Elvis Songwriter Rose Marie McCoy, Reminisces: Rose Marie McCoy 86, of Teaneck, wrote the songs that made Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Ruth Brown and Dinah Washington sing. And that pays a whole lot better.
"It's God's gift," McCoy says. "It's like I can't write a bad song." There is some objective evidence for this.
McCoy, both singly and with onetime songwriting partner Charles Singleton, published some 800 songs in her 57-year career, including tunes that were recorded by Elvis ("Trying to Get to You" and "I Beg of You"), Jordan ("House Party," "If I Had Any Sense I'd Go Back Home"), Brown ("Mambo Baby"), Ike and Tina Turner ("It's Gonna Work Out Fine") and many, many others. In 2007, American Songwriter magazine listed McCoy as one of its 11 "all-time great soul songwriters."
"I had an office in the Brill Building for 25 years," says McCoy, also a producer, who was headquartered in the famous offices at 1619 Broadway that were the 1960s successor to Tin Pan Alley.
"[Jerry] Leiber and [Mike] Stoller were right next door to me," she says.
McCoy, born in 1922 in Oneida, Ark., came to New York in the early 1940s to pursue a career as a singer. She moved to Harlem, got a job doing piecework at a Chinese laundry and set out to conquer the music world.
It was, then as now, a rough and tumble world. Her fortunes however changed dramatically in the early 1950s, when she approached a small independent downtown label, Wheeler Records.
"The woman asked me if I could write my own songs," McCoy recalls. "I thought that was crazy, asking a singer with no name to write her own songs."
But in fact, she could write her own songs. "Georgie Boy Blues" and "Cheating Blues" became her first A side and B side. And while her subsequent recording career failed to ignite, her writing career took off.
She took to haunting the hotels where the great singers stayed, in order to slip them her latest efforts. She became friendly with stars like jump-blues legend Louis Jordan (the fellow Arkansan called her "homey," she says) and wrote for many of the great names of early R&B.
It was through one such recording, "Trying to Get to You," by a black Washington, D.C., group called the Eagles, that McCoy's songs came to the attention of Elvis Presley – whom, incidentally, McCoy was less than impressed by when he first shook his shimmy on TV back in 1956.
"At the time, we didn't think too much of him," McCoy recalls. "He just came out on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and he was shaking his legs and doing his business. They said, 'This guy is going to be the next Rudolph Valentino.' We just laughed."
Within three years, McCoy made good on a vow she had made to the proprietor of that Chinese laundry.
"I told this guy I was going to have a Cadillac and a house," McCoy says. "One day, I drove out to the laundry in my Cadillac. He came out to look at the car. He said, 'For sure, I thought you crazy.' "
"I said, 'I got the house, too.' "
That house, in Teaneck, is where she has lived since 1955. But though she's retired, she's hardly retreated and she's got plenty on her to-do list.
Her next big goal: Oprah. "I would sure like to be on that show," McCoy says.
"Write On Rosie," a new multimedia music revue of her life and songs is playing at 8p.m. this Saturday, Puffin Forum in Teaneck. (News, Source;EIN/SanjaM)
"It's God's gift," McCoy says. "It's like I can't write a bad song." There is some objective evidence for this.
McCoy, both singly and with onetime songwriting partner Charles Singleton, published some 800 songs in her 57-year career, including tunes that were recorded by Elvis ("Trying to Get to You" and "I Beg of You"), Jordan ("House Party," "If I Had Any Sense I'd Go Back Home"), Brown ("Mambo Baby"), Ike and Tina Turner ("It's Gonna Work Out Fine") and many, many others. In 2007, American Songwriter magazine listed McCoy as one of its 11 "all-time great soul songwriters."
"I had an office in the Brill Building for 25 years," says McCoy, also a producer, who was headquartered in the famous offices at 1619 Broadway that were the 1960s successor to Tin Pan Alley.
"[Jerry] Leiber and [Mike] Stoller were right next door to me," she says.
McCoy, born in 1922 in Oneida, Ark., came to New York in the early 1940s to pursue a career as a singer. She moved to Harlem, got a job doing piecework at a Chinese laundry and set out to conquer the music world.
It was, then as now, a rough and tumble world. Her fortunes however changed dramatically in the early 1950s, when she approached a small independent downtown label, Wheeler Records.
"The woman asked me if I could write my own songs," McCoy recalls. "I thought that was crazy, asking a singer with no name to write her own songs."
But in fact, she could write her own songs. "Georgie Boy Blues" and "Cheating Blues" became her first A side and B side. And while her subsequent recording career failed to ignite, her writing career took off.
She took to haunting the hotels where the great singers stayed, in order to slip them her latest efforts. She became friendly with stars like jump-blues legend Louis Jordan (the fellow Arkansan called her "homey," she says) and wrote for many of the great names of early R&B.
It was through one such recording, "Trying to Get to You," by a black Washington, D.C., group called the Eagles, that McCoy's songs came to the attention of Elvis Presley – whom, incidentally, McCoy was less than impressed by when he first shook his shimmy on TV back in 1956.
"At the time, we didn't think too much of him," McCoy recalls. "He just came out on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and he was shaking his legs and doing his business. They said, 'This guy is going to be the next Rudolph Valentino.' We just laughed."
Within three years, McCoy made good on a vow she had made to the proprietor of that Chinese laundry.
"I told this guy I was going to have a Cadillac and a house," McCoy says. "One day, I drove out to the laundry in my Cadillac. He came out to look at the car. He said, 'For sure, I thought you crazy.' "
"I said, 'I got the house, too.' "
That house, in Teaneck, is where she has lived since 1955. But though she's retired, she's hardly retreated and she's got plenty on her to-do list.
Her next big goal: Oprah. "I would sure like to be on that show," McCoy says.
"Write On Rosie," a new multimedia music revue of her life and songs is playing at 8p.m. this Saturday, Puffin Forum in Teaneck. (News, Source;EIN/SanjaM)
