Whatever your age, you undoubtedly know a song written by George David Weiss of Tewksbury. His credits include ''I Can't Help Falling in Love With You,'' ''What a Wonderful World,'' ''The Lion Sleeps Tonight'' and the lyrics to ''Lullaby of Birdland.'' ''Whenever I play a song for people or tell them I wrote it, they say, 'Oh, I remember I met my girlfriend to that song,' or people tell me they got married to many of my songs,'' said Weiss, who is president of the Songwriters Guild of America.
Weiss has written ''thousands'' of published songs, and he hasn't stopped yet. His next project is an album due out in February and performed by his son, Bobby. It was inspired by a recent trip to Africa.
There's no such thing as a creative departure for Weiss, who has authored songs in every genre except country, although several country musicians have recorded his songs, he said. Weiss has penned best-selling Broadway show tunes, swing ballads, rock 'n' roll songs, and soul hits. He even wrote ''Snoopy and the Red Baron's Christmas'' and the soundtrack for ''Gidget Goes to Rome.'' Of the ''Gidget'' score, he now says, ''That was at a very delicate part in my career. I needed to get out of an unhappy contract situation.''
Aside from his ''Gidget'' material, Weiss speaks fondly about all of his songs, and when discussing them, he usually includes a colorful anecdote and a bit of celebrity gossip.
While still in his early 20s, Weiss - who refuses to reveal his age - published his first song and sold it to Frank Sinatra on the same day. A few weeks later, it went to No. 1.
Typical of Weiss' often exclamatory speaking style, the song was called ''Oh! What It Seemed to Be!'' He composed it on the D train from Seventh Avenue and 52nd Street to the Bronx, a trip that inspired the lyrics: ''It was just a ride on a train/ That's all that it was/But oh! What it seemed to be!/It was a trip to the stars/to Venus and Mars/Because you were on the train with me.'' Co-written with Weiss's frequent song-writing partner, Benny Benjamin, the song was rejected by Perry Como before Weiss' publisher brought it to Sinatra, who just happened to be in town that day.
Weiss, a Brooklyn native, has a vivid recollection of his first meeting with Ol' Blue Eyes. ''Sinatra, who was still skinny then, was sitting with his feet on the desk, and he's surrounded by four or five of his sycophants. You know, people who say, 'Frank, you're the greatest,' no matter what he's talking about,'' said Weiss.

STAR-LEDGER FILE PHOTO
George David Weiss
Nervously, Weiss played ''Oh! What It Seemed to Be!'' for Sinatra, and midway through, the Chairman of the Board walked over to the piano. ''My fingers wouldn't work,'' remembered Weiss. ''He hummed it. Then, I hear Sinatra go over to the phone, pick up the phone, and call the head producer of Columbia records.'' ''I was so gone,'' said Weiss. ''It all happened to me in one hour: producer, contract, Sinatra.'' After that, Weiss' career began in earnest and he was able to start writing for some of the greatest names in show business: Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley. Of the many performers he has worked with, Presley is one of the few he never met, although he wrote ''I Can't Help Falling in Love with You'' specifically for him, said Weiss. The screenplay for Presley's film ''Blue Hawaii'' was the impetus for the song, but Weiss couldn't stand the movie. When his publisher forwarded him the screenplay, Weiss didn't want anything to do with it. ''I was appalled,'' he said.
''I loved Elvis. I loved his tender voice, but he didn't exactly make Academy Award-winning movies.'' His publisher tried to convince him otherwise. ''He said, 'You're turning down Elvis Presley! He sells millions of records!' I said, 'Yeah, but I have standards to uphold,''' recalled Weiss.
Finally, he took another look at the screenplay and found a scene he could work with. In it, Presley goes into a souvenir shop and buys a music box for his girlfriend's grandmother. ''It was touching, and it was a music box, so I thought I could write something sweet for Elvis' voice,'' said Weiss. ''I was hearing Elvis in the melody, but the lyrics just came. When I played the song for the publisher, he listened to it, and after a 10-second silence, he said, 'Well, George, it's nice, but we want 'Hound Dog' for Elvis.''' The only person who initially liked the song was Presley himself. He just happened to overhear it at Graceland as his entourage was sampling a pile of demo tapes for the movie.
According to Weiss, Elvis heard the song as he was walking down the hall from his bedroom. ''He said, 'What was that?' and they said, 'Don't worry Elvis, that's some dumb ballad,''' according to Weiss. ''He said, 'No, I want to do that one in my movie.' ''He picked the song. Everyone else turned it down,'' said Weiss. ''He made it his closing piece in every concert he ever played. The last song he ever sang in concert before he died was ''I Can't Help Falling in Love.'' As with the Presley hit, Weiss wrote the hymn-like ballad, ''What a Wonderful World'' specifically for the artist who first recorded it, Louis Armstrong. ''To me, he was a great man, not only a great interpreter of songs,'' said Weiss. ''He was going around the world at the time of the Vietnam war, when the races were confronting each other, and he was trying to bring the people together with music and with love. And I loved him for that because I abhorred what was going on.''
When the song was released in the late '60s, however, it bombed. Weiss thinks it was because people misunderstood the lyrics. ''People would come to me and say, 'You wrote a great song, but are you kidding, What a wonderful world? Now? With Vietnam?' I didn't mean what a wonderful world it was. I was saying what it could be,'' explained Weiss.
His message also escaped Robert Goulet, Eddy Arnold and Tennessee Ernie Ford, all of whom recorded ''horrible'' versions of the song, said Weiss. ''They were taking it literally,'' he said. Ironically, the only Americans who seemed to appreciate ''What a Wonderful World'' when it was released were U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam, said Weiss. The Louis Armstrong version was their No. 1 requested song during the war, said Weiss. When it was included on the soundtrack of the 1987 film ''Good Morning Vietnam,'' it finally got the recognition it deserved, said Weiss. ''Audiences of the movie demanded it and it was reissued,' he said. In another quirk of fate, Weiss had to wait until the 1980s before he would be recognized for one of his most famous songs, ''Lullaby of Birdland.''
Originally, the song was an obscure instrumental written by George Shearing, but when Weiss added lyrics, and Ella Fitzgerald sang them, it soared up the charts. ''Lullaby of Birdland'' went on to become a pop classic recorded by almost every major jazz vocalist, from Sarah Vaughn to Mel Torme. But Weiss could not take credit for the song for more than 25 years. When Weiss composed the lyrics, he didn't know that Shearing had copyrighted the music through BMI. Weiss worked with ASCAP. Because artists with one company were not allowed to publish with the other, Weiss was forced to publish the lyrics under the pseudonym B.Y. Forster, a derivation of his ex-wife's maiden name. ''I had that name on that song even after it was a big smash and a standard,'' he said. ''I couldn't talk about it, put it on my credit list or play it. You don't know what I used to go through to get my royalties. Talk about the Mafia and money laundering. I finally said, 'OK, I can't stand it anymore.''' Even though he feared being sued for fraud, Weiss confessed to the head of BMI and she gave him permission to use his name.
But perhaps his greatest dilemma in co-writing the song was thinking up lyrics to go with Shearing's title, a tribute to the legendary New York jazz club. ''What the hell can you say about a lullaby of Birdland in a love song?'' Weiss wondered. ''But, when I was a kid, my father used to sing songs from his childhood and I remember there were so many talking about you and I are billing and cooing, we're lovebirds. They had that image. When I said that to myself, I knew I had it.'' With such a stellar list of credits behind him, Weiss could retire a wealthy man and live off his royalties, but he refuses. He works full-time for the Songwriters Guild, and doesn't earn a penny.
He also predicts that his greatest work may still be ahead of him. ''The world that we're in, and the business that I'm in, is so childish and youth-oriented,'' said Weiss. ''But I'm still in the business and I'm still writing and I'm still doing great things.'' In the end, it's a songwriter's material and his experiences that count, not his age, said Weiss. ''I don't want to get into years,'' he said. ''I don't want anybody to say, 'Oh, he's X years old, he did that 89 years ago.' I want to talk about facts, about my career, what I've done, my songs.''