Written by: Alex North, Hy Zaret
First performed by: Todd Duncan, 1955
Since tonight is Halloween, I'm treating readers to a great American song in honor of Ghost. All we need to hear is that first "Oh, my love, my darling," and we are transported back twenty years, when Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore made pottery erotic.
But "Unchained Melody" was letting loose long before 1990. Alex North, film composer for A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was urged to write a song into his score for Unchained, a 1955 prison movie. (Now you understand the title, in all its creativity.) He teamed up with Hy Zaret, who was rumored to have written the lyrics for a girl when he was sixteen. Listen to how Todd Duncan (original star of the opera Porgy and Bess) croons it in his quasi-operatic fashion:
As expected, pottery wheels weren't spinning yet. The singer (a prison inmate) pined for freedom, not for sex: "I've hungered for your touch / A long, lonely time. / And time goes by so slowly / And time can do so much." Motown knew how to translate Alex North's jazz-flavored melody into a "Melody" that topped the R&B charts. Both Al Hibbler and Roy Hamilton (both videos linked) recorded North's ballad, now expanded to a full-length hit with busily swooping strings.
Still, Moore and Swayze might have spun urns in silence if not for The Righteous Brothers. Their 1965 cover has prevailed as the radio go-to, even if it owes a debt to Roy Hamilton's tremulous vocals. Bobby Hatfield, one of two Righteous Brothers, sang solo on the track, pouring out melismas and caressing every vowel. He even re-recorded the ballad after its recurrence in Ghost, insisting his falsetto had endured over time. It was strong to start with; listen to this live performance, which ends on a high G:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhll_xIerUA_C1qVJ1yQyeQRjMHQKvTLUhvzew7s5JQSG12j29nUG2uxa97LClNsd5uB39YPZAjGKDtgBVSpq_pQqm_PGa_V2fjupUQsBxBQXgdV9zKFK_YV_4JI6RGSVQ_ilEtL1pGkOk/s200/41KBV908D2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
Though you might lose it looking at the album cover.