I Can Hear The Music: The Life of Gene DiNovi

Chapter Thirty-Six

    Too bad, we never came up with more songs that might have suited Maurice, whether they were about Paris or not.

As things unfolded many years later when our children began to marry and have children of their own, the majority of the songs Bill and I wrote together marked occasions of family celebrations. They were for birthdays, anniversaries and weddings. It became a tradition for the two of us that just kind of evolved.

    On my side of the family, we began in November 1990 with a song for Mac, Denise's oldest child and my first grandchild. Three years after that, we wrote one for Alex, Michelle's son, a boy who grew into a big rangy kid and a terrific baseball player. He was a third baseman with power in his bat, so impressive that Bill and I figured one day we might be writing a song celebrating Alex's first World Series.

    We came up with songs for every large occasion in our families' lives. It was fun for us and pleasantly sentimental. And it had the additional benefit of letting my grandchildren learn a little about their grandfather, to understand that I wasn't just this old guy in the family but someone who had accomplished a few things over many years as a muscian and composer.

Spence Maxwell was a lyric guy I met through Percy Faith's son Peter who had a very active talent agency. Spence was a piece of work, a bit of a heavy drinker, but he could write witty lyrics, a guy who took a Johnny Appleseed approach to life. That quality showed through in a song he wrote before I met him. He did it with a composer named Howlett Smith, and it was titled Let's Go Where the Grass Is Greener. Nancy Wilson had a hit record with the song. I liked it, and I liked working with Spence. Looking back, I think I wrote some of my best songs with him.

    There was one called Walk an Autumn Day With Me that really caught Spence's Johnny Appleseed persona. The Johnny Mann Singers-the Johnny Mann of Joey Bishop's TV show-recorded a very good version of the song. Then there was I Can Hear The Music, which both Peggy Lee and Sue Raney recorded. But the most exciting experience with songs that Spence and I wrote came on a Carmen McRae album, which included two of our songs.

    The two were titled Boy, Do I Have a Surprise For You and My Very Own Person. Carmen picked them to record as part of an Atlantic album in the fall of 1967. I wrote the arrangements for two songs, and that put me in pretty fast company because the other arrangements for the album, which had eleven tunes altogether, were by Benny Carter, Oliver Nelson and Shorty Rogers. These guys represented the absolute cream of the west coast arrangers. They were top drawer, and so were the musicians in the big band that played the arrangements at the recording session.

    Atlantic Records was owned by two smart and capable brothers of Turkish ancestry, Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun. Nesuhi produccd the recordings with the arrangements by me and the others, and a couple of weeks before we went into the studio, I had a meeting with Nesuhi to discuss the musicians for the date. In picking them, I asked for the moon. I wanted Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on bass and everybody else who was the best on their instruments in L. A.