I am not a big fan of Paul Anka or his work, so I considered the new documentary on his career a default choice this morning since ice is on my satellite dish and the channel selection on Direct TV was severely limited. But it’s true: you learn something new and useful almost every day, and often in the least expected places.
I did not know, for example, that Anka wrote “Johnny’s Theme,” the now iconic music that Johnny Carson walked onto the stage to at the start of his version of “The Tonight Show.” But it’s how it ended up as Carson’s entrance music that hammers home an ethics lesson.
When Johnny Carson was preparing to take over from Jack Paar as the host of “The Tonight Show” in October 1962, he ran into Anka, whom he had worked with in a TV special. Carson mentioned to Anka that they needed a new theme, so the pop star composer of “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” “Puppy Love” and the theme to “The Longest Day” repurposed the instrumental arrangement for “It’s Really Love,” a song recorded by his one-time girlfriend Annette Funicello (not one of Annette’s hits) and sent a demo to Carson.
Johnny phoned Paul and thanked him for the offer (and said he and Ed McMahon loved the tune) but said that “Tonight Show” bandleader Skitch Henderson had “his nose out of joint” (does any one use that phrase any more?) because Carson wanted to use a melody written by a “20-year-old kid.”
So Anka suggested that Johnny Carson write new lyrics to his song and that they call it “Johnny’s theme,” which would then be the composition of the “20-year-old kid” and Henderson’s boss. Brilliant! Henderson had to consent to the song’s use every night, and it was Johnny’s walk on music for 30 years until Carson handed over the show to Jay Leno.
Carson’s name on the song meant that he got half the royalties, which averaged $400,000 per year: Carson’s cut was $200,000 a year for lyrics that were never heard or sung. “Johnny’s Theme” had been played more than 1,400,000 times by the end of the Carson’s show’s run. Anka says that Carson admitted he was embarrassed to make all that money for nothing, but the singer shrugs and smiles about it. Johnny got a great theme, and they both made money.
My favorite Harry Truman quote, perhaps my favorite ethics quote by any President and right up there with Winston Churchill’s immortal, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,” is:
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
I don’t know if Paul Anka was familiar with the quote or even if he knows about it yet, but his solution to the “Tonight Show” dilemma is as good an example of Harry’s wisdom in practice as we are likely to see.
[Still waiting for WordPress, or someone, to tell me how to get page breaks in posts under their new %$^&#@ block system…]
Ethics Alarms 
Did you try this manual method for a page break?
I think this works outside the normal block functionality. However, I’m not a blogger and don’t use WordPress.
I’ll try that. I’m desperate.
As I think we’ve previously discussed, much to my surprise, I found out just a while ago that Paul Anka composed “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” for Buddy Holly, who recorded it as a little miniature pop ditty. I only knew the magnificent, and in my case therapeutic, Linda Ronstadt cover, the point of which is “you not mattering anymore” is a serious untruth.
In any event, in my book, Paul Anka has that song going for him.
Oh, mine too. I love Buddy Holly’s version: one of my favorites of his.
Why do you dislike Anka? A Canadian-Lebanese made good!
“Put your Head on my Shoulder” led to alot of nice slow dancing.
I do despise “MY WAY”however, an anthem to narcissism
Now now, I didn’t say I dislike him, I said I wasn’t a fan. He’s obviously a talented and versatile pop composer. He’s never been a very good singer: his voice is undistinguished even for his era with competitors like Fabian and Bobbie Vee, and he’s wobbly on his high notes. He didn’t learn phrasing until late in his career, when he started imitating Sinatra. And his lyrics are uniformly terrible, meh at best. “My Way” is his worst, and he didn’t write the melody, which is by a French composer. Horrible text setting: I’ll bold the parts that drive me crazy. Wild inconsistency of vernacular and grammar, forced rhymes: I bet Sondheim would scream when he heard it:
And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain (Who talks like that?)
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
[Verse 2]
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption (Ugh. And mention and exemption don’t rhyme)
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway (What “byway”? He’s running out of rhymes for “my way” already!)
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
[Chorus]
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out If there was doubt, why did he chew it? And if he ended up spitting whatever it was out, what is so proud of?)
I faced it all, and I stood tall (What does standing tall when you’re spitting stuff out have to do with it?)
And did it my way
[Verse 3]
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside
I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way (Again, ugh.)
Oh, no, oh, no, not me
I did it my way
[Chorus]
For what is a man, what has he got? (You mean, what does he have?)
If not himself, then he has naught (did Elvis or Frank, or Paul Anka ever, in their whole lives, use the term, “naught”?)
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows ( Just a terrible sequence. Say “things”? What are the words of “one who kneels”? He took blows “his way”? What does that even mean?)
And did it my way.
I get upset, as a lyricist, just thinking about that song.