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Billy Walker first recorded the Willie Nelson composition "Funny How Time Slips Away" and took it into the top thirty on the country charts in 1961. Willie Nelson released his version in 1962 on the album "And Then I Wrote ...". The Joe Hinton cover

Composed in 1943 "La Mer" (Trenet) the song was not released until 1945 by singer Roland Gerbeau. The writer Charles Trenet's version was issued a year after. Singer/composer/actor/political activist and television show host Bobby Darin's (Cassotto)

Italian violinist Nino Oliviero composed successfully since WW2. The first movie score for Riz Ortolani was the 1962 release "Mondo Cane" (Oliviero - Ortolani). To date his film work includes "Kill Bill", "Drive", "Django Unchained" and "Inglourious

Prolific composer Wayne Carson (Thompson) recorded "No Love At All" (Thompson - Christopher) for Monument Records in 1970. B. J. (Billy Joe) Thomas hit the top five in 1971 with this single from the album "Most Of All".

In 1962 Burl Ives became the first to record "Busted" (Howard) for the Nashville album "Burl" produced by Owen Bradley and featuring the Anita Kerr Singers. Legendary Harlan Howard was from Kentucky and meant it to be a coal mining song. Ray Charles

Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. once with the Fifth Dimension. In 1978 they were the first to record "Saving All My Love For You" (Masser - Goffin) on the album "Marilyn and Billy". The pair are favourites of President and Mrs. George Bush Sr. They

Composer/piano and guitar teacher Steve Gibb wrote "She Believes In Me" in 1978. Kenny Rogers hit the top of the country charts and the top five of the pop chart with his cover in 1979 from the album "The Gambler".

Bill Giant (Zimmerman) who worked on close to forty tunes with Elvis Presley was part of the composing team of Baum - Giant -Kaye whose work also included "Devil In Disguise". Using the pseudonym Ethel Lee (his wife's maiden name) Bill wrote "Speedy

Lupita Palomera was the first to record "Perfidia" (Dominguez) in 1938. In the early forties Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa and even Glenn Miller and the Modernaires hit with the tune. Jerry Murad's Harmonicats (Jerry, Al Fiore and Don Les)

Scott (Sheldon) English gave us the original "Brandy" (English - Kerr) which hit the 1971 top twenty in the U.K. and also charted in the States in 1972. He and Larry Weiss composed "Bend Me, Shape Me" (see other post on this blog) which became a top ten

Sonny (Joe) West cut "Rave On" (West - Tilghman) with The Big Beats, a group formed by the then unknown Trini Lopez, at the Norman Petty Studios in 1957, after "Oh Boy!" was a hit for Buddy Holly. The song was released on Atlantic Records. Fellow

Bobby Gosh conducted Paul Anka's orchestra for two years. Bobby once opened for a Barbra Streisand Concert in Central Park. He composed "A Little Bit More" which is now available on the compact disc "A Little Bit More .... The Early Years'. Dr. Hook

Former marathon dance contestant, scat singer and "The Jezebel of Jazz" Anita O'Day (Colton) appeared with the Gene Krupa band, Count Basie, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. She recorded "Vaya Con Dios" (Russell - Pepper - James) in 1942. In 1953 the

An earlier version of "Till There Was You" titled "Till I Met You" was recorded in 1950 by an original star of Your Hit Parade, Eileen Wilson. Sue Raney and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra recorded the original "Till There Was You" in 1957 before the

Jamaica's Bob Marley and The Wailers issued their first album "The Wailing Wailers" in 1964. "Stir It Up" is on the 1973 album "Catch a Fire". It's said that he wrote the tune for his wife Rita. Discovered by Arthur Godfrey in the fifties, Johnny Nash

The Reverend Ford Washington McGee was the first to record "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" as a sermon in 1929. A month later, Bessie Johnson's Sanctified Singers (Betty with Sally Sumier, Melinda Taylor and others) aka The Memphis Sanctified

Sonny Dae (Pascal Salvatore Vennitti) and His Knights were first to record "Rock Around the Clock" (DeKnight - Freedman) in 1953 and issue the tune in 1954. Sonny was once a drummer for the Tommy Dorsey band. "Rock Around the Clock" is one of the most

Although they never met "The King", the Pomus (Jerome Felder) -Shuman team wrote 25 songs for Elvis Presley including "Viva Las Vegas". We feature Mort's version here. One of his best pictures, "Viva Las Vegas" was a 1964 Elvis movie with co-star

Roy Orbison recorded "Blue Bayou" (Orbison - Melson) in 1961 for the 1963 "In Dreams" album and as the flip of "Mean Woman Blues". Roy's original peaked in the top thirty. Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon fame produced Linda Ronstadt's cover that easily

Bill Nash of "The Nash Family Trio" was described by the composer of "For The Good Times" as a young Roy Orbison. The single was released in 1968. The multi-talented Kris Kristofferson recorded his own composition after Bill's version. You'll find it

Johnny Darrell was first to record lots of tunes that became hits for others; "The Son Of Hickory Holler's Tramp", "With Pen In Hand", "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town", not the least of which was his first single in 1965, "The Green, Green Grass Of

The City (Carole King, Charles Larkey and Danny Kortchmar) recorded one album "Now That Everything's Been Said" in 1969. It's there you'll find the original recording of Hi-De-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll) (Goffin - King) Blood, Sweat and Tears featuring

Based on the "Boys Town" logo Bob Russell (NOT the writer of "Honey", "Little Green Apples", "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia", "Sure Gonna Miss Her", etc) composed "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" (Scott - Russell) along with Bob Scott who

Brooklyn musician Mort Shuman was part of the Pomus - Schuman hit making team. Mort found great success in France where he enjoyed his own recording career after composing hits like "His Latest Flame" for others. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll

Simon & Garfunkel's "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" appears on the 1966 album "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme". The bridge is also known as the Queensboro Bridge in NYC. Here is the Concert in Central Park version. The Harpers

Jorge Fernandes recorded the traditional Brazilian folk song "Meu Limao, Meu Limoeiro" (My Lemon, My Lemon Tree) as a B side in 1937. Peter, Paul and Mary's 1962 top forty version was "Lemon Tree" (Will Holt) a track from their self-titled debut album.

Grammy Award winners Peter (Yarrow), Paul (Stookey) and Mary (Travers) recorded "And When I Die" in 1966 for the "Peter, Paul and Mary" album. Composer extraordinaire Laura Nyro (Nigro) gave us "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoney End",

Grammy winner Norro Wilson recorded "Mama McCloskey/Hey Mister" (Wilson - Welty) in 1968. It was the B side of the Platter's "Only You" cover. Norro Wilson produced the cover by Joe Stampley as a B side and titled "The Most Beautiful Girl" (Bourke -

Lulu Belle (Myrtle Cooper) and Scotty's "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" (Scotty Weisman) was written in 1945 and Scotty the composer released it with his wife in 1956. Ricky Nelson took it into the top thirty in 1957 as the B side of "Be-Bop

Saxophonist Mike Sharpe (Shapiro) recorded "Spooky" (Middlebrooks) as an instrumental in 1966 for the album "The Spooky Sound of Mike Sharpe". The Classics IV (Dennis Yost, J.R. Cobb, Wally Eaton and Joe Wilson) added lyrics and it resulted in a top

Charlie Blackwell's "The Girl Of My Best Friend" (Bobrick - Ross) was released as a B side in 1959. A year later it was covered by Elvis Presley on the album "Elvis Is Back". A year before he had hit the top ten with "You Don't Know What You Got (Until

In April of1959 the smooth voiced Billy Brown cut "Run'em Off" and on the B side was "He'll Have To Go" (Joe & Audrey Allison). Billy was a former rodeo performer and rockabilly singer and a country gospel evangelist. Jim Reeves recorded the top

Musical prodigy Max Steiner, godson to Richard Strauss, was one of the first composers to write scores for the movies. He was nominated for close to two dozen Academy Awards and won three. In 1959 he wrote the score for "A Summer Place" and a section

Vince Martin (Marcellino) and the Terriers (Alan Arkin, Erik Darling and Bob Carey) first recorded "Cindy, Oh Cindy" (Nemeroff and D'Lugoff under the pseudonyms Barron and Long) using the Jamaican melody to "Pay Me My Money Down" in 1956. The same

Oskar Wagner was one of the first to record the traditional German folk song "Muss I Denn" and he did so around 1900 on the brown wax cylinder heard here. Elvis Presley recorded "Wooden Heart" (Weisman - Wise - Twomey - Kaempfert) for the movie 1960

Chan (Robert Lee) Romero's "Hippy, Hippy Shake" was a hit in Australia in 1959 but that was it. For a brief time he joined Buddy Holly's Crickets substituting for Glenn Harden on an American tour. Originally the Blue Genes, The Swinging Blue Jeans (Ray

In the 1970 movie "Lovers And Other Strangers" Larry Meredith sang "For All We Know" with lyrics composed by Bread members Robb Royer and Jimmy Griffin using the pseudonyms Arthur James and Robb Wilson, the melody was written by the prolific Emmy winner