#10: I Don’t Care Only Love Me by Steve Lawrence

City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: June 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #55
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #62
YouTube: “(I Don’t Care) Only Love Me”
Lyrics: “(I Don’t Care) Only Love Me”

Sidney Liebowitz was born in 1935 to Jewish parents in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. His father, Max, was a cantor at the Brooklyn synagogue Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav, and his mother, Helen, was a homemaker. During high school, Lawrence skipped school to spend time at the Brill Building in the hopes of being employed as a singer. In 1952 at the age of 16, Lawrence signed a contract with King Records after winning a talent contest on Arthur Godfrey’s CBS TV show. That year he had a #21 hit single credited to Steve Lawrence on the Billboard pop chart titled “Poinciana”. The next year, talk show host Steve Allen hired Lawrence to be one of the singers on Allen’s local New York City late night show on WNBC-TV, with vocalists Eydie Gormé and Andy Williams. The show was chosen by NBC to be seen on the national network, becoming The Tonight Show, and Lawrence, Gormé, and Williams stayed until the program’s end in 1957. Lawrence credited the exposure and experience he gained on Allen’s show for launching his career “I think Steve Allen was the biggest thing that happened to me. Every night I was called upon to do something different. In its own way, it was better than vaudeville.”

He also appeared as a guest on The Jonathan Winters Show, The Julius LaRosa Show, The Russ Morgan Show, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, The Patti Page Oldsmobile Show, and The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom. In the late 1950s, Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as the official vocal soloist with the United States Army Band “Pershing Own” in Washington, D.C. In 1957, Lawrence covered Harry Belafonte’s “The Banana Boat Song” (Day-O) which reached #18. His cover of Buddy Knox’s number-one song “Party Doll”, reached #5. In the summer of 1958, he co-hosted The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gormé Show.

He released eleven more singles after “Party Doll”, each failing to crack the Top 40 nationally in the USA. Among these were “(I Don’t Care) Only Love Me”.

“(I Don’t Care) Only Love Me” was written by singer Roberta Corti (1936 to 2004), Italian author and lyricist “Pinchi” (born Giuseppe Perotti in 1900 in Arena Po, Italy and died Milano, 1971), and Virgilio Panzuti (1919-1994). Pinchi had over forty recordings between 1935 and 1970. Corti went by the stage name Betty Curtis beginning in 1957. She had her first Top Ten hit in Italy in 1958 with “Con tutto il cuore” (With All My Heart). Her 1961 recording of “Al di là” was one of her biggest hit records. Between 1958 and 1978, she had over thirty Top Ten hits in Italy. Curtis’s Italian version of “Chariot” (I Will Follow Him) was used in the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film Goodfellas. She died in 2006 at the age of 70.

The original Italian title for the song was “Dalla Strada Alle Stelle”. It was subsequently translated and recorded in French, Finnish, Danish, German, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The song asks not so much for parity of love between the lovers, only that the object of the singers affection promise to love them back. In fact, “I don’t care what you think of me. Just think of me.” Just knowing they are in the thoughts of the beloved will be enough. In return, the singer promises to “do my best to make it more and more.” After all, “Rome was not built in a day, it’s true. And romance works the same way too.” The phrase, “Rome was not built in a day,” comes from the French Rome ne fut pas faite toute en un jour, from the collection Li Proverbe au Vilain, published around 1190. Queen Elizabeth I referred to the idea in Latin in an address at Cambridge in 1563. The idea being that time is needed to create great things.

“(I Don’t Care) Only Love Me” peaked at #1 in Hull (QC), #7 in Arlington (VA), and #15 in Boston. Buddy Grecco also recorded the song with the title “Only Love Me” in 1960.

In late ’59, Lawrence released “Pretty Blue Eyes”. The single was more in the pop style of other teen pop stars, and reached #4 in Canada, #7 in Australia and #9 in the USA. His next release, “Footsteps”, was a #7 hit in the USA, #9 in Norway, and #16 in the Netherlands. In 1961, Steve Lawrence had a #1 hit in the Philippines with “Portrait Of My Love”. The song peaked at #7 in Australia and #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Lawrence earned a Grammy Award nomination for the song in the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance category. In early 1963, “Go Away Little Girl” was a number-one hit in both New Zealand and the USA.

After “Go Away Little Girl”, Lawrence released over thirty more singles until 1984. However, only two of these cracked the Top 40. He was swept away by the combination of the Surf Sound, Motown and the British Invasion. Though there were occasional hits on the pop charts that were also “adult contemporary”, like “Since I Fell For You” by Lenny Welch, Steve Lawrence held little appeal for the emerging teen audience.

Nonetheless, with his wife Eydie Gormé, Steve Lawrence kept selling out live shows at dinner clubs and on the variety TV show circuit. In 1964, Lawrence was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance as Sammy Glick in What Makes Sammy Run? at the 54th Street Theater on Broadway. A year later, he hosted 13 episodes of The Steve Lawrence Show. In the 1970s, he was a semi-regular on The Carol Burnett Show, appearing on 26 episodes.

With Gormé, the pair won the 1979 Emmy for an Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Program for Steve & Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin. The pair appeared regularly on What’s My Line?, I’ve Got a Secret and Password All-Stars, to name just a few.

They were a staple in Las Vegas, headlining Caesars Palace, the Sands, the Sahara and the Desert Inn, etc., and the Las Vegas Entertainment Awards honored them four times as Musical Variety Act of the Year. In 1981, Lawrence realized a lifelong dream when he and his wife performed a series of sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall.

“They are both confident, full-throated singers who show the kind of assured stage presence that can come from years of playing to Las Vegas audiences,” John S. Wilson wrote in his review for The New York Times. “Mr. Lawrence, like so many singers who work in that milieu, uses singing mannerisms that owe a great deal to Frank Sinatra…”

Steve Lawrence was also in film, playing the character Maury Sline in The Blues Brothers (1980), and again in Blues Brothers 2000 (1998). He also was a guest on many TV shows, including Frazier, The Dean Martin Show, Sanford and Son, Murder She Wrote, Hardcastle and McCormick, Here’s Lucy, The Ed Sullivan Show, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 13 episodes of The Garry Moore Show, 9 episodes of The Mere Griffin Show, The Joan Rivers Show, Th Judy Garland Show, The Pearl Bailey Show, The Bob Hope Show, 52 episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and more.

Over his career, Steve Lawrence released nearly 70 studio albums. In March 2024, Steve Lawrence died at the age of 88.

November 1, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Chris Koseluk, “Steve Lawrence, Grammy-Winning Pop Stylist and Actor, Dies at 88,” Hollywood Reporter, March 7, 2024.
John S. Wilson, “Pop: Steve and Eydie at Carnegie,” New York Times, June 16, 1981.
“Betty Curtis,” Wikipedia.org.
“Pinchi,” Italian Wikipedia.org.

CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top Ten | June 20, 1959