This document discusses the origins and inspiration behind several famous songs. It describes how Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" was created after he started improvising a racy tune at a club near the recording studio. It also explains that "Save the Last Dance for Me" was written by Doc Pomus, who had polio and couldn't dance, after watching his new wife dance with his brother at their wedding. Additionally, it mentions that "Single Ladies" was inspired when Beyoncé entered the studio without her wedding ring from Jay-Z. The document provides background on other hit songs like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Tim McGraw," "Fire and Rain," and "I

1. The
Stories
Behind
the
Songs
The sparks
behind some
of music’s
biggest hits
By Peter Cooper
Little Richard’s first studio session was a
bust. He was nervous and stiff, with none
of the fire that brought him to the attention
of Specialty Records in the first place. His
producer, Bumps Blackwell, decided to
break for lunch. At a small club near the
studio, Richard started noodling around on
the piano. Suddenly he began pounding it
and burst out something very close to “A
wop bop-a lup bob, a lop bam boom”—
only a bit racier.
The rest of the lyrics were also kind
of salacious, but Blackwell knew he had a
hit. He called a local songwriter Dorothy La
Bostrie in to help clean up the lyrics and
headed back to the studio. A couple of
takes later, “Tutti Frutti,”and rock and roll
history, were made.
Yet even stranger circumstances and
sources have inspired some of our favorite
songs, with everything from travel to exotic
locales and personal struggles to a missing
ring and a high school crush leading to
many memorable tunes.

3. Catapulted onto radio playlists partly on
the strength of Ben E. King’s emotive lead
vocal, The Drifters’ 1960 hit “Save the Last
Dance for Me” is sung from the perspective
of a man telling his significant other that
she’s free to dance with anyone in the
room until the end of the night.
Co-writer Doc Pomus had polio and
walked on crutches, so he couldn’t dance.
In 1957, he married aspiring actress Willi
Burke, and during a reception at a New
York hotel, Pomus watched as his new
wife danced with his brother.
Three years later, on the back of a
wedding invitation, he began writing “Save
the Last Dance For Me,” which stated:
“Don’t forget who’s taking you home, and
in whose arms you’re gonna be/Darling,
save the last dance for me.”
During The Drifters’ recording session,
Atlantic Records owner Ahmet Ertegun told
the song’s backstory to King, who fought
back tears just before recording one of his
most memorable vocals.
“Save the
Last Dance for Me”
The Drifters
“Single Ladies
(Put a Ring on It)”
by Beyoncé
The song of the year Grammy for
2009 went to this smash, which was
inspired by Beyonce’s then-secret
marriage to Jay-Z. Terius Nash, known
professionally as The-Dream, got the
concept for the song when Knowles
entered the studio without a ring, even
though she was a newlywed.

4. summer/fall2011
29
on, but also how much money they’re
making. “That said something to me, and
so I started writing about a place where
the streets have no name,” recalled Bono.
The band spent weeks working on the
track because it was so tricky, with two
time signature shifts and frequent chord
changes. Producer Brian Eno became
so exasperated that he tried to erase the
tapes of the song. However, engineer Pat
McCarthy grabbed him so he couldn’t.
They eventually assembled the final track
from various takes, and the song became
a staple of U2’s live performances.
The first thing she thought of was
country singer Tim McGraw’s “Can’t Tell
Me Nothin’” record, a favorite of Swift’s.
“When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you
think of me,” they wrote. A Top 10 country
hit, “Tim McGraw” has sold more than a
million copies. And while it was unusual
in 2006 to release a song named after
another singer, country hits named after
other famous vocalists have followed,
including “Johnny Cash,” “Johnny and
June” and “Kristofferson.”
“Where the Streets
Have No Name”
by U2
According to journalist Niall Stokes, this
song’s lyrics are rooted in the time lead
singer Bono spent in Ethiopia in 1985 with
his wife, Ali. In Africa, he found places
where the streets had no name but where
the spirit of the people was strong. “When
I got back, I realized the extent to which
people in the west were like spoiled
children,” he said.
However, this is contradicted by
an interview Bono gave to Propaganda
magazine in 1987. He had heard that in
Belfast, Ireland, you can tell not only what
religion someone is by the street they live
“Tim McGraw”
by Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift, a freshman at a Middle
Tennessee high school, had a couple of
after-school interests. One was writing
songs, the other was dating a senior boy
named Brandon Borello, and she figured
the latter interest would soon dissipate
when Borello left for college.
For a writing meeting with Liz Rose,
Swift arrived with an idea, and with a
melody she’d thought of in math class. The
two writers fused notion and melody and
in 15 minutes, with Swift at a piano, wrote
a song to remind her soon-to-be-departed
beau of the things they’d shared.

5. loewsmagazine
30
committed suicide. The second verse,
in which “my body’s aching and my time
is at hand/And I won’t make it any other
way,” refers to his treatment at Austin
Riggs Hospital in Massachusetts. The
“flying machines in pieces on the ground”
line was about his ill-fated first band,
The Flying Machine. And the “fire” in the
title intimates the electroshock therapy
he underwent at Austin Riggs. In spite
of all the turmoil in the lyrics, Taylor has
performed “Fire and Rain” thousands of
times in front of the picnic basket-wielding
amphitheater crowds that, as he wrote in
1980s song “That’s Why I’m Here,” “pay
good money to hear ‘Fire and Rain,’ again
and again and again.”
“Fire and Rain”
by James Taylor
A No. 3 hit on the all-genre Billboard
Hot 100 chart in 1970, folk-rock song
“Fire and Rain” became a signature
composition and concert staple for Taylor,
and a feel-good fix for the troubadour’s
fans. It was rooted in struggle, though,
with lines referencing the suicide of a
childhood friend, battles with depression
and addiction and career struggles. The
opening line, “Just yesterday morning,
they let me know you were gone,” was
about Suzanne Schnerr, a friend who
Dolly Parton wrote this one as a
bittersweet goodbye to her musical
mentor, Porter Wagoner, who had
helped her to fame by hiring her for his
syndicated television show. In the early
1970s, she sought to move on as a solo
act, a decision that caused Grand Ole
Opry star Wagoner hard feelings. The
song was a way of finding some closure
in the midst of a contentious split that
included lawsuits and accusations. It
topped the charts for Parton in May
of 1974, and reached the top of the
country charts again in 1982, when
she re-recorded it for The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas soundtrack.
Whitney Houston too sang her own hit
version of it, and it remains among the
signature songs in both Parton’s and
Houston’s repertoires. Wagoner’s and
the crooning blonde’s spat was ultimately
“I Will Always Love You”
By Dolly parton
short-lived, and Parton sang it to an
emotional Wagoner on the Grand Ole
Opry stage in 2007. In fact, Parton was at
his side, holding his hand the day he died
later that year.

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31
Our desire was to create something that is contemporary with a
classic edge. Most of all, it had to be a place where people can
have a fantastic experience of entertainment.
In concert, you perform many songs from what’s
known as the Great American Songbook: tunes from
the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and such.
Are you surprised by the long life of those songs?
When I started performing, I was aware that most of my
audience was older, and I thought, “In 20 years, I’m not going
to have an audience at all.” But that hasn’t happened. There are
new generations discovering the music. Because of technology
in the digital age, there are more ways for people to learn about,
access and discover this music.
Do you have any favorite stories behind the songs that
you perform?
Lots of them. But one of my favorites is “Lullaby of Broadway.”
That was written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, and was first
used in the movie Gold Diggers of 1935, even though people
today know it from the Broadway musical 42nd Street. Warren
and Dubin were under contract to Warner Brothers and they’d
written this tune they liked a lot, but the producer (Robert Lord)
criticized the song and said it wasn’t very good and that he
didn’t want it in the film. At the same time, Harry and Al were
working on the music for another film that starred Al Jolson, and
Jolson heard “Lullaby of Broadway” and wanted it in his own
movie. When (Lord) heard Jolson liked it, he changed his mind
and wanted the song in his movie, and it wound up winning an
Academy Award as the best song of the year.
What’s your own songwriting process like?
It’s always mysterious. It changes all the time. Last year, I wrote a
piece with Maya Angelou for Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday.
Maya was delayed in getting the lyric to me because she hadn’t
come up with the right idea she wanted to express. So I had
precious little time to come up with the music for her lyric. When
she got the lyric to me, I didn’t have long to work on the music,
and I sat at the piano and in about an hour worked out the whole
thing. It came because it had to, and otherwise I would have lost
the opportunity we had, which was to perform the song at the
Lincoln Memorial. In the end, it worked out beautifully.
Story Time
with a singer
Multi-platinum-selling, five-time Grammy-nominated
Michael Feinsten is called “The Ambassador of
the Great American Songbook” because of his
interpretations of classic American popular songs.
In addition to your musician duties, you’ve become
a nightclub owner. What’s Feinstein’s at Loews
Regency like?
It’s an homage to the classic nightclubs of New York that
used to proliferate in the city. I think we’re more welcoming,
perhaps, and more comfortable than the nightclubs of yore.
ajmast