“Who wants people?”
July 21, 2017
As misanthropic as that title sounds—”Who wants people?”—misanthropy wasn’t what Lorenz Hart had in mind when he wrote that lyric in 1935 to go along with Richard Rodgers’ melody for “There’s a Small Hotel.”
No, Hart was thinking about solitude when he wrote, “Looking through the window / You can see a distant steeple /Not a sign of people, who wants people?” It was all about a couple, Junior and Frankie, who were planning get cozy in a remote way station where, according to Hart’s imagination, the amenities included “cheerful prints of Grant and Grover Cleveland” and an organ that was tuned every other fall.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
By most accounts, Hart’s lyric was inspired by Rodgers’ visit to a place most recently known as the Stockton Inn, a restaurant and hotel whose history can be traced to a quarry-stone residence that was built in Stockton, New Jersey, hard by the Delaware River, in 1710, and still stands as the focal point of the establishment.
That area along the Delaware, including New Hope, Pennsylvania, a stone’s throw to the south, was once the haunt of New York’s creative community, including the Algonquin crowd.
If Dorothy Parker and Scott Fitzgerald were heading for the inn now, they’d be disappointed. We rushed down there for dinner recently after reading that it was closing in a week. It appears, and one hopes, that the original building will be preserved in the comprehensive redevelopment envisioned for the site. The structure does appear in a rendering, posted on the inn’s web site, of the mixed-use development proposed for the property.
Jimmy Durante
Meanwhile, “There’s a Small Hotel” has a quirky history in that Rodgers and Hart wrote it for “Jumbo,” a famous Broadway show—and later a movie—produced by Billy Rose. It was in that show that Jimmy Durante got to utter one of the shortest and most enduring lines in Broadway lore. Durante is leading a live elephant across the stage in order to keep it from being seized as the circus goes bankrupt. He is stopped by a sheriff who asks, “Where are you going with that elephant?” to which Durante replies, “What elephant?”
Anyway, “There’s a Small Hotel” was cut from “Jumbo” because the show was running too long, but it was introduced by Ray Bolger and Doris Carson in 1936 in the Rodgers and Hart hit “On Your Toes.”
Hart reputedly didn’t like the melody of the song, and frequently made fun of it in Rodgers’ presence by making up off-color lyrics. Others took to the tune, though, and it has been recorded by Josephine Baker (in French), Erroll Garner, Petula Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstein, Della Reese, Barbara Cook, Tony Bennett, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Diana Ross, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Orbach, and Frank Sinatra (in the soundtrack of “Pal Joey”).
You can hear Carmen MacRae and Sammy Davis Jr. sing their version of “There’s a Small Hotel” by clicking HERE.
Jack Lawrence: a podiatrist my foot!
April 5, 2017
In my last post, I mentioned Jack Lawrence, who wrote the song “If I Didn’t Care,” which became the signature of The Ink Spots. Their recording of that song in 1939 sold 19 million copies and still ranks as the tenth best-selling single of all time.
Still, that barely scratched the surface where Lawrence was concerned—either professionally or personally. In terms of his profession, consider this:
- “Play, Fiddle, Play,” 1932, which Lawrence wrote when he was 20 years old, became an international hit, a favorite of singers, violinists, and orchestras. It earned Lawrence membership in ASCAP at that young age.
- “All Or Nothing At All,” 1939, with music by Arthur Altman, was Frank Sinatra’s first solo hit.
- “Never Smile at a Crocodile,” 1939, with music by Frank Churchill, became a children’s classic.
- “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” 1940, which Lawrence wrote using music from a Ukrainian folk song, was introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, and it was Dinah Shore’s first recording—and a hit.
- “By the Sleepy Lagoon,” 1940, with music written by Eric Coates in 1930, provided hit records for the Harry James Orchestra, Dina Shore, Glenn Miller, Fred Waring and others, including—in 1960—The Platters.
- “Linda,” 1942, which Lawrence wrote during his tour of duty with the Maritime Service during World War II, was published in 1946. The recording in which Buddy Clark sang this song with the Ray Noble Orchestra, was on the Billboard charts for 17 weeks, peaking at No. 1. The title referred to the five-year-old daughter of Lawrence’s attorney, Lee Eastman. Linda Eastman would be known to later generations as Linda McCartney.
- “Heave Ho, My Lads! Heave Ho!” 1943, which Lawrence wrote while he was a bandleader at the Maritime Service Sheepshead Bay Training Center, became the official anthem of the Service and the Merchant Marine.
- “Tenderly,” 1946, with music by Walter Gross, was a hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1947, but went on to become the theme song for Rosemary Clooney.
- “Beyond the Sea,” 1946, with music from Charles Trenet’s “La Mer,” became indelibly associated with Bobby Darin.
- “Hold My Hand,” 1950, which Lawrence wrote with Richard Myers, was used in the 1954 film Susan Slept Here and nominated for an Academy Award as best song.
In later life, Lawrence owned two New York theaters, and his credits as a producer included “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music” and “Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.”
Lawrence was born in Brooklyn and, although he was already writing songs when he was still a child, he acceded to his parents’ wishes and, after completing high school, received a doctorate in podiatry—a specialty that was not destined to be his career.
Lawrence was gay, and he was the longtime partner of Dr. Walter David Myden, a psychologist and a social worker in Los Angeles. The men met while serving in the Maritime Service. By the 1960s, their relationship was well known in their circles.
Lawrence and Myden were major art collectors and, in 1968, they donated about 100 20th century works to the American Pavilion of Art and Design at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. An interview concerning that donation, published in The New York Times, made no attempt to disguise their relationship—an unusual circumstance at the time but one that Lawrence and Myden could carry off with confidence and dignity. They were major supporters of the Israel Museum, which had just been established. Their donations in 1968 included works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Ben Shahn, John Marin, and Morris Graves.
Myden died suddenly of a heart attack in 1975, but Lawrence lived to the age of 96, dying in 2009 after a fall at his Connecticut home.
“The trees don’t need to know”
March 21, 2017
When we saw Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall in November, he recalled—again—how he was having a beer after a gig in Chicago when he was approached by a young man who wanted Arlo to listen to a song. Arlo grudgingly agreed. The young man was Steve Goodman, the song was “City of New Orleans,” and rest is—well, never mind the cliche.
It’s one of those “near miss” stories. If Arlo had told Goodman to buzz off, who knows how history would have been altered?
The same goes for Jack Lawrence—or so it seems. There are differing accounts of this event, but according to Marv Goldberg in his book More Than Words Can Say: The Music of the Ink Spots, Lawrence made a cold-call visit on January 12, 1939 to the Decca Records recording studio in Manhattan where The Ink Spots were about to cut “Knock Kneed Sal,” and offered his own composition, “If I Didn’t Care.”
JACK LAWRENCE
The Ink Spots, whose membership evolved over the years, had been around since the early 1930s and by the middle of the decade were popular in the United States and abroad. They continued performing into the mid 1950s, although other groups peddled themselves as the originals for many years after that.
“If I Didn’t Care” was the first studio recording in which The Ink Spots used a style that would become the group’s trade mark. The lead vocal was sung by tenor Bill Kenny, and a spoken bridge was provided by bass Hoppy Jones.
Kenny, who is often cited as a forerunner of Johnny Mathis, sang with a precise, elegant diction and a remarkable high register. Jones would recite the bridge in a colloquial drawl, improvising on the original lyrics and peppering them with terms such as “darlin,” “honey chile,” “doggone,” and “askaird.”
I recently bought a double-CD collection of 50 of The Ink Spots’ recordings, the preponderance of them delivered in this fashion. I was familiar with The Ink Spots because my parents were fans of theirs, and there were some of the group’s Decca records around our house. But until I listened to the collection I just bought, I didn’t appreciate the effect created by the contrast between Kenny’s refined phrasing and Jones’s down-home style.
Besides Kenny’s purported influence on Mathis, The Ink Spots are regarded as ancestors of the R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, and doo-wop groups of later generations.
“If I Didn’t Care” never got higher than No. 2 on the pop charts, but it sold 19 million copies, making it the tenth best-selling single of all time. Their numerous other hits included “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “My Prayer,” “Don’t Get Around Much Any More,” and “Lovely Way to Spend an Evening.”
My favorite among their recordings is “Whispering Grass,” written in 1940 by Fred Fisher and his daughter, Doris Fisher. Perhaps it appeals to me because the lyric seems to have been inspired by Kahlil Gibran: “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.” You can hear “Whispering Grass” by clicking HERE.
You can hear “If I Didn’t Care” by clicking HERE.
Billy Bowen, Bill Kenny, Hoppy Jones, and Bernie Mackey at the Club Zanzibar in New York City, October 18, 1944. Hoppy Jones died that same day.
Movies: “Florence Foster Jenkins”
August 14, 2016
When my son, Christian, told me last July that Meryl Streep would play Florence Foster Jenkins in a movie, my first hope was that the filmmakers would not ridicule Mrs. Jenkins, who would be an easy mark.
I first learned about Florence Foster Jenkins when I reviewed a regional production of Steven Temperley’s play, Souvenir, which recounts the unorthodox singer’s career.
Mrs. Jenkins, who had had several disappointments in her life, inherited a fortune and used her wealth to break into New York society as a significant patron of the arts. She thought of herself as a talented classical singer—whereas in reality she had no sense of tone or pitch—and gave private recitals to controlled audiences that would not tell her the truth. Her ambition exceeded her grasp, however, when she decided to give a public performance at Carnegie Hall.
Some dismiss Mrs. Jenkins as a fool, but others see in her a certain heroism, and her belief in herself may rise to that level when it is viewed in the whole context of her life, including her seriously compromised health.
Anyway, Pat and I saw the Meryl Streep film and found that there was no need to worry. While the filmmakers depart from the facts in that compulsive way that they have, the movie is a fair representation of the woman’s life and, most important, it treats her kindly.
My earlier blog about Florence Foster Jenkins is at THIS LINK.
A scrapper by any other name
June 4, 2016
Mohammed Ali, who died yesterday, was named after his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr., a descendant of slaves.
The senior Clay, in turn, was named after a 19th century political and diplomatic figure. When Ali adopted Islam and changed his name, he explained that it was his “slave name,” that he didn’t choose it and didn’t want it.
I get what he meant by “slave name,” but there was a certain irony in the term inasmuch as the original Cassius Marcellus Clay was an abolitionist. In fact, although he was a Kentucky planter, the scion of a wealthy family, and a member of the state legislature, he argued for the immediate abolition of slavery.
During a political debate in 1843, a hired assassin named Sam Brown shot Clay in the chest, but Clay went after Brown with a Bowie knife and threw him off an embankment.
Two years later, Clay founded an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington. Kentucky. This inspired so much antagonism toward him, that he carried two pistols and a knife and sealed himself behind armored doors at his office, which was equipped with two cannons. After a crowd of about sixty men broke into the office and confiscated the printing equipment, Clay moved his operation to Cincinnati, Ohio, but continued to live in Kentucky.
Clay served in the Mexican-American War as a captain with the 1st Kentucky Cavalry from 1846 to 1847. He opposed the annexation of Texas and expansion of slavery into the Southwest. While making a speech for abolition in 1849, Clay was attacked by six brothers, who beat and stabbed him and tried to shoot him. Clay fought them all off and killed one of them, Cyrus Turner, with a Bowie knife.
Clay later served as minister to Russia under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, resigning after Ulysses S. Grant took office. Clay was in Russia when Tsar Alexander II issued an edict emancipating serfs throughout the empire. Clay received a military commission from Lincoln and returned to the United States for a time during the Civil War, apparently influencing Lincoln to prepare the Emancipation Proclamation.
Clay was influential in the Tsar’s decision to threaten war against France and Britain if they were to recognize the Confederate States of America, and also in the sale of Alaska to the United States, which occurred during Andrew Johnson’s administration.
Clay and his wife, Mary Jane, had seven children, but the marriage ended after forty-five years, due to Clay’s chronic infidelity. At 84, he married Dora Richardson, who was 15 years old at the time. Not surprisingly, two of Clay’s daughters, Laura and Mary Barr, were women’s-rights activists.
Play ‘Misty’ for me
May 22, 2016
We recently attended a concert by Johnny Mathis and he, of course, sang “the holy trinity.”
Those who have followed this singer’s career know that he applies this sobriquet to three songs—”Chances Are,” “The Twelfth of Never,” and “Misty”—that he sings at virtually every appearance, whether he wants to or not.
These songs are identified with Mathis, and his fans expect to hear them.
In fact, from my point of view, they are so identified with Mathis, that no one else need bother to sing them. When the psychotic fan calls Clint Eastwood’s disk-jockey character in that 1971 thriller and whispers, “Play ‘Misty’ for me,” she doesn’t have to say which version she means, although by that time the Errol Garner-Johnny Burke song had also been recorded by stars that included Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Della Reese.
And not long after Johnny Mathis first recorded “Misty” for an album released in 1959, Billy Eckstine set down his version, which you can hear by clicking HERE.
Eckstine, who died in 1993, is largely forgotten, but he was an influential jazz musician and bandleader, a pioneer in be-bop, and a very successful singer. His vocal hits included “Blue Moon,” “Everything I Have is Yours,” “Caravan,” “My Foolish Heart,” and “I Apologize.” His recordings of “Cottage for Sale” and “Prisoner of Love” were million-sellers. He released more than forty-four albums. He had a rich bass-baritone voice with both subtlety and power, and a distinctive vibrato. A lot of his work, including his recordings with Sarah Vaughan and Dizzie Gillespie, is available on CD or MP3.
In 1950, LIFE magazine published a three-page feature on Eckstine that included photographs by Martha Holmes. One of the photos showed Eckstine, who was one of the first “cross-over” black musical performers, with a group of female fans, all of them white. The whole group is laughing over something, and one of the women has her hand on Eckstine’s right shoulder and her face against the lapel of his jacket as she laughs. Because of the mores—or, I should say, prejudices—of that era, LIFE published the photo only with the approval of its publisher, Henry Luce. LIFE received many letters objecting to the picture, and many people turned against Eckstine. TIME magazine reproduced the photo to mark the centenary of Ekstine’s birth. You can see it by clicking HERE.
Eckstine, whose life included its share of personal turmoil, was a civil rights activist and a close friend of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Amazon Update No. 14: “Time out of Mind”
March 20, 2016
Bob Costas tells a story about having dinner with Mickey Mantle and thinking it odd that Mantle asked for a doggie bag when the meal was through. When they left the restaurant, Mantle asked Costas to take a walk with him. At a certain point, Mantle stopped and knocked on a big cardboard box where a homeless man was sleeping. The man emerged, appeared startled and afraid at first, but then recognized his visitor and said, “Oh, hi Mick.” Mantle gave the man the doggie bag, and Costas reasoned from the manner of the exchange that this was not the first time this had happened.
Since Bob Costas told this story, I assume it is true. And if it is, it means that whatever problems Mantle had—and he had more than his share—he had the grace to look at a homeless man rather than avert his gaze, rather than pretend not to see the evidence of neglect and indifference lying at his feet.
RICHARD GERE and BEN VEREEN
The neglect and indifference with which much of society regards the homeless is the underlying truth of Time Out of Mind, a 2014 film starring Richard Gere and Ben Vereen. Gere plays a man named George who, although he denies it—claiming to be in some transitional state of life—is homeless. He has no prospects and no identification, and at times he seems disoriented. When he is able to scrape together a few bucks, say by selling his coat, he uses it to buy a six pack of beer which he quickly consumes. His wife has died, and his daughter, who tends bar in a New York tavern, wants nothing to do with him. George finally resorts to a shelter where he meets Dixon (Ben Vereen), a self-described jazz pianist, who talks almost incessantly and acts like a conscience, a kind of Jiminy Cricket, to George.
The movie is almost without a plot, except for George’s effort to re-establish a relationship with his daughter. Time Out of Mind was written and directed by Oren Moverman and provocatively filmed in Manhattan. There are many scenes in which there is no dialogue, scenes that are mostly a study of how a man who has lost all ties to the world around him can be completely alone among millions of people. There are long, brooding shots, many of them from unconventional angles. There is no background music, only the sounds that sweep over and around George as a world busy with its own affairs goes on as though he were not there. “We don’t exist,” he tells Dixon.
It is a disconcerting film in the same way that the homeless men and women in New York and other cities are disconcerting reminders of the failures of our society, our institutions, and our economy. This film, which Gere’s production company developed, has made no money, and I read on the IMDb web site that twenty people walked out when the movie was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. Maybe that says as much about them as it does about the film.
Movies: “Esio Trot”
February 15, 2016
Lucy Mangan, writing in The Guardian, had this to say about the film Esio Trot: “Just watch it. Once a week, I’d recommend, for the rest of your life.”
Some may think that suggestion is excessive, but it certainly heightened my curiosity, which had already been aroused by the fact that this BBC television movie co-stars Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman. This movie, based on a children’s novel by Roald Dahl, first appeared on British TV in 2014 and still hasn’t been released in the United States. Nor is it available in a DVD format that will play on most American devices. But I poked around on the Internet long enough to find that the movie is available at THIS LINK. You can click on “CC” at the lower right to turn off the Dutch subtitles.
Esio Trot concerns Mr. Hoppy (Hoffman), an introverted aging bachelor who has two passions in life—the lush garden he keeps on his apartment balcony and his lovely and charismatic neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Silver (Dench). Although he and Mrs. Silver often meet, particularly in the apartment building elevator, and although Mr. Hoppy often chats with her when they are on their respective balconies, Mrs. Silver seems to reserve all of her affection for her pet tortoise, Alfie. Mr. Hoppy doesn’t have the courage to tell Mrs. Silver how he feels about her—that, in fact, he would like to marry her—but he sees an opening when she expresses her concern that Alfie never grows any larger. She had dreamed of a more imposing tortoise to keep her company in her solitude. Mr. Hoppy determines to fulfill this dream for Mrs. Silver, and he devises an elaborate, somewhat devious, and ultimately hilarious means of accomplishing it.
The story line in the movie departs from that in the novel, and the differences include a character who appears only in the movie—the boorish Mr. Pringle, played by Richard Cordery—who is Mr. Hoppy’s rival for Mrs. Silver’s attention. The movie is also enlivened by the presence of James Corden, who narrates the story while rushing around London.
Judi Dench, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Cordery, and James Corden are perfect in their roles. (No one is better than Hoffman at playing woebegone figures, and Dench—well, she’s Judi Dench, for Pete’s sake.) But the texture of this movie is made richer by the fact that all the minor characters, from children to shopkeepers, are perfectly cast and utterly believable in an implausible situation.
I don’t know about once week, but I certainly recommend that you watch Esio Trot.
“Stay just 1:36 longer”
January 25, 2016
MAURICE WILLIAMS
My recent post about Dave Somerville—among other things, lead singer with The Diamonds—reminded me that that group’s most enduring hit, “Little Darlin,’ ” was introduced, with far less success, by a different group.
The song was written by Maurice Williams, and it was first recorded in 1957 by Williams’ rhythm-and-blues group, The Gladiolas. That original version was recorded on the Louisiana-based Excello label; the song reached No. 11 on the R&B charts.
Shortly after The Gladiolas introduced the song, The Diamonds covered it, cutting a single for RCA Records that was released on July 19, 1957. That version reached No. 2 in sales in the Billboard Hot 100; Billboard ranked it the No. 3 song for 1957 after Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” and Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand.”
The Diamonds’ rendering of this song has been described by some commentators as self-parody, and the group’s body language in THIS VIDEO might be admitted as evidence.
In any event, the impression The Diamonds made has kept the song popular for almost sixty years, and it has been covered or performed by a wide variety of artists, including Presley, Joan Baez, Sha Na Na, The Chevrons, The Four Seasons, and The Monkees. The song also surfaced, in a hilarious fashion, in the Columbia Pictures film Ishtar, which Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel jointly described as the worst movie of 1987. However that may be, THIS VERSION of “Little Darlin’,” performed by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, is worth the click.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN and WARREN BEATTY
Don’t shed any tears for The Gladiolas, by the way. That group morphed into Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. Under that name, the group recorded “Stay” in 1960; Williams had written the song in 1953 when he was 15 years old, putting to words and music, according to him, an actual experience in which he unsuccessfully tried to convince a girl he was dating to stay out a little longer. The song was released on Herald Records and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The recording–one minute and thirty-six seconds long– has the distinction of being the shortest single to reach the top of record charts in the United States. To date, an estimated ten million copies have been sold.
The Beatles performed “Stay” during their live appearances from 1960 to 1962, and the song has been covered by, among others, The Dave Clark 5, The Four Seasons, Cyndi Lauper, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
The Gladiolas’ version of “Little Darlin’ ” is HERE.
To hear The Zodiacs sing “Stay,” click HERE.
Ishtar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KadgeZuL5wE
Tom was not the piper’s son
January 18, 2016
Tom Hanks’ father was not the lead singer with The Diamonds. He was not. That idea concerning Hanks’ parentage was presented the other day in one of those e-mail messages with the screaming warning sign in the subject line, namely “Fwd.” There are a couple of people, who have too much time on their hands, who circulate such nonsense to us and a long list of other addressees. We usually ignore them, but this one caught our attention because it was so far-fetched. How did such a notion originate, we wondered: was it concocted deliberately (and, if so, to what end?) or did it begin as a misunderstanding? Probably, we’ll never know; still, the false story led us to the true story, which was worth learning.
For the record, Tom Hanks’ father, Amos Mefford Hanks, was a cook. The lead singer with The Diamonds was Dave Somerville. I was familiar with The Diamonds because they became popular in the 1950s when I was in my teens. Their biggest hits, “Little Darlin'” and “The Stroll” were released in 1957. However, I didn’t know until the scurrilous e-mail piqued my curiosity what a varied and productive career Dave Somerville had.
Somerville, who was–as were all of The Diamonds–born in Canada, studied voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music at the University of Toronto. In 1953, he met Stan Fisher, Ted Kowalski, Phil Levitt, and Bill Reed, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The four had formed a quartet, and Somerville coached them; when Fisher dropped out, Somerville became the lead singer. That group became The Diamonds.
In 1955, The Diamonds tied for first place on an installment of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a radio and television show that originated in New York. In 1956, they signed a contract with Mercury Records. The group had sixteen songs on the Billboard charts over the next eight years.
Dave Somerville, billed as David Troy, in the 1966 Star Trek episode, “The Conscience of the King”
After leaving the Diamonds, Somerville worked for six years as a folk singer, using the name David Troy–Troy being his middle name. He also studied acting with Leonard Nimoy; his television acting appearances included The Fall Guy, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Quincy ME, McCloud, Gomer Pyle USMC, and Star Trek.
Somerville and Gail Jensen wrote a song, “The (Ballad of the) Unknown Stuntman,” that prompted Glen Larson, the original baritone with the Four Preps, to conceive of the characters and format for what became the television series The Fall Guy, which ran for 112 episodes with Lee Majors in the title role. “The Unknown Stuntman,” which Larson embellished with added lyrics, was the theme.
Somerville also did voice-over for hundreds of radio, television, and cable TV ads.
In 1967, Somerville joined The Four Preps as a replacement for Ed Cobb. In 1969, he and Bruce Belland, the original lead singer with the Four Preps formed a folk music and comedy act and appeared in concert with Henry Mancini and Johnny Mathis. They were also regulars on The Tim Conway Show. Somerville and Belland wrote “The Troublemaker,” which was the title track of two Willie Nelson albums. Somerville and Belland also sang with a later iteration of the Four Preps.
In 1972, Somerville formed a group called WW Fancy; in the 1980s he sang with the original members of The Diamonds and also returned to The Four Preps.
He made a children’s album, The Cosmic Adventures of Diamond Dave, that comprised many of his original songs.
He also appeared in a stage show, On The 1957 Rock & Roll Greyhound Bus, that was based on a tour in which The Diamonds traveled with Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others.
Dave Somerville died in 2015 at the age of 81. He hadn’t sired Tom Hanks, but he had made his own mark on American entertainment.
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