Sonny Curtis, a member of the Crickets who wrote the theme of the Mary Tyler Moore program, dead at 88

Sonny Curtis, a rock ‘N’ Roller Vintage who wrote the raw classic “I fought in the law” and raised the lasting question “Who can light the world with his smile?” As the writer-author of the main song of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, he died at age 88.

Curtis, included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the crickets in 2012, died on Friday, his wife of more than half a century, Louise Curtis, confirmed to News.

His daughter, Sarah Curtis, wrote on her Facebook page that she had suddenly been sick.

Jo Hale through Getty Images

Curtis wrote or co -written hundreds of songs, from Keith Whitley’s country rhythm “I am not strange to the rain” to “Walk Back” by Everly Brothers, a personal favorite turtles completed while I was in the basic army training.

Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead were among other artists who covered their work.

First days with Buddy Holly

Born during the great depression of cotton producers outside Meadow, Texas, Curtis was a childhood friend of Buddy Holly and an active musician in the rock formative years, either stuck on the guitar with Holly in the mid -1950s or opening for Elvis Presley when Elvis was still a regional act. Curtis’s song touch also emerged soon: before he turned 20, he had written the success “Someday” for Webb Pierce and “Rock Around With Ollie Vee” for Holly.

Curtis had left the Holly group, the crickets, before Holly became a great star. But he returned after Holly died in a plane crash in 1959 and appeared the following year in the album “in style with the crykets”, which included “I fuck the law” (he was canceled in a single afternoon, according to Curtis, who would say he had no direct inspiration for the song) and the collaboration of Jerry Allison “more than me I can say”, a success for Bobby and later for Leo Sayer.

Meanwhile, it occurred until 1966 to “fought the law” and its now immortal chorus “I fought against the law, and the law won” to realize: the Bobby Fuller Four, based in Texas, made it a song of Top 10. During the following decades, it was covered by dozens of artists, from punk (The Clash) to Country (Johnny Cash, Johnny Count Nanci Griffith) to Springsteen, Tom Petty and other main rock stars.

“They are my most important copyright,” Curtis told Tennessean in 2014.

Jo Hale through Getty Images

The other Curtis song was as stimulating as “I was the law” was renounced. In 1970, I was writing commercial jingles when the issue of a new News comedy starred by Moore as a single woman hired as a television producer in Minneapolis occurred. He called the song “Love is All Around”, and used a soft melody to serve as indelible lyrics as any other in television history:

“Who can light the world with your smile? / Who can take a day of nothing, and suddenly make everything seem to be worth it?

The resistance of the song was sealed by the images in which it was heard, especially Moore’s triumphant of his hat while Curtis proclaims: “You will do it after all.” In tribute, other artists began recording it, including Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Hüsker Dü by Minnesota. A commercial launch with Curtis came out in 1980 and was a modest success, reaching its maximum point in number 29 in the list of Billboard countries.

Curtis would remember being commissioned by his friend Doug Gilmore, a road manager from the music industry who had heard that the developers of the situation comedy were looking for an opening song.

“Naturally, I said yes, and later that morning, he left a four-page format: you know, a girl from the west, moved to Minneapolis, gets a job in a writing room, cannot pay her apartment, etc., which gave me the taste of what was treated,” said Cortis, who soon met with the exhibition co-creator (and then a filmmaker for the cinema) James James L. Broks.

“James L. Brooks entered this huge empty room, without furniture apart from a phone that is on the floor, and at first, I thought it was quite cold and a bit distant, and said: ‘We are not yet on the stage of choosing a song, but I will hear it anyway,'” Curtis recalled. “So I touched the song, only me and my guitar, and the following, began to call the people, and the room was filled, and then sent a recorder.”

Curtis would eventually write two versions: the first used in season 1, the second and best known for the remaining six seasons. The original words were more attempt, opening with “How will you do it alone?” And ending with “you could do it after all.” In season 2, the program was a success and the lyrics rework. The producers had wanted Andy Williams to sing the main song, but he rejected it and instead the quiet baritone of Curtis was heard.

The posterior life

Curtis made a handful of solo albums, including “Sonny Curtis” and “Spectrum”, and arrived at The Country Top 20 with the 1981 single “Good Ol ‘Girls”. In subsequent years, he continued playing with Allison and other cricket members. The band released several albums, including “The Crickets and His Buddies”, with appearances by Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Phil Everly. One of Curtis’s most notable songs was “The Real Buddy Holly Story”, a rebuke of the 1978 biographical film “The Buddy Holly Story,” starring Gary Busey.

Curtis settled in Nashville in the mid -1970s and lived there with his wife, Louise. It was included in the Hall of Fame of Nashville composers in 1991 and, as part of the crickets, in the Hall of Fame and the Nashville musicians museum in 2007. Five years later, he and the crickets were included in the Rock Hall, praised as “the blue of the rock and roll bands (who) inspired thousands of children in the world.

News’s journalist Mallika Sen contributed reports.