Jimmy Kennedy wrote or co-wrote more than 2,000 songs. He was a workhorse, producing novelties such as “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and hits for big-band leaders throughout the 1930s. Based in Northern Ireland, he often took foreign and forgotten melodies and presented them with new lyrics to British publishing houses. Kennedy was a musical grandfather to the hip-hop producer sampling from a vault of obscure vinyl.
One song was a unique challenge. Kennedy thought he could create a popular song from “Avant de Mourir”, written and recorded in 1926 by Romanian-born violinist Georges Boulanger. Translated as “Before I Die”, it was a maudlin instrumental piece for piano and violin, spanning two octaves and with a minor chord sequence. The song was designed for the small, attentive “salon” audiences of high society.
“I am not a trained musician and could not do the necessary major surgery to turn the music into something that would be commercial,” Kennedy later said. He enlisted instrumentalists at the Peter Maurice Music Company. They “cut the 12-bar main theme to eight with more understandable chords” and added a new middle and stronger finale.
Kennedy came up with the opening words, “When the twilight is gone and no songbirds are singing.” From there, he was stumped until his wife suggested the title “My Prayer” to match the music’s solemn depth. It became a lover’s lament: “My prayer is to linger with you at the end of the day, in a dream that's divine.”
In 1939, the song was rushed to American big-band leader Glenn Miller. His recording, done in a breezy foxtrot style, reached number two on the Billboard chart. That same year, vocal group The Ink Spotsrecorded a sparser version. High tenor Bill Kenny began the song and Hoppy Jones interceded with his trademark “talking bass” to deliver its plea, “My prayer is to linger with you…” In an improvement on Miller’s version, the Ink Spots had found the song’s humility. It reached number three.
Kennedy began service in the second world war and the song all but disappeared. In the 1950s, he moved to the US to continue his career as a songwriter and found a way to revive “My Prayer”, bigger and bolder.
Kennedy had a chance encounter with Buck Ram, manager of the doo-wop group The Platters, who had just produced two smash hits for Mercury in 1955, “Only You (And You Alone)” and “The Great Pretender”. Kennedy convinced Ram that their next single should be “My Prayer”.
Led by mighty tenor Tony Williams, The Platters’sound was more mournful than most fodder for 1950s radio, but their version of “My Prayer” was something else. Forgoing the instrumental intros of past versions, Williams dives into the first line and delivers it with the force of a Shakespeare soliloquy. The backing harmonies sound like downcast moans. When Williams floats into the lines about prayer, they seem like an actual appeal to the divine against a backdrop of despair. There is none of the romantic whimsy of the Glenn Miller or Ink Spots versions. The Platters had dug up the forlornness of “Avant de Mourir”.
There weren't many records in the charts that had the intensity of "My Prayer". Mercury did not want to release it, but executives learned that another group, The Four Aces, were recording the song, so it was released. The Platters’ version rose to number one on Billboard in August 1956, briefly interrupting Elvis Presley’s reign at the top.
No version has matched The Platters’ power or success, though many have recorded “My Prayer”. Its melodramatic flair made it an obvious choice for Roy Orbison. His take concludes his 1963 album In Dreams. Director David Lynch used The Platters’ version in two key moments in the 2017 revival of the TV series Twin Peaks. In the first, a flashback to 1956, a radio DJ plays “My Prayer” as his town is invaded by soot-faced ghouls. “When the twilight is gone” becomes a prelude to horror. The second is an uncomfortable sex scene between FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) and his secretary Diane (Laura Dern). Both have been through multiple dimensions and states of consciousness throughout the series. The ground is about to shift beneath them again, separating Cooper and Diane into different realms of the show’s mysterious cosmology. And his prayer was to linger with her at the end of the day, in a dream that’s divine.
Music credits: Alojado, Glenn Miller Music Records, Shami Media Group 3, Rare Jazz Music Ltd, RE Musik und Media
Picture credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images