The great lyricist Sammy Cahn died in January 1993. I have written elsewhere – click here or below – about my tenuous connection with him and Frank Sinatra through Harold Davison:
I’ve Mushrooms Under My Skin, Lyric For NewsRevue and/or Frank Sinatra, 21 November 1992
Indeed Harold had told me that Sammy Cahn was impressed by my parody lyrics and had suggested that I try writing some original lyrics as my next move…which apparently had been the route (from parody to witty originality) that Sammy Cahn himself took as a youngster.
Whether that idea really did come from Sammy or was more Harold’s own thinking is lost in ancient history.
Harold had also told me that Frank Sinatra hated My Way, simply because he didn’t like the song…
…and that Sammy Cahn hated the fact that people tended to assume that he had written the lyrics to My Way, whereas it really isn’t his kind of lyric at all.
So in truth, this obituary lyric of mine was a bit of an in joke, which is why it probably never saw the light of day in public – I don’t think NewsRevue used it even in the week of his death.
I suspect this lyric did raise a quiet smile or more among “the in crowd” though, when Harold shared it with his pals. Re-reading it for the first time in ages, 25 years after writing it, I still like it.
SAMMY CAHN OBITUARY SONG
(To the Tune of “My Way”)
VERSE 1
And now the end is here, and so I’ll darn a final lyric;
My friends, I’ll say it clear, that Sammy Cahn’s verse was satyric;
He liked pianos grand, he used a Bechstein and a Steinway,
And yet that Sammy Cahn, did not write “My Way”.
VERSE 2
I’ve heard this song before, I have high hopes it’s magic will pay;
Saturday night, teach me tonight, time after time I’ll go all the way;
Sam didn’t write “My Way”, the words are by some other wanker,
Jul-e Styne or Hammerstein? (thinks for a moment…….sudden flash of light)
No, t’was Paul Anka.
CHORUS 1
Sam wrote a lot with James Van Heusen,
Those songs were Sammy’s most amusin’;
“The Tender Trap” and “All the Way”,
And other crap for Doris Day,
Many a stanza,
For Mario Lanza,
All written Sam’s way.
VERSE 3
His choice it was to slog,
To come so far out from the ghetto;
A voice just like a frog,
But still a star for the libretto;
He wrote six thousand staves,
And even thirty on one Friday,
But not one of those lays, included “My Way”.
CHORUS 2
And there were times, I cannot lie,
When Sam worked hard to versify;
He tried to rhyme adorable,
With Sodom and Gamorable;
What woman’ll,
With criminal,
His rhymes worked Sam’s way.
Below is a vid of Frank Sinatra singing my way: