Wilbur Carl “Skip” Redwine (1926–1987)

Wilbur Carl “Skip” Redwine was a composer and songwriter from Marshall (Searcy County).

Skip Redwine was born on October 31, 1926, in Marshall to Dainy Fendley Redwine and Wilbur Coy Redwine. After spending much of his childhood in Texas, he graduated from Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1944, and he briefly attended Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) before enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II. He reached the rank of corporal and earned an Army Commendation Ribbon for his service as a battalion clerk.

Following his discharge from the military in 1946, Redwine attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County), where he served as president of the Hendrix Pre-Theolog Association, composed of students who intended to pursue religious vocations, and as president of Players, a campus theater group. During his senior year, Redwine wrote and directed an original musical, Rommie and Julie.

After graduating from Hendrix in 1949, Redwine attended the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. During this period of his life, Redwine served in several ministerial roles, including as an assistant pastor of the First Methodist Church of Camden (Ouachita County) in 1948 and as a youth counselor at Highland Park Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas, in 1949; he also sometimes served as an organist for the Asbury United Methodist Church in Little Rock, where his mother worked as the church secretary.

By 1950, Redwine’s attention had turned more fully to show business, and he played the leading role in Brother Rat at the Huron Playhouse in Huron, Ohio. He then moved to Hollywood, California, where he pursued a master’s degree in playwriting from the University of Southern California and worked as a pianist and for Columbia Records while building a songwriting career. In 1952, Redwine’s song “Wild Horses” won a contest on the Los Angeles television show Peter Potter’s Search for a Song and was set to be recorded by the Page Cavanaugh Trio; however, after Perry Como released a song of the same title in 1953, Redwine’s record was never released.

Eventually, however, a number of Redwine’s songs were performed by recording artists, including “What to Do” (co-written with Drake Thornton) by Jeri Southern in 1956, followed by “Promises, Promises” and “Honky-Tonk Heart” by Dinah Shore in 1957, “Somebody’s Stealing My Thunder” and “Have I Been Away Too Long” by Fran Palmer in 1958, “The Night Is Right” and “Robbin’ the Cradle” by Chuck Castle in 1959, and “The Lonely Things” (co-written with Rod McKuen and Ronnie Stephenson) by Glenn Yarbrough in 1966. Among Redwine’s frequent musical collaborators was Rod McKuen; Redwine also served as musical director for several of McKuen’s concert tours. Redwine himself occasionally performed, including as part of the Skip Redwine Trio, the house band for Ellis Space, a Los Angeles supper club that Redwine co-owned with Larry Ellis in the late 1970s.

Redwine’s work was featured in Broadway musicals, industrial musicals, TV shows, movies, and commercials. “You Gotta Have Ee-ooo,” co-written with Paul Dunlap, was featured in the 1958 horror movie How to Make a Monster, and “Honey, Don’t You Know” was included in the X-rated 1976 coming-of-age film Emily, for which Redwine also served as musical director and music arranger. Redwine also wrote the theme song and several other songs for the Peabody Award–winning children’s television show Big Blue Marble (1974–1983).

In 1963, Redwine moved to New York, where he had conducting and musical director roles for a number of Broadway and off-Broadway productions, such as serving as musical director and arranger of Cole Porter Revisited, as assistant musical director for Mame, and as assistant conductor for Oliver!, Dear World, Applause, Seesaw, and Mack & Mabel.

Redwine also co-wrote the short-lived Broadway musical Frank Merriwell, or Honor Challenged with Larry Frank; the show, which premiered at Hendrix College in 1970, both opened and closed on Broadway at the Longacre Theater on April 24, 1971. National critical reception was not favorable, with respected theater critic Clive Barnes stating that “Frank Merriwell was a very bad musical.” However, the show continued to be performed in off-Broadway theaters throughout the 1970s.

Redwine also wrote industrial musicals for companies including IBM, JCPenney, Sears, General Foods, Olivetti (an Italian computer and electronics manufacturer), the International Paper Company, YORK (an HVAC systems company), DuPont, Datsun, and Pontiac, as well as songs for nonprofits, such as “Civitan Song” for Civitan International.

Redwine never married. He died on December 25, 1987, in Little Rock and is buried at the East Lawn Cemetery in Marshall.

For additional information:
“Arkansan’s First Record Is Released.” Arkansas Democrat, May 27, 1956, p. 12.

Barnes, Clive. “Stage: Musical Resuscitation of ‘Frank Merriwell.’” New York Times, April 26, 1971, p. 40.

“College Stages ‘Frank Merriwell.’” Arkansas Democrat, April 26, 1970, p. 49.

Wilbur “Skip” Redwine Papers (MC 2665), Special Collections. University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Finding aid online at https://uark.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/2759 (accessed December 11, 2024).

Katrina Windon
University of Arkansas. Fayetteville