Benny 9 s l i st ' Sir: Both Benny Green (July 1) and
ASCAP appear to be confusing ' songwriter ' and 'lyricist! — two complementary but quite different functions. Thus, Dorothy Fields, Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, and Johnny Mercer have no business on either list, and are credited with work actually done by Arthur Schwartz, George Gershwin, Frederick Loewe, Richard Whiting, Jerome Kern, or Victor Schert
zinger.
Substituting one very minor My Fair Lady song for another seems, in Doctor Johnson's phrase, like settling the paint of precedency between a louse and a flea, but Green's gloomy view of contemporary songwriting doesn't square with actuality. True, many greats are no longer alive, but even omitting brilliant pop field writers like Bacharach, Webb, McCartney, Hatch, Simpson, Nyro, Mayfield, King, and Bell, one can still find such excellent exemplars of the older tradition as Stephen Sondheim (Company), Jerry Bock (Fiddler on the Roof), Burton Lane (On a Clear Day), Tom Jones (Fantasticks), Julie Styne (Gypsy), not forgetting Leonard Bernstein, Hugh Martin, Gene De Paul, Leslie Bricusse, Sammy Fain, Alex North and Henry Mancini.
Owen Peterson 74 Chelmsford Road, Holland-onSea, Essex
Previous page
