In 1958 Mort Block was in the Navy missing his girl Susan.
"I thought, 'I'm going to write my feelings down and put them to music'" he thought. So he did.
Block already had a melody kicking around his head, so he started putting lyrics to it: "My love," he wrote — the same words he would use to begin his letters to Susan. "I miss you more each day…"
They married two years later. "He would play that on the piano all through our marriage," says Susan.
But in March, "My Love" became a social media sensation after Mort and Susan's record label executive grandson Matt suggested releasing it as a single. A TikTok video featuring the song (along with black and white footage of Susan from their Miami Beach honeymoon) has over a million views and 432,600 likes.
Mort says, it's just the beginning. A full-length album, Strange Harbors, featuring songs he and Matt co-wrote will be released later this year. The project has ignited a "burst of life," says Mort, who has begun writing new music again "based on ideas I've had for 60, 70 years."