Author and screenwriter Erich Segal would be 84 today (he died in 2010). Segal’s best-known work was 1970’s Love Story, which was later turned into a movie starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal. The theme song for the movie was written by Francis Lai and was recorded as an instrumental because Paramount Pictures didn’t like the original lyrics. Carl Sigman wrote a new set of lyrics and the song was released by Andy Williams in 1971. It reached #1 on the Easy Listening chart and #9 on the Hot 100.
Bluebird of Bitterness, whose blog you absolutely must follow because it’s great, posted this yesterday for Flag Day. "Stars & Stripes Forever" was written by John Phillip Sousa and is the National March of the United States and it’s one of my favorite pieces of music, but I never knew it had lyrics. Wikipedia tells us "In 1942 the John Church Company published a four-part choral version of the march with a piano arrangement by Elmer Arthur Tidmarsh. This arrangement has additional lyrics written by Tidmarsh for the Breakstrain section of the march." Dan Wright sings all four parts, and he’s pretty amazing.
June 14 is Flag Day in the United States, commemorating the day in 1777 that the Stars & Stripes were adopted as the national flag. "You’re A Grand Old Flag" was written by George M. Cohan in 1906 for his musical George Washington, Jr. James Cagney played the role of George M. Cohan in the 1942 biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy and sang this song, which was a huge production number. I wasn’t able to find the complete video of the song from the movie, so here’s the audio.
So today’s prompts are "greet, hey, howdy," and I decided to go with something a little off the wall. Off the left field wall, because it’s a baseball song.
In 1969, the Chicago Cubs had one hell of a year. They led the newly-formed National League Eastern Division from the start of the season, and the longer the season went on, the more it looked like they were going to run away with it. Great for Cub fans, of which I am not one: I followed the crosstown White Sox, who managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory most of the time. It was cold comfort for us when the Cubs went from 9 games ahead on August 16 to falling out of first place on September 10 and ending the season 8 games behind the New York Mets.
Anyway, they looked really good in June, which is approximately when the Cubs’ fight song, "Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel," came out. The first lines of the song were the exclamations uttered by the Cubs’ announcers, Jack Brickhouse ("Hey Hey!"), Vince Lloyd ("Holy Mackerel!"), and Lou Boudreau ("No doubt about it!"), when a member of the Cubs hit a home run. The song was written by I. C. Haag with music by John Frigo and was sung by the Len Dresslar Singers.
The lyrics, as well as several MP3’s of the song, are on Critter Bob’s webpage.
It took the Cubs 47 more years before they won a World Series.
And that’s Song Lyric Sunday (and Song of the Day) for June 13, 2021.
Singer and actor Jim Nabors would be 91 today (he died in 2017). Best known for playing Gomer Pyle in The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, USMC, he had been living in Honolulu at the time of his death. Carol Burnett would have him on the first show of her variety show each season and considered him her "good luck charm." This performance of "The Impossible Dream" happened on Gomer Pyle, Season 4, Episode 9.
