{"id":2203,"date":"2013-09-04T18:58:14","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T22:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christmasclassics.com\/christmasmusic\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2013-09-10T14:06:55","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T18:06:55","slug":"christmas-classics-person-of-the-day-gloria-shayne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christmasclassics.com\/christmasmusic\/christmas-classics-person-of-the-day-gloria-shayne","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: Gloria Shayne"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this day ninety years ago, Gloria Adele Shain was born of a Jewish family in Brookline, Massachusetts. She changed her name to Gloria Shayne early in her professional career as a pianist and composer. In the 1940s she moved to New York,and it was there where she made her mark.<\/p>\n

In the world of Christmas music she is famed for composing Do You Hear What I Hear? <\/i><\/strong><\/span>in collaboration with her husband Noel Regney, a Frenchman.<\/p>\n

The Shayne and Regney union was a story of romance. They met in the early 1950\u2019s when the Frenchman came to the Beverly Hotel in New York, now known as the Benjamin Hotel, where Shayne was playing the piano. Both were duly smitten on their chance meeting and a month later the two lovers were married.<\/p>\n

Do You Hear What I Hear?<\/strong><\/span>,<\/i> although often taken for a Christmas carol, was actually composed by the husband and wife team as a hymn of peace, one borne out of a sense of desperation and fear of war because of the looming Cuban Missile Crisis. Both composers had not forgotten about the horrors of war. During the World War II years Shayne worked for the Jewish Welfare organization at a time when millions of Jews were being slaughtered by the Nazis. Regney, trained as a classical composer, witnessed its terror first hand when he was conscripted by the German Army, even though he was a Frenchman, but soon deserted it to join the French Resistance.<\/p>\n

Shayne and Regney were especially fond of the phrase “Pray for peace, people everywhere!”<\/em><\/strong> in the carol\u2019s last stanza because it emphasized the rationale for the song. Somehow their hymn of peace became part of the Christmas carol repertoire, perhaps because of Regney\u2019s lyrical imagery of lamb, shepherd boy, and the Child Jesus sleeping that could easily be associated with the Nativity scene.<\/p>\n

Shayne and Regney collaborated on a number of famous songs, including Rain, Rain Go Away <\/i><\/strong><\/span>first performed by Bobby Vinton and Sweet Little Darlin\u2019<\/i><\/strong><\/span> first performed by Jo Stafford. But she also enjoyed success on her own, including writing the music and lyrics for Goodbye, Cruel World<\/i><\/strong><\/span>, recorded by James Darren, and co-writing The Men in My Little Girls\u2019 Life<\/span><\/i><\/strong>, performed by Mike Douglas, and Almost There<\/i><\/strong> <\/span>that was first sung by Andy Williams.<\/p>\n

Gloria Shayne divorced Noel Regney in 1973. She remarried, and in 2008 she died at home in Stamford, Connecticut of lung cancer. She will be most remembered here for her contributions to Do You Hear What I Hear?<\/strong><\/span>, <\/i>a song of peace that eventually spawned a lovely Christmas carol.<\/p>\n

\"Gloria<\/a>

Gloria Shayne<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n