Les Crane, 74, One-Hit Wonder
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Les Crane, who died on July 13 at age 74, became an unlikely one-hit wonder in the British and American pop charts with “Desiderata” (1971), his spoken-word version of an obscure prose poem that became a New Age anthem.
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” Crane solemnly intoned, “and remember what peace there may be in silence.” Arriving at the chorus — “You are a child of the universe; No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here” — Crane was augmented by a backing group of wailing gospel singers.
Of such emotionally withering stuff was a cult hit born, reaching number eight in the American Billboard chart and number seven in the British Top 10 in February 1972 as the country was gripped by a coal strike.
Liner notes for Crane’s “Desiderata” pondered its “laid-back message of hope and inspiration, bathed in sentiment at the very crossroads where hippie culture turned into the New Age movement.” But while the lyrics chimed with the spirit of the early 1970s, they had originated in the belle epoque of the early 20th century and had (erroneously) been thought to date from the era of the American founding fathers.
Composed by an American lawyer, Max Ehrmann, in 1906, the lines had languished until the 1950s, when a pastor in Baltimore included the poem in an anthology headed Old St Paul’s Church, Baltimore, AD 1692 — hence the confusion over the date of its composition. During the late 1960s, it was used on counterculture posters on the American west coast, where Crane spotted its commercial potential.
Re-titled “Desiderata,” it remained in the British charts for 14 weeks, winning a Grammy award for the best spoken word recording of the year.
Les Crane was born Lesley Stein on December 3, 1933, at Long Beach, N.Y. After graduating from Tulane University in New Orleans, he spent four years in the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s as a jet pilot and helicopter flight instructor.
In 1987, reflecting on his unexpected success with “Desiderata,” Crane confessed: “I can’t listen to it now without gagging.”
Les Crane’s fifth wife and a daughter survive him.
