When he was 10 years old, Marc Blatte’s grandfather took him to see his first Broadway show, The Music Man. Some 50 years later Marc was a Grammy-nominated music man himself, and had convinced many people, in song, to upgrade from “Your Father’s Oldsmobile” …and to go “Goldfishin'” for Goldfish snacks.
Marc is the Clio-winning composer of, literally, scores of some of the best known jingles
Bobby, Brad, Marc, at work at Look Jeanne Neary Look with session singer Lani Groves(with the creative and production direction of Jeanne Neary Look) and top 10 hits of the 80s and 90s…and beyond, often with writing partner Larry Gottlieb.
Do you remember holding hands across America as an inspirational movement to raise money and awareness for homelessness and poverty? You were holding hands to Marc’s song. Did you sing along with Kenny Rogers when he described the Pride of America…or lipsync to Marie Osmond’s top country hit, Read My Lips, or dance to the Four Tops’ When She Was My Girl?
As the recipient of an ASCAP Award for Most Performed Country Music Song and The Ralph Peer Music Lifetime Achievement Award and now even a successful novelist, Marc is definitely one of my friends in high places…but he’s also family: my step-brother. So, I got my “bro” to share the inside track on the evolution of some of these tunes, some pretty funny stories, and some of the life-changing advice he got along the way.
You’ll hear how:
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How he pounded the pavement and the doors of publishers for years… and went from janitor to jingle writer…and his suggestions for young artists today;
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Helping out fellow musicians like Marc Cohn, and getting advice from heads of labels;
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How he lost hundreds of thousands in a hip-hop label, but gained enough chops to write a hip-hop detective novel, Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed from the experience!;
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Why he resisted writing a song Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie requested of him…;
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How he finally came up with Healing Hand, a song that is not only one of the best anthems of today, but one that fulfilled him after all these years…
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A synchronistic final tale that spanned Sherry Lansing to Joseph Heller….
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And Thanks for listening. Thanks ALSO to Euro-Pacific Digital Media for tackling this challenging edit, since I had some issues with the audio recording.