Talk:Sally Go 'Round the Roses

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Okay ... so ... is this a song by Donna Gaines/Summer? Or a song by the Jaynetts? Are there two separate songs in this same article or did Donna Summer cover a song by the Jaynetts? NerwenGreen 06:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The original song was by the Jaynettes in 1963. Donna Summer recorded it in 1972 or so.

Who is/are the composer(s)?

Credited on this page as "Malouney/Parkinson", the Remo Four credit the writers as "Sanders/Stevens". [1] notes that the Jaynetts' record label was owned by a composer named Sanders. The mystery deepens! Weydonian (talk) 10:56, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The Malouney/Parkinson writing credit for "Sally..." is a misreading of the credits for the Donna Gaines/Summer version which featured the Malouney/Parkinson composition "So Said the Man" as its B-side. The correct songwriting credit for "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" is indisputably Zelma Sanders & Lona Stevens.--Cherrylimerickey (talk) 00:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the song was written by Zell Sanders, period, and all the sources I've looked at indicate this. According to our article the writing credit is shared with Lona Stevens, but her name may have been added just to ensure that any songwriting royalties were split with Spector (Stevens was Spector's wife). They used to do this back then; Elvis Presley was credited as writer on many songs he had no part in writing for just that reason. Maybe Lona Stevens did help, I don't know; but I haven't seen any indication of it, and everything I've read refers to "Zell Sanders' song" or "Sanders' song". However, I would guess that our default rule is that by "songwriters" we mean credited songwriters not actual songwriters (which is less accurate but much easier to document and much less subject to dispute and opinion). E.g. we follow the "songwriters: Lennon/McCartney" rubric for songs that only one of those lads ever touched, and so on. Herostratus (talk) 07:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Update, found an unreliable blog post which says that Stevens did help write the song, and only married Spector later. This attribution of the songwriting to Spector himself is an outlier and certainly wrong. Herostratus (talk) 07:29, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Lona Stevens passed away a month ago: according to her obit - viewable at http://www.tributes.com/obituary/read/Lona-Leonora-Cataldo-Kiser-103229992 - she and Abner Spector married in 1949. --Cherrylimerickey (talk) 22:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)