George David Weiss

He was the American Songwriter. That was his life. That's all George, who died Aug. 23 at 89, wanted to do. We were walking down Broadway many years ago, and I was humming something, and he said to me, "Why are you singing that? We didn't write that!" He was immersed in writing songs. There were three of us in a team--Hugo Peretti, myself and George. We'd get in a room and start batting around ideas, and by the time we finished, I couldn't tell you who wrote what.

Elvis' publishers asked us to write a song because they thought we had a feel for the type of scene they were doing in Blue Hawaii. Elvis' character had come back from Europe, and he had a music box, and he sang this song along with it. So we wrote "Can't Help Falling in Love" tailor-made to that tune. And Elvis liked it right away.

Bob Thiele, a producer at another label, asked him to write a song for Louis Armstrong, and one day George asked if I'd mind if he did that. I said, "No, that's what you do. You're a songwriter." So he went away and co-wrote a song called "What a Wonderful World."

George--who played several instruments and served as the president of the Songwriters Guild of America for nearly 20 years--was extremely talented. He did whatever was necessary to write songs. And the world is more wonderful for it.

Creatore's new off-Broadway play is An Error of the Moon