Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Who wrote the song "Happy Days"?
"Happy Days" is a song written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox. It is the theme song of the 1970s television series "Happy Days". It can be heard during the TV show's opening and closing credits as it runs in perpetual rerun syndication.
Brooke Candy announced the release of "Happy Day" on January 25, 2016 by releasing footage of its music video through her Instagram account. The single was released on January 29, 2016. Produced by More Mega, "Happy Days" is written by Cassie Davis, Sean Mullins, Ali Tamposi, Olivia Waithe, Talay Riley. The track uses the music from her previously released video "A Study In Duality". A remix package was released on April 1, 2017 to promote the song.
Garry Kent Marshall (November 13, 1934 – July 19, 2016) was an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor, best known for creating "Happy Days" and its various spin-offs, developing Neil Simon's 1965 play "The Odd Couple" for television, and directing "Pretty Woman", "Beaches", "Runaway Bride", "Valentine's Day", "New Year's Eve", "Mother's Day", "The Princess Diaries", and "".
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Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote their song "Sweet Home Alabama" in response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama" from Young's 1972 album "Harvest". Young has said that he is a fan of both "Sweet Home Alabama" and Ronnie Van Zant, the lead vocalist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. "They play like they mean it," Young said in 1976. "I'm proud to have my name in a song like theirs." Young has also been known to play "Sweet Home Alabama" in concert occasionally. To demonstrate this camaraderie, Van Zant frequently wore a Neil Young "Tonight's the Night" T-shirt while performing "Sweet Home Alabama". Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot can often be seen reciprocating by wearing a Jack Daniel's-styled Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt (including at the "Live Rust" concert).
After more than two years off screen, Taylor made her return television appearance on "In Melbourne Tonight" in August 1999, singing "I Want You Back". Taylor joined the cast of the Australian stage production, "Happy Days: The Arena Mega Musical" in October 1999. Taylor played Laura, a character created for the stage show, who was in cahoots with Jon Stevens' Frank (also an original character) to put the famous diner out of business. The music selected for the "Happy Days" production was almost entirely from the 1960s. Taylor's songs included "Stand By Me", "You Don't Own Me" and "Smell Him".
Except to acknowledge that he first learned about Buddy Holly's death on February 3, 1959—McLean was age 13—when he was folding newspapers for his paper route on the morning of February 4, 1959 (the line "February made me shiver/with every paper I'd deliver"), McLean has generally avoided responding to direct questions about the song's lyrics; he has said: "They're beyond analysis. They're poetry." He also stated in an editorial published in 2009, on the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, that writing the first verse of the song exorcised his long-running grief over Holly's death and that he considers the song to be "a big song ... that summed up the world known as America". McLean dedicated the "American Pie" album to Holly.
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The "New York Times" reviewer wrote of the Goodspeed Opera production of 2008: "If you’re going to make a stage musical out of a television show, 'Happy Days' is not a bad choice. All that cheerful white-bread 1950s innocence. All those instant audience associations with beloved characters and the actors who played them. The show won’t ever win a Pulitzer Prize (or the musical-comedy equivalent), but the Goodspeed Opera House’s bouncy new production delivers a pleasant if not transporting evening, and – most important – the Fonz (Joey Sorge) is cool" and "Michele Lynch's choreography is one of the show's real assets".
According to the show's official site, the "NY Daily News" wrote: "If you like GREASE you will LOVE Happy Days" – A powerhouse rock and roll trip down memory lane". However, TheatreMania.com panned the musical in 2007, calling it bland.
This song's writers, Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, had originally written this song for Little Anthony & The Imperials. (It had a very similar sound to that group's first hit, "Tears on My Pillow".) The pair took the song to George Goldner, The Imperials' producer, over at End Records, who, although having the group record and release the song as an End Records single, felt that it wasn't quite done the way they felt it should have been done. The Imperials' version didn't chart, so Sedaka took it and decided that he should record the song himself. "The Diary" was issued on Sedaka's 1959 first solo album "Rock with Sedaka" on RCA. It was reissued on his 1961 record "Neil Sedaka Sings Little Devil and His Other Hits", and again in 1963 on the album "Neil Sedaka Sings His Greatest Hits".
Kid Rock's 2008 song "All Summer Long" interpolates "Sweet Home Alabama" on the chorus and uses the guitar solo and piano outro, as well as the "turn it up" shout before the guitar solo; Billy Powell is featured on the track. "All Summer Long" also samples Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London", which has similar chord progression to "Sweet Home Alabama". Since Kid Rock's release, the original song has also charted at number 44 on the UK Singles Chart.
On April 19, 2011, "Happy Days" co-stars Erin Moran, Don Most, Marion Ross and Anson Williams, as well as the estate of Tom Bosley (who died in 2010), filed a $10 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS, which owns the show, claiming they had not been paid for merchandising revenues owed under their contracts. The cast members claimed they had not received revenues from show-related items, including comic books, T-shirts, scrapbooks, trading cards, games, lunch boxes, dolls, toy cars, magnets, greeting cards and DVDs where their images appear on the box covers. Under their contracts, they were supposed to be paid 5% of the net proceeds of merchandising if their sole image were used, and half that amount if they were in a group. CBS said it owed the actors $8,500 and $9,000 each, most of it from slot machine revenues, but the group said they were owed millions. The lawsuit was initiated after Ross was informed by a friend playing slots at a casino of a "Happy Days" machine on which players win the jackpot when five Marion Rosses are rolled.
After her breakthrough in early 1958 with her single "Who's Sorry Now?", a rock 'n' roll oriented version of the 1923 standard, and a subsequent album of the same title, Francis chose to take a more adult approach to her second album. For "The Exciting Connie Francis", she chose twelve American standards. Francis clearly marked the album as a concept album by dividing it into two sections with different moods: Side A is filled with songs differing between mid-tempo and up-tempo, while Side B consists solely of ballads.
"It's The Things You Do" was released in late 1998 in the U.S., only to receive a lukewarm reception. The group embarked upon a U.S. tour with the American boy band NSYNC, but soon after pulled out due to exhaustion, flying back to England to rest and start work on a new album. Still from the first album, "Got the Feelin'", "Everybody Get Up", and "Until the Time Is Through" were all released as singles in the UK throughout 1998. Five reached the top 5 in several countries around the world, and the latter two singles each rose to the number two spot in the UK. A significant element in Five's popularity was their resemblance to American boy bands such as New Kids on the Block, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC in their uptempo musical style and 'street' image, in contrast to Take That, Boyzone, and 98 Degrees, who at the time were primarily known for their ballads. Five also wrote or co-wrote almost all of their own songs, something boy bands had never done much of until then. According to Cowell, Five almost broke the US. Unfortunately they made some bad decisions. When Cowell heard "...Baby One More Time", he wanted Five to have it, but writer Max Martin had given it to Britney Spears thus broke up with Martin. Five were later offered "Bye Bye Bye", but upon hearing the song, they turned it down and dissed it. "Then they went out to Sweden a few weeks later to record a song which they famously turned down, called "Bye Bye Bye." And it really was bye bye bye after that. That would have been the record that broke them. I would have broken that band," Cowell said.
The series began as an unsold pilot starring Howard, Ross and Anson Williams, which aired in 1972 as a segment entitled "Love and the Television Set" (later retitled "Love and the Happy Days" for syndication) on ABC's anthology show "Love, American Style". Based on the pilot, director George Lucas cast Howard as the lead in his 1973 hit film "American Graffiti", causing ABC to take a renewed interest in the pilot. The first two seasons of "Happy Days" focused on the experiences and dilemmas of "innocent teenager" Richie Cunningham, his family, and his high school friends, attempting to "honestly depict a wistful look back at adolescence". Initially a moderate hit, the series' ratings began to fall during its second season, causing Marshall to retool it emphasizing broad comedy and spotlighting the previously minor character of Fonzie, a "cool" biker and high school dropout. Following these changes, "Happy Days" became the number-one program in television in 1976–1977, Fonzie became one of the most merchandised characters of the 1970s, and Henry Winkler became a major star. The series also spawned a number of spin-offs, including the hit shows "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork & Mindy".
"American Pie" is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released on the "American Pie" album in 1971, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 and also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the UK, the single reached number 2, where it stayed for 3 weeks, on its original 1971 release while a reissue in 1991 reached No. 12. The song was listed as the No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 1 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. McLean's combined version is the fourth longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100, at the time of release it was the longest, in addition to being the longest song to reach number one.
Lloyd Webber was asked to write a song for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and composed "Amigos Para Siempre — Friends for Life" with Don Black providing the lyrics. This song was performed by Sarah Brightman and José Carreras.
Lloyd Webber had toyed with the idea of writing a musical based on Billy Wilder's critically acclaimed movie, "Sunset Boulevard", since the early 1970s when he saw the film, but the project didn't come to fruition until after the completion of "Aspects of Love" when the composer finally managed to secure the rights from Paramount Pictures, The composer worked with two collaborators, as he had done on "Aspects of Love"; this time Christopher Hampton and Don Black shared equal credit for the book and lyrics. The show opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 12 July 1993, and ran for 1,529 performances. In spite of the show's popularity and extensive run in London's West End, it lost money due to the sheer expense of the production.
"American Pie" is McLean’s second album; his first, "Tapestry", having been released to only moderate commercial success and acclaim in 1970. McLean was a protégé of Pete Seeger, having played with him in the 1960s. The album "American Pie" was intended as a unified work, as McLean has said that he was influenced by the Beatles' "Sgt Pepper" album and envisioned "American Pie" to be a similar album. Believing that an artist's work should stand by itself, McLean generally did not offer explanations for his work's themes or meaning, though he did describe the title song as involving "a sense of loss". McLean dedicated the album to Buddy Holly, one of his childhood icons, and it was released in 1971. It has a melancholy feel and rather sparse arrangements. At the time of the writing McLean’s first marriage was failing and the optimism and hopefulness of the 1960s was giving way to the nihilism and hedonism of the 1970s.
Garry Marshall, creator and then part-time writer for "Happy Days", cast Marshall and Cindy Williams to guest on an episode of the show. The installment, titled "A Date with Fonzie", aired on November 11, 1975 and introduced the characters Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney (played by Marshall and Williams, respectively). In that episode, Laverne and Shirley were a pair of wisecracking brewery workers who were dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). The pair were such a hit with the studio audience that Garry Marshall decided to co-create and star them in a successful spinoff, "Laverne & Shirley" (1976–1983). The characters of Laverne and Shirley appeared in five more episodes of "Happy Days". In 1982 at the beginning of "Laverne & Shirley"s eighth season, Williams left the show due to her pregnancy. Marshall continued with the show, but it was canceled after the season's final episode aired in May 1983.
The theme that regularly accompanies each sequence was composed by Charles Albertine, Tommy Boyce, and Bobby Hart. The theme has only been modified a few times since "Days of Our Lives" premiered: in 1972; in 1993, when the opening titles were changed to computerized visuals (designed by Wayne Fitzgerald and Judy Loren); in 2004, with an orchestral arrangement that was only used in eight episodes, after which time the theme was reverted to the 1993 arrangement; and in 2009, when the theme was edited for time and shortened. Beginning with the November 8, 2010 episode, there were slight changes to the coloring of the sky background in the sequence now being displayed in widescreen. However, there was very little change in the sequence's appearance from the 1993 version.The show has had many high-profile fans. In 1976, "TIME" magazine reported that then-Justice of the Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall would call a recess around the 1 p.m. hour to watch "Days of Our Lives". Actress Julia Roberts admitted at the 2002 People's Choice Awards that she was a fan of "Days of Our Lives", asked to be seated near the cast, and upon winning her award stated, "I'm very nervous because the cast of "Days of Our Lives" is here." In 2004, during the show's Melaswen storyline, Roberts' interest was considered notable enough that "Entertainment Weekly" quoted her saying that "the show has gotten a little wacko." A 1998 "TIME" article mentioned that Monica Lewinsky was a passionate fan of "Days of Our Lives", so much so that she wrote a poem about the series in her high school yearbook. The article compared her whirlwind experiences in the White House to a story on "Days of Our Lives". Best-selling novelist Brian Keene has stated in interviews that he has watched the show since 1983, and pauses from writing each day during the hour it is on.
American Pie is the second studio album by the American singer-songwriter Don McLean, released by United Artists Records on 24 October 1971. The folk/rock album reached number one on the Billboard 200, containing the chart-topping singles "American Pie" and "Vincent." Recorded in May and June 1971 at The Record Plant in New York City, the LP is dedicated to Buddy Holly, and was reissued in 1980 minus the track "Sister Fatima". The album was released to much acclaim, later being included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
In terms of legacy and influence, "Oh Happy Day" has been performed by numerous artists of various persuasions and interests. Folk versions (accompaniment by acoustic guitar only) were performed by Don Howard, Mickey Baker, Dolph Dixon and Elvis Presley. Don Howard's version has been released on a recent CD compilation entitled "Songs That Inspired The King" in reference to Elvis Presley. Elvis is known to have performed "Oh Happy Day" during the dress rehearsal for his 1968 Comeback Show and at an August 5, 1976, concert at the Sahara in Las Vegas. He described the chord arrangement on "Oh Happy Day" as representative of early rock and roll, stating "Oh Happy Day" was similar to the songs "Blue Moon" and "Young Love" in this regard. See Elvis's voice over on the CD From Burbank to Vegas, recorded at the Burbank Studios, Hollywood, where the 1968 dress rehearsal for the 1968 Comeback Show took place. The arrangement of Lawrence Welk's "Oh Happy Day" has also been described as early rock and roll. A more traditional big band 1940s sound is heard in the rendition by Geraldo and His Orchestra (UK). Other versions demonstrate a jazz orientation or influence including those by Jimmy Giuffre, Dick Erickson and Ron Levin and Milt Levitt Orchestra. Other international versions were performed by The Johnston Brothers (#4 in the UK); Pilgrim With Rhythm Quartette (UK), Don Cameron (UK), Dave Carey (UK), Leo Heppe u.d. Continentals & Lutz Alberecht u.s. Orchester (Germany and sung in German); Mieke Telkamp (Germany) and Dick Todd (Canada). The Four Knights rendition has been described as early doo-wop rock and roll and several more explicitly doo-wop versions followed in the 1950s and 1960s by the Singing Belles, the Skylites, Dion, Rick Martell & the Angels, the Five Satins, and Stephanie & the Gothics. Dion's "Oh Happy Day", recorded in 1963, has been described as a stand-out doo-wop recording on his "Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings” album. Other artists that have recorded "Oh Happy Day" include Tab Hunter, the Four Lads, Homer & Jethro, Kamahl, Bill Buchanan, the Honey Dreamers and Don McPherson and the Hy-powers. Homer & Jethro's "Unhappy Day", a parody of "Oh Happy Day", stays faithful to the melody and brings forth a chuckle.
Moving away from her past rap sound from her 2014 EP "Opulence", the track is an electropop song that revolves around the pursuit of happiness and the struggles involved. Critical response to "Happy Days" was mixed; some music critics praised the sound while another criticized it alongside the other promotional singles for the album. Renata Raksha directed the song's music video, which features Candy portraying three characters based on parts of her psyche. The video received positive feedback from "Elle UK".
Season one used a newly recorded version of "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets (recorded in the fall of 1973) as the opening theme song. This recording was not commercially released at the time, although the original 1954 recording returned to the American Billboard charts in 1974 as a result of the song's use on the show. The "Happy Days" recording had its first commercial release in 2005 by the German label Hydra Records. (When "Happy Days" entered syndication in 1979, the series was retitled "Happy Days Again" and used an edited version of the 1954 recording instead of the 1973 version). In some prints intended for reruns and overseas broadcasts, the original "Rock Around the Clock" opening theme is replaced by the more standard "Happy Days" theme.
"Oh Happy Day" was one of the first pop hits whose momentum was driven by the high-school teen set. Described as a "garage hit," before the song was recorded, Don Howard Kaplow sang it accompanied by his guitar before his classmates at Cleveland Heights High School, in Cleveland, Ohio. At a Saturday high-school dance, the boys and girls called 13 times for "Oh Happy Day". This convinced Koplow to put the song on wax. Once it was played on the air, teenage fans besieged the disc jockey, Phil McLean of radio station WERE with requests that kept him spinning the song all week. Calls began coming in from nearby cities, and it was decided the record should go to market. A contract was signed in early November 1952 and "Oh Happy Day" went on sale. Upon release by a brand new record company (Triple A), 21,000 copies quickly sold around Cleveland. Then the record was leased to another label (Essex) for national distribution. By February 1953, it was pushing the half-million mark.