I have to start by saying this is in the top 10 of my all-time favorite songs. For me, this is a “deserted island” song. You know, if you were stranded on a deserted island, what music would like to have with you. I love this song.

Harry Edward Nilsson III was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, but his family moved to the Los Angeles, California area in the mid-Fifties. Harry graduated from high school in California and went on to get a normal job just like any other teenager. Except that he wasn’t your normal teenager. He liked to write songs and soon found that he was pretty good at it.

He started writing songs in the early Sixties and submitted them to record companies hoping they would get picked up and recorded. The first song Harry sold was called “Travelin’ Man” (not the Rick Nelson song) and he sold it to Randy Sparks who was the lead singer of The New Christy Minstrels. He sold it for $5. After that he got noticed by Phil Spector who bought two of his songs for the girl group The Ronettes and for the Modern Folk Quartet. Harry was a songwriter most of his life, but in 1967, he decided to try singing the songs which he wrote. He may have been taking after Neil Diamond in this, because Neil was a writer first and a singer second.

The songs he wrote during the Sixties were recorded by some of the biggest names around. The Monkees recorded “Cuddly Toy” for their album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. The song didn’t chart but it did get him noticed. He also wrote the number five hit “One” for Three Dog Night. By now, Harry was recording his own work and had dropped the Harry from his name and was being known just as Nilsson.

In 1968, a strange thing happened. The members of the Beatles were each asked who their favorite American performer was and both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, independently said “Nilsson.” And Harry had only one album out at the time and had not yet hit the charts with any song. Harry remained friends with the members of the Beatles for many years. He and Ringo still talked right up until Harry’s death.

The song that put Nilsson on the map was, oddly enough, not written by him. “Everybody’s Talking” hit number six in 1969. The song was written by Fred Neil and Neil had recorded it himself, but nothing had happened. Then Harry Nilsson’s version was used in the movie Midnight Cowboy and, suddenly, the song was a hit.

After a couple weaker songs which peaked in the thirties, Nilsson got his big hit, “Without You.” This song also was not written by Harry. It was written by two of the members of the rock group Badfinger and recorded by the group. Harry first heard the song at a party and, mistakenly assumed that it was the Beatles who were singing. When he found out it was Badfinger, he decided to record it himself. Nilsson’s version is quite different from that of Badfinger. Listen to them back to back and it’s not hard to pick the best version.

“Without You” entered the American pop charts on January 15, 1972 and stayed at number one for four weeks. It also spent five weeks on the top of the Adult Contemporary Chart and five weeks at the top of the British pop chart. Billboard ranked it as number four in popularity for the entire year of 1972. It was Harry Nilsson’s only number one song. He only had four more Top 40 hits, the last being “Daybreak” which hit number 39 in 1974.

Harry Nilsson suffered a massive heart attack on February 14, 1993. He then died of heart failure on January 15, 1994. He was fifty-two years old.