I made the rounds of the Brill Building publishers along with people that would become close friends like Dick Miles (a composer, best known for They've Got An Awful Lot Of Coffee In Brasil), Mack Discant (lyricist, known for lyrics to Max Steiner's Theme From A Summer Place) and John Benson (Johnny) Brooks (You’ve Come A Long Way From St. Louis).  Publishers viewed me as an oddity – there really weren’t any women writing music and lyrics in those days, just Dorothy Fields, Mary Rogers and Betty Comden writing lyrics. They were constantly calling other guys over, like “hey Joe, you gotta see this” as if to say “look it’s a girl and she writes music”. While they were curious, they also didn’t quite know what to do with me. It was very much a boys’ club in the Brill Building.

One publisher, Weiss and Barry, seemed to like my work, but kept saying things like “it sounds like a show tune, not a pop song” or ‘I love it but it’s not commercial”, which led to my song Its Commercial. When I played them David Means Love they said “yeah, its great, but David’s just not a popular name”. They were helpful to me, though, and gave me assignments to write lyrics for some songs which were actually recorded, but I never met the composers. These included Back In My Arms recorded by Nat King Cole, Tell It To Me Again recorded by Frankie Lester, Don Cherry and the Percy Faith Orchestra, and June Valli with Henri René And His Orchestra, Be A Little Delicate Hey recorded by the Peppermints, and Saturday Lover - Sunday Stranger recorded by Joan Weber. In the late 70’s there was even a reggae version of Back in My Arms done by Danny Ray that we found on line!