Sometimes opportunity knocks and sometimes it telephones. In Leigh Robbins' case it was a 9:00 A.M. phone call from her performing rights association, SESAC, asking if she and songwriting partner/producer Ken Barken had a song in any way reminiscent of "It's Magic."

"It was for a Cyndi Lauper/David Keith movie called 'Off And Running'," Leigh explains. "The producers had attempted to negotiate for the right to use 'It's Magic' and couldn't strike a deal. Unfortunately, they needed a master tape by the next morning and we didn't have a song we believed appropriate. We decided to write and record it that day."

Ken Barken booked the studio time and began calling musicians. Leigh started on a song. "I was writing lyrics in the shower," she laughs. "We worked all day and finished the final mix ten minutes before Federal Express closed. Ken got there just as they locked the doors. After he really begged, they opened the doors and accepted the package."

The next morning "Off and Running" producers called to say they loved the song and wanted it for the film soundtrack. It's the stuff of which show business legends are made. And like most magical success stories, the script began in childhood.

Leigh Robbins grew up with a business-minded father and a music-minded mot her, Ellen, who introduced her daughter to the performing at an early age. By the age of six Leigh had already taught herself to play the ukulele, and she began winning talent contests soon thereafter. By the time she was in her teens Leigh and her sister were performing as a duo in the Washington D.C. area, both as headliners and as opening acts for major music groups. Ellen Robbins performed with a successful McGuire Sisters-type act that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, among others. At age eleven Leigh started singing with Ellen's singing group at the time, the Sweet Adelines of Alexandria, Virginia. Within a year she was voted in as a member, one of the youngest ever.

"There were no children on my street," Leigh recalls. "So I basically grew up around adults. I'd bake cookies with one neighbor and look at another's rock collection instead of playing tag with a group of kids. So it seemed very natural to work with the women in Sweet Adelines. In many ways being a member was like a dress-up game. Sometimes I wore high heels like my mother and her friends, and sometimes we performed theme shows in costume. My favorite was a show where we wore clown costumes with yarn wigs. We even had a professional make-up artist do our clown make-up."

For Leigh Robbins, the experience became far more important than a childhood adventure -- it helped her find work in the tough and competitive city of Nashville, Tennessee: Music City U.S.A. Another factor in her success story is the influence she felt from her father, an executive employed in the corporate health care field. It was he who advised Leigh to study business and math in addition to her music course work. She did just that, even after joining a band and starting playing shows seven nights a week. She studied on breaks between sets, listening to taped lectures as she drove to rehearsals and took both parts of her life very seriously. After graduating with mathematics honors from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Leigh decided to try her luck in Nashville. She arrived prepared to work, and to work hard.

Leigh found work singing lead vocals on demos for local writers, jingles for both national and local clients, and harmonies for major label recordings. She modeled for clients including Pepsi and performed in a band that played standards, oldies and contemporary pop. Emmy-winning Ken Barken, the man who would later become her songwriting partner and record producer, orchestrated one of her first recording sessions. In addition to his award-winning scoring, writing and production credits, Ken had made a name for himself as a trumpet player performing with Bob Hope, The Smothers Brothers, The Four Aces and Heny Youngman. Ultimately Ken and Leigh would team up to write songs for many film and television projects.

"I'd lived in Nashville about two years before I started writing," Leigh says. "The songs were never confined to one type -- like country, pop or swing. That worked for us when Ken and I started sending songs to Hollywood."

Getting a song into film and television soundtracks is considered a tough assignment in Nashville. If a writer can somehow make a connection within the film industry, their songs are often put on a back burner in favor of the works of better known writers. In the case of Leigh and Ken, the break came through an old college pal of Ken's, Ed Dzubak, who suggested the team send songs to the television industry. The result was astounding.

Not long after they started submitting their songs, Leigh and Ken were contacted by the producers of the film Naked In New York, which starred Kathleen Turner, Tony Curtis, Eric Stolz, Ralph Macchio and Mary Louise Parker. A swing tune was needed to replace a k.d. lang song which had been pulled for inclusion in her own CD. To the Nashville songwriters' delight, their song "These Days" was chosen for the soundtrack of this Martin Scorsese film.

Leigh co-wrote and performed a song in the hit movie The Mask, starring Jim Carrey as well as songs included in daytime dramas Another World, As The World Turns and The Guiding Light. Most recently she and Ken have signed a contract with NBC to provide songs for prime time's Providence.

It was the success of these songs that led Leigh to recording her new CD, Fire In The Rain. Many daytime drama viewers have requested copies of the songs they were hearing on their favorite television shows, and since Leigh and Ken had recorded a number of new compositions, releasing a CD was an obvious move.

The new project includes many of their biggest television hits, including "These Days," "My Nights Have Seen Better Days" and "I Only Get Lonely For You," which have been performed countless times on shows including Another World (NBC), The Guiding Light (CBS) and As The World Turns (CBS). "These Days," for example, has played frequently on the jukebox on The Guiding Light's Buzz's Diner as well as in nightclub scenes in many other daytime shows. "I Only Get Lonely For You" was a montage feature on The Guiding Light for a major love scene and still receives frequent spins in Germany, Italy, Greece, Japan, Brazil and France.

Several of the songs on Fire In The Rain have been covered by other artists.

"Home (Wherever The Heart Is)" was recorded by Patty Cabrera on Curb Records, receiving enough AC airplay to initially outdistance even a Whitney Houston's.

"Never Give Up On Love" was written by Leigh, Ken and Joe Hogue, and has been recorded by Mary Griffin, an artist who has been compared to Toni Braxton, and who has been featured on screen singing in the movie Studio 54. This is another song to watch for, since renowned L.A. music supervisor Bobbie Greenberg has pitched it to several major film companies.

New songs include "If I Were You," written especially for this project, "Honey Child," written on assignment for a Melanie Griffith film (currently on hold) and "Absolutely, Positively, Definitely," which garnered considerable attention in Nashville, and was "on hold" for a major label artist.

Leigh covered two songs on Fire In The Rain: the Indigo Girls' "Get Out The Map" and Aerosmith's "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing." Early reviews of Fire In The Rain are overwhelmingly positive. Leigh's vocals have been singled out as stellar, the production lauded, the songs applauded.

This is indeed a singer/songwriter to watch.