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Excerpts from the article
To most folks, Cy Coben was simply a nice, balding older fellow who liked
to hang out with his pals and play tennis -- a lot of tennis, couple of
hours every day. He was like a lot of retired men in upper-crust Atherton,
never mentioning work and wholeheartedly enjoying the good life.
If people asked him what he did, he'd just say he was retired.
What he didn't say was that he was one of the most prolific songwriters
in the nation.
And not just any songs. All kinds.
For the past six decades, he wrote top-selling pop, big band and
instrumental hits for dozens of artists, and probably more than
anything he wrote country music -- an odd, bold specialty for a Jewish
guy from New Jersey to go into back in the segregated 1950s.
But go into it he did, and the fact that there were no bar mitzvahs
back then in Nashville didn't stop bluegrass legend Bill Monroe
from turning Mr. Coben's "A Good Woman's Love" into one of his standards, or the
honey-voiced Eddie Arnold from scoring big with "I Want to Play House With You."
Hank Snow rode several of Mr. Coben's songs to the top of the charts,
including 1949's "Nobody's Child," a heart-breaking ode to a
blind orphan, which has been covered by more than a dozen other artists
since then -- including the Beatles, and the Traveling Wilburys
supergroup in 1990.
"He should have been in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, but the
young folks just don't know about him," said longtime friend and
collaborator "Cowboy" Jack Clement, the legendary producer
who turned Jerry Lee Lewis into a rock star and wrote hits
himself for seemingly everyone from Johnny Cash
("I Guess Things Happen That Way") to (Porter Wagoner &) Dolly Parton ("Someone I Used to Know").
"Cy was one of the first Northern guys who made it big here in Nashville,
and boy did he know how to write a song,'' Clement said. "He wrote a lot
of stuff, and he was great."
The diversity of his craft alone was breathtaking.
Mr. Coben's first hit was "My Little Cousin," recorded by Peggy Lee
with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1942 when Mr. Coben was
23 years old. On the Songbirds section of mrlucky.com, a history of Lee's
collaborations with Goodman calls the tune the "catchiest of all" their
recordings, adding that "the somewhat exotic tune is strongly reminiscent
of traditional Yiddish song."
Mr. Coben quickly followed up with compositions picked up by Al Jolson,
Dinah Shore, Eddie Cantor, Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como.
Liberace and Hoagy Carmichael, in particular, did rollicking
hit versions of Mr. Coben's "Old Piano Roll Blues."
Then he made a trip to Nashville in the early 1950s with the
late RCA executive Stephen Sholes, and he caught
the country western bug. Soon he was turning out hits
with a twang, from "Lonely Little Robin" for Jim Ed Brown to "A Good Woman's Love,"
which Jerry Reed went big with around the time Monroe
scored his bluegrass hit with it. Willie Nelson and Jim Reeves were
among the others who recorded Coben titles -- which eventually numbered
into the hundreds.
His main love in life, after family and music, Greg Coben said,
was playing tennis. "Dad played tennis every day with the same group of
friends in Redwood City," he said. "It kept him young. In fact, if the
weather hadn't been bad the day he died, he probably would have had
that heart attack right there on the court."
The only service for Mr. Coben was a private memorial last week on one of his
favorite tennis courts. And perhaps if the family chooses to play a song or
two in his memory over the coming days, there might be no better epitaph
than "A Good Woman's Love," which goes in part:
"And so when the night falls and the stars shine above,
I'm a man with a dream and a good woman's love."
Mr. Coben is survived by Dozier; his son; a daughter, Bonnie Coben of Capitola; and four grandchildren.
Hillbilly-Music.com Note:
Some of the songs that Mr. Coben wrote or co-wrote with others included:
- I Wanna Play House With You
- There's Been A Change In Me
- Nobody's Child (w/Mel Foree)
- Lady's Man
- Older and Bolder
- Hep Cat Baby
- I'm Hurtin' Inside
- That Crazy Mambo Thing
- If You Were Mine
- I Need A Good Girl Bad
- A Good Woman's Love
- Do You Know Where God Lives
- Hearts Weren't Meant To Be Broken (w/Mel Foree)
- Eddy's Song (w/Charles Grean)
- There's No Wings On My Angel (w/Eddy Arnold and Irving Melsher)
- Lonely Little Robin
- Mommy Can I Take My Doll To Heaven
- I'll Trade Yours For Mine
- You're Never Too Old For Love
- Would You Mind?
- I'll Never Change My Mind About You
- Faith Is The Key (That Opens Your Heart)
- I'm A Walkin' Advertisement For the Blues
- Burning A Hole In My Mind
- What, Where and When (w/Little Roy Wiggins)
- Something Old, Something New (Something Borrowed and Blue) (w/Charles Grean)
- Free Home Demonstration (w/Charles Grean)
- Horace the Horse (w/Charles Grean)
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