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Following are exclusive video and photo programs, along with lyrics of some of Jimmy's best songs!
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| Video: B.B. Kings: March 18, 2005
Highwayman
By The Time I Get To Phoenix
Didn't We
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| Photos: Sessions from Michael Feinstein's "Only One Life" |
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| Recording Session, New York, May 2003 |
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| Video shoot, New York, July 2003 |
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| Video: Sessions from Michael Feinstein's "Only One Life" July 2003 |
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Jimmy comments on the trumpet solo on
"These Are All Mine" |
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Jimmy and Michael listen to the trumpet solo on
"These Are All Mine" |
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Jimmy and Michael practice the vocal for
"Skywriter"
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Jimmy and Michael listen to playback for
"Only One Life" |
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Jimmy makes a "commercial" for Chili
Lime Chips |
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WORDS & MUSIC BY JIMMY WEBB:
Jimmy has written some of the most inspired popular music of our times. Click on the following song titles to read the words of these classic songs. This list will continue to be updated.
CLASSIC SONGS:
This area is devoted to Jimmy's greatest songs, in his own words. This page will be updated periodically to include more classic songs.
By The Time I Get To Phoenix
Words & Music By Jimmy Webb
A great song idea usually utilizes an interesting hook line or title and incorporates it into a fully realized scenario that reveals in careful, logical stages the true goal or intent of the writer. This is the "developmental" component of a verse. For instance, in "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" it is composed of the lines after the "teaser":
By the Time I Get to Phoenix she'll be rising
She'll find the note that I left hanging on her door
And she will laugh to read the part that says I'm leavin'
'Cause I left that girl too many times before.
Well, if this isn't a soap opera in the making then I've never heard one! We find out some interesting things very quickly: that he's left a note on her door, that it's a farewell note that will cause her some amusement and that as a note-leaver our hero is perhap a repeat offender. Now this is the way we build up the story, the meat and the muscle of the inner lines of verses ... the strong tissue that connects the sometimes deceptively nondescript opening line with the "hammer," or at Motown in the old days, the "message," the hook, line and sinker, what have you. In the case of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," the hammer doesn't land until the very end of the last verse when we find out that as smug as she may be, the one who has been left behind is in for a rude surprise, "And she will cry to think that I would really leave her ..." This time he means it. This is the O'Henry-esque twist or surprise ending that is common to the true ballad and is probably descended from the storyteller by the hearthside.
The above is an excerpt from "Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting" by Jimmy Webb. For more information and to purchase the book, click here.
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