Word: tunesmith
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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COCO, with book by Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady), music by Andre Previn, the Hollywood tunesmith. Costumes and sets by Cecil Beaton. Starring Katharine Hepburn. Couturière Coco Chanel and the Beautiful People...
...violence and sex. That's the way it is in this world. Sometimes there's animal in it; but let's face it, we've got a lot of animal in us." The difference between Tin Pan Alley and Soul is not hard to define. A conventional tunesmith might write: "You're still near, my darling, though we're apart/ I'll hold you always in my heart." The soul singer might put it: "Baby, since you split the scene the rent's come due/ Without you or your money it's hard, yeah, hard to be true...
...even sharper departure from Big Beat banalities came as Tunesmith McCartney began exhibiting an unsuspected lyrical gift. In 1965, he crooned the loveliest of his ballads, Yesterday, to the accompaniment of a string octet-a novel and effective backing that gave birth to an entire new genre, baroque-rock. Still another form, raga-rock, had its origins after George Harrison flipped over Indian music, studied with Indian sitar Virtuoso Ravi Shankar, and introduced a brief sitar motif on the 1965 recording Norwegian Wood. Now everybody's making with the sitar...
...such rare delights as Mae West burbling an aria from Samson et Dalila in her 1935 Coin' to Town, and a 1934 version of La Boheme, starring Gertrude Lawrence and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., with "music and lyrics by Giacomo Puccini and G. H. Clutsam," the latter a Hollywood tunesmith in unlikely company...
...that the Guild's award for outstanding movie achievement had been presented to someone other than a producer. President Kennedy, ex-Presidents Eisenhower and Truman telegraphed their congratulations. And then, "with great pride," surrounded by a boodle of filmdom's most glittering stars, the old tunesmith clogged every throat when he hopped to the piano to God Bless America, as only Irving...