Ben Weisman

Ben Weisman, songwriter: born Providence, Rhode Island 16 November 1921; married; died Los Angeles 20 May 2007.

Ben Weisman came up with more songs for Elvis Presley than any other songwriter, yet his name is never mentioned alongside the great Presley writers - Pomus and Shuman, Leiber and Stoller, and Otis Blackwell. There is a good reason for this: there were only four hits among the 57 songs Weisman wrote for Presley and the biggest of them, "Wooden Heart", was a novelty song for a puppet show. Indeed, Weisman wrote several of the worst songs that Presley recorded - "Rock-a-Hula Baby", "Do the Clam", "A Dog's Life" and "He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad". Weisman did not set out to write ridiculous songs: he was simply a jobbing songwriter following the instructions for a particular film scene.

Weisman was born in Rhode Island in 1921 and sang in a church choir when he was young. From the age of 13, he studied the piano and he secured a scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music. He wanted to be a concert pianist, but he appreciated that there was more of a living in popular music and so he studied with the jazz and swing pianist Teddy Wilson. During the Second World War, Weisman honed his arranging skills with an air force band.

After the war, he was a piano accompanist for Eddie Fisher and Vic Damone and his first recorded song was "Have a Little Sympathy" with the lyricist Sammy Gallop for Dean Martin in 1949. He formed a songwriting team with Fred Wise and Kay Twomey. Among their successful songs were "Mother Nature and Father Time" (Nat "King" Cole, 1953), "Pretty Little Black-eyed Susie" (Guy Mitchell, 1953) and "Let Me Go Lover" (Joan Weber and Patti Page, 1955).

In 1956, the publisher Jean Aberbach asked Weisman to write for Elvis Presley. "I didn't think it was anything special at first," said Weisman. "I approached it the way I would any songwriting assignment, trying to figure out his range, and tried to get a feeling for his style." His first song for the rock'n'roll star was a whimsical ballad, "First In Line", and then he wrote "Got a Lot of Livin' to Do" for Presley's second film, Loving You, in 1957. Weisman was more comfortable with ballads, but Presley's frenzied workout in the film is the best example of him performing raucous rock'n'roll.

Taking a lead from Porgy and Bess, Weisman captured the cries of street vendors in New Orleans for "Crawfish" in the Presley film King Creole (1958), but one of his best songs, the moody "Danny", was dropped. The song was picked up by the British rock'n'roller Marty Wilde and became the atmospheric B-side of his 1959 hit "A Teenager in Love". Under a new title, "Lonely Blue Boy", it became a US chart single in 1960 for Conway Twitty.

When Presley returned from army service in March 1960, Weisman wrote the B-side of his first single, a poignant ballad, "Fame and Fortune", and then worked on his good-natured film G.I. Blues. The orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert thought of adapting the folk song "Muss I' Denn Zum Staedtele Hinaus" ("Do I Really Have To Miss This Little Town?") and Weisman, Wise and Twomey wrote a new lyric, "Wooden Heart".

Weisman wrote "Moonlight Swim", a US hit for the actor Tony Perkins in 1957, "When I am with You" for Johnny Mathis (also 1957) and "Lend Me Your Comb", which was recorded by Carl Perkins for the film Disc-Jockey Jamboree (1957) and was often performed live by the Beatles. Brian Hyland recorded his "Warmed Over Kisses (Left Over Love)" in 1962, while Bobby Vee had one of his biggest hits with Weisman's "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" (1963).

In 1961 Weisman moved to Hollywood where he was on hand to write for Presley's films, but he was sometimes dismayed by the results. "I thought 'Summer Kisses, Winter Tears' was a beautiful love song," he said, "but they put in a scene in Flaming Star with Elvis and some American Indians smoking the peace pipe." He contributed to Presley's films throughout the Sixties. In 1966, Dusty Springfield had a Top Ten hit with "All I See Is You", which Weisman wrote with the British writer Clive Westlake, and in 1974 Barbra Streisand recorded his "Love in the Afternoon".

Spencer Leigh