Words by Fred Hellerman, Music by Alec Wilder
From LP An Evening with Carol Lawrence (Cameo C-1077)
Written in 1953
wilderworld recently asked Mr. Hellerman, one of The Weavers of folk legend, about how his unlikely collaboration with Alec on Summer Rain came about:
“Summer Rain has the distinction of being the only song I ever wrote for which I didn't write the music. It's nowhere near being a ‘folky’ type song, but was written as a pop ballad. It came about, oddly enough, when I had read the comments at the graveside of the Rosenbergs by their lawyer, who hoped that the ‘summer rains fall gently on this spot.’ I was very moved by it and wrote a pop lyric around it.
“I gave it to my then-publisher who left it lying around on his desk. Alec Wilder happened to see it, loved it and asked if he could write some music to it. Being a fan of Alec's, I was terribly flattered and excited at the prospect.
“It's hard for me to say what I felt about what he did. As I said, I never before had anybody else write music for a lyric of mine and so I was quite taken aback by it, inasmuch as it was so far from anything I had imagined. But then again, I had absolutely no experience hearing what music someone else might write to a song of mine. I'm not sure what it is that I had in mind, but this was quite different. Not bad, but different.
“In any case, nothing ever happened with it. There was one record of it by Carol Lawrence on some cockamaymee record label. I think it may have sold less than 10 records and then zoomed into oblivion.
“I never knew Alec. I had casually met him several times but never got to know him, so I had to settle for admiring him from afar. But I'm certainly glad to have my name associated with him albeit in some small way.”
