Paul Anka and his Songs of December

Paul Anka started his career as a Teen Idol making girls across the country swoon to songs like “Diana”, and “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.”  He later had a tremendous career as a songwriter, writing a few of the most well-known songs in our history like the theme from The Tonight Show, and Frank Sinatra’s big hit, “My Way.”  He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his 2011 Christmas CD, “Songs of December.”  Below are a few brief excerpts from that interview.  

Ron Bennington: It’s good to see you. Christmas songs…why these songs?

Paul Anka: Well there’s certainly a wide variety. The reason for these is for the concept of the album. I wanted to do an album that had one vibe through it. I didn’t want to do the traditional brass and bells and whistles and choirs. And out of the process I came up with these because they’re familiar. Songs that I knew but songs that I could bend around within the concept of very lush, very romantic, within the concept of, yea, it’s Christmas but it ain’t happy for everybody. I took these songs and I reinvented them like I did with Rock Swings. But I tried to find ones that I could personalize and apply the kind of string approach, the romantic approach that I have on there. Certainly there were other ones, but I wound up with these. The stretch ones for me were Blue Christmas which is very tied to Elvis, but I wanted to really come up with something very different on that because I liked Elvis’ record. And all the songs on there, I like a lot. Let It Snow, my friend Sammy Kahn wrote that years ago. Mel Torme who was a friend, The Christmas Song. So there was a personalized approach on all of them, and it had to fit the infrastructure of where I wanted to take this in terms of the vibe of the record.

Ron Bennington: There’s so many great songs on here. And you being a songwriter…when you sing these songs do you end up thinking about the songwriter?

Paul Anka: Not necessarily. I let the song really be the criteria. Having knowledge of the business and growing up with it, and knowing writers, because I’m a writer, I’m aware who wrote it but it really doesn’t come in to the picture when I’m doing it, other than the respect I have for those who have structured the songs. So if I see something by Sammy Kahn, or by Mel, or these other great writers, I know I’m dealing with a great piece of material that’s pliable in a sense and can be done any way.

Ron Bennington: But you just take on the song as if it was yours.

Paul Anka: I try to make it mine, like I did with Rock Swings. I try to sing it and approach it as if I wrote it, and keep the integrity of, where I keep it within my style.

Ron Bennington: So were you performing as a kid before you were writing songs, or did that go hand in hand?

Paul Anka: I started around twelve or thirteen years old. I was a big fan of music so I was singing in the church choir or singing at school, doing performances. Imitations was a big part of my life back then. And then I started getting into music. I worked at a local newspaper, I wanted to be a writer, and I got thrown out of short hand but I kept the typing. The shorthand led to piano and I started to get knowledge of music. So I started to become the writer. And I started just writing songs. And then when I saw this girl Diana who I had a crush on, she was a few years older than I was, and in those days, that’s what it was about. I wrote the song, but I just wrote it as a writer, and it was all about song writing for me back then.

Ron Bennington: And once you wrote that song, and other people connected to it, then it became this lifetime thing for you.

Paul Anka: The life change came…what a lot of people don’t know is, being the fan that I was, I came to California to see an uncle of mine, and that’s when I started to write. And I wrote a song called Blau Wile Deverest Fontaine, and it was a city in Africa, part of a book report I had to turn in; part of my writing course. But the record at the time was called Stranded in the Jungle by the Cadets. I was a big Doo-Wop guy and I loved all that stuff. And I loved this song and I used to go to Wallach’s Music City and sit in one of those booths and I’d listen to it. But one day I bought the record and it said Bihari Brothers Modern Records Culver City. And it was just a few miles from where my uncle was. So I said, man I’m going to hitchhike out there, I’m going to go see these guys and play them my song. So I walked in, and there was the Bihari Family, and I said, yea I’m Paul Anka and they looked at me like I was delivering coffee because I was in jeans and a t-shirt. I said, I got this song. So you know in those days, it was like infancy stage pop music. And they said, well, let me hear it kid. So I started singing. (Sings) They said, we want to sign you. I said you’ve got to be kidding. So they brought in a guy named Ernie Friedman who was a great, great arranger who later made it big time. And they said, how would you like the Cadets that sing Stranded in the Jungle to sing with you? I said, are you kidding? So they bring in the Cadets, Ernie Friedman, and there was a garage in the back, just like Motown. We went in and cut a record, Blau Wile Deverest Fontaine on the front, I Must Confess on the other side. They put it out. Maybe I sold a hundred copies, I was a failure at fifteen. I wasn’t dejected. I think the Wolfdog or some guy played it. Does nothing but I get the injection, right up the arm. I gotta be in the business. The next year, I leave and go to New York and I get lucky with Diana with Don Costa.

Ron Bennington: But I imagine at fifteen, just carrying that record around and seeing your name on it had to be almost enough already.

Paul Anka: Oh man, hooked. Buzz buzz buzz.

Ron Bennington: And then when you got to New York, at that period in New York there were so many things popping here too.

Paul Anka: Well Brill Building, Doo Wop, all of that was just starting to happen. Presley kicked in, you had Kirschner. It was a great time. Big time Doo Wop time. Philadelphia time. So when I hit, I was living in a bathtub on 46th Street at the President Hotel, making the rounds and enjoying this environment. And walking into Costa’s office at ABC, and all of a sudden I became a part of it.

Ron Bennington: And after that point it was like an overnight success for you, because it just exploded right?

Paul Anka: Yea, Diana kicked in right away. You know back in those days, you cut a tape, you go to Philly, you do American Bandstand you did Allan Freed, and within a week you had a hit. And that happened that quickly for me. My life just changed. That was it.

Ron Bennington: And did you think, okay not I’ve got to keep on writing, or did you get caught up in the fun of having a hit record.

Paul Anka: No I knew I had to keep writing. When they signed me they locked me away. It was a hundred bucks a month. You better write the next album. You know back in those days you lived and breathed rock and roll and I did. It was writing every day, making an album, maybe three or four a year. A whole different process back then and you had to write and stay with it all the time.

Ron Bennington: It becomes your life. And at that point, are the songs coming fast? Or are you battling them out?

Paul Anka: Yea they’re coming up fast because that’s all there was. The whole industry was in its infancy stage. We all lived together. Every act, I was traveling with. We were fifteen of us on a bus. We would be singing what we were writing, I knew what Buddy Holly was coming up with, what the Everly Brothers were doing, we’d be playing off each other. It was all about the music back then unlike today. And so you’d be banging them out and banging them out because you had to and because you were trying to impress your friends, and because that’s what it was all about. We were all in like one little box, traveling together, doing certain dates and it was that close. And that motivated you to keep showing your friends what you could do.

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