“It
seems to me that it's every man's obligation to make what contribution he can.
You live each day as best you can. That, to me, is what makes life
interesting.” – Rod McKuen
Born in a California homeless
shelter on this date in 1933, McKuen was one of the best-selling singer-songwriter
poets in the United States during the late 1960s, and continued to produce a
wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry,
film soundtracks and classical music. He
died in 2015.
Never taken seriously by critics or
many of his fellow writers, he nonetheless wrote poems and songs about love and
nature that connected with everyday people, selling over 100 million songs and
60 million books of poetry worldwide. He
won critical acclaim for his 1968 Lonesome Cities, which won a Grammy
for Best Spoken Word album. One
of his most popular and enduring song poems was “If You Go Away,” and if you
ever get the chance to see a clip of his performance of “What a Wonderful
World,” done at age 78, you’re in for a great treat.
“I tried not to put messages in my songs,”
McKuen said. “My only message was man's
communication with his fellow man. I just wanted to narrow the gap of
strangeness and alienation.”
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