Steve Lawrence, 1935-2024, Joins Eydie
"It either works or it doesn't," the crooner said of his longtime partnership
Even then, they seemed frozen in time — singing American songbook in glittering evening dress before nightclub crowds. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé were standard bearers for an earlier form of popular entertainment in the days before rock ’n’ roll.
And they were still in demand. “Our bags are always packed,” Steve Lawrence, who died this week at 88, told me in an interview more than 30 years ago.
At the time, they were set to headline another show at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Conn. after a global tour with Frank Sinatra celebrating Old Blue Eyes’ 75th birthday. “We told him he’s on his own,” Lawrence joked.
Sinatra had praised the couple for “represent[ing] all that is good about performers and interpretation of a song ..They’re the best!”
But Lawrence, born Sidney Liebowitz in Brooklyn, begged to differ. “I grew up in the shadows of Frank singing. And growing up, inspired and encouraged by him, it was a thrill to work with him.”
And though they had met up with Sinatra here and there for over three decades, it was something else to be on the road with him, he told me.
“Touring with someone, living with someone, is a lot different than seeing him at parties. To take a plane ride for 18 hours to Australia and to sit there and listen to him tell stories, I was just so fascinated.”
Lawrence’s own story began being discovered through regular appearances on Steve Allen’s first incarnation of “The Tonight Show” in the 1950s, where he also met Edye Gormé, the singer he married in 1957. Lawrence scored a few Top 10 hits in the late 50s and early 60s, and one No. 1 in 1962, “Go Away Little Girl,” written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
Both he and Gormé — who had a 1963 hit herself with “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” — had a chance to get on the radio in the days before the British Invasion.
“It’s tough — close to impossible — to get on those stations now,” Lawrence said in 1992. “It’s a shame because I think when people have the exposure of what you’re al about, if there’s something of substance and quality there, they will latch onto it. My big frustration with radio in particular [is that] so many of my colleagues are left out. They’ll play Top 40 and heavy metal, but won’t touch them. But there’s so many good people — if people heard it, they might find something in it.”
Of popular performers of the time, Lawrence said “I think Billy Joel is awfully talented. And Michael Jackson is extremely talented and fun and exciting to watch. Hall and Oates I enjoy. U2 has some nice stuff out. And Neil Diamond, of course, is wonderful.
“But good music is good music. If someone tells you an old joke and you haven’t heard it, you laugh because you haven’t heard it before.”
As far as their own longevity as a couple and an act, he said, “It either works or it doesn’t. I don’t know if there’s a magic answer. I think in friendships, or marriage or partnerships or anything, it either works or doesn’t.
“A lot of friends say, ‘You work together, you live together, you sleep together, don’t you ever get sick of each other?’ Some people go to wrk away from their home, traveling all the time, never see each other and end up divorced. So I don’t know. I guess a sense of humor helps.”
Gormé preceded him in death in 2013 at 84.