He had a long career, and wrote other popular songs as well as scores for many movies and TV shows, but his fame came from this one piece. He wrote it in 1961 for a TV show in his native Denmark, and it became a hit in 1962, winning a Grammy for best rock ‘n’ roll record (yes, I know, it’s not rock ‘n’ roll).
Like Heart and Soul, Alley Cat simple enough for beginning piano students. Chet Atkins, Al Hirt, Ray Conniff, and Peggy Lee covered it (in Lee’s case, after Jack Harlen wrote lyrics). It’s been used in movies and TV shows. It’s so ubiquitous and so simple that it seems like a folk song, one of those pieces that everyone knows but whose author has been lost to time (except that he wasn’t).
In the US, his label was Atco Records, and any inner sleeve of an Atco LP would show a bunch of Bent Fabric albums which all had animal-theme titles - “The Happy Puppy”, “Never Tease Tigers”, “Operation Lovebirds” and so on. That was the marketing strategy. It might have annoyed Fabric, whose own Danish title for “Alley Cat” translates as “Around a Piano”. I guess he couldn’t complain, though.
Probably the same. My parents had a friend married to a Danish woman named “Bente,” which I assume is the female form. It was pronounced “Ben-tee.” I would think “Bent” would be pronounced as the English word.
His last name is a stage name derived from “Frabricus,” so it’s probably also like the Englsh name.
I believe there were two, with one replacing the other after a couple of years. This also happened with the original Hollywood Squares. (Steve Allen wrote lyrics for one theme, which he titled “The (or That) Silly Song.”)
BTW, the set in the photograph doesn’t look like the original I remember.
My memories might be false, but they’re pretty strong even so.
Incidentally, how many of the panelists in that photo can you name? I know four of the six with a fair degree of certainty, but I’m not at all sure of the two women in the middle.
As another aside, Peter Marshall himself sang “That Silly Song” as a guest on Steve’s syndicated show in the late '60s.
That’s not a photo, it’s a video, and if you play it, they’re all introduced. From left to right, the men are Bennet Cerf, Henry Morgan, and Robert Q. Lewis, and the women are Joan Fontaine, Betty White (one of the most famous faces on television over the past six decades), and Peggy Cass.
I didn’t want to play the video (still haven’t) until I heard from you (or someone else). In any case, I got four of the six immediately (the three men and Peggy Cass). I thought the other two women might be Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen (or possibly Betty White). Since Dorothy died in November 1965, I figured it probably wasn’t her.
All perennial game show panelists I grew up watching.
My only familiarity with Bent Fabric was the appearances on “sleeve ads” in records by other artists. Ditto Mr. Acker Bilk. Always thought Bent Fabric was the name of a group, rather than a single individual.
