going back through one’s catalog with the idea of resurrecting good songs that might have fallen through the cracks and might not have gotten recorded when they were new. With all of the songs being written and demoed weekly in Nashville alone, it seems like the shelf life of a great new song is lucky to be three or four days. The volume of new songs being written is staggering.
For me, a big year of writing songs might total sixty. Today, in Nashville, young writers have told me they are turning out 250–300 songs per year. In many respects, the business has become a “throw enough shit on the wall and some of it is bound to stick” scenario.
In fairness to the major publishers who are servicing twenty-five to fifty songwriters each, it’s seemingly impossible to service that many songs to the select few artists, producers, and record company A&R people who are looking for material. There simply aren’t that many projects, so the odds of getting even a great song cut become pretty slim.
Factor in the reality that a lot of artists or producers write their own songs, and the odds get dramatically slimmer still for the independent or staff songwriter. Hence, my song written with Eric Kaz . . . we live “Miracle to Miracle.”
It’s been a rare occurrence for me that a brand new song, freshly demoed, gets recorded right away. Unfortunately, lightning in a bottle like that just hasn’t been my career’s MO. That’s why I am constantly going back through my catalogs, listening and rethinking songs I truly believe in.
“I Cross My Heart” and “The Man in Love with You” were both #1 records for George Strait. There were also eight and eleven years old, respectively, before George recorded them. Over the years I’ve had dozens of my songs recorded years after I wrote them. It just takes a lot of belief and perseverance.
One such example happened just this week.
In 1996, Kent Blazy and Kim Williams, two amazing songwriters from Tennessee, came out to Los Angeles to write with me for a few days. I think we wrote about six songs in three days. It was a marathon. These guys were quick with fresh ideas and even better at executing those ideas. One of the songs we started that week was an idea called “Lay Down and Dance.” It was a fun, up-tempo song that I eventually recorded with Troy Cassar-Daley.
I always thought it was a better idea than a baked song.
Kim and Kent had stayed friends, and they remained in contact with me over the years.
About a year ago, Kent called me to tell me the tragic news that Kim Williams had suddenly passed away. I was heartbroken. Kim was one of the nicest and most talented guys you could ever meet. We had just written a couple of new songs together a few months prior to his passing.
Kim and Kent both had a longstanding association with the great Garth Brooks. Garth was looking to do a new album project, and Kent was sending him some songs, one of which was our twenty-year-old relic “Lay Down and Dance.”
Garth absolutely loved the title, and the song’s meaning. He just didn’t think the music or lyric were quite as relevant as they needed to be. He suggested we start from scratch and give the song a complete facelift, to make it more “Garth.” He recommended bringing in one of his favorite cowriters, Victoria Shaw, to help out, and help out she did: I just received a call that “Baby, Lay Down and Dance” will be included on Garth’s new ten-CD retrospective collection, as well as being the first single release from his forthcoming new album.
I continue to mine the old catalog for the hidden gems that, for some reason, haven’t yet had their time to shine. Thanks, Paul, for the early on great advice!
33
Sherry, Nancy, and Mom
The year 2008 is one I would love to forget but surely never will. Within the space of five months, I lost two of the most important women in my life.
My first wife and my mother.
In 2005, Nancy was complaining of blurred vision, and had experienced a few episodes of temporarily losing her peripheral vision. She had just finished getting her master’s degree in psychology, and was working on her doctorate. I told her I thought it was probably just a case of her eyes being tired from all of the heavy reading and papers she had to write. She went to the eye doctor, who after doing a full evaluation recommended possibly seeing a neurologist, as the loss of peripheral vision was a bit troublesome to him.
After several exams and evaluations, a CT scan revealed a tiny dot in the occipital lobe, or vision center of the brain. The doctor was almost certain it was nothing to be alarmed about, simply a small lesion. Over the course of the next six months and a few more episodes of vision distortion, another CT scan and MRI were ordered, and we got the dreaded news: it was in fact a small tumor, and that small dot had grown significantly. Nancy would need to have a biopsy to determine exactly what we were all facing.
Glioblastoma was the last thing any of us had wanted to hear. I had never heard that term before, but it sure didn’t sound good. Over the course of the next few years, the regimens of chemo treatments, radiation, and a new trial drug that actually shrunk the tumor by 85 percent gave us tremendous hope that Nancy would beat this thing.
She fought hard, but the disease fought harder.
After almost three years of what was the most difficult and gut-wrenching experience of my life, we said goodbye to Nancy shortly after midnight on February 19, 2008. She was only fifty-nine years old.
My boys were devastated at their loss of their mother, and I was, too. My daughters Callie and Kaitlyn had come to love Nancy so much in their young lives, and they too were heartbroken. Nancy had many close and valued friends who were shattered by her loss.
Everyone loved her.
Even though deep down I knew it was increasingly inevitable, her passing left me with deep unresolved sadness. Months before her death, Nancy came to my house and we cried together and shared stories, apologies, regrets, and hopes. She asked me to take care of our boys and my girls, whom she loved as if they were her own. Her love for Callie and Kaitlyn was a shining example of giving that she showed Stephen and Andrew. It has enabled my four children to love and accept each other as true brothers and sisters. That is the greatest gift that Nancy could ever have given to me.
Her passing also left me with a new unexpected challenge of being my boys’ only parent. She was an adoring mom who took such good care of them, always planning every holiday and family event. I regretfully never realized how much credit she deserved for doing all she did for our sons. The saddest part for me, personally, was that after six long years of dedicated study, a brilliant thesis, and hundreds of hours spent helping people as a clinical psychologist, Nancy had received her hard-earned doctorate, and was on the verge of what would have been, no doubt, an important career of helping so many children and families. I am so proud of her accomplishment, proud to have known and loved Dr. Nancy Dorff (the first doctor in my entire family history), and proudest of her for being the best mom to our sons.
At the time of Nancy’s passing, my mom had just celebrated her ninety-fourth birthday. Other than osteoporosis, she was in pretty good shape. Her mind was sharp, and she could carry on full and intelligent conversations with the nurses a
nd friends residing in the assisted-living facility where she was in nearby Camarillo, California. I would normally try to get up to see her at least every few weeks when I was in town and not traveling.
I had just gotten back from a trip to Nashville and drove up one afternoon to visit. We had lunch together, I caught her up on what the kids and I were up to, and then she whipped my butt in a game of Scrabble before I kissed her and said goodbye. I remember laughing with the nurses about how well she was doing and how much energy she had.
Three days later, at about nine in the morning, I received a call from one of the nurses who told me my mother wasn’t waking up.
“What do you mean, she’s not waking up? Is she alive?” I asked.
The nurse explained that her vitals were starting to shut down, and because they have seen this time and time again in people my mother’s age, it was most likely that my mom was not going to wake up.
I jumped in the car and shot up there in about thirty minutes. By the time I arrived, Elaine Dorff had already passed away peacefully in her sleep.
Ironically, it would have been my dad’s ninety-fifth birthday.
My sister Sherry, ever the optimist, would later say, “Mom was giving Dad a birthday present.”
It was an unbelievably sad drive back home for me, flooded by memories of things I hadn’t thought about in years. I was much closer to my mom than I was my dad. I was a lot more like her in so many ways. In spite of the years I struggled with her drinking, I loved her very much. She and my grandma (her mother, Gertie) were always there for me, and had been the solid foundation of my upbringing. My mom never stopped telling me I could do anything I put my heart and mind to, and she gave me that all-important high self-esteem that would help me navigate the ups and downs of this life.
Losing my mom was hard. Losing my sister was harder.
Even though we lived on opposite coasts, Sherry and I had stayed close throughout our lives. We would speak on the phone at least once a month, never miss a holiday or birthday call, and generally would keep up with each other fairly regularly regarding our mom, and dad, when he was alive.
There were a few years in there where we drifted. Sherry, like both my parents, was unable to stop drinking once she started. She was in total denial about it, and I frankly couldn’t deal with speaking to her on the phone when I could tell from her first slurred word that she had had way too much to drink.
Once, when Sherry was visiting me in California, I was going to an event and she asked if she could open a bottle of wine and have a glass while I was gone. I came home a few hours later to four empty bottles, and I was uncomfortably thrown back in time to when both of my parents would do the exact same thing. Only this time, I wasn’t eight or ten; I couldn’t run to my room, bury my head in the pillow, shut the world off, and visit the orchestra in my head.
Sherry and I had a series of serious “Come to Jesus” conversations about her health, and how she desperately needed to get help for her alcoholism. Thankfully, she started to attend AA meetings back in New York, and she was finally on the right path to staying away from her demon in the bottle.
I was unbelievably proud of her.
A few years ago, Sherry was on vacation in Vegas when suddenly her face began noticeably swelling up. She felt no pain but had some shortness of breath. She went to an emergency room and the doctor there said she should probably get examined when she got home, as he couldn’t really diagnose without a full MRI or CT scan.
Upon arriving home, Sherry went in for tests that showed a fairly large tumor on her lung. It was small-cell lung cancer, commonly caused from smoking. Sherry had been a heavy smoker since she was a teenager.
Sherry’s only daughter, Lizz, was due to have her first child, a beautiful little girl named Ella Gaffney. I truly believe that Ella added a year onto Sherry’s life. Sherry fought and fought through round after round of chemo and radiation treatments. She lived to be a grandma to that little girl.
On May 17, 2016, my big sister peacefully passed away.
My entire immediate family growing up was gone.
It has been a difficult adjustment, not having Sherry here. In some strange way I feel like an orphan, even though I have my kids to see or speak to every day. Sherry knew me longer than any other human being on the planet, from the first day I was born. I miss her terribly.
Tina Shafer—a talented singer/songwriter from New York—and I had written a beautiful, poignant song about her brother’s passing many years ago. I don’t think I ever truly appreciated the depth of Tina’s lyric until Sherry passed away. It’s one of my all-time favorite songs that I have written, and it has never been recorded.
It doesn’t matter. I have started playing “The Backyard Sky,” in Nancy, Sherry, and Elaine’s memory.
Each one of these beautiful women taught me so much about strength, courage, perseverance, and unconditional love.
May God rest their souls.
In their own way, each of these women shared deeply my passion for music, and they never stopped supporting and encouraging me to follow my dream—especially the dream of writing a Broadway musical.
34
Broadway, Here I Come
The Josephine Baker Story
It feels like I’ve been writing about Josephine for 119 years. But Josephine would have never happened without Lunch.
Despite the personal debacles surrounding Lunch, we decided to do a concept CD to keep the show alive. We went to various artists we knew, and they all agreed to sing. Faith Prince, Carol Burnett, Davis Gaines, Kim Carnes . . . all said yes. The show had a short run, and the CD could be purchased at various music stores around the country.
Cut to twenty years later.
I got a call from Tony Award–winning producer Ken Waissman, whose hits included Grease, Agnes of God, and Torch Song Trilogy. He wanted to know if I’d write the score for a show called Josephine: The Josephine Baker Story.
“Of course I’d be interested. How’d you decide on me?”
“Bob.”
“Bob? Who is Bob?”
I racked my brains. For the life of me I had no idea who Bob was . . . especially a Bob who could convince a Tony-winning producer to blindly hire me.
Bob worked at the famed (and now closed) Colony Records on Broadway and 47th. The store was an institution in New York City and boasted one of the nation’s biggest collections of sheet music, vinyl, theatrical songs, and all forms of music memorabilia. Ken Waissman was at the store checking out when Bob, a cashier with long stringy dirty black hair, asked him, “What are you listening to these CDs for?”
“I’m looking for the next great composer-lyricist team to write the next great musical for me.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, you forgot one then. Lunch.”
Bob went to the back of the store, in some discarded, cobweb-filled corner, and pulled out our CD. Now, Colony Records supposedly stocked anything that’s ever been performed anywhere, any time in the world. That’s how driven they were to have everything possible.
Somewhere over the course of the next three days, Ken was meeting with Ellen Weston, Josephine’s book writer, and they listened to Davis Gaines sing “Time Stands Still,” which I cowrote with John Bettis. She looked at Ken and said, “These are the guys.”
It helps to be at the right place at the right time.
It’s essential to be good at what you do.
This combination breeds success . . . plus, it’s always helpful to have a Bob in your corner.
Yet, because of the Lunch debacle, John Bettis and I swore it would be a long time before we’d tackle another theater piece.
Never say never.
Before Josephine came along, we had a few “can’t say no” projects. The first was in 2001, when Rick Hawkins approached us with a project based on the life and love of George Burns and Gracie Allen. It was ca
lled Say Goodnight. John and I both loved the whole idea and didn’t hesitate before saying, “We’re in.”
Rick wrote a fabulous book and John and I began to write some really terrific theatrical songs. To this day, I think some of the songs we wrote for Say Goodnight are some of our best. We did a workshop reading, and that’s about as far as that one went because Frank Gorshin, a top comedian/impressionist most notable as the Riddler from Adam West’s Batman, decided to do a one-man show on Broadway called Say Goodnight Gracie.
The timing sucked. We were dead in the water with our show.
Pure Country is a musical based on the movie that I did all the music for. Rex McGee, who wrote the screenplay, came to John and me one day and said, “Let’s do a musical.” Again, we said yes. We’ve toiled with this one for nine or ten years. But we’ve hung in because we think it’s a great show, especially for Middle America. I’m not sure if it will ever go to Broadway, but it could easily sit down in places like Nashville and Vegas. We opened at the Lyric Stage in Dallas in June 2017 for the show’s premiere run.
Josephine was our fourth stab at writing a stage musical and, without question, our best chance of going to Broadway. We’ve written over sixty songs for this show; we’ve had readings and workshops. We had six different Josephine Bakers playing the title role until we landed on the spectacular Deborah Cox—that rare triple threat who finally brought Josephine to life. And we are closer than we have ever been to a Broadway opening.
But it hasn’t always been easy.
The war stories about our musicals are no different to most others. There are a lot of talented writers with a lot of strong opinions. And with so many cooks in the kitchen, it’s nothing short of a miracle that we were able to do a standing-room-only run at the prestigious Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, Florida, in the spring of 2016.