Shel Silverstein born September 25, 1930

Shel Silvertsein (September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999) was an American writer, cartoonist, songwriter, and musician.

Sheldon Allan Silverstein was born and raised in Chicago. His father, Nathan, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and his mother, Helen, was born in Chicago to a Hungarian-Jewish family. They ran a bakery that fared poorly, having been opened during the Great Depression. He grew up in the Albany Park neighbourhood of Chicago but spent summers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at his family's summer home in Chicago, he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School. He then attended the University of Illinois for one semester and was enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts for one semester before being drafted into the U.S. Army (1949-1955) . 

Shel & Hugh Hefner

He served in Japan and Korea and contributed to the armed forces periodical Pacific Stars and Stripes. On his return home, he established himself as a cartoonist and writer with Playboy and befriended the magazine's owner, Hugh Hefner. His cartoons became one of Playboy’s hallmarks. Many of his songs reflect a hedonistic lifestyle and, as the record producer Chet Atkins remarked, "Ol' Shel has probably got the worst voice of anyone alive, but he's also got the run of the Playboy mansion and I'm not knocking anybody with a deal like that."

Shel with Johnny Cash

Silverstein recorded Inside Folk Music in 1962. His first children's book, Uncle Shelby's Story of Lafcadio, the Lion who Shot Back, appeared in 1963, joined the following year by The Giving Tree - about a tree that gives up its branches, fruit and even its trunk to make a boy happy. In 1969 he passed Johnny Cash a poem the day before he was due to give a concert in San Quentin prison. Cash asked Carl Perkins to set it to music and the result was a million-selling saga of transvestites and bar- room fights, "A Boy Named Sue". Cash also sang Silverstein's witty song about the condemned cell, "Twenty-Five Minutes To Go", while Loretta Lynn topped the US country chart with his song about the restrictions of motherhood, "One's On the Way" (1970). In 1970, he wrote several songs for the film Ned Kelly.

                        

Silverstein met Dr Hook and the Medicine Show whilst working on a Dustin Hoffman film, Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things about Me? (1971). The film was every bit as bad as its title but Silverstein realised that the outlandish hippies of Dr Hook were the perfect mouthpiece for his material. "Sylvia's Mother," is a good example of an over-the-top romantic lament that reached number five on the charts. They recorded 60 of Silverstein's acutely observed vignettes of American life. He parodied the group's desire for success in "The Cover of Rolling Stone" and "Everybody's Makin' It Big But Me".

The group backed Silverstein on his outrageous solo album, Freakin' at the Freakers Ball (1972), and the titles match the contents such as "Polly in a Porny", and "I Got Stoned and I Missed It". Silverstein gave Dr Hook a poignant song about the pressures of modern life, "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan", which was also recorded successfully by Marianne Faithfull. In "A Couple More Years", which has been sung by Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, he wrote of an older man's love for his girlfriend, and in "More Like The Movies", another hit for Dr Hook in 1978, of the difficulties of satisfying a partner.

Though he became a millionaire, Silverstein never owned a car, and looked for bargains in flea markets. When he found an album by Bobby Gosh, he offered one of the songs, "A Little Bit More", to Dr Hook with the comment, "This is a great song even though no one's ever heard it." In 1973 he wrote an album, Lullabys, Legends and Lies, for the country singer Bobby Bare in four days. It included a country hit about the witch queen of New Orleans, "Marie Laveau", how you lose even when you're "The Winner", and an eight-minute picture of grotesque characters in a late- night diner, "Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe". He went on to write two more albums for Bare in quick succession: one of children's songs, Singin' in the Kitchen (1974) and one of "Songs for the New Depression", Hard Time Hungrys (1975). In "Daddy's Been Around the House Too Long" a child comments on her father's unemployment, and even God is in "The Unemployment Line".

Many other classic songs stem from the 1970s including Emmylou Harris's portrayal of a bar-room prostitute, "The Queen of the Silver Dollar", Tompall Glaser's response to Women's Lib, "Put Another Log on the Fire", and Burl Ives' touching look at old age, "Time". Silverstein commented on the hypocrisy behind Nashville's tributes to the bluegrass musician Lester Flatt, in Bobby Bare's "Rough On The Living": "They didn't want him around when he's living, But he's sure a good friend when he's dead."

A restless man, Silverstein tired of writing songs and returned to children's books and cartoons. His books include Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), The Missing Piece (1976), and A Light in the Attic (1981). His poems share the same anarchic spirit as Spike Milligan: "Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird, And catch the worm for your breakfast plate, If you're a bird, be an early early bird, But if you're a worm, sleep late." His epic poem about a bad songwriter making Faustian deals, The Devil and Billy Markham (1978), became an off-Broadway musical.

Shel Silverstein's heart disease made him view death as a subject for popular songs. The remarkable result, Old Dogs (1998), performed by Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, Mel Tillis and Jerry Reed, happens to be his funniest album for several years. During his lifetime, Silverstein was described variously as a world traveller and a free spirit but also as a recluse and workaholic. Silverstein died at the age of 68 from a massive heart attack in his two-story Conch house, Key West, Monroe County, Florida. He was found by his cleaning maids, sitting up in bed with the notes and drafts of the next project around him. He was buried in the Westlawn Cemetery, Norridge, Illinois. He was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2014.

(Edited from The Independent obit by Spencer Leigh, Wikipedia & Tampa Bay Times) 

Anthony Newley born 24 September 1931

Anthony Newley (24 September 1931 – 14 April 1999) was an English actor, director, comedian, singer, and composer. A "latter-day British Al Jolson", he achieved widespread success in song, and on stage and screen.

Born to a single mother in the East London working-class neighbourhood of Hackney, Newley was evacuated during the bombing of London and was thereby exposed to the performing arts when he was tutored during this time by George Pescud, a former music-hall entertainer. Though recognized as very bright by his teachers back in London, he was uninterested in school, and by the age of fourteen was working as an office boy when he read an ad for "boy actors." After an audition, he was offered a job including free tuition at the prestigious Italia Conti Stage School. He accepted and his career was launched. 

Petula Clark & Anthony Newley 1947

He first appeared as a child actor in the film serial Dusty Bates (a.k.a. The Adventures of Dusty Bates, 1947) which launched his career. This was followed by The Little Ballerina and Vice Versa; in 1948 he starred as the Artful Dodger in David Lean's acclaimed adaptation of Oliver Twist. In 1955 Newley made his theatrical debut in the revue Cranks, with close to two dozen more onscreen character roles. During the 1950s, Newley made twenty-seven movies for J. Arthur Rank, many of them in the United States, "comfortably transitioning from child to adult actor".  He was under contract for many years to Warwick Productions who built him into a star. 

He also had to spend two years in the UK military in what was then called "national service". In 1959 he starred as a rock 'n' roll star in Idle on Parade; the feature's soundtrack EP launched the hit ballad "I've Waited So Long," the first in a string of seven U.K. Top Ten hits between 1959 and 1961 including "Personality," "Pop Goes the Weasel," "If She Should Come to You" and the chart-toppers "Why" and "Do You Mind." In 1960, Newley issued his debut LP Love Is a Now and Then Thing, followed a year later by Tony.

                                   

During  the 1960’S he also added his greatest accomplishments on the London and Broadway stage, in Hollywood films, and British and United States television. With collaborator Leslie Bricusse, Newley wrote the book, music and lyrics for the 1961 stage musical Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!; he also directed and starred as Littlechap. The production was a major success, running in London's West End for over 16 months before appearing on Broadway for some 500 performances; adapted by Hollywood in 1966, it also launched the hits "What Kind of Fool Am I?," "Once in a Lifetime" and "Gonna Build a Mountain." 

After recording the 1963 comedy album Fool Brittania with wife Joan Collins and Peter Sellers, Newley and Bricusse wrote the theme to the James Bond entry Goldfinger before mounting their next musical, 1965's The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd; Newley later starred on Broadway in the lead role, although the production did not equal the success of Stop the World. Upon appearing with Rex Harrison in the 1967 film musical Doctor Doolittle, Newley directed and starred in 1969's Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? 

In the 1970s he remained active, particularly as a Las Vegas and Catskills resort performer, but his career had begun to flounder. He had taken risks that eventually led to his downfall in Hollywood.  After the 1978 LP The Singer and His Songs and the musical film Sammy Stops the World, Newley spent the majority of the 1980s away from music, accepting only small roles in projects like a 1982 PBS production of Alice in Wonderland, the 1983 TV miniseries Malibu and the reviled 1987 feature The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. 

Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley

In 1989 he helmed a short-lived London revival of Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! Newley's vocal style has been recognised as a major influence on that of the early David Bowie. In recognition of his creative skills and body of work, Newley was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989 with his long-time collaborator Leslie Bricusse. In his later years as a mature singer Newley recorded songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Scrooge. He enjoyed his final popular success onstage when he starred in the latter musical in London and Birmingham in the 1990s. He mounted a theatrical anthology of his past material titled Once Upon a Song, and later continued performing the material in a cabaret act. 

Ill health had plagued the star for many years. He was first diagnosed with renal cell cancer in 1985, and had one kidney removed. The cancer returned in 1997, this time attacking his lungs, then spreading to his liver. One of the final television acting appearances for the renowned English actor, singer, and songwriter was in 1998 when he took a small role in BBC soap EastEnders. Speaking once about his illness, he said: "When they told me I had a growth on my left kidney I had  a bet with the surgeon. 'A dollar that it's not malignant', I said. "Before they wheeled me into the operating theatre they pinned a dollar on my gown. It had gone when I finally came round. That's when I knew I'd lost the bet." Cancer finally claimed his life on 14th April, 1999 at his home in Jensen Beach, Florida. He was 67.

Anthony and his mother

Newley married and divorced three times. In 1956, he first married Elizabeth Ann Lynn, and the marriage was dissolved in 1963. The same year he married Joan Collins; and they divorced in 1971. In 1989, he divorced his third wife, air hostess Dareth Dunn. At the time of Newley's demise, he was survived by his mother, Grace, age 96 (with whom he lived in Surrey since 1992 after 22 years living in the U.S.), and four children, a boy (Sasha) and a girl (Tara) with Joan Collins, and another boy (Christopher) and girl (Shelby) with Dareth Dunn. His third wife, Dareth Newley Dunn, described him as "a dear, sweet, loving friend and father, consummate performer and ultimate composer".

(Edited from Wikipedia & Find-a-Grave) 

Stud Cole born 23 November 1943

Stud Cole (23 November 1943 - 23 June 1997) was a singer and songwriter.

Better known as Stud Cole, Patrick Anthony Tirone was born in Buffalo, New York. He recorded first as Patrick Tyrone ('It Ain't Right', 1963), then as Virgil Trucks and the Noblemen ('The Witch', 1964) and as Virgil Trux ('I Don't Want To Go' and 'I'm Glad', 1966). 

                               Here's "It Ain't Right" from 1963

                                   

His best work was an eleven-track LP that he recorded as Stud Cole, with all songs credited to P.A. Tirone. The album, released on his own Pacific Atlantic Tribune-label (P.A.T.) in 1968, was sent to radio stations but nothing happened after which Stud Cole left the music business, disillusioned.

He has been described as “Jack Starr meets Johnny Kidd,” “a lysergic Conway Twitty” and “Elvis fronting the ’66 Yardbirds” but his stand-alone uniqueness is quite notable and its a wonder why he never became more well known. Tirone was a bartender that seemed to like Elvis and wanted to just make a rock and roll record. He never played live and just got a bunch of teens to be his band and record these strange lo-fi sounds. Once it was done he just went back to being a bartender. His fusion of 60’s rock and gritty country still sounds years ahead of its time, his seductive singing style both alluring and skittish with its contrasting soft undertones and rough-round-the-edges quality.

Beyond his brief recording history, virtually no reliable public records exist detailing his real full name, birth/death dates, or life after music. Like many regional rockabilly performers of the era, he faded into obscurity shortly after his records were pressed. He died 23 June 1997 in Los Angeles, California.

(Very scarce information edited from The Listening Post, Discogs & Dan Lovrenski @Facebook)

Oscar McLollie born September 22, 1924

Oscar McLollie (September 22, 1924 – July 4, 2008) was an American jump blues  baritone singer, congo player and orchestra leader who was one of the missing links between jump blues and rock 'n' roll. For someone who had only one modest hit, he had a lot of influence with many of his records being covered by other artists who enjoyed greater success.

He was born in Kelly, Caldwell Country, Louisiana. In the armed forces during World War II, Oscar sang in a quartet called The Bullets, putting on USO shows for fellow servicemen. After the war, he made his way to Los Angeles, the location where he would make all of his recordings. He sang in local jump blues bands before being recruited by Mercury Records, for a short time, as their West Coast A&R man for black music. In 1951 he also recorded the song "I'm Hurt." 

After his short stay at Mercury Records, McLollie started to record for Leon Rene and his son Rafael, also known as Googie. They had just set up a new label, Class Records, after the bankruptcy of Exclusive Records, but decided to make a quiet start and struck an arrangement with the Bihari brothers to release the Class masters on Modern Records. Leon Rene would be Oscar's manager, producer and chief songwriter (often using his pseudonym Jimmie Davis) throughout his recording career. McLollie's first release under this arrangement was "The Honey Jump" (Parts 1 & 2, 1953), credited (as would be all of his Modern records) to Oscar McLollie and his Honey Jumpers. 

Though not yet quite rock 'n' roll, it has many elements of the genre. Two saxes try to out-honk each other, while the piano man is pounding away on the 88 keys. Wild stuff. The song was covered by the Sauter-Finnigan Orchestra on RCA and by Jackie & Roy with Charlie Ventura on Coral. McLollie's follow-up, the witty "All That Oil In Texas", was outsold by a cover version by Ralph Marterie on Mercury. For Christmas 1953, Leon Rene wrote the old-fashioned "God Gave Us Christmas", which failed to catch on, but after the holidays, the swinging flip, "Lolly Pop" (written by Googie Rene), started to make noise for Oscar. 

                                    

It was covered by none other than Louis Jordan for his final Decca date. The year 1954 saw several good up-tempo releases by McLollie, like "Mama Don't Like", "What You Call 'em Joe" and "Wiggle Toe", but with no commercial success. "Love Me Tonight"" became Oscar's only UK release, on the London label.  "God Gave Us Christmas" was reissued by the Biharis for the 1954 Yuletide season, this time with a jumping B-side, "Dig That Crazy Santa Claus", hoping to appeal to the growing teenage market.

By 1955, Oscar and his Honey Jumpers were in heavy demand as live performers. More Modern singles were released in that year, among them was the ballad "Convicted", with an upbeat B-side, "Roll Hot Rod, Roll". The single, promoted by DJ Alan Freed, became McLollie's biggest seller on the Modern label and won him a slot on the Hunter Hancock TV show. The latter starts off with a "One for the money" chorus that resembles the one that Carl Perkins would use to kick off "Blue Suede Shoes" a few months later. "Convicted" (his biggest seller on Modern) showed that McLollie was also a fair ballad crooner and was covered by Lu Ann Sims and Gene O'Quin. It was also recorded by Dale Hawkins, whose version remained unissued until 1998.

After an interval at Mercury, Oscar was reunited with Leon Rene on his reactivated Class label. It was here that he scored his only (pop) hit, a duet with Jeanette Baker, "Hey Girl, Hey Boy" backed by Googie René's band, reached number 61 on the Billboard pop chart. However, it was not successfully followed up. The tune was covered by Louis Prima and Keely Smith and turned into the title of one of their movies. Later, McLollie continued to perform in cabaret in Los Angeles. Reportedly, he also spent some time in the Philippines, where he appeared in low-budget martial arts movies. 

In the 1960s, Oscar Lollie met Anna Margaret McCabe in Los Angeles, California; they married and had two daughters. In the late 1960s McLollie took his career in a new direction, moving his family north to Canada and settling in the Chilliwack Valley of British Columbia. His first Canadian release was the 1970 single So Pleasing Loving You b/w As Long As You Care at All on the New Syndrome label, a soulful and contemporary track that showed him at ease with modern funk stylings. A year later he issued Chilliwack Valley b/w She’s a Child on 6th Avenue Records, a heartfelt tribute to his new home in the Fraser Valley.

The culmination of his Canadian period was a self-titled LP on Big 3 Records in 1973. For these sessions McLollie drew upon the city’s finest studio musicians: keyboardist Robbie King, bassist Doug Edwards, drummer Kat Hendrikse, guitarists Terry Frewer and Ed Patterson, saxophonists Wayne Kozak and Steve Douglas, and horn players Bob Rerick and Don Clark. Their presence gave McLollie’s Canadian work a polish and groove that reflected the very best of the city’s studio sound in the early 1970s. After Oscar and Anna divorced in the 1970s, he returned to California. He continued performing in lounges in the Pacific Northwest and California before fading from prominence.

He died in Oakland, California, in 2008 aged 83 years.

(Edited from Wikipedia, This Is My Story & The Museum Of Canadian Music)

Jesse Ed Davis born September 21, 1944

Jesse Ed Davis (September 21, 1944 – June 22, 1988) was a Native American guitarist who was well regarded as a session artist and solo performer. He played for some of the biggest music stars of all time yet his incredible highs and tragic lows have often been overlooked.

Jesse Ed Davis III  was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, Jesse Edwin "Bus" Davis II, was a citizen of the Comanche Nation and a Muskogee and Seminole descendant. He was a graphic designer for the military, as well as a fine artist. His mother, who was the first Kiowa woman to earn a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University, taught piano. A sad event in Davis’s family wound up cementing his commitment to the guitar. When he turned 15, his grandfather died. The family honoured the Kiowa tradition of observing a year of mourning, and Davis used that quiet time to hone his skills. Later, he broadened his sound by playing with scores of local bands in Oklahoma City and surrounding areas. In 1966 one of his bands The New Breed recorded a single "He's Just Another Bird Dog."

After graduating from college, Davis’s first professional gig was with Conway Twitty’s band playing rockabilly-country. That opportunity led him to California. For eight years, he lived in Marina del Rey with his companion, Patti Daley, and her son, Billy. Through his friendship with Levon Helm, he became friends with Leon Russell, who introduced him to recording session work. Davis joined Taj Mahal and played guitar and piano on Mahal's first four albums. He played slide, lead and rhythm, country and even jazz during his three-year stint with Mahal. In a 1967 gig, Mahal played with a young Duane Allman in attendance, and Davis' slide guitar playing on Statesboro Blues that night would ignite Allman's interest in the technique. Mahal and his band were later invited to England by the Rolling Stones, and they appeared as a musical guest in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.

                                  

He played in the "electric" disc of Mahal's double album Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home (1969) and appeared in two songs of his fourth album Happy Just to Be Like I Am (1971). In 1970, Davis played on and produced Roger Tillison's only album for Atco Records, a division of Atlantic. Roger Tillison's Album was recorded live. It was finally released on CD by Wounded Bird Records in 2008, with Davis playing electric guitar, bottleneck (slide) guitar and banjo. In 1971, Davis recorded his first solo album after Atco Records signed a contract with him to record two albums with the label. The first was the album ¡Jesse Davis! (1971), which featured backing vocals by Gram Parsons and performances by Leon Russell and Eric Clapton, among others.

Davis was close friends with Gene Clark. In 1971, he played on and produced Clark's second solo album, White Light, and provided lead guitar on Clark's album No Other in 1974. On Jackson Browne's 1972 debut album, Davis played the electric guitar solo on Browne's hit song "Doctor, My Eyes". After guesting with Russell on Bob Dylan's 1971 singles "Watching the River Flow" and “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, and collaborating in Albert King’s Lovejoy, Davis went on to work with George Harrison, performing at the ex-Beatle's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden, along with Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Russell, Keltner, Clapton and others.

Two more solo albums followed: in 1972 Ululu, which included the original release of Harrison's "Sue Me, Sue You Blues", and in 1973 Keep Me Comin, occasionally listed as Keep On Coming. Around this time, Davis began playing with John Lennon, for whom he played lead guitar on the albums Walls and Bridges (1974) and Rock 'n' Roll (1975). In addition, Davis was a guest performer on other albums by former Beatles: Harrison's Extra Texture (1975) and Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) and Ringo's Rotogravure (1976). In the late summer and fall of 1975, he performed with the Faces as second guitarist throughout their final US tour. It was on this tour that Davis became addicted to drugs.

Jesse with The Faces

That part of his life became much more serious. The session bassist Bob Glaub once said that “the Jesse who left for that tour was not the same Jesse that returned. He came back a junkie.” After the Faces tour, Davis continued to work as a session player. In addition to the artists already mentioned, Davis contributed to albums by Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Keith Moon, Steve Miller, Guthrie Thomas, Harry Nilsson, Ry Cooder, David Cassidy, Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Rick Danko, Van Dyke Parks and others. He played on Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man (1977), produced by Phil Spector.

In 1977, Davis moved to Hawaii. In 1981, he returned to Los Angeles broke and ravaged by drugs and alcohol. In and out of clinics, Davis disappeared from the music industry for a time, spending much of the 1980s dealing with his addiction. But by 1985 he formed and played in the Graffiti Band, which coupled his music with the poetry of the Native American activist John Trudell (American Indian Movement). The result of this collaboration was the album, released initially only on cassette, called AKA Grafitti Man, which Bob Dylan called the best album of the year.

In the spring of 1987, the Graffiti Band performed with Taj Mahal at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, California. At this show, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and John Fogerty got up from the audience to join Davis and Mahal in an unrehearsed set which included Fogerty's "Proud Mary" and Dylan's "Watching the River Flow", as well as classics such as "Blue Suede Shoes", "Peggy Sue", "Honey Don't", "Matchbox" and "Gone, Gone, Gone".

In his last years, he served as drug and alcohol counsellor at the American Indian Free Clinic in Long Beach. Davis collapsed in the laundry room of an apartment building and was pronounced dead in Venice, Los Angeles, California, on June 22, 1988. Police stated that his death appeared to be the result of a drug overdose. Davis had a fresh needle mark on one arm and burned matches and tin foil were scattered on the ground nearby. He was 43 years old. 

In 2002, Davis was posthumously inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. In 2018, Jesse Ed Davis was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame at the 18th Annual Native American Music Awards. A performance tribute was held by his former Graffiti band members. His cousins Richenda Davis Bates and Constance Davis Carter accepted the induction.

(Edited from Wikipedia & The Guardian) 

Margo Guryan born September 20, 1937

Margo Guryan (September 20, 1937 – November 8, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter. 

Born in a New York suburb, Guryan began her musical path as a child, taking up the study of piano in the first grade and continuing through high school and into Boston University. She studied classical music, though she was attracted to certain kinds of pop music, particularly jazz, which she had fallen in love with in high school. Never a fan of performing, Guryan switched from her piano curriculum, for which she would have had to complete a senior recital, to composition in her sophomore year at Boston. 

Her pop and jazz compositions began garnering immediate attention. Chris Connor became the first artist to record one of her songs, "Moon Ride," which she released on Atlantic in 1957. The summer after she graduated from college, Guryan spent three weeks at the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts, where Ornette Coleman and Gary McFarland were fellow students and the teaching staff included Bill Evans, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Jim Hall, Max Roach, and Gunther Schuller. Lewis and Schuller signed her to MJQ Music once the session was completed and gave her the assignment of turning Coleman's "Lonely Woman" into a vocal version.

Jazz singer Chris Connor recorded her song "Moon Ride" in 1958, while Guryan was still at university, and in 1962, Ms. Connor had recorded "Lonely Woman" with Guryan's lyrics. Another early recording of her work was by Harry Belafonte, who recorded "I'm On My Way to Saturday" for The Many Moods of Belafonte (1962). She attended the Lenox School of Jazz in 1959, where she met and worked with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, and was taught by Bill Evans, Max Roach, Milt Jackson, Jim Hall, John Lewis and Gunther Schuller, among others. 

She was one of two women admitted to the program that year. Following this, Lewis and Schuller signed her to MJQ Music. She was primarily a jazz musician in this period, married to jazz trombonist and pianist Bob Brookmeyer and writing lyrics for jazz pieces by composers including John Lewis, Ornette Coleman and Arif Mardin. Songs of this period, with her lyrics, were recorded by Chris Connor, Freda Payne, Nancy Harrow and Alice Babs, among others.

                                   

Until the mid-'60s, Guryan had focused largely on classical and jazz, but it was her friend Dave Frishburg who introduced her to a pop record that changed her life: the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows." She soon began listening to any pop and rock music she could get her hands on and altered her own song writing tendencies accordingly. After working up a catalogue of her own originals, jazz producer Creed Taylor sent Guryan to Columbia's publishing company, April-Blackwood, and manager David Rosner (her eventual husband) was sufficiently impressed enough to help her record an album. Take a Picture appeared on Bell Records in 1968, by which time Spanky & Our Gang had already recorded a hit version of one of the songs, "Sunday Morning." The album earned positive reviews, but wider attention was sacrificed to her performing aversion.

As a songwriter, though, it was a thoroughly productive period for Guryan. Claudine Longet, Jackie DeShannon, and Astrud Gilberto all released versions of "Think of Rain" (while Dion and an impressed Harry Nilsson also recorded unreleased versions). "Sunday Morning" was also a hit for Oliver, and it was recorded by Julie London, Bobbie Gentry, and Glen Campbell, among others. Her songs were placed with London, Carmen McCrae, the Lennon Sisters, and Mama Cass Elliot.  Guryan continued composing through the end of the '60s and into the '70s. Although she preferred writing songs that others could record and perform, in 1968 Margo recorded and released an album entitled "Take a Picture". Although the success of this record back then was limited, it has since become a much sought-after collector’s item, so much that original pressings of the "Take a Picture" LP have been spotted being sold on e-Bay for as much as $190 each!

She moved with her husband to Los Angeles and tried to stay current by writing a several topical songs -- she even tried her hand at disco for a single effort -- but her personal connection with the music had begun to wane, and she turned to producing other artists. Gradually she began to study and practice classical music again with Howard Richman, the teacher she had initially found for her stepson. She, in turn, became a teacher, and took up composing again in the '90s as a teaching aid for her students. By the end of the decade, interest in her 1968 album had come full-circle, garnering raves among pop aficionados, not only in the United States but also in Japan, England, and Europe. Meanwhile a new generation of artists began embracing her songs including Saint Etienne, Linus of Hollywood, and the Wondermints. An archival release called 25 Demos was released by Franklin/Oglio in 2001 with a slightly expanded U.K. version, Thoughts, appearing a bit later on the RPM label.

Sessions for a possible new record commenced in the mid-2000s, though 2006's "16 Words" was the only track to see release. An instrumental recording of Guryan performing The Chopsticks Variations was issued in 2009, and over the next decade additional versions of her demo anthology were released including Burger Records' 27 Demos (2014) and Modern Harmonic's 29 Demos (2016). Margo Guryan died at her home in Los Angeles on November 8, 2021, at the age of 84. 

(Edited from Wikipedia)