Music: Who Sings Shostakovich?

The little man shaped like a cigar stub played a few bars on the piano, trying out his tune on his new partner. Lyricist Sammy Cahn, who used to play fiddle in a burlesque house, grunted: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before.” Before Tunesmith Jule Styne could think of something nasty to reply, Sammy Cahn said hastily: “I mean it’s a good title —I’ve Heard That Song Before.” According to Messrs. Styne & Cahn, this is how the title to their first hit was born. Since then most of their major decisions, and the titles of their best songs, have come like that. Like their brothers on Tin Pan Alley, Styne & Cahn believe that a tune either “romps,” “walks,” “bounces,” or you put it away. Says Jule: “You can’t fight it; either it comes easy or you don’t play with it.” Last week the latest Styne & Cahn hit, It’s Magic, was the nation’s No. 2 best seller in the jukeboxes, though it had taken a long time to romp, walk or bounce.

Jule wrote the music two years ago; but Sammy had been fighting the lyrics.

Walk Together. Messrs. Styne & Cahn are, after Rodgers & Hammerstein, perhaps the most successful songwriting team on Tin Pan Alley. In the seven years they have been partners, they have writ ten 150 songs together, sold 6,000,000 copies of sheet music, made the hit parade two dozen times and first place nine times (among their hits: I’ll Walk Alone; It’s Been a Long, Long Time; Give Me Five Minutes More.) They earn $150,000 a year. Jule, who was born in London 42 years ago, was a piano prodigy who was guest soloist with the Detroit Symphony at eight. Sammy, 35, was brought up on the sidewalks of New York, set a hooky record at Seward Park High School”which still stands.” He was already a successful lyricist at 28 (Shoe Shine Boy, Bei Mir Bist Du Schon) when he and Jule teamed up in Hollywood.

Now they are inseparable, buzz in & out of each other’s houses, often leave their wives twiddling their thumbs at the gin rummy table while they rush to the piano with an idea. Each considers the other, in Hollywoodese, a “great genius.” Sammy likes to say that Jule writes “a warm tune” and “lets the melody go where it wants to go.” But, says Jule: “I always give the pros a chance to use their voices, usually at the end so the public knows when to stand up and clap.”

No Improvements Allowed. The boys are mighty particular about how their songs get plugged. Whenever they can make it, they show up at the studio when a top singer first tries out a new one. Says Sammy: “They’re damned careful to sing it the way we wrote it when we’re staring ’em in the face. Lotsa singers don’t know the proper phrasing and even lose a rhyme. So we gotta be around to protect our baby.” Says Jule: “Nobody’s going to improve our songs to death.”

Their formula for success is as simple as a C scale. Says Sammy: “We make our songs easy to remember and easy to sing. That’s what Americans like—songs the guy in the locker room and the woman in the farmhouse can sing without a piano.

Give ’em what they understand; don’t try to elevate them.” Adds Jule: “You gotta write for the people . . . Art is great, sure . . . but who can sing Shostakovich?”