Songwriter Cynthia Weil Honored at California Memorial by Bill Medley, Dolly Parton, Tony Orlando & More

As friends filed into Sunday’s (June 11) music-filled memorial for Cynthia Weil, they smiled in recognition and sang alongside to a string of hit songs she co-wrote that had been performed on audio system in a lush courtyard of the Beverly Hills Resort.

Weil, the Grammy-winning lyricist who loved a decades-long partnership with husband Barry Mann and helped compose “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’,” “On Broadway,” “Strolling within the Rain” and dozens of different timeless tunes, died on June 1 at age 82.

Singer Tony Orlando, who hosted the personal occasion from a small stage with a grand piano, admonished attendees that regardless of the cloudy skies the day was to not be mournful, however a sunny celebration.

“I need the applause to be loud!” he stated. Orlando carried out “Bless You,” the 1961 ballad that gave Weil and Mann their first prime 20 hit on the Billboard Sizzling 100. They had been married inside months of the music’s launch.

White-coated waiters distributed trays of vibrant inexperienced apple martinis, Weil’s favourite cocktail, to her buddies, members of the family and present enterprise contemporaries. Amongst these elevating their glasses had been Mann, document producer Lou Adler, singer CaroleBayer Sager and songwriters Carole King, Jeff Barry, Mike Stoller and Diane Warren.

Weil and Mann had been certainly one of well-liked music’s most profitable groups, a part of a crew of younger songwriters based mostly in Manhattan’s Brill Constructing neighborhood, close to Instances Sq.. With such hit-making duos as King and Gerry Goffin and Barry and Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Constructing hit manufacturing unit turned out most of the greatest singles of the ’60s and past.

The couple collaborated with producer Phil Spector on songs for The Ronettes (“Strolling within the Rain”), The Crystals (“He’s Positive the Boy I Love”) and different teams and singers.

Their most well-known collaboration, a music that might turn out to be historic, was “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’,” a soulful anthem produced by Spector with epic strings and sung with determined depth by the Righteous Brothers, Invoice Medley and Bobby Hatfield. “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feelin’” topped the Sizzling 100 in 1965 and was lined by quite a few different artists.

Showing on the memorial through a recorded video, Medley stated Weil and Mann didn’t simply write the Righteous Brothers a success, “They wrote us a profession!” In accordance with BMI, no different music was performed extra on radio and tv within the twentieth century.

Dolly Parton, who additionally appeared on video, recalled her profession being despatched “out into house” when the nation star scored a crossover pop hit in 1977 with “Right here You Come Once more,” written by Weil and Mann.

“She left an awesome physique of labor,” Parton stated.

Weil and Mann had been inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1987 and the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2010. They had been supporting characters within the hit Broadway present, “Stunning: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in 2013 and documented the extraordinary friendship and rivalry between the 2 married {couples}. Mann and Weil’s musical “They Wrote That?” had a quick run in 2004.

On Sunday, with Paul Shaffer on piano, King carried out “Someplace Out There,” a music Weil wrote with James Horner for the soundtrack of “An American Tail.” It received Grammys in 1987 for music of the yr and finest music for a film or tv, and was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe.

Weil’s daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann, stated the songwriter died at her house in Beverly Hills, California. She remembered her mom Sunday as a loving spouse to Mann, a faithful grandmother to her two women, a lover of animals, and a soft-hearted romantic who may shock folks together with her no-nonsense enterprise sense.

Whereas lots of Weil’s friends struggled as soon as the Beatles caught on within the mid-Sixties, she continued to make hits, generally with Mann, or with different companions. Weil helped write the Peabo Bryson ballad “If Ever You’re In My Arms Once more”; James Ingram’s “Simply As soon as”; and The Pointer Sisters’ “He’s So Shy.” In 1997, she was within the prime 10 once more with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”

And her skills prolonged past love ballads. She and Mann wrote certainly one of rock’s first anti-drug songs, “Kicks,” a success for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966. The Animals had a success together with her story of working class frustration, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” The Crystals’ “Uptown” was a 1961 hit that touched upon race and sophistication in methods not usually heard in rock’s early years.

Showing on video, rocker Paul Stanley of KISS recalled being a fledgling songwriter as a youngster in New York and scouring the credit on his favourite data.

“Invariably, songs that I cherished, I might see her identify on it,” Stanley stated.