Although Saroyan didn’t play any instruments (other than noodling on a harmonica), he was a music lover, played his pianola, and surrounded himself with musician friends, including Artie Shaw, Alan Hovhaness, and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian. Collaborating with professional composers, Saroyan wrote the lyrics to many songs, including “Come On-A My House” made popular by Rosemary Clooney in 1951. Later, the song was covered by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Kay Starr, and Chiemi Eri. Della Reese also recorded the song, and it is her version that Madonna mimes to in the remake of Swept Away. Many have offered an untraditional twist, such as Mickey Katz singing in Yiddish and Eartha Kitt performing a Japanese rendition. The composers themselves performed it – Bagdasarian singing, Saroyan offering occasional narration – for Coral Records. Other songs by Saroyan include: Oh! Beauty! - Words and music by Ross Bagdasarian and William Saroyan, Recorded by Jack Smith, 1951 A Little Closer Please -Lyrics by William Saroyan, Music by Paul Bowles, Recorded by William Sharp and Steven Blier, 1989 Eat, Eat, Eat! - Words and music by William Saroyan. Recorded by Danny Kaye in 1951 Too Many People - Words and music by William Saroyan. This song was included in the play Sam the Highest Jumper of Them All. Girakgi Picnic -Lyrics by William Saroyan, Music by Alan Hovhaness, 1941. Recorded in 2018 by Hasmik Harutyunyan and Aleksan Harutyunyan Bari Bari - Lyrics by William Saroyan, Music by Alan Hovhaness, 1941. Recorded in 2018 by Hasmik Harutyunyan and Aleksan Harutyunyan Anyway, Saroyan later decided to concentrate only on his literature and visual art and gave up composing music. In the 1964 short story Isn’t Today the Day, he wrote: “I can’t sing, and that’s what I’d like to do. My songs aren’t much good, and I don’t even bother to put them on paper anymore; I let them go.” Besides writing music, Saroyan’s literature was considered highly musical and lyrical, jazz-inflected by writer and lecturer Dr. David S. Calonne, the author of William Saroyan: My Real Work Is Being, and Bebop Buddhist Ecstasy: Saroyan’s Influence on Kerouac and the Beats. “If you look at a passage like the following from a short story called “Baby” written in 1936, you can hear it singing through the lines: “Sang baby. O maybe. Sang motors and wheels till Saturday night in America, and a hundred thousand jazz orchestras sang So come sit by my side if you love me, and the sad-eyed, weary-lipped Mexican girl silenced Manhattan uproar with the soft, velvet-petaled signing of darkness and death, O heart there is no end to the river’s flowing. Sang locomotive north through the snow to Albany and west to Chicago, O baby maybe.” Notice the syncopated rhythm of “Sang baby. O maybe.” It is as if a train is starting and stopping. The prose has the forward spontaneous improvised quality of jazz, and indeed Saroyan is here depicting “a hundred thousand jazz orchestras” in the act of making music. Saroyan sings, packing into his music the syncopations and surprises of jazz. The precise image, speed of movement, onrushing improvisatory rhythms.” In Leo Hamalian’s book “William Saroyan: The Man and the Writer Remembered,” Saroyan was asked to explain his quote: "Everything I've done has been sort of song." His answer was: “Ah! I have a book, my first play; My Heart's in the Highlands, is a song [he sings] My heart is in the highlands, My heart is not here... And so on. The Time of Your Life is all songs. I have one book in which the structure unknown to the reader is symphonic. That is a book called Rock Wagram. You state the theme, you enlarge upon it, and you resolve it. I have eleven themes in the front, eleven themes in the middle, and eleven themes in the back, and they all work to one conclusion. The form is musical. How you'd say, "What is the meaning of that?" The meaning of it is simply this: if there is a communication of form as language itself, form being the language, it's in music.”

There are several songs and musical compositions that appear throughout Saroyan’s works as well. Here are our favorites. To receive Saroyan’s full “Playlist”, please leave your email address. 1. Chubby Checker - Hooka Tooka Mama soda cracker 2. Songs of Elvis Presley 3. Songs of Ray Charles 4. Songs of Beatles 5. Ave Maria 6. The Weavers – We’re All Dodgin’ 7. Texas Playboys - New San Antonio Rose 8. Music of Beethoven 9. Music of Gershwin 10. Folk song - The daring young man on the flying trapeze