I came up with the phrase when I was in the army in the mid fifties. Did nothing with it until the mid sixties, when I was working at Ackerman and Associates advertising agency in Oklahoma City. Sitting in my office trying to come up with an ad campaign for Oklahoma City Federal Savings and Loan, I picked up my guitar and wrote a song. I recorded it and Pat Catlett, Johnny Shannon, and Tom Kreutil put some video with it. We broke the campaign on New Year’s Day 1970. Phone calls, letters, and cards started flooding the S&L instantly, saying the song had stopped people from committing suicide, had brought estranged families back together, etc. Eventually we got more than 50,000 responses, from as far away — somehow — as Australia. Unfortunately, neither I nor the agency copyrighted the phrase or the song, so it was appropriated by many others. And that’s the name of that tune. Anyway, here’s the song for your listening enjoyment or whatever.
As with “Thank Heaven for Seven Eleven” and many, many other themes I’ve written, lots of other folks claim to have come up with it. Specifically Charles Dederich, who didn’t. In fact, Merv Griffin was considering using it as his TV show theme until he heard Dederich had appropriated it for Synanon, an operation with which Merv did not want to be associated in any way. On the other hand, Edie Sellman, a lovely lady who I know only via email, came across it much later, and chose it for her domain name: todayisthefirstdayoftherestofyourlife.com. Which couldn’t make me happier.
And now you know the rest of the story.
