FOR THE WEEK OF MAY 11, 2020

DEAR JERRY: In your most recent column (May 4), you provided everything a reader wanted to know about the song "Only You Know," by Dion, that played during an episode of "Ozark."

Since I have been trying unsuccessfully to solve a song mystery for one of my listeners, I'm hoping you can come to our rescue. Here is what we do know:

During a 2002 flim, titled "I Was a Teenage Faust" (i.e. Teenage Devil), a song that has nothing much to do with the scenes begins at about the 16:40 mark, and runs to about 17:55.

It is very briefly heard again at 124.35 and runs to 126.20, though mostly heard only in the background. One clear lyric is "you are the answer to all my dreams," which could be a clue to the title.

This mystery tune is a bona fide doo-wop group sound, typical in the 1950s, or early '60s.

Fortunately, the complete movie is posted on YouTube, so I jumped to the ending, hoping there would be a list of song credits.Turns out there are only two tunes listed in the credits, and neither had anything to do with the mystery song.

Give it a listen and let me know if you are familiar with this very cool recording.
—Alex Ward host of "Pink and Black Days" on SiriusXM Radio, '50s on 5 (Channel 5)

DEAR ALEX: The first thing I did was listen to the 1:15 version heard in the film, thinking, since I am a fan of doo-wop tunes, I might recognize it immediately. That was not the case. Not only did I not know the song, the group was also a mystery.

Next I called on my Chicago based film maker friend, Robert Alaniz, since he is an IMDb PRO member, and therefore has access to contact information for just about anyone in their vast system.

Looking over everyone who worked on "I Was a Teenage Faust," Robert singled out Gael MacGregor, a music coordinator for this film, and sent me her phone number and e-mail.

I immediately called Gael and she was as friendly, helpful and informative as anyone could possibly be, though she had no recollection of the mystery music. Understandable since it had been 18 years since she worked on this film — and not what one might refer to as a memorable movie.

By looking at the film credits on YouTube, Gael noticed FirstCom Music, a Dallas based music publisher and licenseor of music tracks from their Production Music Library. She suggested I contact them, and I did.

The first person I spoke to at FirstCom was Andrew Collins. He was intrigued by my mission, but he admitted that he was not with FirstCom 18 years ago, though there are some old timers with the company, who were around in 2002. He said he would have one of them look into this situation.

The very next day, I heard from Andrew and John Lentz, who was there in 2002, and John was able to identify the song in question as "I Hear Angels."

Unlike music from a commercial recording, tunes from a licenseor's production library are not credited to anyone. As such, even FirstCom does not know the production group who did such a great job on "I Hear Angels."

Obviously that track, and all other music in their production library, were never available on any commercially manufactured recordings.

Now, we'll end the story just like in the movies, by rolling the credits to whom I'm thankful to five wonderful friends who made this mission a real success:

Alex Ward
Robert Alaniz
Gael MacGregor
Andrew Collins
John Lentz