Hy Zaret - Biography

Hy Zaret (August 21, 1907 – July 2, 2007) was an American Tin Pan Alley lyricist and composer best known as the co-author of the 1955 hit "Unchained Melody", one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century.

Biography

Zaret was born Hyman Harry Zaritsky in New York City and attended West Virginia University and Brooklyn Law School, where he received an LLB. He scored his first major success in 1935, when he teamed up with Saul Chaplin and Sammy Cahn to co-write the pop standard "Dedicated to You." The early '40s brought some collaborations with Alex C. Kramer and Joan Whitney, including 1941's "It All Comes Back to Me Now" and the socially conscious, WWII-themed "My Sister and I." Zaret also wrote lyrics for an English translation of the French Resistance song "The Partisan" (aka "The Song of the French Partisan"), which was later covered by Leonard Cohen. In 1944 he and Lou Singer wrote the popular hit novelty song "One Meatball", based on a song popular among Harvard undergraduates.

Zaret's biggest success, though, was "Unchained Melody," a song he co-wrote with film composer Alex North for the 1955 prison film Unchained (hence the title), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. No fewer than three versions of the song—by Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, and Roy Hamilton -- hit the Top Ten that year, with Hibbler's version ranking as the best-known for the next ten years. The song was also recorded successfully by Jimmy Young and Liberace, and covered by countless others, but the Righteous Brothers' 1965 version—given a supremely romantic production by Phil Spector -- became the definitive take, reaching the pop Top Five. That recording was revived in 1990 thanks to its inclusion in the film, Ghost, and nearly reached the Top Ten all over again. Elvis Presley & Roy Orbison also recorded versions of the song.

Zaret turned his attention to educational children's music in the late 1950s, collaborating with Lou Singer on a six-album series called "Ballads for the Age of Science"; different volumes covered space, energy and motion, experiments, weather, and nature. The records were quite successful, and the songs "Why Does the Sun Shine" (aka "The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas") and A Shooting Star Is Not a Star were even covered by alternative rock band They Might Be Giants in 1994 and 2001, respectively. (source: Steve Huey, Allmusic)

See Also

• William Stirrat — whose discredited claim to have written "Unchained Melody" under the pen name Hy Zaret has been widely circulated.

Reference list

External links

• ASCAP Foundation Living Video Archive interview Hy Zaret
• Zaret Bio at MPL Communications
• Story of Unchained Melody at MPL Communications
• Michael Feinstein Foundation