My point in raising Dylan was based on a Dylan documentary that I believe was on PBS, that highlighted the producer at Columbia that really stepped out on a limb and signed Dylan - with his nearly absent singing capability. This particular documentary spoke quite a bit about how most popular recorded SINGERS of the day, were usually not songwriters themselves. They were told 'here, sing this, we're going to make a hit record from it'. I hadn't really considered this until seeing that documentary. Here's a link to the website for the documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/bob-dylan/about-the-film/574/

Some of you might poo-poo my being educated in this manner, but I really had no interest in the topic of songwriters writing for the pop music machine before watching this film. Maybe Dylan wasn't the first where the songwriter was who was recorded by the record companies, but this movie seems to emphasize that point - at least for a major label like Columbia. They actually spend quite a bit of time talking about the producer. I think it's this guy: John Hammond: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Hammond

My understanding was that up to that point in time, most branches of music, including Rock, had 'pretty voice' singers, even if their technique caused tremors to vocal teachers. Not having lived through Roy Orbison's heavy popularity, I'm guessing the fans parents and teachers had probably not too many nice things to say about Orbison, or Elvis (This is of course pretty well documented), doo-[*****] groups, etc.

I'm probably younger by 10-15 years (46) of most of the thread participants here, and my choir teacher in HS railed on and on about how Sinatra ruined popular music with all of his slides into and out of notes. But he did acknowledge he enjoyed Sinatra's tone.

So, the main point of my post was that wasn't it more the rule than the exception that popular recorded and broadcast music wasn't written by the performer?

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