Wednesday 6th October, 2004
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A Thought for Today
Without the singer, there is no song.
This
One Does It For Me!
Ken,
I would be grateful if you would answer a question or two about an old
song which may have been sung by Rod McKuen.
The song, I believe, was entitled Jeanne, Jeanne. The song had a line as
follows: "Jeanne, Jeanne you're young and alive."
My friends and I have been trying to identify the singer(s) who made
this song a hit. We would also like to access the lyrics. Any help would
be much appreciated.
Thank you very much.
Jerry
You've come to the right
place, Jerry!
Rod did indeed sing "Jean,"
in fact he wrote it. Rather than read what I have to say about the song,
here's what Rod wrote about it and the man who made it such a huge world
wide hit, Oliver, back in February of 2000.
THE CLOUDS ARE SO LOW, YOU CAN TOUCH THEM . . .
William Oliver Swofford would have been 55 today. He died this past week of
cancer. You might have known him better by his stage name Oliver. He was a songwriter who wrote literate, lovely songs and the voice that took "Good Morning Starshine" to the top of the charts. And, not so incidentally, turned my title song from "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" into an international hit.
Bill Swofford was another of those people that happened along in my life and changed its course.
In the spring of 1969 I was in New York for a guest shot on a Nancy Sinatra television special. The director, Dwight Hemian asked me to perform "A Cat Named Sloopy" as part of my program. He was a friend of writer/producer Bob Crewe and knew that Bob had a beautiful white Persian cat named Simon. He suggested that I should get together with Simon for some photographs that could be used during the performance.
I'd go anywhere to meet a cat and getting to meet Bob, the architect of The Four Seasons and so many other acts I admired, was the alamode.
I left Bob with a test pressing of the "Jean Brodie" soundtrack and forgot about it. I had no idea he was Oliver's producer and anyway it couldn't possibly make a difference. I didn't have any unusual expectations for "Jean," after all a year earlier I'd written the songs and score for another film, "Joanna" and nobody was tripping over themselves to record "I'll Catch The Sun" or "The Ivy That Clings To the Wall." (to my way of thinking still two of my best
songs).
By September Oliver had made "Jean" the number two song in the country. At the end of the year Oliver's "Jean" was such an enormous hit that it was covered by nearly a hundred artists around the world, including Johnny Mathis, Glenn Campbell, Henry Mancini and Andy Williams. Jazz and polka artists did it and a couple of female singers even performed it as "Gene." I, myself, sang it to Gene Kelly at the Golden Globes and won the statue. It earned me the Motion Picture Exhibitors Award as the
years' best film song and an Oscar nomination.
No song, good, bad or so-so means anything unless it's performed and performed well. Oliver didn't just sing "Jean" well; he and Bob Crewe's production values set a standard for its performance.
I'm sorry to say I never got to know Bill Swofford as well as I'd like to have known him. My
loss. With his passing all of us have lost yet another voice for our kind of song. His voice has been missing for a long while and now will be missed evermore.
- Rod McKuen
February 22, 2000
Thanks for writing, Jerry. I
hope the above answers your questions and you'll find the lyrics below.
Want the words to a favorite McKuen song or
poem? Got a Rod McKuen story to relate or a question to ask? Wednesday
is the day we deal with things like this so please drop me a line at
kenb@mckuen.com and I'll do my best
to provide an answer just as soon as I can. - Ken, Johannesburg,
October 6
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