Word: tunesmithing
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...night in 1938 Tunesmiths Raye and De Paul spent an evening at Manhattan's Famous Door cabaret listening to Count Basie's band. "Jeez!" remarked Tunesmith Raye as Jimmy Rushing trucked onto the stage for his number, "that guy's just about five by five." "That," said Tunesmith De Paul, "is an idea for a song." By the time the evening was over, Raye and De Paul had written the song out complete-on a paper napkin. Four years later Mister Five By Five, plugged to popularity by Bandleader Freddie Slack...
Tailored by Tunesmith Irving Berlin for the suave, sleepy voice of Cinemactor Bing Crosby, this song (from Paramount's Holiday Inn) originally expressed the longing for sleet and ice of an Easterner marooned among the palm trees of Hollywood. But with thousands of U.S. servicemen facing snowless Christmases from North Africa to Guadalcanal, White Christmas has unexpectedly become the first big sentimental song hit of World...
Baltimore's semiweekly Afro-American promptly reminded Tunesmith Berlin that "the term 'd-y' [is] offensive to colored people." Said the Afro-American: "The piece is sung by Bing Crosby . . . and came to the attention of the Afro after it was blatantly rendered in its naked aspect by Fred Waring...
...Hastily, Tunesmith Berlin wired his Manhattan publishers to change "d-y" to "Negroes" in all future copies of the song. Said he: "No song is important enough to offend a whole race. I should never have released it had I known the epithet was objectionable...
...weeks ago. A medley of bronx cheers and polka-dottiness that has to be heard to be appreciated, Der Fuehrer's Face last week seemed well on its way to become the comic theme song of World War II. The song was written by Walt Disney's Tunesmith Oliver Wallace for a picture originally entitled Donald Duck in Nutzi-land, skyrocketed so fast that Disney decided to change the title of the picture to that of the song. Also rocketing to fame on the song's beer-barrel phrases was a hitherto obscure drummer named Lindley Armstrong...