Hy Zaret

Hyman Harry Zaritsky (Hy Zaret), songwriter: born New York 21 August 1907; married Shirley Goidel (one son, and one son deceased); died Westport, Connecticut 2 July 2007.

In 1955, the composer Alex North was writing the music for a prison drama, Unchained, which starred Elroy Hirsch and Barbara Hale. At the last minute, the film's producers decided they wanted a title song and so North visited his friend, Hy Zaret, and asked him to write lyrics for his melody. Zaret, who was painting his house, said that he was too busy. North persisted and Zaret finally agreed, but found that he could not incorporate the word "unchained" into the song as requested, although he did manage a story of devotion from somebody parted from his love - in this case, by a jail sentence.

Zaret wrote "Unchained Melody" on the top of his lyric sheet and it was sung by Todd Duncan for the film's soundtrack. Although the film was quickly forgotten, the song was nominated for an Oscar and went on to become one of the most recorded songs of all time. It has topped the UK charts on four occasions - for Jimmy Young (1955), the Righteous Brothers (1990), Robson and Jerome (1995) and Gareth Gates (2002). It also made the charts for Al Hibbler, Les Baxter and his Orchestra, Liberace and Leo Sayer.

Hyman Harry Zaritsky was born into a family of Russian immigrants in New York in 1907; his father sold clothes for a living. Hy Zaritsky, who officially shortened his name to Zaret in 1934, attended both university and law school. He was set to practise law, but in 1935 wrote a song, "Dedicated To You", with Saul Chaplin and Sammy Cahn which became a standard, with key versions sung by the Mills Brothers, Sammy Davis, Nat "King" Cole and Ray Charles.

During the 1940s, Zaret wrote several successful songs, among them "There I Go" for Vaughn Monroe and "My Sister and I" for Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra with Bob Eberly. In 1945, he wrote an optimistic song about a hobo down on his luck, "One Meat Ball", which became a staple part of Josh White's repertoire as well as later being recorded by Ry Cooder. His wartime song about the French Resistance, "The Partisan", was recorded by Leonard Cohen in 1969. He also wrote "So Long for a While", the theme song for the top US radio show Your Hit Parade, which continued to be used when it transferred to television.

In 1955, four versions of "Unchained Melody" made the US charts - for Les Baxter and his Orchestra (reaching No 1), Al Hibbler (No 3), Roy Hamilton (No 6) and June Valli (No 29) - and the song's success as a standard was assured. The publishers would not allow a hilarious pastiche by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan to be released, but it eventually made The Peter Sellers Collection in 1990. There was a whispered rock'n'roll treatment from Gene Vincent (1957) and a frantic doo-wop version from Vito and the Salutations (1963). Elvis Presley loved Roy Hamilton's recording of the song and, in 1977, he took to playing it himself on stage with his own piano accompaniment.

"Unchained Melody" was recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1965, whose recording was revived for the pottery-in-motion scene in Ghost in 1990. In one of the most erotic moments to be found in a mainstream film, Demi Moore's pottery wheel collapses as she is distracted by Patrick Swayze, and many people rushed out to buy the music that accompanied it.

In 1994, one of the episodes of the ITV series Soldier, Soldier required the actors Jerome Flynn and Robson Green to sing "Unchained Melody" at a wedding reception. The record producer Simon Cowell was so impressed with their performance that he offered them a deal on the spot and predicted that they would have the Christmas No 1 that year. In the event, the single was not released until 1995, but it stayed at No 1 for seven weeks and launched Robson and Jerome on a brief pop career.

"Unchained Melody" was the first song that the young Gareth Gates had learnt to play on guitar. He knew it would be a great song to perform on the television talent contest Pop Idol: "It's a song you can sing very badly," he said. "Lots of people mess up the 'I need your love' bit, but I knew I could do it okay." He came second and his CD single sold 1.3 million copies in the UK.

In the late 1950s, Zaret had collaborated on a series of educational "Singing Science" albums, with songs including "What Does a Bird Have that I Have Not", "How Does a Frog Become a Frog" and "What is the Milky Way". One of them, "Why Does the Sun Shine", was covered in 1994 by They Might Be Giants.

In his retirement, Zaret was still writing lyrics, often about growing old, and still hoping that someone would set them to music. In truth, not many of his songs were well-known, but since one of them was "Unchained Melody", he had quite a comfortable life.

Spencer Leigh