Paul Korda (born Paul Kunstler, 1948 – 11 March 2020) was a Singaporean songwriter, singer, musician, and actor. He wrote and performed music from the 1960s onwards, and his songs have been covered by artists such as Roger Daltrey, Dave Edmunds, Frankie Valli, and Love Sculpture.
Family background
Korda was born in Singapore, into a creative family of entertainers, professional singers, songwriters, and accomplished musicians. His father, Hungarian-born Tibor Kunstler, was a violinist and former student of the Franz Liszt Conservatory of Music in Budapest, Hungary and Academia La Scala in Milan. Tibor played saxophone on Coleman Hawkins' tour of the East. Korda's British mother, Shirley Green—who worked under the stage name Shirley Lenner—was a vocalist and actress. She starred in Those Kids From Town (1942) and also sang with Joe Loss, George Elrick, and Stéphane Grappelli.
Kunstler and Green met while working as entertainers in Singapore. Kunstler, who had been interned during the Japanese invasion of Java while playing at the Hilton Hotel there, was performing at Raffles Hotel while Green, who had spent the latter part of World War II entertaining British troops, was singing at Princes Restaurant nearby.
Korda's British grandparents had also been professional singers, songwriters and musicians. In the 1890s, his grandmother Florence Wright worked in a market stall in Edinburgh, Scotland, singing songs penned by Lawrence Wright to help sell his sheet music. Wright and her husband, pianist Tommy Lenner, took their thirteen children on tour with them as angels at the beginning of the Vaudeville era.
Shirley Lenner's sisters were well known singers in Britain: Judy Shirley hosted Monday Night at Seven for the BBC during World War II, and Anne Lenner sang with American composer Carole Gibbons.
Formative years
Due to his parents' work commitments and divorce, Korda was sent to boarding school at age five and a half upon returning to England. He continued to be away at school for much of his childhood. He took classical piano lessons, prompted by his father's classical education, while his mother arranged for him to take lessons from a contemporary piano player. At the age of nine wrote his first musical.
At thirteen Korda won a scholarship to Victoria College on the Isle of Jersey in the Channel Islands. It was on Jersey that he joined The Intruders, a local band, even though boarders were forbidden to go to nightclubs, and began writing songs.
Korda applied for a place at Harrow Technical College, near London, to study photography at age fifteen. He was accepted at the college, based not on his academic results, but on the quality of his photographs. While studying photography, Korda ran Harrow Technical College's Folk Club, and was spotted by the manager of Bluesology, a band formed by Elton John and Rod Stewart. The manager soon took Korda to meet Beatles publisher Stephen James and introduced him to Elton John (still called Reg Dwight).
Early career: songwriting and production
Korda's first record, "Go on Home", was released on EMI's Columbia label when he was seventeen. At this point in his early career Korda began playing the Soho folk club, Les Cousins, alongside other friends, Sandy Denny and Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens and Korda became close friends and in between recording sessions would often check out the London nightlife together.
In 1967 Korda was signed as a songwriter to Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records publishing company and went on to write for P.P. Arnold for her single "The Time Has Come". The song made the UK charts, and the Italian version "Se Perdo Te", recorded by Patty Pravo, reached No. 18 in Italy. Korda, like so many Immediate artists, wasn't paid, and, being a minor, repudiated his contract after the managing director took Korda's new 12-string guitar and gave it to another songwriter.
That same year Korda formed his first professional band and gave his opening night at the 7 1⁄2 Club in London to Jimi Hendrix so that Hendrix could showcase to the English music business. Hendrix expressed his gratitude for the chance and referred to the Afro-wearing Korda as his "soul brother".
After suffering the shock of his mother's accidental death, he was offered a production job by EMI Records and produced Jon Anderson's first recordings Korda's production rhythm section included Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenney Jones on drums.