I hate bland boring bio's, hopefully this isn't. I was born in
Hollywood, CA, way back in 1940, and this event has affected my life
greatly. As a little kid, I was sick often, but fever gave me really
colorful dreams. My dad used to give me back rubs with syncopated hand-pat
drum figures. My mom tried to keep me away from germs, & sang me silly
songs.
When I was six, I started creating melodies on a xylophone. At age
seven, we moved from L.A. to Palm Springs, this having nothing to do with
my xylophone work. I graduated to the ukelele, & soon was singing to
my classmates. On records, my idol was Spike Jones.
1954 found me entering Coachella Valley High School, & playing
piano by ear. I started my first band, now emulating Jerry Lee Lewis,
Little Richard (I was hoarse a lot), Elvis & Fats. Besides figuring
out chords on the piano by ear, my spare time at home was divided between
1) soaking up records on the radio, & 2) "over-dubbing" my
musical ideas on two borrowed tape recorders.
The Coachella Valley has a large Spanish-speaking culture; my band
gradually morphed into six Mexican Americans and me, affording me new
chord & melody ideas from our latin repertory of boleros, cha chas,
& corridos. I started writing & performing my own "pop"
songs, often inspired by dark-eyed untouchable high school senoritas.
The band became immensely popular. In my senior year we performed for a
school assembly. I sang my songs, girls screamed & cried, & I
never recovered.
Through my college years in Pasadena & San Bernardino, my mind was
more on music than my liberal arts studies. New friends turned me on to
B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker,
Little Walter, Muddy Waters. Deeply bluesified, I began teaching myself
guitar & harmonica. Little Richard was too white for my tastes at that
point.
In 1961 I teamed up with a high school guitarist friend whose father
ran an independent movie company in Burbank. It was here that I first
scored... We put together a four-piece group & began playing clubs.
Funk & rock stuff with four-part harmonies. I played Wurlitzer
electric piano with a Farfisa organ strapped underneath.
I continued performing in bands for several years, gleaning most of my
musical education from records ("Let's see, if I play this 45 at 33
rpm, I can figure out the piano part"). I had some exciting moments:
performing in the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, recording for Dunhill Records
in 1966, entertaining our troops throughout Europe & the Far East in
1967.
In 1969, I cleared my head to try songwriting full force. I stopped
performing, & survived by working part time at a local recording
studio. I was "Head of A&R", which included sweeping floors
& emptying wastebaskets, but it gave me time to learn some technical
stuff, & write & exploit my songs.
Signing as a writer with E.H. Morris Music in 1969, & Warner
Brothers Publishing in 1971, led to my first hit: Bobby Sherman's
"The Drum". What a thrill it was to hear my song on the radio!
I broadened my arsenal of musical & electronic equipment, so that
on my demos I could do all instruments, voices, & mixing. This gave me
more control over presentation of my songs. My demos became a minor legend
in the biz; virtually all the successful records of my songs followed my
arrangement & feel. One proud example is Helen Reddy's "Angie
Baby", which hit #1 in December of 1974, & became her biggest
selling record.
In 1976, I signed as an artist with Pacific Records, a brainchild of my
WB publishers. I was the first, & at that time the only artist
on the new label. Distributed by Atlantic, my first release,
"Undercover Angel", zoomed to the top of the charts in July
1977, selling about two million copies.
A follow-up single, "Skinny Girls", became a #1 song in
Australia in 1980, & in 1981 I co-wrote "Your Eyes" with
singer-songwriter Tatsuro Yamashita, which became a hit for him in Japan.
I left Warners in 1982 to write & self-publish. In 1983 I was
invited to Tokyo to co-write 6 more songs with Yamashita for his album
"Big Wave". The collaboration yielded a Gold Disc Award in
Japan, & I still co-write occasionally with Tats.
In 1983 I met, & co-wrote a children's song with singer-songwriter
Janis Liebhart. This was on "spec" for a new animated TV show,
which became "Jim Henson's Muppet Babies". Eight years later we
had written almost 100 songs for this Emmy Award winning Saturday morning
program, which is syndicated worldwide.
Janis & I continued co-writing for kid-focused projects, including
National Geographic's Really Wild Animals, an acclaimed series of videos
which feature our singing & production chops as well, and Alaska
Video's children's products.
ALAN O'DAY
