A very talented man named Billy Barnes died the other night owing to Alzheimer's Disease. He was 85.
Billy was a songwriter and a very good one, and for many years he was the most in-demand writer of what they call Special Musical Material. That means songs — usually funny ones — penned for a specific act or show. He wrote them for all the major variety shows of the sixties and seventies but was best known for composing practically everything that was sung or played for the first time on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
Before that in the early sixties, he was famous for a series of shows that ran sometimes in New York but more often in Los Angeles in mid-sized theaters. They had different names but were generally referred to as The Billy Barnes Revues. I was too young to attend any of them but the cast albums, if you can find them, are a wonderment of clever lyrics and catchy tunes.
I was pleased to work with Billy on a couple of specials I wrote for Sid and Marty Krofft and we even sometimes collaborated on lyrics. When we first did this, he was a thousand times better than I was but I learned from the man and eventually, he was only about 800 times the lyricist I was…and am. He was charming and funny and everyone I knew who was familiar with his work just respected the hell out of him.
Here's the L.A. Times obit which will tell you more about him and here are two videos of songs Billy wrote. In the Laugh-In one, you can catch a brief glimpse of him playing piano in a routine. A lot of us miss that man already…
