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Over the past few weeks, I’ve covered the songbooks of British composers Roger Greenaway and Roger Cooke, Tony Macaulay and John Macleod, Les Reed and Barry Mason, and the American team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter.

Now it’s time to cover one of the great American masters, Jimmy Webb, composer of the incomparable “Up, Up and Away” and other classics. This is The Jimmy Webb Songbook: Part 1, the Sixties.

Webb’s father was about to move back to Oklahoma from Southern California after the death of Webb’s mother, but 19 year old Jimmy decided to stay in Los Angeles to pursue song writing.

His first successful sale came in 1965 with an imitation Motown song for a local label. The song got a little air play but went nowhere. What is interesting about this song is that once you get past the doo-wop opening, the melody for the verses is not bad. At 1:24 the middle eight shows some promise, and when the third verse comes in, it almost comes together. It’s a good first try.

The Contessas: “I Keep on Keepin’ On”