CARL SIGMAN SONGS NO PRINTING GLUE SURFACE THE EXPLANATION IS THE SONG ITSELF Reflections On Carl Sigman By DAVID McGEE WHEN CARL SIGMAN PASSED AWAY IN HIS MANHASSET, New York, home on September 28, 2000, the most eloquent and appropriate tributes to the great American pop songwriter were not the splendid obituaries in The New York Times and The Los An- geles Times, but rather the snippets of his enduring songs — “Ebb Tide,” “What Now My Love,” “It’s All In The Game,” “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo),” “(Where Do I Begin) Love Story,” “Losing You,” “Pennsylvania 6- 5000” — that were played on radio stations around the country to ac- company the announcement of his death at the age of 91. The printed obits — well-written, factually accurate, and unabashed in the writers’ fondness for Sigman’s art — were no doubt many readers’ introduction to the man himself, for Carl Sigman was a craftsman and an artist of the first rank, but he was not in any way a public figure. As was his wont. So when his lyrics filled the airwaves again on the day of his departure from this mortal coil, Carl Sigman was going out as he would have wanted, with his music telling the story of his deepest joys, fears, yearnings and pleasures, as well as illuminating his whimsical, feisty sense of humor, vivid imagination, and generally optimistic worldview. ☛ If people throughout the United States and over- seas (many of Carl’s songs were not only domestic hits but huge successes internationally as well) were “AFTER PLAYING SOFTBALL hearing these lyrics and saying, “So that’s who wrote that song!”, then Carl Sigman was a happy man. For TOGETHER IN THE BROOKLYN all of the abundant life in his songs, from the poignant evocation of utter heartbreak in “Losing You” to the SCHOOLYARDS, WE’D SPEND sanguine acknowledgement of pain leading to pleas- ure in the oft-covered “It’s All In The Game,” this son of a Brooklyn ladies’ shoe manufacturer and a LONG NIGHTS WRITING housewife mother (or as Rae Bresson Sigman was characterized by Carl’s mentor, Johnny Mercer, in WHAT SEEMED TO BE ISHAM the latter’s forthcoming memoir, “[Carl’s] little, round attractive mother [who filled me up] with blintzes or chopped liver on rye bread”) was happiest alone, or in the company of his wife, Terry (maiden name Eleanor Berkowitz), JONES SONGS. BUT WE HAD and three sons, Michael, Randy and Jeffrey. “The truth is that he was a tense person for much of his life, and almost phobic ONLY ONE SONG PUBLISHED, about going out and being a public person,” recalls his son Michael, who now heads Carl’s publishing company, MajorSongs. “That’s one of the reasons the catalogue isn’t as well known, and it’s also why he didn’t do more Broadway shows or movie ‘JUST REMEMBER,’AND IT themes or anything like that. He just wanted to be left alone. He played golf virtually every day of his life, and when he got into a foursome or something, it was fine. But he WAS NOT A HIT. BUT I LOVED was also happy playing by himself. He hated being interviewed. He wrote one Broad- way show that was a moderate hit (Angel In The Wings,) but never wanted to do it again CARL’S TUNES. AS IT TURNED because he had to go to the theater and meet producers and hang out. Literally, in the last 25-or-so years of his life, he was very much on his own, except for my mom and im- mediate family and a couple of friends.” OUT, HE WAS ALSO A GREAT “No, he didn’t schmooze like other people did,” agrees Terry, his wife of 51 years (they met when she was working for Louis Prima and Carl came up for a visit as Prima LYRIC WRITER,WHICH HE was preparing to record “Civilization.” Seventeen years Terry’s senior, Carl swept her off her feet and four months later they were wed, thus answering the question posed LATER PROVED.” in Carl’s 1971 hit, “Love Story,” to wit: “Where do I begin/to tell the story of how great —JOHNNY MERCER SHIRTLESS, IN BROOKLYN. a love can be?”), although she adds: “He had his coterie was a regular presence on Billboard’s Top 20 pop chart from 1920 through 1938.] But we of friends. And they happened to be a bunch of guys who had only one song published, ‘Just Remember,’ and it was not a hit. But I loved Carl’s tunes. were in different phases of the business, and they were As it turned out, he was also a great lyric writer, which he later proved.” all close. They had a poker game, and they were all What Mercer doesn’t mention is that he pushed Sigman into lyric writing. When friends. One was Harry Meyerson, who at one time was they met, Carl was a tunesmith, a melody writer. But Mercer advised him, “A band has with MGM Records and ended up at Decca; there was 15 musicians who can write tunes to one person who can write a lyric. You have a flair Joe Carlton, who was an A&R man at RCA Victor; there for it; you’ll get songs published.” Of course Mercer knew whereof he spoke, but even was Jack Lacey, a deejay on WINS in those days; there he could not have envisioned the monuments Sigman would construct after launch- was Paul Barry, a song plugger; there was Howie Rich- ing his career with “Just Remember,” that 1936 co-copyright with Mercer. mond, a publisher; and Allie Brackman, who was part- The 1940s would be the first of four-plus bountiful decades for Carl, more than jus- ners with Howie; and Jerry Wexler. It was a bunch of us who lived in Manhasset and tifying Mercer’s assessment of the budding songwriter’s gift. The beginning of the ’40s Great Neck and the environs; all the women were friends and the men were friends.” saw the Big Band era in full flower, but giving way, post-war, to the rise of small com- Before any reader forms a mental picture of a lonely, isolated man, and starts in with bos, such as The King Cole Trio, which recorded several of Carl’s songs for radio tran- the pop psychology, understand that Carl Sigman lived the life he desired, however remote scription. As well, the ’40s saw Carl on the charts with “Before Long,” by Louis Arm- it might seem to those who prefer or find comfort in the extended families we develop in strong; “It’s Square But It Rocks” (interesting title in light of the musical revolution the business, recreational activities, clubs and the like. Michael adds, “He was very, very pri- ’50s would bring) by Count Basie with Helen Humes; “Busy As A Bee,” by Benny Good- vate. He never talked about his experiences in World War II, and I only learned after he died man with Helen Forrest handling vocals; “The Thousand Islands Song,” by Johnny that he had won a Bronze Star, when I found it in his personal items. One of the great things Mercer, then Arthur Godfrey, and then Louis Prima; “Don’t Ever Be Afraid To Go Home” about the way he was, though, is that there was no ego, no showing off, nothing like that. by Bing Crosby and later Frank Sinatra, recording the first of 12 Carl Sigman songs he The flipside is that he wasn’t as expansive personally as he was in his music. He expressed would set to wax over the years; and “Crazy He Calls Me,” by Billie Holiday. his deepest feelings in the songs. And those are certainly loving and heartfelt and intimate.” From King Cole to Lady Day to the Count to the Chairman of the Board to Der Bingle That Carl Sigman became a songwriter at all is music’s gain and the legal world’s to Satchmo — that these towering artists, not merely among the most important of their loss. A graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, Sigman, in deference to time but of all time, zeroed in on Carl’s songs is evidence enough to warrant him being his mother, who had insisted he become a doctor or a lawyer, matriculated at New York mentioned in the same breath with the decade’s most important songwriters. University, earned a bachelor of law degree from the NYU Law School and was admitted Throughout his long career, Carl continued to write hits in his own style, oblivious to the New York State Bar. But Carl’s heart was not in the study and practice of law, so to the changing trends in popular music (Michael says his father had neither a record he started hanging around the Brill Building in Manhattan, where many of the top song- collection nor any interest whatsoever in generational changes in musical taste). His writers of the day were to be found penning the tunes that would soon be heard on the great gift was his innate understanding of how listeners connected emotionally with Hit Parade. He was befriended by and wrote his first professional song with Johnny Mer- a direct, conversational style of lyric. Almost entirely devoid of flowery language and cer, who recalled in his memoir, “After playing softball together in the Brooklyn school- surreal imagery, his songs instead trade on colloquial expressions and plot lines eas- yards, we’d spend long nights writing what seemed to be Isham Jones songs.