Mitch Murray (born Lionel Michael Stitcher; 30 January 1940) is an English songwriter, record producer and author. He has won two Ivor Novello Awards, including the Jimmy Kennedy Award. Murray has written, or co-written, songs that have produced five UK and three US chart-topping records. He has also been awarded the Gold Badge of Merit by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. Early life He was born Lionel Michael Stitcher in Hove, Sussex, England. In 1968, he changed his legal name by deed poll to Mitch Murray. Musical career Murray's first major songwriting success was "How Do You Do It?" It was picked up by producer George Martin, who insisted that The Beatles record it as their first single. The recording remained officially unreleased until it appeared on Anthology 1 in 1995. Martin let them release "Love Me Do" instead, passing "How Do You Do It?" to another young Liverpool-based group, Gerry and the Pacemakers. Their version launched their career with a UK Number 1 single the following spring. Thus encouraged, Murray sent them another of his songs, "I Like It", which became their second single and also topped the UK Singles Chart. He had further success throughout the next ten years, writing "You Were Made for Me" and "I'm Telling You Now" for Freddie and the Dreamers, the latter in collaboration with their frontman, Freddie Garrity; and "I Knew It All the Time" recorded in 1964 by The Dave Clark Five. Murray's 1964 book, How to Write a Hit Song, inspired Sting, then a 12-year-old schoolboy, to start writing songs. Sting now refers to Murray as "My Mentor", and wrote the foreword to Mitch Murray's Handbook for the Terrified Speaker (Valium in a Volume). Most of Murray's subsequent hits were written with Peter Callander, among them "Even the Bad Times Are Good" (The Tremeloes), "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" (Georgie Fame), "Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha" (Cliff Richard), "Ragamuffin Man" (Manfred Mann), "Hitchin' a Ride" (Vanity Fare), "Turn On The Sun" (Nana Mouskouri) and "Avenues and Alleyways", "Las Vegas", and "I Did What I Did for Maria" for Tony Christie. Murray and Callander were also Christie's producers, and produced "Is This the Way to Amarillo?" (written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield). In an interview in The Times in which Christie described another Murray-Callander penned tune, "Las Vegas", he noted that the two "were the star songwriters