Songwriters Hall of Fame

Larry Stock was born in 1896, the son of a cellist with the New York Symphony Orchestra. Before his eighth birthday, Stock was playing the piano, and at 12, was accepted by the Institute of Musical Art in New York, which later was renamed The Juilliard School. Graduating at 16, he continued his studies at The City College of New York. Stock also studied piano with a then prominent teacher, Clarence Adler.

"I was trained to be a concert artist," Stock was once quoted as saying, "but after graduating from college, there weren’t many jobs around for a young man. It was the Great Depression, you know, so I was happy to get occasional work in nightspots."

Performing in clubs left time during the day for other pursuits and Stock used them for songwriting at which he became accomplished but generally unrecognized, until 1938, when after a decade of effort, he enjoyed his first major success with "Umbrella Man." Perry Como also looked favorably on Larry Stock's material and subsequently recorded a number of his tunes, including "Did You Ever Get That Feeling in the Moonlight," "You Won't Be Satisfied Until You've Broken My Heart," "With All My Heart and Soul" and "If Wishes Were Kisses."

Over the course of nearly a half century of writing and composing, Larry Stock turned out literally scores of songs that became hits, noting at another juncture, that "I have more than a thousand unpublished songs." Most popular of all his songs was "Blueberry Hill," which, coincidentally, was a major hit recording for Fats Domino. Another song, the earlier "Umbrella Man," ultimately surpassed "Blueberry Hill" in sales, selling over 50 million records and more than a million pieces of sheet music. Both songs were co?written with Vince Rose.

"I wrote the lyrics for both songs," Stock recalls, "although I've written music for others and many times, both words and music. One important publisher turned down 'Blueberry Hill,' because, he claimed, blueberries don' t grow on hills. I assured him I had picked them on hills as a boy, but nothing doing. So Chappell and Company bought the song and another hit was born."

The timing of "Umbrella Man," written in 1938, was a big help since its release coincided with the umbrella?toting British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain's trip to Munich to sign what turned out to be a phony peace accord with the Nazis. The public quickly made the association and rushed to buy. Kenny Baker, the tenor on the Jack Benny radio show, also helped send the song on its way by performing it on the program.

An even bigger success story was the song, "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You," which has become an almost traditional nightclub specialty tune to bring a performance to a crescendo of applause. The song has been recorded successfully literally scores of times by prominent artists. Larry Stock was also the composer of a favorite Christmas song, "The Cradle in Bethlehem," which found its way into the late Nat King Cole's Christmas album, still popular today over 50 years later.

Larry Stock was posthumously inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998.

John Williams is, without question, one of the most gifted and distinguished American composers of the late 20th century. His output, interestingly, is not focused on the vehicle of popular song, per se, but on an equally popular facet of the musical mainstream, that of movie music. Movies and their music, whose death knell was sounded loud and clear in the early days of the emerging television vehicle, have simply grown through the years.

The Academy Awards presentations had created a veritable frenzy of public interest and an attendant new record of TV viewers of the big doings in LA's Shrine Auditorium. The soundtracks for the most popular motion pictures now consistently make the top of the best-selling charts.

John Williams is a major contributor to the movie success story, having composed the music for more than 75 films, including Jaws, Indiana Jones Trilogy, Amistad and Superman. His movie theme and soundtrack material reads like a "best of " list of American motion picture classics of the last couple of generations.

His name is to be found prominently in the credits for Seven Years in Tibet, The Lost World, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, ET (The Extraterrestrial), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Born on the Fourth of July, Empire of the Sun, Nixon, Sabrina Teen Witch, Saving Private Ryan and most notably, the Star Wars epics.

John Williams' labors in music have resulted in 36 Academy Award nominations. He has amassed a living room full of five Oscars, nearly 20 Grammy awards and several gold and platinum records as well. His soundtrack album for Star Wars has sold over four million copies.

New York born John Williams moved west to Los Angeles in 1948, where he attended UCLA and studied composition with the noted Mario Castelnuova-Tedesco. Following duty in the Air Force, he returned to New York to attend the Juilliard School, studying piano with Rosina Lhevinne. While in the east, he worked as a jazz pianist in local clubs and on jazz recordings. Later, he succumbed to the lure of California and its world of moviemaking and became active working with such studio composers as Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Franz Waxman.

In addition to his almost frantic schedule of writing for movies and television, John Williams feels equally at home in the concert hall and has written many concert pieces, including two symphonies as well as concertos for flute, tuba, violin, clarinet and cello. In the late 1990’s, he composed a bassoon concerto commissioned by The New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a trumpet concerto, commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra.

Williams is the composer of the NBC News theme, "The Mission," "Liberty Fanfare," composed for the rededication of The Statue of Liberty; and themes for the Summer Olympic Games of 1984, 1988 and 1996. He is also the composer of the NFL Network Themes.

Extremely active as a guest conductor with notable ensembles, Williams has batoned the Boston Pops and Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestras on tours of the United States and Japan. He has also guest-conducted The London Symphony, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Pittsburgh Symphony and The San Francisco Symphony. He also holds honorary doctorates from 14 American Universities.

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