Eddie Snyder

Edward Abraham Snyder (born February 22, 1919 in New York , † March 10, 2011 in Lakeland (Florida) ) was an American composer and songwriter who also worked under the pseudonym Kay Rogers . His works include the English-language texts for the Bert Kaempfert compositions Strangers in the Night and Spanish Eyes , which became global successes in the 1960s.

Life

The historic Brill Building in New York (2008)

After studying piano at New York's Juilliard School , Snyder took a position as a songwriter in the Brill Building on Broadway . There he had to write a song every day in a windowless room with a piano. In later years he worked as a singing pianist in various clubs and hotels in New York and Florida, where in 1945 he met his wife Jessie, a nightclub singer.

In 1951 he returned to New York and composed his first own songs there. With a text by Stanley J. Kahan, The Girl with the Golden Braids was a success for Perry Como in 1957 . Together with Rudy Vallée , the two wrote Talk to Me in 1959 for Frank Sinatra , which reached number 20 on the American hit parade . This was not successful enough for Sinatra and he refrained from recording further pieces by Snyder until 1966.

It was in that year that Eddie Snyder had the opportunity to work with Charles Singleton on the English words to Bye Beddy - a Bert Kaempfert composition, which is partly also attributed to Ivo Robić - for the film A Man Could Get Killed (German Title: Welcome, Mister B. ) to write. Snyder claimed to have influenced the design of the melody. Although Frank Sinatra had a deep dislike for the song released as Strangers in the Night - he compared it to a "piece of Sch ..." among other things - it was not only his first number one hit in over ten years, but also a world hit , which became an often- covered evergreen and has since been part of the standard easy listening repertoire .

After the instrumental film version won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Original Song in a Motion Picture" in 1967 , Strangers in the Night received four other awards at the 1967 Grammy Awards , including "Single of the Year". The BMI awarded the title as the most performed song of 1966. In January 1970, BMI added the title to the list of songs performed publicly over a million times, and in 1990 BMI certified four million airplays in a cumulative broadcasting time of 22.8 years.

As early as 1965, Snyder, also together with Singleton, wrote the English words for the Kaempfert composition Moon Over Naples . Under the title Spanish Eyes, this became a worldwide success for Al Martino in 1966 and also established itself as an easy listening standard covered by numerous other performers. In 1968 Kaempfert received a BMI Award for this.

Margaret Whiting also had her last hit parade in 1966 with The Wheel of Hurt, composed and written by Snyder and Singleton .

In 1968 he received attention when he and Larry Kusik wrote the words to the film melody composed by Nino Rota from Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet , which was number one in the USA in an instrumental version by Henry Mancini in 1969. As A Time for Us it was included in the repertoire of Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis, among others .

Eddie Snyder's other successes were A Hundred Pounds of Clay , Remember When (We Made These Memories) , Turn to Me and Ten Lonely Guys . With his words on the James Last compositions Games That Lovers Play and When The Snow Is on the Roses , he contributed to its success in the English-speaking world.

" Strangers in the Night made me a lazy man", he once stated, "because after that I didn't have to do anything".

swell

1. ↑ Eddie Snyder at Discogs (English)

Web links

• Pierre Perrone: Eddie Snyder: Co-writer of 'Strangers in the Night' and 'Spanish Eyes' , The Independent, London, April 6, 2011 (obituary)
• Eddie Snyder , The Telegraph, London, March 31, 2011 (obituary)