Songwriters...

I started playing music in the school symphony by day and cutting my teeth for 'Rock-n-Roll' in a garage band by night. For years and years it was playing music by other known artists. This is referred to as 'Cover Bands' musicians who don't play compositions of their own.

When I bought albums, I would read everything from cover to cover and all through the record liners. Usually on the back cover you can find the song listings and credits. For the most part, members of the band wrote their own songs.

Go back a generation and you will find many artists/singers/performers were promoted by management and record companies and all their music was produced. They became stars by the hard work of others. That's not to say they didn't work hard on their careers, it's to say their huge success was manipulated by others.

Let's say I wrote a great song, but I didn't have the voice, stage presence or finances to promote the song. If I knew the right people, I could offer/sell that song to a record company who could match the song with an entertainer to record it. If you check on YouTube for some 50's music, you can find many artists recording the same song.

When we get into the 60's songwriters often teamed up with singers. The magical match was singer Dionne Warwick and composer/songwriter Burt Bacharach (and Hal David). Burt is listed as a singer... I didn't think that was his strong point, Dion was the singer and sold millions and millions of records.

I just scratched the surface with this blog about songwriters and plan to write some more insight to the record business in future blogs.


Thanks for reading !

"Do you know the way to San Jose..."