{"id":7888,"date":"2013-06-19T11:22:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T18:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=7888"},"modified":"2013-06-21T11:35:33","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T18:35:33","slug":"music-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/music-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Man – Songwriter Will Holt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summerguide 2013 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Lemon Tree, very pretty, and the story behind it\u2019s sweet.<\/h3>\n

By Colin W. Sargent<\/p>\n

\"lemon_tree\"<\/a>We know \u201cThe Maine Stein Song\u201d hails from this neck of the woods. But \u201cLemon Tree\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in Chicago with my wife, Dolly Jonah (1930-1983),\u201d says composer\/lyricist Will Holt, a Portland native. \u201cWe needed a song for the opening. It was a nightclub, so we said, \u2018We should do something kind of nightclubby!\u2019 With a swizzle stick and a glass, I started tapping out the melody. It was just the opening to the song. It had no words. I\u2019d heard it first from Gene and Francesca, a folksinging duo. \u2018This seems kind of fun,\u2019 they told me. I said, \u2018Yeah, there ought to be words to it.\u2019 That was it. It just hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tune Portland native Will Holt is talking about is what the world celebrates as \u201cLemon Tree.\u201d It\u2019s the same haunting melody that Peter, Paul and Mary sang in their first album, that Chad and Jeremy sang, and The Seekers, the Kingston Trio, even Bob Marley and the Wailers. Trini Lopez put it over the top in 1965, when \u201cLemon Tree\u201d rose to No. 2 on the Hot Adult Contemporary list. The central lick hearkened back to strains of a Brazilian folk song (Meu lim\u00e3o, meu limoeiro<\/em><\/i>), which Jose Carlos Burle had experimented with musically as early as 1937. But this was in the late 1950s, and performer Holt was in the right place at the right time. As Wikipedia trumpets, Holt is the person who brought us the English lyrics and the enchanting musical structure which lights up \u201cLemon Tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote the words and the verse,\u201d he says. \u201cI wish I\u2019d kept the swizzle stick!\u201d Musicians agree that it is Holt\u2019s genius intro, complete with a dead-perfect key change, that magically sets off the refrain. \u201cIt put my kid through college!\u201d<\/p>\n

Holt clearly embraces the irony that someone from icy Maine could pen the words to such a warm song.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born in Maine General Hospital (now Maine Medical Center),\u201d he says. During the summer of 1929, \u201cwhen I was three months old, my family and I came to North Bridgton. I still spend summers in the same cottage on Bell\u2019s Point at the top of Long Lake,\u201d on a green lollipop peninsula that dangles off the end of Holt Road. \u201cMy father bought the cottage from Professor Edward Spooner. It was white and green, with a porch,\u201d as it is today. \u201cThe narrow-gauge railroad came right by my door. It was wonderful. Do you know where the Academy Beach is? I\u2019m right across from the Beach. I grew up there, learned to swim there, and snuck out to dances at Freelove\u2019s Pavilion. The owner\u2019s name was Alvin Freelove. People had difficulty saying it without snickering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Holt headed off to Exeter Academy, \u201cI worked as a boy\/slave at Long Lake Lodge in 1944. I pared the vegetables, did everything that one can do.\u201d Among those things was to \u201cget everybody into the Cadillac, I remember the green interior, and we\u2019d all go to the Mayfair theater in Bridgton, driving fast as I could down the hill. All the work boys and staff. I can\u2019t believe we weren\u2019t killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Holt was making a name for himself as a singer and guitarist, in places so cold they still come back to him. \u201cOne of them was in Portland, singing at the Columbia Hotel, which had a nightclub and dinner and so forth.\u201d Performing late, \u201cI had no place to go other than to sleep in the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Maine, one of his arch rivals was \u201cMark Stimson. He was a very good singer with very good high notes. I was never quite as good as Mark. He really was a soprano. He stayed in Portland and went into real estate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restless, Holt kept performing and tuned his skills as he went from Exeter to Williams College to the Richard Dyer Bennett School of Minstrelsy.<\/p>\n

He married actress Dolly Jonah (who played Elaine in 1974\u2019s Harry and Tonto<\/em><\/i>\u2013sadly, she died in North Bridgton during the summer of 1983 at just 53), and together they launched a sophisticated act grounded by Holt\u2019s lyrics and enriched by the German cabaret works made famous by Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht in 1926. A string of influential songs and albums culminated in a 1971 Tony nomination for Holt, for Best Lyrics (Musical) in Broadway\u2019s for \u201cThe Me Nobody Knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the way to all of this, Holt and Jonah found themselves in venues like Greenwich Village and San Francisco where famous people knew each other before they were famous. As for \u201cLemon Tree,\u201d \u201cPeter, Paul and Mary had heard me playing it at the Hungry Eye and the Purple Onion [in San Francisco],\u201d Holt recalls. \u201cThe two clubs were across the square from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holt had first come across the trio in New York. \u201cI remember Al Grossman said, \u2018I\u2019ve got this group. Peter, Paul and Mary. Give them a listen. See if they\u2019re any good.\u2019 We went to Al\u2019s flat in the Village. They started to sing\u2013two songs. He said to them, \u2018Okay, you can go now.\u2019 I said, \u2018Get them out of here. They\u2019re terrific!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a different world then. When Holt heard Peter, Paul and Mary singing \u201cLemon Tree\u201d around 1959 or 1960, he thought nothing of it. \u201cEverybody swapped. It was the thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember meeting Trini Lopez,\u201d Holt says. \u201cHe was a sweet guy, really charming. I heard his version of \u2018Lemon Tree,\u2019 and I thought, that\u2019s another take of the song. Trini was unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holt, 84, who is still in good voice, sings a few bars of \u201cLemon Tree\u201d the way he performed it, where the lemon flower is sweet. Then he shifts and starts singing the song in Trini Lopez\u2019s voice, in his jazzy, percussive style. \u201cBut the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.\u201d Asked what makes a song memorable, Holt says very unromantically, but very thoughtfully, \u201cUsage.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why he must have loved the Lemon Pledge commercial, so famous in the 1960s, lilting to the Brazilian stylings of \u201cLemon Tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s at the base of his fascination with novelist Tim O\u2019Brien having used the song as a motif in one of the most famous short stories in his book The Things They Carried<\/em><\/i>. Remember \u201cLemon Tree\u201d in the soundtrack for Apollo 13<\/em><\/i>? With an ear for music like Holt\u2019s, what goes around, comes around.<\/p>\n

Trini Lopez, a Holt fan, agrees. Reached in California, the years peel away when he remembers \u201cLemon Tree.\u201d Asked about the background of the song, he says, \u201cOh, my gosh. I know Will Holt wrote it,\u201d speaking as though Holt is a near-mystical presence. \u201cI think I might have met him once, somewhere in L.A., just in passing. I remember it was very personable. I remember that. Is he still alive? That\u2019s nice to hear. People ask about \u2018Lemon Tree\u2019 all the time. It\u2019s one of my most favorite requested songs. It\u2019s a very catchy tune. I just happen to like the chorus. My father always used to tell me as a kid to be careful with women. As you well know. Everyone should be careful with the ladies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does Lopez ever get sick of performing \u201cLemon Tree\u201d? Does the haunting melody keep him up at night like the theme song that stalked Harry Lime in The Third Man<\/em><\/i>? \u201cOh, no! I\u2019m always in the mood. I wouldn\u2019t get onstage otherwise. I remember one time I was performing at Disney World, in the beautiful nightclub where the monorail goes through. David Cassidy was in the audience. He wanted to see me afterward\u2013he seemed to have something urgent to ask me. \u2018Trini,\u2019 he said, \u2018don\u2019t you get tired of doing all those songs over and over again? I just have two or three hits, and I\u2019m already tired.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez was astonished. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to say. I never sing a song I don\u2019t want to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure. But remember, Trini, he wasn\u2019t singing \u201cLemon Tree.\u201d Try making a furniture spray out of \u201cI Think I Love You.\u201d<\/p>\n

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