Norman Gimbel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Norman Gimbel is an Oscar- and Grammy-winning American lyricist of pop songs and movie themes.
Contents |
[edit] Early successes
A New Yorker, Gimbel was self-taught in music and soon decided to make it his career. His initial employment in the business was as an office boy for music publisher David Blum, but he quickly progressed to a contract songwriter with Edwin H. Morris Music. He had small successes as early as 1952 and achieved moderate fame in 1953 with "Ricochet Romance" and in 1955 with Dean Martin's recording of "Sway", which reached #6 on the UK charts. His first big U.S. hit, however, came in 1956 with Andy Williams' version of "Canadian Sunset", which climbed to #1.
[edit] Two Broadway musicals
Frank Loesser became Gimbel's mentor and, through Loesser, he met composer Moose Charlap, with whom he collaborated on the only Broadway musicals he has written, Whoop-Up and The Conquering Hero. Whoop-Up opened at the Shubert Theatre on December 22, 1958 and closed after a disappointing 56 performances on February 7, 1959. Conquering Hero, at the ANTA Playhouse, fared even worse with 7 performances, January 16-21, 1961.
[edit] Hit English-language lyrics to Brazilian and French songs
In 1963, Gimbel was introduced by publisher Lou Levy to a group of young Brazilian bossa nova composers, including Antônio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá and Baden Powell, for whose works he started writing English-language lyrics. Most notably, he wrote the English lyrics for Marcos Valle's "So Nice (Summer Samba)", Jobim’s "How Insensitive?", "The Girl from Ipanema", which became a top hit for Astrud Gilberto, and "Meditation", which has gained the status of a "classic" of jazz and Brazilian music. He also provided the lyrics to two themes by France's Michel Legrand for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, "Watch What Happens" and the Oscar-nominated "If It Takes Forever (I Will Wait for You)".
[edit] Long career as award-winning lyricist of film songs
In autumn 1967, Gimbel moved to Los Angeles, where he became very active in film and television. Among the Hollywood composers with whom he worked were Elmer Bernstein, Bill Conti, Jack Elliott, Charles Fox, Dave Grusin, Maurice Jarre, Quincy Jones, Fred Karlin, Francis Lai, Peter Matz, Lalo Schifrin, David Shire and Pat Williams.
Gimbel received three Golden Globes nominations, the first of which was for the song "Stay" (written with Ernest Gold), heard in the 1969 film The Secret of Santa Vittoria. The other two nominations were for the songs "Richard's Window", from the 1975 film The Other Side of the Mountain, and "Ready to Take a Chance Again", from the 1978 film Foul Play. Both songs were written with his frequent collaborator Charles Fox and both were also nominated for Oscars.
In 1973 Gimbel experienced another great success with Roberta Flack's recording of "Killing Me Softly", again written with Charles Fox. The song won him his second Grammy Award for Song of the Year. In 1979 he had his only Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Music Composition for a Series" (The Paper Chase), which he again shared with Fox. Los Angeles theater work with Fox included a rock/pop version of A Midsummer Nights Dream at the John Ford Theater for the city's Shakespeare Festival, and The Eleventh, which played the Sunset Theater.
1980 was a banner year at the Oscars for Norman Gimbel with a win for "Original Music Score" and "Best Original Song" ("It Goes Like It Goes"), written with David Shire for the film Norma Rae.
Continuing his working relationship with Charles Fox, Gimbel has written lyrics for the theme songs of many TV series, including Laverne & Shirley, Happy Days, Angie, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, The New Adventures of Wonder Woman the Emmy-winning Paper Chase theme and the song-score for Pufnstuff (the movie).
In 1984, Norman Gimbel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
As of 2007, Norman Gimbel, is still active in film, writing all the songs for 2001's Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure ("A World Without Fences"), in addition to having written song scores for The Phantom Tollbooth, A Troll in Central Park, The Thief and the Cobbler (aka Arabian Knight) and Where's Poppa?. Many of his songs have been used in over seventy-five films over the years, most recently in V for Vendetta ("The Girl from Ipanema"), Shall We Dance? ("Sway"), Mr. and Mrs. Smith ("The Girl From Ipanema") and [[2046 (Sway]. Additional songs were also used in the films Johnny Dangerously (written with composer Johnny Morris), Invincible ("I Got a Name"), Catch Me If You Can ("The Girl From Ipanema"), Deconstructing Harry ("The Girl from Ipanema") and Click ("So Nice").
){kind=link}