I Wrote That One, Too

By Steve Dorff

While researching the life of U.S. Navy sailor Calvin Graham, who served on the battleship USS South Dakota in 1942 when he was twelve years old, I was surprised to learn Steve Dorff had composed the music for Calvin’s 1988 made-for-TV movie, Too Young the Hero. I knew Steve was a songwriter and was excited I might be able to talk to him about this movie. My first step was to purchase his 2017 memoir, I Wrote That One, Too…, co-written with Colette Freedman.

The book is as great as its title. “The first conscious memory I have of hearing music was when I was still in the crib,” he writes. “I was laying on my stomach and making noises that my parents swore was me either humming or singing.” He remembers banging his head against the crib and making guttural noises: “I had never heard music, but I was definitely hearing something and I was visualizing it as colorful plasmic bubbles.” As soon as he could walk, he would bang on the low keys of their piano and then on the high keys. “I was telling a story,” he writes. “To me, the low keys were a bear and the high keys were birds.”

Steve has composed the music for numerous TV shows and movies, from Growing Pains, Murphy Brown, and Murder She Wrote to Clint Eastwood’s Any Which Way But Loose and George Strait’s Pure Country. He usually co-writes his songs, putting music to another person’s lyrics. These many hit songs include “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” “Barroom Buddies,” and “Cowboys and Clowns.”