Lyricist Jang Kyung-soo of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” dies after battle with liver cancer ahead of song festival named after him

[Financial News] “I heard through the grapevine, ooh, ooh, that you had found a lover.”
Jang Kyung-soo, lyricist of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which became a major hit after Kiha & The Faces remade it for the soundtrack of the 2012 film “Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time,” died of liver cancer. He was 73.
Yonhap News reported on the 29th that Jang Kyung-soo (real name Jang Hee-won), a lyricist behind hit songs of the 1980s and ’90s, died that morning after battling cancer.
Born in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, the late lyricist met singer Ham Joong-ah at a reserve forces training site in 1977 after being introduced by Nam Cheol-jin, a drummer with the group “Shin Jung-hyun and The Men.” Ham Joong-ah introduced him to his own older brother, composer Ham Jeong-pil, which led Jang to take up songwriting.
He made his debut in the Korean music industry in 1977, writing the lyrics for Yoon Soo-il’s “I Guess It Was a Dream,” composed by Ham Jeong-pil. He went on to write many hit songs, including Cho Yong-pil’s “16 Bit,” Song Dae-kwan’s “Because of Love,” Choi Jin-hee’s “Little Doll,” Yoo Mi-ri’s “Notebook of Youth,” Yoon Hee-sang’s “Lovers of the Kasbah,” and Park Jung-sik’s “Thousand-year Rock.” He wrote some 1,300 songs over the course of his life.
The “Jang Kyung-soo Star Discovery Song Festival,” named after the late lyricist, was originally scheduled to be held in his hometown of Sokcho on the 25th of this month, but the event was canceled in its entirety recently due to his deteriorating health.
He served as the ninth chairman of the Korea Songwriters Association, an organization for composers and lyricists, and as a board member of the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA). His wake is being held in Special Room 8 at the funeral hall of Myongji Hospital in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. He is survived by his spouse and two sons. The funeral procession is scheduled for 6:30 a.m. on the 31st.

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