Jimmy van Heusen (real name: Edward Chester Babcock) has always been my favorite non-Broadway composer. (Van Heusen's late-night escapades around Vegas and the California desert are legendary. Sammy Cahn once quipped that Sinatra wanted to be van Heusen, but he couldn't pass the physical.) Personality, co-written by van Heusen and lyricist/poet Johnny Burke, and introduced by Dorothy Lamour in one of the Hope/Crosby Road movies, proved a perfect vehicle for this parody. I recorded it in 1998 at the request of the then-fiancee of investment/derivatives guru Myron Scholes, who had been a professor of finance at the University of Chicago before he learned that Wall Street would actually pay him for being smart. If I remember correctly, her name was Francine. She'd seen an article about me in the New York Times in which I'd mentioned that I had recently written a song about the Black/Scholes option pricing model. I'm guessing it was probably the first song ever written about the Black/Scholes option pricing model, and I'm not expecting Britney to try copy-catting any time soon. Anyhow, Francine thought the song would make a nice wedding gift for a guy who had everything, including her. She asked me how much I'd want to record the song, and I threw out 0 as a number. She immediately agreed, and when I hung up the phone and told my wife what transpired, she said, "Are you nuts? You could have just as easily said five thousand and she wouldn't have batted an eyelash!" A few months later Scholes' hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, blew up in public view, but I'd bet he and Francine are still doing more than a bit of OK. I've posted my original performance at my HillarySong site (www.hillarysong.blogspot.com). Link is below.

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