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'Unchained Melody' Writer Hy Zaret Dies
Jul 3, 4:22 PM (ET)
WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - Lyricist Hy Zaret, who wrote the haunting words to "Unchained
Melody," one of the most frequently recorded songs of the 20th century, has died at age 99.
Zaret died at his home Monday, about a month shy of his 100th birthday, his son, Robert Zaret, said Tuesday.
He penned words to many songs and advertising jingles but his biggest hit was "Unchained Melody," written
in 1955 for a film called "Unchained." It brought Zaret and Alex North, the composer, an Academy Award
nomination for best song.
Zaret refused the producer's request to work the word "unchained" into the lyrics, instead writing to
express the feelings of a lover who has "hungered for your touch a long, lonely time."
The song was recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Lena Horne, U2, Guy Lombardo, Vito & the Salutations
and Joni Mitchell, who incorporated fragments into her song "Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody."
An instrumental version was a No. 1 hit in 1955 for Les Baxter, while a vocal version by Al Hibbler reached No.
3 the same year.
But most baby boomers remember the song from the Righteous Brothers' version. The record, produced by Phil Spector,
reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart in 1965, and was a hit again 25 years later when it was used on the soundtrack
of the film "Ghost."
In all, it was recorded more than 300 times, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers,
which listed it in 1999 as one of the 25 most-performed musical works of the 20th century.
Among other songs Zaret co-wrote were "My Sister and I," a hit in 1941 for Jimmy Dorsey; "So Long,
for a While," the theme song for the radio and TV show "Your Hit Parade"; "Dedicated to You";
and the Andrews Sisters' novelty song "One Meat Ball."
"He had some big, big hits," said Jim Steinblatt, an assistant vice president at ASCAP.
In later years, Zaret had to fend off the claims by another man, electrical engineer William Stirrat, who said
he wrote the "Unchained Melody" lyrics as a teenager in the 1930s and even legally changed his name to
Hy Zaret. Robert Zaret and Steinblatt both said the dispute was resolved completely in favor of the real Zaret,
who continued to receive all royalties. Steinblatt said Stirrat died in 2004.
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Best known as the co-writer of the perennial "Unchained Melody," lyricist Hy Zaret
was born in New York in 1907, and scored his first major success in 1935, when he teamed up with Saul Chaplin and
Sammy Cahn to co-write the pop standard "Dedicated to You."
The early '40s brought some collaborations with Alex C. Kramer and Joan Whitney, including
1941's "It All Comes Back to Me Now" and the socially conscious, WWII-themed "My Sister and I."
Zaret also wrote lyrics for an English translation of the French Resistance song "The Partisan" (aka
"The Song of the French Partisan"), which was later covered by Leonard Cohen.
Far and away his biggest success, though, was "Unchained Melody," a song he co-wrote
with underrated film composer Alex North for the 1955 prison film Unchained (hence the title). No less than three
versions of the song -- by Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, and Roy Hamilton -- hit the Top Ten that year, with Hibbler's
version ranking as the best-known for the next ten years. The song was also recorded successfully by Jimmy Young
and Liberace, and covered by countless others, but the Righteous Brothers' 1965 version -- given a supremely romantic
production by Phil Spector -- became the definitive take, reaching the pop Top Five. That recording was revived
in 1990 thanks to its inclusion in the film Ghost, and nearly reached the Top Ten all over again.
Meanwhile, Zaret turned his attention to educational children's music in the late '50s, collaborating
with Lou Singer on a six-album series dubbed Singing Science; different volumes covered space, energy and motion,
experiments, weather, and nature. The records were quite successful, and the song "Why Does the Sun Shine?"
(aka "The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas") was even covered by quirky alt-rockers They Might Be Giants
in 1994.
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Obituary: Hy Zaret, 'Unchained Melody' lyricist, 99
Hy Zaret, one of the last of the Tin Pan Alley lyricists, whose most indelible work was the oft-recorded 1955 hit
"Unchained Melody" but whose oeuvre ranged from jingles to songs about science to ballads of love and
war, died Monday at his home in Westport, Connecticut. He was 99.
His son, Robert, announced the death.
Zaret liked to tell about the time the composer Alex North called him to say he had written a song for a movie
and needed words. Zaret replied that he was busy painting his house. But he found time to write the lyrics for
"Unchained Melody." The movie itself, "Unchained," a low-budget prison film, turned out to
be a lot less memorable than the song.
Zaret, a habitual contrarian, refused a producer's request to include the word "unchained" in his lyrics,
though it was impossible to keep it out of the title. The words have again and again evoked a lover's loneliness
in recordings by more than 300 artists, including Lena Horne, Guy Lombardo, the Righteous Brothers, Elvis Presley
and U2: "Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time."
Last month the Songwriters Hall of Fame honored "Unchained Melody" with its Towering Song award for having
"influenced the culture in a unique way over the years."
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Zaret also wrote the English lyrics for Anna Marly's French Resistance song "The Partisan," which Leonard
Cohen recorded.
"He had some big, big hits," said Jim Steinblatt, assistant vice president for special projects at the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Indeed, "So Long, for a While," for which he wrote
the lyrics, was the closing theme for "Your Hit Parade," a show that for many years played the week's
top songs, on radio and later on television.
Although Zaret appreciated the royalties - "Unchained Melody" made him financially independent - he was
just as proud of the educational and public service songs he wrote, often with Lou Singer, for radio, television
and schools. He addressed fire prevention with "Never Clean With Gasoline," fought racism with "Brown-Skinned
Cow" and satisfied curiosity with "Why Are Bananas Picked Green?" and "How Does a Frog Become
a Frog?"
Hyman Harry Zaritsky was born in Manhattan on Aug. 21, 1907, the son of Max Zaritsky, a clothing manufacturer,
and the former Dora Shiffman, who had emigrated from Russia in the 1890s. He legally changed his name in 1934.
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William Stirrat's false
claim to have written "Unchained Melody" under the "pen name" Hy Zaret has been widely circulated
on the internet.
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