Toronto Jeweler Gets ‘True Blood’ Breakout
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A song he composed 17 years ago has come back to bite a Toronto jeweler — but in a good way.
Sam Rosenbaum made pop history this weekend when his ditty “Why Did You Leave Me Now” made the soundtrack rotation on Sunday night’s episode of True Blood.
Rosenbaum, 61, told the Toronto Star that lyrics for “Why Did You Leave Me Now” came to him after a dream about his father, who had died seven years earlier. “The words came, the melody came, I couldn’t even explain it,” he claimed. “It was a song that expressed a loss.” The tune played this weekend over the closing credits of season six, episode nine, called “Life Matters.”
A onetime music manager, Rosenbaum recorded the song with Liz Rodrigues, one of his artists, on vocals. The song was promptly forgotten; when his entertainment business faltered, Rosenbaum made a career switch, becoming a jewelry salesman.
But last month, “out of nowhere,” “True Blood” musical director Gary Calamar called to request rights to the song. “At first, I didn’t believe it,” Rosenbaum told the Star. “But I Googled him and found out he was the Real McCoy. He was a Grammy nominee.” Rosenbaum called it “a gift from my father… Divine intervention. How else can something like this happen?”
But Calamar’s explanation was a bit more down to earth. “The title, “Why Did You Leave Me Now?” got the attention of the producers, as each episode title of “True Blood” is named after a song that appears in the episode,” he told the Star. “We came across it on an iTunes search, and we thought it worked perfectly in the scene.”
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