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"The Soho Serenade" -
A fifty year song journey
The above picture shows me proudly holding a framed copy of my first demo 45 RPM record, "The Soho Serenade" in 1965.
This song traveled a long and diverse journey before it was finally released.
It all began back in 1961 when I wrote the first lyrics to "The Soho Serenade." I revised them after a trip to snowy London when I visited the Soho district.
I also wrote a brief story treatment featuring the song in a possible movie. I thought the song would make a nice accompaniment to a drama taking place in the Soho district.
I had also written a few more songs and two of them, "Dream World" and "Frauleins From Frankfurt," were recorded with a few Army buddies in a group we called "The Potpourris" -- who knows how or why we came up with that strange name? I sang backup vocal and played the bongos as shown here:
In 1963, I was dating a sweet English girl, Sadie, and I dedicated my song to her. We both liked the record of "My Bonnie," which had been recorded by Tony Sheridan and The Beatles and here is the record jacket:
She was thrilled to receive my new song which was titled, "The Soho Serenade." After returning to England, she said she would try to find someone to record my song. Her letters she sent back from England were amazing in their details of her daily life there, but no mention of getting my song performed or recorded. Then eventually her letters stopped coming and I returned to the States. I doubt she ever found any musicians to record my song about the London entertainment district I wrote about.
When I returned to the U.S. after being discharged from the Army I told my friends about the Beatles. All they could say was -- "never heard of them. Who are they?" I told them to just wait until the Beatles get some attention in America.
The Beatles arrived on February 7 for their live television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Two days later, February 9, 1964, they made their first televised appearance in the U.S.A. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Beatles became a huge success, while I was still struggling to get "The Soho Sereande" recorded.
In April of 1964, I revised my song and prepared a lead sheet and copyrighted both the words & music but I still had no recording of the song.After looking for a place to record my song, I found the Star Recording Studio in my hometown of Bloomfield, NJ and arranged to have a 45 RPM demo record made in 1965.
The singer featured on “The Soho Serenade” record was the very talented singer, Ethel Regan. Whatever happened to her? I wish I knew. She had so much class. I learned from her manager that she loved my song and had worked all night recording it with the other musicians and she never received any payment for it. I asked Bill, the studio owner and a sneaky jazz musician, what he had done with all the money I had given him. He said he had used most of my money to pay the electric bill. "Hey, wait a minute!" I said. I becamed very angry and told him the money was supposed to be for the musicians, especially for Ethel. I gave him more money and he agreed to pay the musicians. Ethel deserved to be paid for her many hours recording my song. Bill may have been a slippery business owner but he was a very good musician and he did come through with a professional-sounding demo record of "The Soho Serenade" which is the version I still have in my collection.
I had several copies of my song pressed at a recording studio in New York and the engineer there said he liked my song too and it should be picked up by a record company. Oh, really?
That never happened after numerous contacts with record companies in New York. All I got were rejection letters.
Eventually, I lost interest in trying to sell my song to a record company and my movie story was lost somewhere during the years of moving.
But my song still survived. Eventually it was listed on ASCAP and is available to any musicians who wanted to sing it or record it.
Now after all these years, "The Soho Serenade," has finally hit the Internet jukebox and is available for the first time in 50 years.
Maybe someday it might be used in a movie or recorded by a jazz or pop singer.
Anyone interested in a 50 year-old song by a struggling songwriter who is growing old waiting for his BIG breakout record?
--Roger Lee Hall, April 2015
To listen to the song -- click here for streaming -- please do not copy this song to your computer since then I receive no royalty for it.
It is included on the "Gentle Peace" CD listed below.
Read about the CD which includes "The Soho Serenade" with Ethel Regan -- click here
Read the story: "Gentle Peace - Making a CD Album" -- click here
See other CDs from AMRC:
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