I knew that.  Probably because it was...
 
D) trivial and worthless knowledge to retain.

Shel also wrote poems for Playboy. Put that at the end of your sidewalk and smoke it.

No shiat. Thanks Buzzfeed for figuring out something everyone else knew for years. YOU GET AN AWARD YAY!

Randy Newman wrote "Momma Told Me Not To Come "

I've known that for years.

RaceDTruck: Randy Newman wrote "Momma Told Me Not To Come "


Wow.  I thought you were just joking.  Glad I actually looked it up.  Newman's version is pretty good too... you can find it on YouTube.

Just as a heads up for everybody, you have the first 20 posts of this thread to state that you already knew this fact and have known it for a very long time and can't believe that any half-sentient human being who doesn't live under a rock *didn't* already know it. If you haven't said it by then, you're the goober who didn't know and even if you say it, we all know you're just lying to cover up your ignorance. LOSER.

Paul Shaffer, David Letterman's band leader, wrote "Its raining men"

I already knew this fact and have known it for a very long time and can't believe that any half-sentient human being who doesn't live under a rock *didn't* already know it.

Duh

oldnewsissoexciting.jpg

Seriously. I've known this for ages.

/in before the Pocket Ninja Rule takes effect.

Always been as Shel Silverstien fan. Also wrote The Cover of the Rolling Stone, and I'm Checkin' Out. But I think his best was the ABZ book:


 

The versions you might hear on the radio of Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Blinded by the Light and Santana - Black Magic Woman are covers.

I already knew this.

Pocket Ninja Rule(s)

I also knew this before today.

I didn't know this. And now, I may very well forget it.

Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboy

Dafodude: The versions you might hear on the radio of Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Blinded by the Light and Santana - Black Magic Woman are covers.

What the hell is a "radio"?

Hoyt Axton's mother co-wrote "Heartbreak Hotel".

Counter_Intelligent: Shel also wrote poems for Playboy. Put that at the end of your sidewalk and smoke it.

Dad didn't buy that I was reading it for the poetry.
When I was 15 and he caught me with penthouse and I told him it was for school, and I was reading the Henry Kissinger interview (from the 70s, not the one in litigation now) he took it, read it, and quizzed me. Good thing I already had.

This has been another thread of "What Pocket Ninja Said."

Also, Alan Arkin - Banana Boat Song, Paul Anka - Tonight Show Theme.

/Did not know the Randy Newman one.

Time's up you know-nothing gits!

Needs a "No shiat" tag.

There was an album that came out a couple years ago that was a Shel
Silverstein tribute. There's some good stuff on that album.

The song 'Smile' (as made famous by nat king Cole), was written by Charlie Chaplin. He penned the music, but the lyrics were added by someone else later on...

I didn't know that! Thanks, subby, for the cool link.

Man. Shel Silverstein. That's cool.

And the target demographic of Buzzfeed is...

/GET OFF MY LAWN

Shel also wrote many of the songs for Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, including their best known "The Cover of the Rolling Stone."

Oye vay, that's mashugana. Pass the gefillte.

According to that new how Johnny Cash song by Song Buzz Feed doesn't have the story quite right.

Apparently the night before Johnny recorded Live at San Quentin he had a party at his house and at the end of the night he and a few of his guests, namely, Kris Kristoferson, A young fella named Bob Dylan, and Shel Silverstein (goddamn I want a time machine now) we sitting around a room trading licks and showing off ne stuff they'd recently written for Johnny (Who was a de facto patron of singer songwriters at the time) At the end of the night Shel hands Johnny a poem he wrote and asks him to look at it, Johnny reads it and tucks it into a pocket and promises to get back to him with a critique. The next day, live on stage, Johnny pulls that poem out of his pocket, tells his band to give him a rock-a-billy riff, and then just launches into the iconic performance of that song-which he did as a cold read improv


and THAT's why Johnny is considered a legend, even by his peers

/In before everyone claims they knew.... Oh, wait.

Barry Manilow did not write "I write the songs", which drives me nuts.

He wrote the sequel, too (SFW-ish).

PsychoPhil: The song 'Smile' (as made famous by nat king Cole), was written by Charlie Chaplin. He penned the music, but the lyrics were added by someone else later on...

Chaplin's years in silent pictures made it difficult for him to express himself in words. Hence the lack of lyrics.

Ahh yes, the annual greenlighting of this thread....

Yea I knew it so what. What I really want to know is where my copies of Where the Sidewalk Ends and LIght in the Attic went. Anybody in my mid 30ish age bracket NOT read those books?

FTFH: "A Boy Named Sue," immortalized by Johnny Cash, was written by... C) Shel Silverstein

In other news water is wet, the Pope is Catholic and bears used the Great Outdoors for a rest room.

Jesus, Buzzfeed articles are lame. Yet they're posted here numerous times on a weekly basis.

cretinbob: Ahh yes, the annual greenlighting of this thread....

You shouldn't talk that way about a website that pays to be on Fark. I mean they have to pay right? It really is a horrible site.

Hurrah for Uncle Shel!

I have a copy of The ABZ Book.

I had to check that Paul Schaffer really wrote "It's Raining Men!" He did, sort of. His co-writer was Paul Jabara, a Lebanese-American. That means that "It's Raining Men! is a Lebanese-American-Jewish-Canadian co-production. How many of those can you name off the top of your head without consulting Wikipedia. I can name zero. God bless. Jabara has a cousin who is a classical guitarist.

Says Wiki:

Paul Jabara (January 31, 1948 - September 29, 1992) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter of Lebanese[1] ancestry. He wrote Donna Summer's "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday (1978) and Barbra Streisand's song "The Main Event/Fight" from The Main Event (1979). He cowrote the Weather Girls hit, "It's Raining Men" with Paul Shaffer. Jabara's cousin and close friend Jad Azkoul is also a Lebanese-American musician specialising in classical guitar.

devilskware: cretinbob: Ahh yes, the annual greenlighting of this thread....

You shouldn't talk that way about a website that pays to be on Fark. I mean they have to pay right? It really is a horrible site.

That reminds me, I need to go see how the sponsored WoW:Care Bears edition sale thread is going.

Magorn: According to that new how Johnny Cash song by Song Buzz Feed doesn't have the story quite right.

Apparently the night before Johnny recorded Live at San Quentin he had a party at his house and at the end of the night he and a few of his guests, namely, Kris Kristoferson, A young fella named Bob Dylan, and Shel Silverstein (goddamn I want a time machine now) we sitting around a room trading licks and showing off ne stuff they'd recently written for Johnny (Who was a de facto patron of singer songwriters at the time) At the end of the night Shel hands Johnny a poem he wrote and asks him to look at it, Johnny reads it and tucks it into a pocket and promises to get back to him with a critique. The next day, live on stage, Johnny pulls that poem out of his pocket, tells his band to give him a rock-a-billy riff, and then just launches into the iconic performance of that song-which he did as a cold read improv


and THAT's why Johnny is considered a legend, even by his peers

This isn't correct.
Go read the only Shel Silverstein biography - don't remember the title but there *is* only one - and this is never mentioned. Shel wrote tons of songs and this eventually found it's way to Cash - it was NOT none the night before as poem that Johnny did as a 'cold reading'.

Dammit, I know Wikipedia isn't held in high esteem by the academic community but...does no one bother to check for this sort of thing anymore??

Here's everything you ever wanted to know about it, complete with citations.

One of The Monkees mom invented White Out.
There, I've added a bit of useless trivia to this thread, bummed since I didn't make PN's top twenty cutoff.
Back to drinking and turkey sandwiches.

Not only did i already know that, i didn't know that it was even possible to know that song and NOT know that.

Wow. Johnny Cash performed someone else's work.

One of my favourite RL trolls regards his American recordings. Hurt, Personal Jesus and the like. Whenever the original comes on, say, "yeah, but it's not as good as the Johnny Cash original".

/In other news, WTF is a "Shel Silverstein"?
//Is it related to a "Justin Bieber"?

Steve Allen was an accomplished composer who wrote over 10,000 songs. He began his recording career in 1953 by signing with Decca Records's Brunswick Records sublabel. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs, Let's Go to Church Next Sunday, was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting. Allen's best-known songs are "This Could Be the Start of Something" and "The Gravy Waltz," the latter having won a Grammy award in 1963 for Best Jazz Composition. He also wrote lyrics for the standards "Picnic" and "South Rampart Street Parade." Allen composed the score to the Paul Mantee imitation James Bond film A Man Called Dagger (1967), with the score orchestrated by Ronald Stein.
Steve Allen wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical "Sophie", which was based on the early career of "The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas", entertainer Sophie Tucker. The book for the show was by Philip Pruneau; Libi Staiger and Art Lund were featured in the leading roles. "Sophie" opened at the Winter Garden Theatre after tryouts in three cities on April 15, 1963, to mostly unfavorable critical notices; it closed five days later on April 20, after 8 performances. As Ken Mandelbaum noted in his 1991 book "Not Since Carrie" - "The show received consistently negative reviews in Columbus, Detroit (and) Philadelphia... the score went unrecorded (by the cast), although several months later Judy Garland sang three songs from 'Sophie' on her CBS television series... Tucker was around when the show about her was done; she even invested in it when it was floundering on the road and sat through the opening in a box seat. Steve Allen's only other produced musical was the 1969 London flop "Belle Starr", which starred Betty Grable." A "compiled" recording of "Sophie" was later released with vocals by Steve Allen, Libi Staiger, Judy Garland and others. The CD release is currently out-of-print and rare.

And Townes Van Zandt wrote Poncho and Lefty and If I Needed You

Shel is one of my favorite poets - ever. (...and R. Frost)

Oh, and that dude "anon" whoever he is, is a badass poet.

Terraceten: Barry Manilow did not write "I write the songs", which drives me nuts.

Give em a break, he was too busy opening up for the Village People. If you see what I am getting at there, and I think you do . . . nttiawwt