Category: Tunes

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Music Tunes

Harry & Joe

The amazing Gary Burr did this demo. We were fortunate to have country legend Don Williams record it. I wrote it about my dad, Joe Handler, and his close Florida friend, Harry Gordon. It’s completely true, didn’t have to make up a word. When I was finished with the three verses, my good friend, Andy Gundell, said, “…think it needs a chorus.” So we wrote one together, and that’s history.
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Music Tunes

Harry & Joe

(Don Williams Cut)

Written by Len Handler & A.J. Gundell. This is the Don Williams recording.
Joe Handler, Basking Ridge,NJ, c1950
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Music Tunes

A Few New Tricks to Learn

Written by Len Handler & George Wurzbach;

It’s not often that you get to share a compilation with Carly Simon, Livingston Taylor, and Natalie Merchant, plus a dozen other amazingly talented writers. Yet here it is.
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Music Tunes

Seven Days In My Heart

Written by Len Handler & Kim Oler

Piano/Vocal by Kim Oler; I wrote this about being a single parent. Even as life changes and evolves, it is as true today as it was forty years ago.
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Music Tunes

Mickey Mantle

Written by Len Handler & A.J. Gundell: Performed by The Helium Bros.

I used to walk the railroad tracks between Westwood and Hillsdale, N.J. It was a straight line between the two towns – the only tough part was the railroad bridge by the Banana Factory. In July and August, the trip was usually punctuated by the smell of tar and creosote from the tracks. And by the sounds of cars being worked on in the garages along Broadway that paralleled the tracks. And the blare of baseball over the service station radios.

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Music Tunes

Meteor

Written by Len Handler & Kevin Briody;

Performed by Brad Blackwell;
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Music Tunes

Bridges

(Nashville Demo) Russ Zavitson encouraged lyric changes on this tune, then signed it to Polygram Music in Nashville. He was never able to get a cut on it, but not from lack of trying. I still think it’s one of the simplest, most straightforward tunes I’ve written.
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Music Tunes

One Hundred Dollars

Written by Len Handler & Kim Oler;

Performed by Kim Oler; A tune about the journey taken by a $100 bill, and how it affects the lives of the souls it encounters.
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Music Tunes

The Favor

Written by Len Handler & Kevin Briody

Vocal by Kevin Briody; Guitar, Len Handler

This is another tune that is absolutely true. I recorded my Mom, Evelyn Handler, playing piano for her 65th Birthday. It seemed like such a milestone then, but here I am older now than she was then. Kevin Briody did some wonderful co-writing on the lyric.

Evelyn Lasky Handler, in front of Lasky Co., Newark, NJ, c1940
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Music Tunes

I Never Loved Her (and I Always Will)

Written by Len Handler & A.J. Gundell

(Nashville Demo). Ya gotta have a swing tune on your reel! This is mine.