AudioLand

I posted a bunch of videos yesterday from the group The Seekers.  What I found out later from reader Shelly Goldstein, who I wrote about here, is that both songs -- "Georgy Girl" and "I'll Never Find Another You" -- had music written by Tom Springfield, brother of Dusty.  Shelly also mentioned that Tom wrote many songs with a lyricist named Jim Dale.  She wasn't sure if he was the Jim Dale, though, but suspected he was.

I checked into it -- and it's one in the same.  Jim Dale is widely known to a huge generation of listeners as the narrator of the Harry Potter series of audio books, and won two Grammys for it.  He also served as the narrator on the off-beat ABC series, Pushing Daisies.  But for many others, they likely know of him for his many films (such as the villain in Pete's Dragon) and on stage, most notably his amazing, Tony Award-winning role in Barnum, where he exploded on stage non-stop for 2-1/2 hours, doing most every circus and non-circus acrobatic imaginable, from juggling to actually tightrope walking.

Back to his songwriting though at the beginning of his career.  It turns out that among the songs Jim Dale wrote the lyrics for to Tom Springfield's music was the beloved, "Georgy Girl."

Anyway, for those who've only heard Jim Dale narrate, or maybe seen him act -- here he is singing, from Barnum.  It's not the best song in the show, but it's certainly one that shows off how wildly energetic his performance was.  He probably deserved the Tony Award for simply getting through this remarkable tongue-twisting number every night, "Museum Song," written by Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman.