L E H A V R E 9 WWW.QUEENSCOURIER.COM | MAY 2015 | LEHAVRE COURIER 9 Rapp and Parker also received $5,000 to develop a score for a proposed musical based on the early history of Oregon, called “The Big O.” Unfortunately, Abe Burrows of Columbia Records regarded the western-style music as “old stuff,” putting the kibosh on Rapp’s shortlived Broadway career. Soon thereafter, Lerner and Loewe’s “Paint Your Wagon” debuted on the Great White Way with its “old stuff,” receiving a lackluster reception and closing after only 289 performances. But Rapp had his greatest musical payday collaborating with Jack Weiner and Jack Keller on a song, entitled “Forty-Nine Broken Hearts,” which appeared on Vietnam-war hero Barry Sadler’s second album, “The A Team.” Sadler’s first album, “Ballads of the Green Berets,” which featured the iconic song, “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” held the number one spot of Billboard’s Top 100 for five weeks in 1966. His follow-up, however, failed to reach such lofty heights and petered out at #30. Still, Rapp’s tune on the album proved his most lucrative financial windfall as a tunesmith, though its writing did experience a few bumps along the way. Originally, entitled “Forty-Seven Broken Hearts,” the title numeric refers to the penultimate number of states in the U.S. at the time, and how the 48th 48th th state, whence the narrator’ true love resides, represents the only one in which he has not left a “broken heart.” The tune had to be rewritten twice as first Hawaii, then Alaska, entered the union. “Forty-Eight was terrible; Forty-Nine, I could work with,” reveals Rapp. Interestingly, it was as Rapp was fiddling with lyrics to better fit his melodies that he discovered he was better at writing prose than commercial music, a realization which led to his writing career. He first caught the political bug during his years in Sinatra’s office, when the Chairman of the Board campaigned for John F. Kennedy. He returned to the political arena as a writer upon his departure. “The Sinatra years were very good to me,” Rapp professes. “But when you work for a man like Sinatra, you tend to believe that you’re a much more important person than you really are.” For many years thereafter, Rapp penned newsletters for several Democratic clubs and worked on political campaigns, including several years working in the offices of New York Assemblyman Mort Hillman in the 80s and 90s. For about three months during his time with Assemblyman Hillman, Rapp wrote a weekly column for the Queens Courier. He wrote his first novel, “Friends and Illusions,” in 2008. It, like “A Box of Sand,” is semi-autobiographical, a dramatization of six childhood friends and the different directions their lives took. As for the real-life counterpart to the titular box of Rapp’s latest book, not realizing the emotional significance it held for her son, Rapp’s mother threw it out many years ago. The author reveals it as one of the most upsetting moments in his life, the memory of which elicits teary eyes. But with “A Box of Sand,” the object and its significance will last for generations to come. N E W S M A Y Queens Borough President Melinda Katz and the erstwhile author Rapp with Queens Councilman Paul Vallone The author as a young man standing with his family far left behind his grandfather who is seated The author’s Grandfather and Grandmother, Sam and Eva Rapp meeting legendary music producer Quincy Jones while New York Assemblyman, for whom Rapp worked in the 80s and 90s, watches on
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