Here is a fascinating story about a song that I know pretty well and have long admired for it’s beauty but admittedly I knew very little about it’s origin. ‘The Rose’ was made famous by Bette Midler when she recorded it for the soundtrack of the 1979 movie ‘The Rose’. But the story began a couple of years earlier when Amanda McBroom wrote it and performed it in clubs. She was an aspiring singer/songwriter/actress and her manager had suggested that she write some ‘Bob Seger style songs’ to speed up the likelihood that she might catch a big break. She wrote this piece of poetry in 45 minutes but fretted because “the song had no bridge or hook”. When Bette Midler was looking for submissions for the movie she was working on, McBroom submitted ‘The Rose’ but thought nothing of it. Apparently 30,000 songs were sent to soundtrack producer, Paul Rothchild (some of you may remember him as The Doors Producer) and he whittled the list down to thirty songs for Midler, who chose seven; and ‘The Rose’ was among the group. It became the song for the closing credits of the movie. It was also released as the second single from ‘The Rose’ Soundtrack album. It became a chart topping hit and helped Bette Midler win a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance over Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. The underdog story does not stop there though. It was on a short list for an Oscar Nomination for Best Original Song but there was a minor technicality. In order for a song to qualify it has to have been written exclusively for the movie. When McBroom was asked she had to answer honestly that she was trying to be the female Bob Seger and the song was written long before knowledge of the movie existed. Truth prevailed and her integrity is still well intact.

Interestingly, there are actually two mixes of the Midler version of ‘The Rose’. One has full orchestration, while the film version does away with the orchestration in favour of an extended piano introduction and focuses on piano and vocals only. McBroom actually sings backing vocals on the Midler song.

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So…here is Amanda McBroom with her original composition. I chose this video so you can read the lyrics and sing along. Like I said; it is beautiful. It needed no bridge and it needed no hook.

It is not necessary for me to say that Bette Midler does an amazing rendition of this song. That is obvious. It is the source of the inspiration that really speaks to me. The movie ‘The Rose’ was loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin. It told the story of a self destructive 60’s female rock star. The movie was to be called ‘Pearl’ (Joplin’s nickname and the title of her last album) but in the end Joplin’s family denied the Producer the rights to her story. One wonders if ‘The Rose’ would have been selected among Midler’s seven songs if the movie was to have gone through with the original intention to be specifically a Joplin bio pic and been called ‘Pearl’? Anyway, here is Bette Midler’s version. So sad!

The road to song selection for Ted Tock’s Covers is sometimes obvious and other times there are twists and turns. When researching significant milestones for June 5th I learned that country music legend Conway Twitty died on this day in 1993 of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Now Conway Twitty is a country music legend; the high priest of country. He was a major influence on many, including Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. I also remembered a story by Ronnie Hawkins where ‘The Hawk’ credits Twitty as the reason he came to Canada. Conway Twitty told Hawkins that Canada was ‘the promised land’ for musicians. The rest was history there, but still no connection to ‘The Rose’ right? Well as I read on I learned that the great Conway Twitty (born Harold Lloyd Jenkins) recorded a cover version of ‘The Rose’ in 1983. Here it is. All tied up with one big bow and delivered with… a rose.

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