Monday, Dec. 15, 1947
It Comes Easy
Song for song, few of Tin Pan Alley's tunesmiths can match the havoc wrought by a gum-chewing Oklahoman named Jack Owens. He has an assist on a public nuisance of 1941 called The Hut-Sut Song, wrote Hi, Neighbor, a song which has become the nightly entering wedge of Pal Joey-type masters of ceremony the U.S. over. He composed for Red Skelton something called I Dood It, and in his own tenor voice has crooned the merits of orange drinks and frankfurters for singing commercials.
Now 35, Owens has spent half his life as a radio entertainer. On his Chicago Breakfast Club program, he seems to have something the ladies like. It troubled him at first that his singing voice sounded like a man with a cold in the nose. Says he: "Then a hillbilly singer told me that was 'resonance' and that the women would go for it. I've let it go ever since. That's the sex in my voice." He also has a cute routine: he comes down into his radio audience with a portable mike. First he parks his gum with someone in the front row and retrieves it at the end of the hour, which is good for big laughs both times. Then he perches coyly on ladies' laps to croon his songs. Afterwards he plants a kiss on the prettiest girl he can find. The effect is uproarious.
Last week, Owens had another scalp on his belt: the fastest rising tune on the hit parade, a soggy, foggy ballad called How Soon? He had written the lyrics five years ago, to a simple tune by Sammy Kaye's arranger, Carroll Lucas. No one paid any attention to it, even when Owens was plugging it on ladies' laps. Then, a year ago, the Reynolds Pen Co. hired Owens to record the Rocket Song, hoping that listeners would be reminded of Rocket Pens. Owens got a chance to slip How Soon? on the other side of the record. Disc jockeys started playing it, and requests poured in. He expects to earn $100,000 from the song.
Owens already has a new tune on the fire called You Can't Hurt a Heart That's Broken. He usually thinks up words and music together, sometimes uses arrows over the words to indicate whether the melody goes up or down. His songwriting formula: "For me, either they come easy or they're no good."
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