Steve Allen: composer of TEN THOUSAND songs?!?!?

[Acsenray]

According to Wikipedia, Steve Allen composed 10,000 songs. TEN THOUSAND? Wha? ....

(1) When did he have the time, between all his other gigs?

(2) Have I heard any of these songs?

(3) How is it possible? I mean, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Johannes Sebastian Bach ... did any of history's great composers come near this level of output? (Looking at Bach's Wikipedia page, I see he's got 1,000, and he was a full-time composer.)

(4) Is there any person in any form of creative work whose output is comparable?

[Sigmagirl]

You have heard "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," even if only as Pia Zadora's performance at the Academy Awards in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.

[Richey84]

Interesting quote from the Wikipedia article:

Allen was an accomplished composer who wrote over 10,000 songs. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine.

There's 350 songs right there, in one week. Sounds like he was heavy on quantity not quality though.

[Half Man Half Wit]

I don't know any more about Steve Allen than the wiki article tells me, but there's also Billy Childish, who's so far released more than 100 full length LPs, 40 collections of poetry, four novels, produced more than 2,500 paintings, and co-founded the art movement of Stuckism.
And he's only 48, so he'll probably keep going for a while...

Also, Isaac Asimov has written over 500 (!) books, IIRC.

[Mark Ryle]

Jack Parr had something to say about the OP's question #2. Jack did not like Steve Allen, I'm not sure why. On a television interview long long after Jack left the Tonight Show (I don't remember the show or interviewer) Jack, in his blunt but witty style, leaning forward in his chair, challenged the interviewer, who had just mentioned Steve Allen's artistic abilities in some favorable light:

"Steve Allen has written 50 books. Name one. He's written a thousand songs. Name two."

This Could Be the Start of Something (Big), published 1956, isn't a great song but it's become a standard of sorts. It's generally known, anyway, fifty years after its appearance. It became the opening theme to Steve Allen's own original Tonight! show in 1956. (Jack Paar succeeded Allen as host in 1957.)

[Sampiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Ryle

Jack Parr had something to say about the OP's question #2. Jack did not like Steve Allen, I'm not sure why.

Neither did Johnny Carson; in fact they both despised him. He was evidently an extremely obnoxious and egomaniacal person who insisted that they and pretty much everyone else after his show owed their careers to him, a male Norma Desmond. (Surprisingly though I've only heard good things about Mrs. Meadows-Allen, who always seemed like she'd be a first order biatch.)

Some gossip on the personal Allen by former employees here and in the accompanying message boards.

[kunilou]

One biography I read said that while Allen did write 10,000 "songs," the vast majority of them were only a few bars long -- more like jingles or even just refrains.

When I was a commercial production director in radio I wrote something like 10,000 commercials in 4-5 years. Technically it was true, but a lot of them were along the lines of "Hurry, the sale ends Saturday," vs. "Hurry, the sale ends tomorrow" vs. "Hurry, the sale ends today."

According to this Charles Wesley wrote more than 6,000 hymns.

[Sampiro]

PS- It was part of Steve Allen's contract on personal appearances (game shows, talk shows, speaking engagements, etc.) that he be allowed to write his own introduction which must be read, which is usually why it included words such as legendary/pioneer/prolific/brilliant/etc., or as one guy put it (on the site linked to above) introductions that you expected to end "and beloved inventor of penicillin".

[Shoeless]

Maybe Wilt Chamberlain hired him to write a song about every woman he slept with...

[DMark]

I hate to constantly be interrupting these types of threads with "I met him" comments, but considering several have already mentioned Steve Allen was not liked by Johnny Carson or Jack Parr - yes, I did work at the theater for a short time with Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows.

Steve Allen was not a particularly nice guy - professional on stage, yes - but back stage he was arrogant and bossy, with quite a mean streak to boot. His wife was nice, but she was most certainly second fiddle in that relationship and whatever Steve said was the final word.

I can well imagine not many people would have wanted to work with him unless they had to.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

Originally Posted by DMark

Steve Allen was not a particularly nice guy

Which was kinda funny, in view of his on-stage persona as a genial, friendly, caring etc. dude, quick with a quip, never mean-spirited etc. I guess he left it all onstage.

[lissener]

I have a CD of Steve Allen Bossa Novas. I like Bossa Novas; they're bubbly and fun and silly and nostalgy. His, however, are bland and dull.

[Mark Ryle]

Steve and Jayne were a beautiful couple and memorable conversationalists in a group setting. Steve didn't dominate Jayne and both of them together didn't monopolize conversation in a group. I'm talking about on-air, of course. Just the opposite - their statements, interjections, questions, etc., were bright, witty, intelligent, and at the service of the conversation not themselves. I mainly used to see them on the Mike Douglas Show out of Philadelphia which had an informal setting in which all guests contributed in a conversational circle-type coffee table arrangement throughout the show. The setting was non-confrontational, Mike being a low-key genuine nice guy. You could watch and learn while Steve and Jayne gave object lessons on generating and nurturing good conversation. They must have co-hosted or guest hosted on Mike Douglas regularly because I used to see them together a lot. They were truly a couple you would like to have as guests in your living room.

Sampiro's deathwatch site above is gossipy, as he said, and its tone breezy about these things, like "What did Steve Allen, Judy Garland, Elvis, etc, etc. have in common? They died on a toilet." But I like the vignette a couple paragraphs further down: On the night he died he was in his Cadillac Seville [1993 model, in 2000] with his grandson, and a Halloween cake in the passenger seat. And this: "On the 9th of November, post-autopsy, Steve's body was released to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills and buried in an unmarked grave."

[Governor Quinn]

Interestingly, Steve Allen's ASCAP entry only lists 520 songs, and his BMI entry only adds 43 more.

This balances better with the output of others (for instance, ASCAP credits Richard Rodgers with 704 songs), and would seem to indicate that many of the compositions credited to him are either fictitious or otherwise negligible, given his failure to register them.

(Note: I have not provided direct links due to the terms of use requirements, but you can search yourself here and here.