Jimmy Kennedy

Jimmy Kennedy OBE (20 July 1902 - 6 April 1984) was a British songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz (aka Hugh Williams) and Nat Simon amongst others.

Kennedy was born on Brookmount Road in Omagh, Ireland. His father was Joseph Hamilton Kennedy, a member of the Irish police force. However, Jimmy Kennedy grew up in Portstewart, an Ulster seaside resort located to the north in Derry. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin.

Kennedy taught for a while in England before applying to join the Colonial Service as a civil servant in 1927. His music career took off, though, while he was awaiting a posting to the colony of Nigeria. He embarked on a career in songwriting by joining the staff of Bert Feldman, a music publisher based in London's Tin Pan Alley. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he wrote some 2000 songs, of which over 200 became worldwide hits and about 50 are all-time popular music classics.

Until John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he had more hits in the United States than any other Irish or British songwriter. His first success came in 1931 with the "Barmaids Song" sung by Gracie Fields. "Red Sails in the Sunset" (1935) was inspired by beautiful summer evenings in his native part of the world, and "South of the Border" by a holiday picture postcard he received from Tijuana, Mexico. While serving in the British Army's Royal Artillery, where he rose to the rank of Captain, he wrote the wartime hit, "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" for the British Expeditionary Force. His hits also include "The Isle of Capri", "My Prayer", "Teddy Bears' Picnic" (music by John Walter Bratton), "Love is Like a Violin", "Hokey Cokey" and "Roll Along Covered Wagon".

Many of Kennedy's songs were recorded by such artists as Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, The Platters, Vera Lynn, Petula Clark, Karl Denver, Paul Robeson, Perry Como, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Glenn Miller and Elvis Presley. More recently, Engelbert Humperdinck and Belfast-born Brian Kennedy have both released recordings of "Red Sails in the Sunset"; The Beatles performed the same song during their Hamburg days.

Kennedy won two Ivor Novello Awards for his contribution to music and received an honorary degree from the New University of Ulster. He was also awarded the OBE in 1983. In 1997 he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Kennedy died in Cheltenham, England, and is buried in Taunton, Somerset. He is survived by two sons, Jimmy Junior and Derek.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Kennedy. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.