Tom Dawes: 

Bouncing from Fizzle to Fizz

“Red Rubber Ball,” the 1960s rock hit, and Speedy Alka-Seltzer, the animated TV commercial character, have something in common: A Ridgefield man who lived in a famous playwright’s house.

Tom Dawes co-founded The Cyrkle, which sang the 1966 hit, and later wrote Speedy’s famous song: “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh What A Relief It Is.” 

Dawes, who lived more than 20 years in what was once the home of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, was a talented musician and composer, much of whose career was spent writing advertising jingles, but who also wrote many rock tunes and a serious music, and who illustrated several books with his photography.

Born in 1943 Thomas Webster Dawes grew up in Albany, N.Y., learned guitar and bass, and “stole the show” at a high school talent show with his rendition of The Kingston Trio’s “Scotch and Soda,” said his sister, Robin Ducey.

The young Dawes was not only an accomplished bassist, but also an All-American diver, helping him earn a full scholarship to Lafayette College, Easton, Pa. 

There he met Don Dannemann. In 1962, the two founded a four-member band called The Rhondells that performed in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey area. 

After graduating in 1965, the band signed for a grueling gig at the Alibi Lounge in Atlantic City, N.J., performing 90 straight days from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. with two matinees Saturdays and Sundays. There they were spotted by Nat Weiss, an entertainment lawyer and business partner of Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles. A short time later, Weiss invited them to New York to record some demos.

In the meantime, while Dannemann was finishing up some service in the Coast Guard, Dawes signed on as bass guitarist with the touring band for Simon and Garfunkel, whose new hit, “Sounds of Silence,” was topping the charts. Paul Simon struck up a friendship with Dawes and offered his band three new songs, including one he had co-written, called “Red Rubber Ball.”

 When Epstein, Weiss’s partner, heard The Rhondells sing “Red Rubber Ball,” he arranged a deal for the band with Columbia Records. 

At Epstein’s urging, the group changed its name to The Cyrkle — allegedly John Lennon suggested the spelling — and “Red Rubber Ball,” as a single and with an album of the same name, was released early in the summer of 1966. The song wound up #2 on the Billboard top 100 list (at the same time The Beatles “Paperback Writer” was #1), and sold more than one million copies.

Adding to their sudden success, The Cyrkle was invited to open for The Beatles on the British band’s final American tour in August that year. (Band members wound up playing poker several evenings with the Fab Four.)

Later in 1966, another tune, “Turn Down Day,” reached #16 on the Top 100, but it was to be The Cyrkle’s last hit. The band released a second album, “Neon,” which critics have said contained better songs, mostly written by band members like Dawes, but it did not sell well. The Cyrkle made a soundtrack for the B movie, “The Minx,” and produced a few more singles in 1967.

“I got sort of frustrated with the whole situation,” Dawes said in a later interview. “We kept on coming out with what I thought were good singles, and very little was happening.”

Brian Epstein’s death in August 1967 may have been the final straw; The Cyrkle disbanded soon after. 

Fortunately for Dawes, Nat Weiss got him a job producing the jingle for the new “Uncola” advertising campaign for 7-Up, the soft drink. The band spent only a few hours recorded the music.

“Somebody handed me a check for $10,000,” Dawes recalled. “I said, ‘Hey, maybe I want to stay in New York and do this.’”

That was the beginning of a 20-year career of writing jingles for  major ad campaigns, including L’eggs hosiery (“Our L’eggs Fit Your Legs”) and American Airlines (“We’re American Airlines, Doing What We Do Best”).

After he married fellow jingle writer Virginia Redington in 1978, the two collaborated on such campaigns as McDonald’s “You, You’re the One,” Coca-Cola’s “Coke Is It,” and American Airlines’ “Something Special in the Air.” Ginny Redington was also a songwriter whose work has been recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Gladys Knight.

(Encouraged by Dawes, Dannemann also went into the jingle-writing business; he did the tunes for Continental Airlines’ “We’re Going to Move Our Tails for You” and for Swanson TV dinners, among many others.)

Dawes retired from the ad business in 1990 and focused on photography and serious songwriting. He did the photography for several of his wife’s books, such as “Victorian Jewelry: Unexplored Treasures” (1991) and  “Georgian Jewellery 1714-1830” (2007).

The couple teamed up to write “Talk of the Town,” a well-reviewed 2004 musical about members of the Algonquin Round Table that ran off-Broadway for two years and then became a cabaret show at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, where the Round Table group lunched.  The two spent years researching Round Table members including Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marx, Heywood Broun, George S. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber. “We also interviewed family members when possible,” Dawes said. “We read at least 100 books to find out everything we could that related to the Round Table. It took us time to weave together the characters, the humor, and the story line.”

In the early 1980s, Tom and Ginny Dawes bought Brook Farm, the former O’Neill homestead at 845 North Salem Road, living there for more than 20 years. In 2005 they sold the place for $3 million and moved to nearby Weston where Tom Dawes died of a stroke two years later.

Long after they disbanded, The Cyrkle — whose other two members became a surgeon and a lawyer — got together twice in the Lafayette area; in 1986, at a poverty benefit and in 1995, at their 30th college reunion.

When Dawes died, The Cyrkle’s most famous hit was frequently played on the radio in his honor.

“Usually when I hear ‘Red Rubber Ball,’ I’m happy,” Don Dannemann said at the time. “This time it was sad. I thought: Oh, my god, I can never sing it with Tom again.”

Harold Rome: 

Maker of Musicals

Harold J. Rome was a songwriter who penned not only the lyrics but the music for most of his work. When he moved to Ridgefield in 1944, he was already well known for writing the Broadway musicals “Pins and Needles” and, with Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, “Sing Out the News.” 

He was also known for his song “Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones,” sung by Ella Fitzgerald in 1938 and Judy Garland in the 1941 movie “Babes on Broadway.”

In December 1944, The Ridgefield Press reported that “Corp. Harold J. Rome, the Army’s songwriter, and Mrs. Rome, paid their first visit over the weekend to their newly acquired Ridgefield home … in the Limestone District.”

While living in Ridgefield, he was officially stationed at Fort Hamilton, Long Island. The 1944 Press article said, “Rome now turns out tunes tailor-made for scripts written by the orientation department. According to an article in Sunday’s ‘Times’ magazine section, ‘Rome has already written four such tunes with sophisticated lyrics that might easily be removed — sometimes after only a bit of scouring — to a Broadway musical show.

“He produced ‘The Gripers’ for a script on soldier gripes; ‘It’s a Small World’ for a dramatic interpretation of geopolitics; ‘All GI’s Got Rights’ for a show on the GI Bill of Rights; and ‘Do a Favor for Adolph, Please,’ to explain to the soldiers why they are given orientation instruction.”

After the war, Rome gained greater fame, writing such musicals as “Wish You Were Here” in 1952, “Fanny” in 1954, “Destry Rides Again” in 1959, and the show in which Barbra Streisand made her Broadway debut, “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” in 1962.  A less-known show, “The Zulu and the Zayda” in 1965, dealt with racial and religious intolerance.

Rome was probably drawn to Ridgefield by his friend James Waterman Wise of Pumping Station Road. Wise was an author who was writing books exposing Nazism before Hitler even came to power. He was also a biographer of Vice President Henry Wallace, who lived in South Salem and was active in St. Stephen’s Church. 

Mr. and Mrs. Wise often got together with the Romes and with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Draper — Paul Draper was a then-famous tap dancer and choreographer. All were involved in liberal causes, and Draper was once accused of being a communist.

Florence Rome, Harold’s wife, bought the 21-acre spread on the west side of lower Great Hill Road, but the couple apparently didn’t find country life to their liking. She sold the place a couple of years later. 

Harold Rome, who was also a painter and art collector, died in 1993 in New York City at the age of 85. Florence died four years later.  

Andrew Gold: 

A Man of Much Music

“He is comic, creative and charismatic, and he likes people to treat him like the typical guy next door," said a 1998 Ridgefield Press interview with Andrew Gold. 

Mr. Gold was the voice and music behind many popular tunes including some of Linda Ronstadt’s hottest hits such as You’re No Good and Heatwave. 

Besides songwriting and singing, he was a producer, engineer and musician, and played an amazing variety of instruments, including, guitar, bass, keyboards, accordion, synthesizer, harmonica, saxophone, flute, drums, ukulele, musette, and harmonium.

Andrew Gold was born in 1951 in Burbank, Calif. That he started writing songs when he was 13 was no surprise; his father, Ernest Gold, was the Academy Award-winning composer of the many film scores including, Exodus and On the Beach, and his mother, Marni Nixon, was in films the singing voice of Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Deborah Kerr in The King and I. 

In 1973, Gold joined Linda Ronstadt’s band and also arranged much of the band’s music

throughout the 1970s. He also recorded with such artists as Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, and Cher.

Over the years Mr. Gold had also produced and wrote songs and music for many television and movie soundtracks, such as the theme to Mad About You on TV.  His biggest hit was “Lonely Boy,” a top-10 single in 1977.

Perhaps his most unusual accomplishment was serving as the voice of Alvin, the singing chipmunk on television! 

Many albums of his songs have been released, and he produced many albums of other artists. He had two hits of his own as high as number five on the charts. 

Mr. Gold maintained a studio on Bailey Avenue for a couple of years, but moved it to Nashville in 1999, and commuted between there, London and his home on St. Johns Road, where he lived with his wife and three daughters.  

In the early 2000s, he moved to California where he died in 2011 at the age of 59. He had been under treatment for cancer, but the cause of death was given as heart failure.

Noël Regney & Gloria Shayne:

What They Heard

When Noël Regney and his wife, Gloria Shayne, wrote the classic Christmas song, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” they had no idea it would be a hit — or even published.

“Columbia records was doing a cute Christmas song and they asked us to do something offhand for the other side of the record,” Ms. Shayne told The Ridgefield Press in 1969. 

“This is my chance to write a Christmas song for myself,” Mr. Regney later recalled thinking at the time. “I had thought I’d never write a Christmas song: Christmas had become so commercial. But this was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the studio, the producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated.”  

He was walking home to his apartment on East 52nd Street when he “saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. “The babies were looking at each other and smiling, and all of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary.” He got home, sat down, wrote the lyrics, and handed them to his wife, who wrote the tune. 

“We couldn’t sing it through; it broke us up,” Gloria Shayne said.

The flip-side deal fell through, but Mercury records decided to produce the song, performed by Harry Simeone Choral, as a lead recording. A quarter of a million copies were released just after Thanksgiving 1962; they sold out within a week. 

A year later, Bing Crosby did a version, and for many years and under various artists, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” sold more than one million copies annually.  Now ranked among the 25 top Christmas songs of all time, the composition has been recorded on more than 120 albums by not only Bing Crosby, but also such other stars as Perry Como and Mahalia Jackson. The Regneys also did two other Christmas songs, still sung today: “I Sing Noel” and “Three Wise Men, Three.”

The daughter of an attorney and a professor, Gloria Shayne was born, nee Shain, in Brookline, Mass., in 1923, a next-door neighbor of Joseph and Rose Kennedy and their children—including John F. Kennedy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Boston University and headed for New York City where she worked as a pianist and was an arranger for the likes of Stephen Sondheim and Irving Berlin.

In 1951 she met Noël Regney while she was performing at a hotel in New York City and the two collaborated on a number of hits, including “Rain Rain Go Away,” sung by Bobby Vinton, “Sweet Little Darlin,” by Jo Stafford, and “Another Go Around,” by Perry Como and Doris Day. Ms. Shayne also wrote the hit song, “Goodbye Cruel World,” recorded by James Darren — it was his biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit.

   The Regneys moved to High Ridge in 1969. After their divorce in the mid-1970s, she moved to Stamford, but Mr. Regney remained for many years in Ridgefield, where he was a frequent performer—often at benefits—and could also be found playing the piano at The Elms Inn. He also often made appearances in schools.

   A charming man with a deep voice whose accent reflected his native land, Mr. Regney was born in France as Leon Schlienger. He eventually took that name and spelled it backward—subtracting the LHCS and changing I to Y—to create Noël Regney. During World War II, the German army drafted him—he had grown up in Alsace near the German border and could speak German. He soon deserted, and joined the French resistance, acting as a double agent for the French, and was once wounded when he led Nazi troops into an ambush. 

After the war, he came to the United States as a working musician. After his collaborations with Ms. Shayne, Mr. Regney also wrote songs on his own, including several musicals. He also wrote the English lyrics for “Dominique,” the 1963-4 top hit by The Singing Nun. 

In 1975, he wrote the five-part cantata, “I Believe in Life.” “Writing it,” he said in 1977, “was like coming back to my first love. I began to think this would be my musical testament, something lasting.”

He died in 2002 in Brewster, N.Y. at the age of 80. Gloria Shayne Baker, who had remarried, died in 2008 in Stamford, age 84.