Steve Lawrence bids farewell

A voice from the past said goodbye last March 7. Singer and actor Steve Lawrence passed away from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 88.

Lawrence was one of the great balladeers. I find him particularly memorable because he was a wholesome alternative to rock and roll. With parents and teachers and more so the nuns in school frowning on rockers and their noisy kind of music, Lawrence was considered acceptable.

Lawrence’s early hits were teen-targeted tunes like Pretty Blue Eyes and Footsteps from 1959, Come Back Silly Girl and My Clair de Lune in 1960. The No. 1 selling Go Away Little Girl composed by Carol King and Gerry Goffin came in 1962.

It was, however, with Portrait of My Love that the ballad-crazy Pinoy really got into his music. A worldwide hit for Lawrence, the song was immensely popular in the Philippines that Sampaguita Pictures even made a movie starring Susan Roces and Eddie Guitierrez using that title.

Other hit songs followed, In Time, Our Concerto, Somewhere Along the Way, I Will Wait for You and that monster of a theme song from the documentary film Mondo Cane, titled More which with its unforgettable melody gave Lawrence another global seller.

Another biggie for Lawrence was the love song The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me in 1973. He sings in one of its lines, “Eydie, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” That Eydie was Eydie Gorme, his wife and favorite singing partner from 1957 until she passed away after a long illness in 2013. They were together for 56 years.

Gorme was a star in her own right. She had her share of hits like Blame It On the Bossa Nova, If He Walked into My Life, My World Keeps Getting Smaller Everyday and that big Pinoy favorite It Takes Too Long to Live Alone. She also made several landmark recordings with the popular Latin act, Trio Los Panchos.

One of my all-time favorite albums is We Got Us by Steve and Eydie. I got my hands on a reissue of the 1957 recording and would play it again and again. It has cuts like the Grammy winning We Got Us, Side by Side, No Two People, Darn It Baby That’s Love, Together, Flattery, This Could be the Start of Something Big, Baby It’s Cold Outside, Two Lost Souls, Harmony, Cheek to Cheek and the one I absolutely adored, I Remember It Well from the musical Gigi.

Steve and Eydie sounded great solo but as a duet, they were stunning. They did a lot of television and theater. They also headlined the biggest venues from Las Vegas to Carnegie Hall.

One of the first things that Lawrence did after Gorme passed away was record an album that he dedicated to her. Titled When You Come Back into My Life, it is one of his best with heartfelt versions of Solitaire, The Hungry Years, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Our Day Will Come, Dream a Little Dream of Me, I Was a Fool to Let You Go and others.

Eydie never came back, it was Steve who got impatient and left to find her.

Lawrence was born Sydney Liebowitz, the son of a Jewish cantor in New York. He started singing as a teenager in high school, joining talent shows until he got discovered. While making his name as a singer, he was a regular in the Steve Allen show on television.

Lawrence was also a successful actor. On stage, he was nominated for a Tony Award for his work in the musical What Makes Sammy Run. He starred with Jacqueline Bisset in Stand Up and Be Counted. He also appeared in two Blues Brothers films, The Lonely Guy and The Yards. Up to a few years ago, I would see him in TV shows like CSI and Hot in Cleveland and reruns of Frasier and Murder She Wrote.

Lawrence was a natural for the motion picture screen but nothing beats his easy, heartfelt singing.