A Song Is Born!

I know I have written several posts about music and me….my biggest regret is that I didn’t follow my heart into music when I was 18. Let’s be honest: I didn’t have the guts. 

I know I have been kind of a late bloomer doing a lot of things (getting married, having kids, getting a teaching credential, getting a master’s degree, writing a bunch of books), but this is ridiculous! I won’t give my age. You can figure that one out for yourselves.

So, several days ago, my first published song “dropped.” I think that is the terminology they use!

The Brief Long-Ago History

I loved and listened to music from a young age. I started with my parents’ Broadway soundtracks from the 50s, I guess it was, with a little Glenn Miller and Ahmad Jamal mixed in. I wrote a musical when I was six called Babes in Toyland (so original) for my friends and me to perform for our mothers. I wrote poetry all through my childhood. I was an only child and kind of a loner, I guess. Despite a lack of money, my mother enrolled me in dance, drama, and then, later on, piano. Probably some of it was to get rid of my shyness. So I loved the arts.

I don’t remember when I first starting listening to rock and roll radio, but it was before my 9th birthday, when I received my first transistor radio, which I immediately attached to my ear! It was all WMEX radio, 1510 AM on the dial — from Boston. Later on I added WPTR in Albany when I could get it to come in. A disc jockey named Roger Scott used to answer the phone and take my requests. In the mid 60s I found my muses. I don’t talk about this very much. I was a Beatles fan like everyone else. And I liked a lot of the British invasion groups. But one July day in the mid 60s on an afternoon talk/variety television show, I saw Jay and the Americans. I fell in love then and there — and started writing songs. I cannot really explain what happened, but it was magical.

And Then…

I wrote mostly lyrics, but I always had some melody in my head so I could get the rhythm of the words correct. Since I could read music (piano lessons!), I did write a few of the melodies down. I started faithfully reading Billboard Magazine every week, mostly looking for a mention of my muses. My high school yearbook says that my ambition is to be a songwriter. I had some other ambitions at the time that came and went — actress for one — but mostly it was music. I amassed about one hundred songs. I had some company make one into a demo. They took my words, changed them, gave the song a melody, turned it into a country song, and had a terrible vocalist — and it was awful. I don’t remember what is cost, and I doubt they ever tried to market it.

Eventually, half giving up the songwriting idea, I still wanted to work in the music industry, doing anything! I decided I would go to college in New York City. That is where it all went wrong. I didn’t do it. I stayed in Boston. But when I went for my interview in New York at Barnard College  (Columbia University), I did manage to go to the famous Brill Building on Broadway where all the music at the time was happening. Jay and the Americans had an office there. I went up there, probably with some of my songs, but they weren’t there. (My parents were with me, and discouraged me from going to school in NYC.) Incidentally, Barnard did accept me.

So I went to college in Boston, and the music pretty much ended there. I majored in journalism, still with the thought of writing for Billboard Magazine or something else glamorous. The music I loved was now gone replaced by folk and psychedelic, neither of which I liked. Jay and the Americans eventually broke up (they are now reconstituted with both original and new members and back together for the past almost 20 years). I graduated college, veered away from music, got married, had kids. Yada, yada, yada. Got majorly into tap dancing. That is a whole other story,

Years and years later, I decided to take jazz piano lessons, and I got back into my love of music. Got divorced, became a teacher, and eventually moved from California to Florida to follow one of my kids.

Fast forward to about two years ago. I was looking in my souvenirs box in the garage for some photos from a 1968 (I was just a tiny baby, of course) Jay and the Americans concert at Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I still have one of the photos from that night, but I had others that I can still picture. I had looked for them before, so I pretty much knew they were not in that box. I think they got misplaced decades ago when my parents moved houses and I moved out.

I didn’t find the photos, but I found a big manilla envelope that contained all the song lyrics I had written, yellow and faded from years away from the manual typewriter they were written on. I immediately took them into the house and began scanning them all into my computer so they would be safe. I then separated them into piles: the hopeless ones, the ones I could maybe resurrect, the good ones, the bad ones with good titles.

I remember being at a Jay and the Americans concert in around 2023 or 2024, and they asked me what I was up to (I have seen them frequently since I moved to Florida, and am friendly with them now.)  I told them I was scanning my songs into the computer, and they looked at me as if I were crazy — because they had no idea what I was talking about, or that I wrote songs. We aren’t that friendly. I later realized they probably thought I was nuts.

And then…

I have been pretty active on Facebook for a long time. I joined in 2008 when my daughter joined Disney on Ice as a professional skater. She was traveling around the world, and I wanted to know what she was up to, since she had always lived with me.

By a few years ago, I was already cultivating friends in the music business on Facebook. A little over a year ago, I ran into Norman Bergen. I don’t know who friended whom, but I saw on his profile that he had a very impressive musical career, including songwriting. So I messaged him telling him I always had wanted to be a songwriter. He said that I could probably write lyrics since I was a book author. I told him that I had indeed written lyrics decades and decades ago. He asked me to send him a few. I sent hm three that were in the “good ones” pile. He loved one of them. He created a melody and a beautiful arrangement. He found a wonderful vocalist to sing it. He found a topnotch recording studio and engineer to make it a record. 

And now…

A few days ago, after some really hard work by Norman, who knows the business and got it into the distribution channels, the song appeared on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon Music, and the other online music stores.  A huge thank you to my mentor, Norman! And to Lainie,  whose beautiful voice and interpretation made the lyrics come to life! We have two more songs completed, the next one coming out in a month or so. I even created a new Facebook page for my music,

 Spotify

iTunes

Amazon Music

Norman Bergen   (Composer, Arranger, Producer)

Lainie Gullixen  (Vocals)

Lindsey Blair ( Guitar)

Paul Kronk (Engineer)