‘Our Winter Love’ keeps us warm during the holidays

One of Dick Clark’s favorite rock’n’roll instrumental hit songs was “Our Winter Love,” released 60 years ago in 1963. It was a “one-hit wonder” for artist Bill Pursell.

 

Dick Clark was an American music legend, having hosted the “American Bandstand” television show for 33 years (from 1956-89). In the reference book “Dick Clark’s The First 25 Years of Rock & Roll,” the top two seasonal instrumentals mentioned are “Our Winter Love” and “Theme from A Summer Place” by Percy Faith (1960).

 

Bill Pursell was trained as a classical pianist. He did arrangements for the U.S. Air Force Band while serving in World War II. After the war, Pursell landed in Tennessee and became a member of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

There, he found after-hours opportunities to play “jazz with guys like Boots Randolph and Chet Atkins and did session work for a number of the reigning kings and queens of country music, people like Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves,” wrote M.C. Antil, a Chicago-based writer and music enthusiast.

 

Pursell never crossed paths with songwriter Johnny Cowell of Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada, but it’s a great story about how “Our Winter Love” came to be…most of which appears to be true.

 

Cowell said he was contacted by Chet Atkins to provide some material for trumpeter Al Hirt. 

For his book “They All Love to Play,” author Murray Ginsberg interviewed Cowell. 

Atkins told Cowell: “Al Hirt’s doing a recording session in about six weeks, and we’re looking for something for Al to play. Your name came up, and since you’re a trumpet player and a writer, would you write something for Al and send it down to us?”

 

Ginsberg said: “Johnny very quickly put the finishing touches on a tune he’d been calling ‘Long Island Sound.’ Usually, he wrote his own lyrics, but in this case, he hadn’t had time to work on any lyrics.” So, he sent it off as it was. 

Cowell’s acetate demo did arrive at Columbia Records in New York City…and eventually, the plain brown envelope was opened at the studio. Pursell was there. He and others heard the potential for “Long Island Sound”…even though some bonehead record company executive played the 78 rpm recording on a 45 rpm setting. 

After some tinkering by Pursell to produce a “hauntingly icy, plink, plink, plink sound” on the keyboard, Columbia Records was ready to produce the song that was renamed “Our Winter Love.”

 

“‘Our Winter Love’ became something of a minor phenomenon,” Antil said. “It struck a chord with people, who found themselves caught up in the gentle simplicity and emotional solitude it conveyed. The song climbed to Number 9 on the pop charts and to Number 4 on the adult contemporary charts.” 

“‘Our Winter Love’ carved out a meaningful niche for itself in the annals of pop history and has become for many a song for the ages; a remarkable little melody that can be evocative, wistful, romantic and slightly melancholy, all at the same time,” Antil said. 

Radio host Phil Maq, whose show “Theme Attic” airs weekly on WHFR 89.3 FM in Dearborn, Mich., has proclaimed “Our Winter Love” as a GSER – one of the “Greatest Songs Ever Recorded.” 

Another GSER, according to Maq is the remake of “Our Winter Love,” by the Lettermen in 1966, with lyrics to the song added by Bob Tubert. The song became a minor hit for the Lettermen. Members of the vocal group were Jim Pike, Bob Engemann and Tony Butala.

 

“The Lettermen harmonies were exquisitely beautiful,” Maq wrote.