Ken Lane

Kermit " Ken " Lane ( born December 20, 1912 in Brooklyn, New York, † November 23, 1996 in Lake Tahoe, California ) was an American musician and composer. His most successful composition is the song Everybody Loves Somebody, which was well known by the interpretation of Dean Martin in the 1960s. Lane worked for 25 years with Martin. In the show and television appearances he was a pianist and Stooges.

Career

Lane began his musical career as a vaudeville pianist on the East Coast. In the 1940s he led the Ken Lane Singers, a vocal ensemble, that worked with Frank Sinatra, Frances Langford and Dinah Shore. After the Second World War, Lane moved to Los Angeles. At the beginning of the 1950s he worked for Paramount Studios as speech and singing teacher; among his students in the early 1950s, also Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Lanes musical collaboration with Dean Martin began in the spring of 1957. Replaced Lane Dick Stabile, whose orchestra Martin had accompanied for half a decade at performances and studio recordings. Lane served as Martin's pianist, with many appearances he conducted the orchestra. Lane was Martins Stooges and took many cases the role of the "Straight Man", so Martin's demeanor well opponent. The cooperation also existed at the Dean Martin Show, a 1965-1974 television series broadcast on NBC. Lane was a musical advisor here. In each episode of the show, he played the piano accompaniment for a song.

Parallel to his involvement with Martin composed Lane until the 1970s in film music for cinema and TV films.

Everybody Loves Somebody

Lanes greatest success as a composer is the hit Everybody Loves Somebody. He wrote the song in 1947 together with Irving Taylor for Frank Sinatra, who took over the copyright. Sinatra played a song 1948. In the same year she sang Dean Martin Bob Hope radio show; a recording session took place at that time but not yet. At the beginning of the 1950s was followed by versions by Peggy Lee and Dinah Washington; but none of them reached chart positions.

In April 1964, Martin worked on the completion of his album Dream With Dean, the fifth studio album for Reprise Records. After eleven songs were already recorded, struck Lane his Everybody Loves Somebody as a final number yet. At the request of Martin's wife Jeannie, it was taken as the twelfth song in the album. Martin played a recording on 16 April 1964, Lane played the piano. Published in May 1964 Reprise recording as a single, soon after the album was released.

Dean Martin's version of Ken Lanes Everybody Loves Somebody was one of the most successful songs of the year 1964. It reached on August 15, 1964 number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Martin, for whom it was the first Top 40 ranking since 1958, so the Beatles displaced from the top spot.

Everybody Loves Somebody was in the following years to Dean Martin's signature tune. In the first episode of the Dean Martin Show, which aired on 16 September 1965, as Martin sang the song, but it broke after a few lines with the remark: " When I sing the song ended, buy later possibly the disk is not ". In almost every stage show Martin played it on at least. As part of his act, he often mocked Drunk it. Thus, from the song line "If I had it in my power" often " If I had you in my shower".

Private life

Ken Lane had two children. His daughter, Robin Lane (born 1947) is a singer of the rock band Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, his son Christopher is not active in the music industry.

Lane sat down with Dean Martin, who had his last live appearance in 1991, to rest. He died just a year after Dean Martin in Lake Tahoe from emphysema.