the luckiest man in show business

Of all the unlikely and unexpected beneficiaries of the posthumous windfall that is "Michael Jackson," you would have to put Paul Anka way at the top; a song he co-wrote with Jackson back in the '80s was uncovered and polished up as the first posthumous single, 'This Is It,' and now Anka is in for 50% of the revenues. Which is like waking up and discovering a winning lottery ticket in the pocket of old pajamas that you wore to bed because you haven't done the laundry in a few weeks.

This is how lucky Paul Anka has been:

A tune he wrote for an Annette album, 'It's Really Love,' was slightly revamped and adopted as the theme for a TV program in the early 1960's, 'The Tonight Show.' Thirty years later, he was still getting royalties from that ditty.

He penned some grandiose English lyrics for a French song that was originally called 'Comme d'Habitude,' and turned it over to Frank Sinatra. Voila: 'My Way.'

And then there was that fluky #1 single in the '70s, an ode to his sperm, '(You're) Having My Baby.' Note that the 'You're' is in parentheses. How generous of him.

For more than fifty years, Paul Anka has nudged his way into mainstream popular culture, going further on minimal talent than just about anyone of his era and longevity. The media, in the '50s, made much of him being a teenaged writer of his own songs, when his contemporaries were relying on professional songwriters. But his songs, with their dreary melodies and lyrics of pure doggerel, hold up far less well than the Brill Building classics that were being churned out. Have you listened to 'Put Your Head On My Shoulder' recently? 'Puppy Love'? 'Lonely Boy'?

'I'm just a lonely boy/Lonely and blue/I'm all alone/With nothing to do.'

Genius!

I have a couple of Paul Anka recordings on my iPod, I have to confess. One is his original ABC-Paramount version of 'You Are My Destiny,' which I downloaded after seeing it used effectively in some foreign film whose name (and country of origin) I've since forgotten. It's pure schmaltz, and the lyrics and vocal suck, but the arrangement (Don Costa, maybe?) is so over the top that it really does work. The other is 'Remember Diana,' a simply hilarious sequel to the single that launched his career. I wasn't aware of this track (it wasn't a big hit) until I saw a screening of a bunch of Scopitone videos at the Cinema Village a few years ago. It cracked me up, so I bought the track on iTunes, and I laugh every time I play it.

It is possible that Tom Jones' rendering of Anka's 'She's a Lady' is on there as well, the most condescending 'love' song ever written, performed with macho gusto by Mr. Jones.

Oh, I also have another Anka recording on iTunes, a spoken word soliloquy where he laces into his band members after a show (or a rehearsal?). warning them about their attire (he has a real grudge against t-shirts), and threatening them. When he gets angry, he says, he 'slices like a hammer.' That doesn't seem like the most efficient means of slicing, but he's the boss.

And the luckiest man in show business. Shown here in the trailer of his cinematic debut, where he croons for nuns and the most well-behaved group of reform school girls you ever will see.