April 30, 2011 - Les Crane - "Desiderata"

 
(This one of the many hit records that veteran record promoter Don Graham worked on. Despite serious efforts, we were unable to locate a live performance by Les Crane, who passed away in 2008. Below is the song with some imagery.)

Desiderata (Latin: "desired things", plural of desideratum) is a 1927 prose poem by American writer Max Ehrmann (1872-1945). It exhorts the reader to "be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be", and to "keep peace with your soul". "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams," wrote Ehrmann, "it is still a beautiful world." The text, largely unknown in the author's lifetime, came to the attention of the public first for its usage in a church hymnal which dated it, mistakenly, to the 17th century, then for its being found on the bedside table of Adlai Stevenson upon his death in 1965, and then Les Crane's spoken-word recording in 1971 and 1972. The poem was actually written in 1927.  In approximately 1959, the Reverend Frederick Kates, rector of Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of devotional materials he compiled for his congregation. At the top of the handout was the notation: "Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692." In the 1960s, the poem was widely circulated with the claim that it had been found in Baltimore, Maryland's Saint Paul's Church, and that it had been written by an anonymous author in 1692, the year of the founding of Saint Paul's.  When Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found a copy of Desiderata near his bedside and discovered that Stevenson had planned to use it in his Christmas cards.  The publicity that followed lent widespread fame to the poem, and to the poem's connection with Saint Paul's Church of Baltimore. In late 1971 and early 1972, Les Crane's spoken-word recording of Desiderata was a major hit in the United States and Great Britain, peaking at #8 on the Billboard charts and #6 on the Melody Maker such. The makers of the record assumed, as had many others, that the poem was very old and in the public domain, but publicity surrounding the record led to clarification of Ehrmann's authorship, and his family eventually received royalties. In August 1971, the poem was published in Success Unlimited magazine, again without authorization from Ehrmann's family. This led to a lawsuit against the magazine's publisher, Combined Registry Company. In 1976, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the copyright for the poem had been forfeited due to the poem's authorized publication in the 1940s without a copyright notice. Thus the court ruled that the poem is, in fact, in the public domain.  "Desiderata" - Les Crane"