Sep 1 2020 - See You In September

That's a song from 1959 and then again in 1966.    What a wonderful story it has:  Sid Wayne, the co-composer, would recall the song's inception: "I was in the habit of going from my home on Long Island every day to Brill Building, on Tin Pan Alley to meet with different songwriters there. We'd eat at Jack Dempsey's or The Turf Restaurant and then we'd go up to one of the publishers' offices and work in the piano room. We'd sit around saying to each other, 'What do you want to write today? A hit or a standard?'" At 11 a.m. on a Friday in June 1959 Wayne thus met up with Sherman Edwards: "he said, 'What do you want to write?' 'I'd like to write a song called See You in September,"' I said. We talked it back and forth and I think I may have contributed part of the opening music, but with Sherman it didn't matter, because he could throw me back half the lyric — that's how he worked. I think probably by two in the afternoon we got the song finished. It needed to be written; it was like boiling inside of us."  By 4:30 p.m. that day, Wayne and Edwards had reworked their composition, simplifying it so as to appeal to the teen demographic, and proceeded to make the rounds of publishers to pitch the song which, after one rejection, met with an enthusiastic reception from Jack Gold, owner of the local Paris label; by 8 p.m. he had telephoned the Tempos in their hometown of Pittsburgh. The group had been flown into New York City by the next day, Saturday. Sid Wayne: "By Monday the record was cut [with the Billy Mure orchestra], test pressings were Thursday, and by Friday the song was played on WNEW in New York. The thing took off like wildfire… Five hundred dollars to split between the two of us [ie. Wayne & Edwards]… was a damn good week's pay in 1961." The writing and production process seems so simple and straight-forward - everything happened within days.  That's something for us to remember that the 1950s and 1960s were simpler times. What would a salary be in 1961?  In 1961 the average income was $5,700 so at $250 a day x 250 working days in the year, they would make more than 10 times the average income, and if they only worked one day a week they were still double the average income.  He's right:  "Nice work if you can get it" This motion blur Canadian flag is from last October's visit to Kingston.

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