Carl Sigman in the News
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L.A. Times, October 4, 2000
Carl Sigman; Wrote Lyrics for Many Well-Known Songs
BY MYRNA OLIVER Times Staff Writer

He wrote the songs. Boy, did he write songs.
__And most people can warble a line or two from several of them.
__He threw everything from a telephone number to rejiggered French or Italian phrases into what he called "conversational lyrics." And with that formula, he wrote himself an indelible legacy.
__Carl Sigman, the lawyer who hated the law and tuned to writing lyrics and sometimes music for dozens of standards, died Sept. 26 at his home in Manhasset, N.Y. He was 91.
__His songs are as old as 1940 and as new as a commercial for the 2000 Summer Olympics- "Pennsylvania 6-5000," "What Now My Love," "Arrivederci, Roma," "Where Do I Begin?," "It’s All in the Game," "Enjoy Yourself"
__"I was always listening, reading or looking for everyday expressions," Sigman told Newsday in an interview a year ago. "I strive to make conversational lyrics-that’s my strength –like ‘Did anyone call?’ or ‘I’ll never forgive myself.’ "
__His first big hit was " Pennsylvania 6-5000" six decades ago- a tribute to New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania where Swing Era icons- the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw-performed regularly. The Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded the song and it became a classic, not only still recorded but used over and over by Hollywood, from the 1945 film "The Glenn Miller Story" to the 1999 "Any Given Sunday." The hotel still answers to the phone number.
__Sigman took a common adage, "Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think" and turned that into the popular song "Enjoy Yourself" in 1950. He also used the phrase on his telephone answering machine. Woody Allen added the song to the soundtrack of his 1996 motion picture "Everyone Says I Love You," and viewers of the Olympics heard it again, accompanying a Mercedes-Benz commercial over the last two weeks of September.

The Brooklyn-born lyricist and composer often Americanized European melodies or sentiments. Usually, he had to start from scratch on the words, he said because "the accents and meter are different."
__But for the 1966 hit "What Now My Love," he simply translated the French title, creating a catchy phrase in English.
__His theme for "Love Story," the 1970 tear-jerker starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, came out of Sigman’s frustration.
__"I wrote a lyric, made a demo for the movie," he told Newsday three years ago. "Bob Evans, the producer hated it. So I come and sit down with Terry (his wife) and say, "I don’t know how to rewrite this. Where do I begin?’ And that’s how I wrote it."
__His exquisite result pops up repeatedly, not only in recordings, but also in movies, including the goofy 1989 musical comedy "Earth Girls Are Easy," starring Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum.
__Another Sigman song considered the perfect addition to many a motion picture represents perhaps the lyricist’s most unusual collaborative effort.
__"One day I got a call from Warner Bros. Music, telling me that Dawes had just died and left this tune to which he thought I should write a lyric," Sigman told Billboard in 1997.
__Dawes was U.S. Vice President Charles G. Dawes, who served with President Calvin Coolidge, and the tune was a classical piece composed in 1912 called "A Melody in A Major."
__"After hearing it, I thought its two-octave range made such an assignment difficult," Sigman said. "We took a few high notes out, and I wrote the words."
__The resulting song was called "It’s All In The Game" which became a hit recording in 1951 and again in 1958 for singer Tommy Edwards. On screen, it has re-surged in "Diner" in 1982, "Losin’ It" in 1983 and "October Sky" last year
__Other Sigman songs that have sounded as welcome to movie and concert goers as the old familiar phrases on which the lyrics were based include "Ebb Tide," which he originally wrote in 1953 to Robert Maxwell’s instrumental melody; "Bongo, Bongo, Bongo (Civilization)," from Sigman’s 1947 Broadway musical "Angel in the Wings," and "Buona Sera," memorable in the movies "Big Night," and last year’s "Mickey Blue Eyes."
__Television, too, loved Sigman’s work. When CBS brought "The Adventures of Robin Hood" to the small screen from 1955 to 1958 starring Richard Greene as the good bad guy of Sherwood Forest, it was Sigman who introduced him each week with, "Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding though the glen; Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men…" For those too young to remember, the group Deep Purple recently featured the ballad on an album.
__And in 1955, Perry Como urged the nation to take Sigman’s cozy advice, "Dream Along With Me (I’m on My Way to a Star)." The Como theme song has made the theatrical circuit in recent years in the tuneful "Forever Plaid."
__Singers like Sigman songs, recording them repeatedly and incorporating them into stage acts. In addition to Como, Sigman songs have been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Louis Prima, Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass, Sonny and Cher, Danny Kaye, the Andrew Sisters, Vic Damone, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole. And now a younger generation is recording them. Cole’s daughter, Natalie, brought out Sigman’s assertive "If You Could See Me Now" on her 1997 CD "Stardust."

Told by his mother he must become a doctor or a lawyer, Sigman, who couldn’t stand the sight of blood, duly graduated from New York University Law School, passed the bar and practiced for a year, hating every minute.
__"I worked as a typist, a piano teacher," he said, all while "trying to find time to go to the Brill Building, where all the songwriters hung out."
__One of the songwriters he befriended was the legendary Johnny Mercer, who gave him some pragmatic advice: "A band has 15 musicians who can write tunes to one person who can write a lyric. You have a flair for it; you’ll get songs published."
__Sigman even turned his World War II Army services into a song. Sent to Europe in a glider crew, he earned a Bronze Star for heroism and wrote what became the 82nd Airborne Division’s official song "The All American Soldier." His pay? A $25 war bond.
__He was inducted into the song writers Hall of Fame in 1972.

The song writer is survived by his wife, Terry, whom he met when she was working for Louis Prima and he stopped by to hear Prima recording "Bongo, Bongo", three sons, Michael of Los Angeles, Jeffrey of Carmel Ind., and Randy of Hartford, Conn. And one granddaughter.
__Able to spin a lyric until the end Sigman told Newsday last year "With the advent of rap music, I became totally out of it… There’s no real outlet for my type of song anymore."
__Anybody who attends a concert listens to a record album, turns on the radio or sees a movie might beg to differ.

(c) L.A. Times