Man with the Golden Ear

Ten years ago, a couple of boys from The Bronx named Walden Cassotto and Donald Kirshner got into the music game writing radio-commercial jingles. They never made a living at it, but Cassotto contrived to change his name and his luck by going into singing: he is now that ever-lovin' smash, Bobby Darin. Kirshner still has the same moniker, but in what passes for the pop-music business these days, he is far more formidable than Darin. At 32, he is president of the music division of Columbia Pictures-Screen Gems TV, the hottest publisher in the pop field, and he has been a millionaire for three years.

Since 1959, Kirshner has published 500 songs, of which 400 have made the hit charts. Last week he had no fewer than 25 on the Billboard lists, including the No. 1 song (You're My) Soul and Inspiration. All told, Kirshner songs have sold 150 million recordings.

Farm System. Donnie--as all the pussycats in the trade call him--did it without being able to read a note of music. That in itself is not so odd, since most pop performers nowadays cannot sing a note of music. "What I just seem to have," he says, "is an infallible ear for picking hits." He picks them by getting unsung writers to produce them on order. "I can hear a kid hit a note," he says, "and I know whether he has it or not." He keeps a farm team of young writers whom he pays $50 to $200 a week in retainers against royalties.

In 1963, for example, he hired Toni Wine, who was then a 15-year-old sophomore at Juilliard. Toni proceeded to run her advances up to $20,000. Suddenly, this month, she has broken into the Billboard "Hot 100" with a likely winner, A Groovy Kind of Love. The lyrics, of course, were written by another Kirshner protege, Schoolteacher Carol Bayer, 21:

When I taste your lips Oh I start to shiver Can't control the quivering inside.

With a little bit of luck, Groovy Kind will pay back Donnie's investment, and perhaps make a few bucks for the authors. With a lot of luck, they might join the seven Kirshner teams earning big money. The luckiest team right now is Barry Mann, 26, and his wife Cynthia Weil, 24, who wrote Soul and Inspiration as well as Kicks (No. 10 on the Hot 100) and Magic Town (No. 32); the Manns have just signed a five-year $1,000,000 contract with Kirshner.

When it comes to getting the best out of his stable, Donnie is a regular Toscanini. If he wants a song changed and is told "we didn't do it that way at Juilliard," he replies gently: "I know you're right artistically, but, unfortunately, this is the way it will sell." He may suggest a less complicated "story line," or a different twist to the melody, or a switch in rhythm. He also knows how to boost a youngster's ego. Composer Tommy Boyce, 22, and Lyricist Bobby Hart, 23, came in from Hollywood last week, played Donnie a new ballad called Sunday, the Day Before Monday:

Sunday ay-ay-ay, The day before Monday, yeah, I'll be singing my baby a song.

"Tommy," Donnie gushed to the throb of the last chord: "It slays me! It's great! It really breaks me up! It's fresh! It knocks me out! It's got everything! It's completely fresh, especially with that yodel!"

Like David Baby? Kirshner himself plays only one instrument--the telephone. There are 14 of them in his South Orange, N.J., home, and an eleven-channel radiophone in his chauffeured Fleetwood. In the 40-minute drive to the office, Donnie averages nine calls, daily ringing up London, his overseas headquarters, Nashville and Hollywood, where eleven TV series and 28 movies await Kirshner scores.

In his gold-carpeted Manhattan office, the calls continue at two or three a minute. During lulls, he works up demonstration discs with which he peddles his new properties to name performers. Here again, Donnie's ear is uncanny. "I hear a song six different ways in my head," he says--and then decides who can do it the most good. Not long ago, he took a tune called You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling and got it recorded by 17 different artists including the Wild Ones, Floyd Cramer, Nancy Wilson, George Hamilton, Roger Williams and the Righteous Brothers (the biggest seller). Nowadays, performers call Kirshner. When the phone rings and Donnie says, "Hey, Stevie baby," it means that Steve Lawrence is looking for material. Kirshner is also doing lucrative business with his old friend Walden baby, and next season he hopes to bring in his very first Broadway musical. "I want to become to music publishing," he says, "what David Merrick is to Broadway."

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