Margo Guryan

Margo Guryan (September 20, 1937 – November 8, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter.

As a songwriter, her work was first recorded in 1958, although it was for her 1960s song "Sunday Mornin'", a hit for both Spanky and Our Gang and Oliver, that she is perhaps best known.

Her songs have also been recorded by Cass Elliot, Glen Campbell and Astrud Gilberto, among others.

Jazz singer Chris Connor recorded her song "Moon Ride" in 1958, while Guryan was still at university, and in 1962, Ms. Connor had recorded "Lonely Woman" with Guryan's lyrics.

She attended the Lenox School of Jazz in 1959, where she met and worked with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, and was taught by Bill Evans, Max Roach, Milt Jackson, Jim Hall, John Lewis and Gunther Schuller, among others.

She was one of two women admitted to the program that year.

Following this, Lewis and Schuller signed her to MJQ Music.

She was primarily a jazz musician in this period, married to jazz trombonist and pianist Bob Brookmeyer and writing lyrics for jazz pieces by composers including John Lewis, Ornette Coleman and Arif Mardin.

Songs of this period, with her lyrics, were recorded by Chris Connor, Freda Payne, Nancy Harrow and Alice Babs, among others.

Popular music passed Guryan by until, after her divorce from Brookmeyer, her friend Dave Frishberg urged her to listen to the song "God Only Knows" from the album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys.

According to Guryan,"'I thought it was just gorgeous. I bought the record and played it a million times, then sat down and wrote 'Think of Rain.' That's really how I started writing that way. I just decided it was better than what was happening in jazz.'"

Guryan played Creed Taylor, for whom she was at the time working as a secretary, a tape of some of her newer songs, and he pointed her in the direction of April-Blackwood, the publishing arm of Columbia Records.

At April-Blackwood she met David Rosner, who would become not only her producer but also her husband.

Rosner signed her up, and suggested she double-track her voice on demos, to compensate for the difficulties she

had previously and produce a better sounding vocal.

Another early recording of her work was by Harry Belafonte, who recorded "I'm On My Way to Saturday" for The Many Moods of Belafonte (1962).

"Think of Rain" was recorded by Bobby Sherman, Jackie DeShannon and Claudine Longet in 1967.

The Cyrkle and Nilsson also recorded versions although neither was released.

"Sunday Morning" was recorded by Spanky and Our Gang as "Sunday Mornin'".

Released in December 1967, it reached No 30.

Tommy LiPuma commissioned Guryan to write a Christmas song for Claudine Longet, and the result was "I Don't Intend to Spend Christmas Without You", a 1967 single.

Saint Etienne later covered the song on a Christmas fanclub release.

As a performer, she is best known for her 1968 album Take a Picture, the sole album release in the initial phase of her career.

Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell sang it as a duet in 1968.

Also in 1968, Marie Laforêt released "Et si je t'aime", a French version of "Sunday Mornin'" with lyrics by Michel Jourdan.

"Sunday Mornin'" was listed as one of the "102 most performed songs in the BMI repertoire during 1968".

Carmen McRae and Julie London both released versions of two songs by Guryan: McRae performing "Can You Tell" and "Don't Go Away" on The Sound of Silence (1968) and London releasing "Sunday Mornin'" and "Come to Me Slowly" on Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (1969).

Guryan signed to Bell Records as an artist, recording an album, Take a Picture (1968), full of light, jazz-tinged pop melodies, produced and arranged initially by John Simon, then when he became unavailable, by John Hill, both overseen by David Rosner.

The musicians on the record included Hill on guitar, Kirk Hamilton (flute, bass), Phil Bodner (oboe), Paul Griffin (keyboards) and Buddy Saltzman (drums).

That same year, she released an Italian version entitled “E Se Ti Amo”.Oliver also released a version of "Sunday Mornin'" which reached #35 in the US charts in 1969.

The album was re-released in 2000, and followed by a compilation entitled 25 Demos (2001).

In 2014 the American record label Burger Records released another compilation named 27 Demos on cassette.

Margo Guryan grew up in New York City in the neighborhood of Far Rockaway, Queens.

Her parents met at Cornell University, where her mother majored in piano, and her father, also a keen pianist, in liberal arts.

Guryan wrote poems from an early age, and moved on to writing songs soon after being introduced to the piano in childhood.

Initially interested in the popular music of the time, as well as the classical music she was studying, Guryan became interested in jazz at college.

She studied classical and jazz piano at Boston University, idolizing musicians such as Max Roach and Bill Evans, and switched from piano to composition in her sophomore year in order to avoid performing.

While still in high school, Guryan was sent to Frank Loesser's Frank Music, whose Herb Eiseman sent her on to Atlantic Records, where she performed her songs for Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun, who signed her up to song contracts, and had a demo session with Tom Dowd.

She was signed by Atlantic, initially as a performer, but her initial attempts at recording were not successful, due in part to her inexperience and in part to a range break in her voice (as Guryan stated, "I couldn't damn sing!").

The label instead retained her as a writer.