#241: Gloria’s Theme by Adam Wade

City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CJAD
Peak Month: December 1960
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #9
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #49
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #74
YouTube: “Gloria’s Theme”
Lyrics: “Gloria’s Theme”

Patrick Henry “Adam” Wade was born in 1935 in Pittsburgh (PA). After high school he worked as a lab assistant with Dr. Jonas Salk on a polio research team. Wade began to pursue a recording career, signing with Coed Records in 1959. His first single release was “Tell Her for Me” which climbed to #66 on the Billboard Hot 100. His debut album, And Then Came Adam, was released late that year. The liner notes exclaim:
From the world of science to the glittering world of entertainment, from test tubes to records, from guinea-pigs to real live audiences – this is the unorthodox and exciting saga of Adam Wade thus far. Although he has been a member of the entertainment fraternity for no more than a few months, his achievements in such a short space of time have given us an indiction that Adam is a talent to be reckoned with – one who will be a leading personality in popular music for many years to come. 

In early 1960, Adam Wade had his first hit in early 1960 with the song “Ruby”, a cover of a song from a film in 1953. The single cracked the Top 60 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #58. A third release, “I Can’t Help It”, was another minor hit which climbed to #64 on the Hot 100 in 1960.

Adam Wade recorded songs with lush arrangements. His hero was Nat “King” Cole, and Adam Wade’s treatment of his material reminded listeners of both Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis.

In the fall of 1960, Adam Wade’s second album, Adam and Evening, featured the debut single “Gloria’s Theme”. 

“Gloria’s Theme” was cowritten by Bronisław Kaper and Mack David. In 1902, Bronislaw Kaper was born in Warsaw into an Ashkenazi Jewish family. He began playing the piano at the age of six, and later studied composition and piano at the Warsaw Conservatory. After university, he moved to Berlin and was involved in cabaret and theatre. In Berlin, in the late 1920s, Kaper met another young composer, the Austrian Walter Jurmann. The two worked as a team, first in Berlin and then, after the Nazis took power in Germany, in Paris. The emergence of sound film created a major market for their talents. In Paris, they composed music for films directed by persons who had fled the rise of Nazism and consequent persecution of Jews and other minorities.

In 1935, upon being offered a seven-year contract with MGM by studio head Louis B. Mayer, Kaper and Jurmann emigrated to the United States. One of their first Hollywood films was the Marx Brothers comedy A Night at the Opera (1935), for which they composed the song “Cosi-Cosa”. Kaper and Jurmann also co-wrote the for the 1936 film San Francisco. They worked again with the Marx Brothers on their follow-up film, A Day at the Races (1937).

Bronislaw Kaper

Bronislaw scored music for many more films. These include Above Suspicion (1943) starring Joan Crawford and Fred McMurray, Gaslight starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman (1944), The Stranger starring Orson Wells, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young (1946), The Great Sinner starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, Butterfield 8 starring Elizabeth Taylor (1960), and Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando (1962). In total, Kaper scored music for a dozen German films up to 1933; Two French films; And 33 Hollywood films. His later work included scoring for the TV show The F.B.I. from 1965 to 1974.

His sole musical theater venture in New York was 1946’s Polonaise, for which he both adapted music by Chopin, and composed many numbers himself. In 1947, Kaper scored the MGM film Green Dolphin Street, whose title song “On Green Dolphin Street” is perhaps Kaper’s most enduring and popular composition. It has since become a jazz standard. Kaper also composed “Invitation” for director George Cukor’s melodrama A Life of Her Own. But it was not until its use as the theme song for the 1952 film Invitation that the song became popular. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for Lili in 1953. Bronislaw Kaper died at the age of 81 in 1983.

Mack David was born in 1912 to a Jewish family in New York City. He planned a career in law, but switched to songwriting as he tunes got attention. In 1935, Mack David had a Top 20 hit with “Quicker Than You Can Say Jack Robinson” for Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. In 1939, “Sixty Seconds Got Together” was a Top Ten hit for the Mills Brothers. That same year Glenn Miller had a number-one hit with Mack David’s “Moon Love” (which was also at Top Ten hit for several other recording artists).

Mack David

Mack David’s other notable songs that went on to become hits include “On The Isle of May” (#3 for Connie Boswell in 1940), “The Singing Hills” (#2 for Bing Crosby in 1940), “Take Me” (#5 for Jimmy Dorsey in 1942), “Johnny Zero” (#7 for the Songs Spinners in 1943), “It’s Love-Love-Love Baby” (#1 in 1944 for Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians), “Candy” (a number-one hit for Johnny Mercer and Jo Stafford in 1945), “Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba” (number-one for Perry Como in 1946 – cowritten with Jerry Livingston), “Sunflower” (#5 for Russ Morgan in 1949), “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” (a Top 2o hit for both the Fontane Sisters and Jo Stafford in 1950), “I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine” (a #8 hit for Patti Page in 1950), “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” (a number-one hit for Perez Prado in 1955), “Bimbombey” (#11 for Jimmy Rodgers in 1958), “Young Emotions” (#12 for Ricky Nelson in 1960 – cowritten with Jerry Livingston), “Baby It’s You” (#8 in 1961 for The Shirelles, and #5 for Smith in 1969), “Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte” (#8 in 1965 for Patti Page), and “It Must Be Him” (#3 in 1967 for Vicki Carr). In 1950, he also wrote (with Jerry Livingston) the theme song to the cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost (which was featured in individual cartoon episodes before it got its own TV show beginning in 1959).

David’s most remunerative song was “Sunflower” recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1948. Jerry Herman used four bars from the song for his theme song in the hit musical Hello Dolly! When David sued Herman for copyright infringement, he won $250,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Mack David died on New Year’s Day in 1994 at the age of 81.

“Gloria’s Theme” concerns an elusive woman named Gloria. She is like a) a kiss in the night, b) one brief caress, and c) a star in its flight, d) a taste of champagne, e) sparking and gay, f) so free to surrender. Yet, Gloria is also someone “you can’t possess.” And “all she holds is a shadow.” Gloria’s fate is that she was “born to be loved and betrayed.”

“Gloria’s Theme” reached #9 in Montreal, #31 in Denver, and #36 in Springfield (MA). It stalled at #74 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1961, Adam Wade reached the zenith of his musical career. “Take Good Care Of Her” climbed to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #20 on the R&B chart. The followup, “The Writing on the Wall” reached #5 on the Hot 100 and match the previous ranking at #20 on the R&B chart. A third single, “As If I Didn’t Know”, became his third Top Ten pop hit when it peaked at #10, and at #16 on the R&B chart.

Just as quickly as Adam Wade had developed a following, interest in his material waned. He released 23 more singles between 1961 and 1968. Only two of these cracked the Billboard Hot 100. “Tonight I Won’t Be There” peaked at #61 on the Hot 100, and #14 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the USA. And in 1965, Adam Wade’s cover of Sonny Til and the Orioles number-one R&B hit “Crying In The Chapel” was a minor hit.

In the early 1970s, Adam Wade found work as an actor in the Blaxploitation genre. This included Shaft and Gordon’s War. By the end of the decade, he had steady work on episodic television series, including Kojak, Good Times, and Police Woman. In between he became the first African-American to host a a game show. Musical Chairs debuted on CBS in 1975. Though the TV show only ran from mid-June to October 1975, Adam Wade enjoyed presenting musical guests on the show. These included the Tokens, Irene Cara, the Spinners, Larry Kurt (from the Broadway musical West Side Story), 1940s and ’50s pop standard singer Margaret Whiting, the New Christy Minstrels, and Sister Sledge.

Into the 1980s, Wade co-established with his wife, Jeree, Songbirds Unlimited, a company that put on musical theater productions. In his final years Adam Wade battled Parkinson’s disease. He died at the age of 87 in 2022.

March 9, 2026
Ray McGinnis

References:
“Mack David, 81, A Composer and Lyricist,” New York Times, January 1, 1994.
“Noted Hollywood composer Bronislaw Kaper, whose best-known songs included,…,” UPI, April 1983.
Leslie Caron, “Hi Lili Hi Lo“, Lili, MGM, 1953.
Peter Tonguette, “Adam Wade, 1935-2022,” Washington Examiner, July 15, 2022.

CJAD 800-AM Montreal (PQ) | December 31, 1960