Neil Sedaka
Encyclopedia
Neil Sedaka is an American
pop/rock
singer, pianist
, and composer
. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricist
s Howard Greenfield
and Phil Cody.
, New York
. His father, Mac Sedaka, a taxi driver, was of Sephardic Turkish-Jewish
descent. ("Sedaka" is a variant of tzedaka, which translates in both Hebrew and Arabic as the word charity). Sedaka's mother, Eleanor Appel Sedaka, was of Polish-Russian Jewish descent (or generally referred to as Ashkenazi-Jewish descent). He grew up in Brighton Beach. Sedaka is a cousin of singer Eydie Gormé
.
Sedaka demonstrated musical aptitude in his second-grade choral class, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus
department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright. In 1947, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music's Preparatory Division for Children, which he attended on Saturdays. His mother wanted him to become a renowned classical pianist such as the contemporary of the day, Van Cliburn
, but Sedaka was discovering pop music. When Sedaka was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield
, an aspiring poet and lyricist. They became two of the legendary Brill Building
's composers. There were technically two "Brill Buildings" — the original located at 1619 Broadway at 49th Street in Manhattan, and a second building that also took on the moniker of a "Brill Building", located at 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, unofficially known as "Allegro Studios".
Sedaka and Greenfield wrote songs together throughout much of their young lives, with Sedaka going on to being a major teen pop star and the pair also writing hits for a litany of other artists as well as for Sedaka's own career. However, when The Beatles
and the British Invasion
took American music in a different direction, Sedaka was left without a recording career and decided a major change in his life was necessary, moving his family to the UK in the early 1970s. Sedaka and Greenfield mutually agreed that their partnership reached an end with "Our Last Song Together". Sedaka began a new composing partnership with British lyricist Phil Cody. After Sedaka returned to the US, however, the Sedaka-Greenfield team eventually reunited and continued until Greenfield's death in 1986.
. The band had minor regional hits with songs like "While I Dream", "I Love My Baby", "Come Back Joe", and "Don't Go", before Sedaka launched out on his own in 1957. However, after a few personnel changes, in 1961, The Tokens would hit #1 on the Billboard
pop charts with the international smash "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
". Meanwhile, the very young Sedaka's first three solo singles, "Laura Lee", "Ring-a-Rockin'", and "Oh, Delilah!" failed to become hits (although "Ring-a-Rockin'" earned him the first of many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand
). But they demonstrated his ability to perform as a solo singer, so RCA Victor signed him to a recording contract.
His first single for RCA, "The Diary
", a song that he had previously offered to Little Anthony and the Imperials, reached #14 on the Billboard charts for Sedaka in 1958. His second single, "I Go Ape
", was a modest success at #42, and his third single, "Crying My Heart Out for You
", was a flop at #111 (although it went to #6 on the pop charts in Italy). Desperate for another hit, he bought several hit singles and listened to them repeatedly, studying the song structure, chord progressions, lyrics and harmonies — and he discovered that the hit songs of the day all shared the same basic musical anatomy. Armed with his newfound arsenal of musical knowledge, he set out to craft his next big hit song, and he promptly did exactly that: "Oh! Carol
" delivered Sedaka his first domestic Top 10 hit, reaching #9 on the Hot 100 in 1959 and going to #1 on the Italian pop charts in 1960, giving Sedaka his first #1 ranking. The song was dedicated to his then-girlfriend, Carole King
, a fellow Brill Building composer and rising pop star of her own. King would respond with her own novelty song, "Oh! Neil" later that year.
After establishing himself in 1958, Sedaka kept churning out new hits from 1960 to 1962. His flow of Top 30 hits during this period included: "Stairway to Heaven
" (#9, 1960); "You Mean Everything to Me
" (#17, 1960); "Run, Samson, Run" (#27, 1960); "Calendar Girl
" (#4, 1961); "Little Devil" (#11, 1961); "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen" (#6, 1961); his signature song, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
" (#1, 1962); and "Next Door to an Angel" (#5, 1962). Singles not making the Top 30 during this time period included "Sweet Little You" (#59, 1961) and "King of Clowns" (#45, 1962). RCA issued four LPs in the US and Britain of his works during this period, and also produced Scopitone
and Cinebox
videos of "Calendar Girl" in 1961, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" in 1962, and "The Dreamer" in 1963. He made regular appearances on such TV programs as American Bandstand
and Shindig!
during this period.
. Francis began searching for a new hit after her 1958 single "Who's Sorry Now?
". She was introduced to Sedaka and Greenfield, who played every ballad they had written for her. Francis began writing in her diary while the two played the last of their songs. After they finished, Francis told them they wrote beautiful ballads but that they were too intellectual for the young generation. Sedaka suggested to Greenfield a song they had written that morning for a girl group. Greenfield protested because the song had been promised to the girl group, but Sedaka insisted on playing "Stupid Cupid
". Francis told them they had just played her new hit. Francis' song reached #14 on the Billboard charts.
While Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked her if he could read what she had written. After she refused, Sedaka was inspired to write "The Diary", his own first hit single. Sedaka and Greenfield wrote many of Connie Francis' hits, such as "Fallin'" and the "Theme from Where the Boys Are
", the film in which she starred. Although the latter hit the Top 5 on the Billboard pop singles chart and Francis had several #1 singles, "Where the Boys Are" eventually became her signature song.
's hits, such as "Another Sleepless Night", "What Am I Gonna Do?", and "All the Words in the World". Sedaka himself recorded each of these three songs: "Another Sleepless Night" appears on his Rock With Sedaka debut album; "What Am I Gonna Do?" was the B-side of "Going Home to Mary Lou" and appeared on his 1961 album Neil Sedaka Sings "Little Devil" and His Other Hits; and "All the Words in the World" was recorded but was kept in the RCA vaults until 1977, at the height of Sedaka's return to popularity, when it was released on the album Neil Sedaka: The '50s and '60s.
. Many of his English-language records were released there and proved quite successful, especially "Crying My Heart Out For You
" (Italian #6, 1959) and "Oh! Carol
" (Italian #1, 1960).
In 1961, Sedaka began to record some of his hits in Italian, starting with "Esagerata" and "Un Giorno Inutile", local versions of "Little Devil" and "I Must Be Dreaming". Other recordings were to follow, such as "Tu Non Lo Sai" ("Breaking Up Is Hard to Do"), "Il Re Dei Pagliacci" ("King of Clowns"), "I Tuoi Capricci" ("Look Inside Your Heart"), and "La Terza Luna" ("Waiting For Never"). "La Terza Luna" reached #1 on the Italian pop charts in April 1963. Cinebox
videos exist for "La Terza Luna" and "I Tuoi Capricci". From a language standpoint, his recordings in Italian had very little American accent. RCA Victor's Italiana office distributed his records in Italy and released three compilation LPs of Sedaka's Italian recordings.
Sedaka also recorded in Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Japanese. He enjoyed popularity in Latin America for his Spanish-language recordings. Many of these were pressed onto 78 rpm discs.
" hit #1. But after 1962, Sedaka's popularity began to wane. While 1963 singles "Alice In Wonderland" (#17), "Let's Go Steady Again" (#26), and "Bad Girl" (#33) all managed to hit the Top 40, "The Dreamer" (#47) did not, and it would be more than another decade before Sedaka would see one of his singles hit the Top 10 again. After the release of "Bad Girl", Sedaka's career went into a sharp decline, hastened by The Beatles
' arrival on the radio and especially their much-hyped February 1964 appearance on CBS
' The Ed Sullivan Show
and the rest of the British Invasion. When describing The Beatles' effect on his career in the mid-'60s, he puts it brusquely: "The Beatles — not good!" This negative effect is seen in the fact that from 1964–66, only three of his singles even made it onto the Hot 100 at all: "Sunny" (#86, 1964), "The World Through a Tear" (#76, 1965), and "The Answer to My Prayer" (#89, 1965).
In the summer of 1964, after Sedaka had recorded "It Hurts to Be in Love", with the entire orchestration including himself on the piano and backing vocals along with a set of female backing vocals, the song instead became the third Top 10 hit for rising star Gene Pitney
. By then, with the British Invasion already underway and RCA Victor clearly not pleased with Sedaka's recent declining performance on the record charts, the fact that Sedaka did not record the master recording track of the song in one of RCA's own studios — a well-understood requirement under the terms of his recording contract — RCA refused to accept Sedaka's radio-ready master recording, neither producing and distributing the single at retail nor promoting the song at major radio markets. Allegedly Sedaka was particularly angry about RCA's decision to let this song go, especially since it had been all of Neil's work, and he was convinced that it would be his "comeback" song (even though he had #1 and #5 singles less than two years earlier; output in the early 1960s was demanding). As it turned out, his premonition was correct. Pitney was also eager for a hit single after a lengthy (by 1960s standards) dry spell, and since Gene had a similar, high-tenor vocal range to Neil's, the newly-available acquisition of Sedaka's master track of "It Hurts to Be in Love" allowed Pitney and his record label, Musicor
, a perfect opportunity to recharge his own career. The only thing needed to do was to remove Sedaka's lead vocal track and replace it with Pitney's. Both Sedaka's original piano and backing vocals remained exactly intact, along with the female backing vocals. Once Pitney's "Sedaka version" of the single was out and was a hit, he and his record company recorded new, alternate versions of "It Hurts to Be in Love", especially varying the drum tracks. But the main issue was to not let Pitney's popularity wane, so by issuing Sedaka's version with Pitney's vocal as quickly as possible, Pitney hit the Top 10, and the objective was achieved.
The same, however, could not be said for Neil Sedaka. When his contract with RCA expired at the end of 1966, RCA chose not to renew it, leaving Sedaka without a record label.
Although Sedaka's stature as a recording artist was at a low ebb in the late 1960s, he was able to maintain his career through songwriting. Thanks to the fact that his publisher, Aldon Music, was acquired by Screen Gems
, two of his songs were recorded by The Monkees
, and other hits in this period written by Sedaka included The Cyrkle
's version of "We Had a Good Thing Goin'" and "Workin' on a Groovy Thing", a Top 40 R&B hit for Patti Drew
in 1968, and a Top 20 pop hit for The 5th Dimension in 1969. Also, "Make the Music Play" was included on Frankie Valli
's charting album Timeless.
On an episode of the quiz show I've Got a Secret
in 1965, Sedaka's secret was that he was to represent the United States in classical piano at the 1966 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow
, and he impressed the panelists with his performance of Frederic Chopin's "Fantaisie Impromptu" on the show. Prior to his piano performance, panelist Henry Morgan
challenged Sedaka with the fact that the Soviet bureaucracy despises — and, in fact, outlaws — rock 'n' roll music and that any Western music that young Russians have was by underground smuggling. This exchange continued before the panel learned that Sedaka was to represent the USA at the Tchaikovsky classical piano competition, which Van Cliburn
had won in 1958. Unfortunately, Morgan's warning turned out to be true. Despite Sedaka's classical roots, because of Sedaka's "other" life as a pop star, he was disqualified by the USSR as the US entrant for the competition.
Sedaka also made an appearance in the 1968 movie Playgirl Killer, with a scene of him performing a song called "The Waterbug".
and Australia
for standing by him. "... You know, Bob, in my lean years — I called them The Hungry Years
— it was Bob Rogers and Australia who welcomed me." He made several trips to Australia to play cabaret dates, and his commercial comeback began when the single "Star-Crossed Lovers" became a major hit there. The song went to #5 nationally in April 1969 — giving Sedaka his first charting single anywhere in four years. It also came in at #5 in Go-Set
magazine's list of the Top 40 Australian singles of 1969.
Later that year, with the support of Festival Records
, he recorded a new LP of original material entitled Workin' on a Groovy Thing (released in the United Kingdom as Sounds of Sedaka) at Festival Studios in Sydney. It was co-produced by Festival staff producer Pat Aulton
, with arrangements by John Farrar
(who later achieved international fame for his work with Olivia Newton-John
) and backing by Australian session musicians including guitarist Jimmy Doyle (Ayers Rock
) and noted jazz musician-composer John Sangster
.
The single lifted from the album, "Wheeling, West Virginia," reached #20 in Australia in early 1970. The LP is also notable because it was Sedaka's first album to include collaborations with writers other than longtime lyricist Howard Greenfield
; the title track featured lyrics by Roger Atkins and four other songs were co-written with Carole Bayer Sager
, who subsequently embarked on an enormously successful collaboration songwriting with Aussie expat singer-songwriter Peter Allen
, who would become known as "The Boy from Oz" in addition to being married to Liza Minnelli
and having the incomparable Judy Garland
for a mother-in-law.
In 1971, Sedaka released the Emergence. Singles from that album included "I'm A Song (Sing Me)," "Silent Movies," "Superbird," and "Rosemary Blue." Emergence and the next year's Solitaire album were both released on the RCA Victor label, marking a short-lived reunion between Sedaka and RCA. Good friend and New York music impresario Don Kirshner
attempted to make the U.S. release of Emergence a comeback for Sedaka, but the album and single releases had no appreciable success. After the failure of Emergence in the U.S., Sedaka left his hometown of New York and moved his family to the UK.
In 1972, Sedaka embarked on a successful English tour and in June recorded the Solitaire album at Strawberry Studios
in Stockport
, working with the four future members of 10cc
(best known to American audiophiles for "I'm Not in Love
" and "The Things We Do for Love"). As well as the title track, which was successfully covered by Andy Williams
(UK Top 5 singles chart) and The Carpenters
(US Top 20), it included two UK Top 40 singles, including "Beautiful You," which also charted briefly in America, Sedaka's first US chart appearance in ten years; but its minor performance did little to generate interest in restarting Sedaka's career.
for MGM Records
, which started the second phase of his career and included his original version of the hit song "Love Will Keep Us Together" (also a US #1 hit two years later for The Captain & Tennille). This album also marked the effective end of his writing partnership with Greenfield, commemorated by the track "Our Last Song Together." They would reunite, however, and begin composing together again before Greenfield's death in 1986. From 1974 onward, Sedaka's records were issued in Europe and around the world on the Polydor
label. His first album of new material with Polydor was Laughter in the Rain.
In the US, Sedaka's records were issued first on the Rocket
label from 1974–77 and on the Elektra
label from 1977-81. It was Sedaka's association with Rocket Records that helped resurrect his career in the States, for Elton John
signed Sedaka to Rocket Records upon discovering that Sedaka had no formal U.S. recording contract. "We couldn't believe our luck," John remembered in Elizabeth Rosenthal's "His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John." Sedaka returned to the U.S. album charts with the release of Sedaka's Back
, a compilation of songs from three British albums he had already recorded in Britain, namely "Solitaire," "The Tra-La Days Are Over," and "Laughter In The Rain." It was only the second Sedaka album ever to chart in the U.S. Sedaka was known principally as a singles artist to that point, his only other American charting album being "Neil Sedaka Sings His Greatest Hits," a compilation of his early singles, according to Rosenthal's research.
Although the single was released in the autumn of 1974 and was slow in building, eventually Sedaka found himself once again topping the Billboard
Hot 100 singles charts with "Laughter in the Rain
" in early 1975. One of Sedaka's most well-received compositions during this period was the second single, "The Immigrant
" (US pop #22, US AC #1). Critics hailed its beautiful orchestration and evocative lyrics: wistful, nostalgic, and no doubt enhanced and embellished by both pride and disillusion with the state of affairs in the contemporary life in the nation in which Sedaka was raised. It was at one time welcoming of strangers from afar, willing to allow emigrants from faraway lands to enter our shores as immigrants, being allowed to try to find a place in that new home of their dreams – possibly not necessarily as perfect as initially hoped – but still the great land called America.
But it was also was a protest ode dedicated to his friend (ironically, a former Beatle who had shooed him across the Atlantic in the opposite direction), John Lennon
. The U.S. Government was repeatedly denying him permanent resident status. Eventually, he did receive that request, only to be assassinated by a deranged fan's bullet in Sedaka's own hometown of New York City, slightly more than five years after this song was on the charts and the radio. The third consecutive Billboard Top 25 hit from Sedaka's Back was the uptempo rocker "That's When the Music Takes Me" (US pop #25, US AC #7). This song was a rarity at the time as it was one of the few songs Sedaka wrote by himself, without a collaborator. It remains today his standard curtain-call concert closer.
Sedaka and Greenfield co-wrote "Love Will Keep Us Together
," a No. 1 hit for The Captain & Tennille and the biggest hit for the entire year of 1975. Toni Tennille
paid tribute to Sedaka's welcome return to music-business success with her ad lib of "Sedaka is back" in the outro while she was laying down her own background vocals for the track. "Captain" Daryl Dragon
and Toni also recorded a Spanish-language version of the song the same year that cracked the top half of Billboards Hot 100 chart ("Por Amor Viviremos," US pop #49).
In 1975, Sedaka was the opening act for The Carpenters
on their world tour. According to The Carpenters: The Untold Story by Ray Coleman
, manager Sherwin Bash fired Sedaka at the request of Richard Carpenter
, allegedly because Sedaka was becoming more popular than the Carpenters. The firing resulted in a media backlash against The Carpenters after Sedaka publicly announced he was off the tour. This, however, was before Karen and Richard recorded Sedaka's "Solitaire" which became a Top 20 hit for the duo. Richard Carpenter denied that he fired Sedaka for "stealing their show", stating they were proud of Sedaka's success. However, Bash was fired as The Carpenters' manager a short time after.
In late 1975, Sedaka earned more chart success with the release of his second Rocket album, The Hungry Years
. This album was an American edition of Sedaka's British Polydor album "Overnight Success". Near the close of 1975 and lasting into early 1976, Sedaka would have another big single with "Bad Blood
". The song stayed at #1 for three weeks and was certified Gold® by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the most individual commercially successful single of his career. Elton John provided uncredited backing vocals for "Bad Blood" and has been credited by Sedaka as being responsible for his breakthrough back into the US pop music scene.
Another highlight from "The Hungry Years" was Sedaka's new version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." His 1962 original, a #1 hit single, was an upbeat pop song, while the remake was a ballad, based on a similar arrangement used by Lenny Welch when he recorded a version of it in 1970. Sedaka's ballad version hit #8 on the Hot 100 in early 1976, making him the only artist to ever record entirely reworked and rearranged versions of the same song to reach the Top 10 by the same artist. Sedaka's second version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" topped Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in 1976. The same year, Elvis Presley
recorded the Sedaka song "Solitaire". This was followed by Sedaka's Top 20 hit "Love in the Shadows", also from 1976.
Later in 1976, Sedaka released a second (and final) collaboration with Elton John, with Elton once again on uncredited backing vocals on the title song to Sedaka's third and final Rocket album "Steppin' Out". While it would crack the Hot 100's Top 40, it would also signal the beginning of a slowdown in Sedaka's music sales and radio play not unlike what he experienced in 1964 when The Beatles and the "British Invasion" arrived. In this version of another fading of his music sales, it was the arrival of the disco era. In 1977, Sedaka, now with Elektra Records, released his next album "A Song" which had moderate success. While Sedaka attempted to release disco-themed music himself in the late 1970s, his album sales were weak and singles could not get a foothold on the radio. In 1980
, Sedaka had his final Top 20 hit with "Should've Never Let You Go", which he recorded as a duet with his then 17-year-old daughter, Dara.
Throughout the 1970s, Sedaka's old record company, RCA, would re-issue his 1960s-era songs on several compilation LPs on the RCA Victor and RCA Camden
labels, a practice which continues to this day. Sedaka also released one final album of new material with RCA, consisting of a live concert he gave in Sydney, Australia. The album was released on the RCA International label in Australia and Europe as Neil Sedaka on Stage in 1974. It saw a US release on the RCA Victor label in 1976 as Sedaka Live In Australia. The songs on the album were mostly cover versions of rock and pop songs from the previous twenty-five years, such as "Proud Mary", "Everything Is Beautiful
", and "The Father Of Girls." RCA and Sedaka have been at odds for decades over ownership rights over Sedaka's original master tapes from his late 1950s/early 1960s hits. RCA has released assorted repackaging of his old hits, forcing Sedaka to re-record his old hits and make them sound as close and authentic to the originals as possible.
-Tammi Terrell
1967 Top 5 smash "Your Precious Love
", placed high enough on the AC chart (making the Top 15) for one final album to be released. But the second album's only release did not fare well on the AC chart, barely cracking its Top 40, and by 1985, Sedaka was once again without a recording contract. Concertgoers filled theatre seats while Sedaka created his own music label. That would assure that his catalog of hits would find the marketplace, and he released occasional CDs of self-produced new, original material.
, an American singer-musician-songwriter and judge on NBC
's hit a cappella vocal-group competition series The Sing-Off
, credited Sedaka on his "iTunes Originals" album as an inspiration for song publishing. Hearing Sedaka had a song published by the age of 13 gave Folds the goal of also getting a song published by his 13th birthday, despite the fact that Sedaka did not actually publish his first song until he was 16.
In 1985, songs composed by Sedaka were adapted for the Japanese anime
TV series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
. These included the two opening themes "Zeta - Toki wo Koete" (originally in English as "Better Days Are Coming") and "Mizu no Hoshi e Ai wo Komete" (originally in English as "For Us to Decide", but the English version was never recorded), as well as the end theme "Hoshizora no Believe" (written as "Bad and Beautiful"). Due to copyright, the songs were replaced for the North American DVD
.
In 1994, Sedaka provided the voice for Neil Moussaka, a parody of himself in Food Rocks
, an attraction at Epcot
from 1994-2006.
A musical comedy based around the songs of Sedaka, titled Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, was written in 2005 by Erik Jackson and Ben H. Winters; it is now under license to Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
A biographical musical, Laughter in the Rain, produced by Bill Kenwright
and Laurie Mansfield, starring Wayne Smith as Sedaka, had its world premiere at the Churchill Theatre
, in the London borough of Bromley, on 4 March 2010. Sedaka attended the opening and joined the cast onstage for an impromptu curtain call of the title song.
, and was an October 2006 inductee of the Long Island Music Hall of Fame
. His ardent fans have appealed for his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in Cleveland, due to his longevity, contributions to contemporary music, and hit songwriting for himself and dozens of other artists.
TV series American Idol
, Sedaka appeared as a guest judge and mentor to the five remaining finalists. (The "guest judge" aspect of the series has long since been discontinued.) Several of the contestants' performances from Sedaka's songbook sparked particular praise from the guest judge. One of those performances came from eventual third-place finalist Kimberley Locke
, who sang the "Theme from Where the Boys Are
." The Sedaka/Greenfield composition was originally recorded by Connie Francis
and has gone on to become her signature song. Sedaka termed Locke's performance "ear-licious."
Eventual Season 2 runnerup Clay Aiken
chose Sedaka's 1972 song "Solitaire" for his performance. As Aiken explained to the studio and TV audiences, host Ryan Seacrest
, and the four total judges, "Solitaire" had long been one of his mother's all-time favorite songs. When she learned that Sedaka was going to be a guest judge and that the finalists would be singing Sedaka's songs, she begged him to sing "Solitaire." The performance was uniformly given extraordinarily high praise by the judges (including perennial skeptic Simon Cowell
). Sedaka dissolved into tears, telling Aiken that he officially passed ownership of the performance of "Solitaire" to Clay, offering to record and produce a single of the song or an entire CD with him.
Although it did not appear on his debut CD itself, Aiken recorded and added "Solitaire" as the B-side to the single "The Way
," whose sales were faltering. "Solitaire" was quickly moved to the A-side, and radio airplay and single and download sales responded immediately. "Solitaire" hit #1 on the Billboard
Hot Singles Sales chart and was, in fact, the top-selling single for all of 2004. It also hit the Top 5 on Billboards Hot 100. Sedaka was invited back to American Idol to celebrate the success of "Solitaire" several times, as it continued to reach new milestones. Since then, Aiken has mined the Sedaka songbook again, recording a cover of probably Sedaka's best-known song, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," on the "deluxe version" of his 2010 CD release, Tried and True
.
Sedaka continues to be seen in the American Idol studio audience on at least an annual basis — most recently on May 19, 2011, when Seacrest had Sedaka stand and greet the audience on-camera during Season 10's "Top 3" results show.
recorded and released the Sedaka/Greenfield composition "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?" in 1971. The song did relatively well on the UK singles chart, peaking in the Top 20. The song would lie dormant for more than three decades, when UK comic Peter Kay
lip-synched the song for a 2002 video in his TV series Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights
. For the 2005 annual Comic Relief
charity drive, he solicited a number of celebrity friends of his and updated the video, and it became an enormous hit. The original 1971 Tony Christie single was re-released to radio and CD/download sales, and hit #1 for seven weeks and was the biggest hit in Britain for all of 2005.
When interviewed for an "extras" feature for a DVD set of a concert filmed in London on 7 April 2006 (see below), Neil jokingly had heard that Christie had retired and was "golfing in Spain." The sudden revival of "Amarillo" summoned Christie back to the UK for an unexpected return to fame. Sedaka also released the song in the U.S. in 1977 as the shortened "Amarillo
," but it was only a mid-chart entry, peaking just shy of the Top 40. In early 2006, the song received new life yet again when it received a dance beat and revised lyrics to become a novelty hit for the UK team's FIFA World Cup finals with "Is This the Way to the (England) World Cup?" It was used yet again later that summer by the Central Band of the Royal British Legion prior to the Men's Finals of the 2006 Wimbledon tennis tournament.
On 7 April 2006, Sedaka was appearing at the Royal Albert Hall and filming for the above-referenced CD/DVD package, when he was interrupted mid-concert by a gentleman who walked onstage from the wings. The planned scenario was that Sedaka was to begin performing "Amarillo", and after one verse, the audience was to be surprised by the appearance of Christie for an eventual duet. But at the interruption, a seemingly annoyed Sedaka asked, "What is this?" The interloper was a representative from Guinness Records, and he was there to present Sedaka with an award from Guinness World Records
: British Hit Singles and Albums for composing "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?", the most successful UK single of the 21st century (up to that date, of course). After the presentation, Sedaka proceeded into "Amarillo", Christie entered onstage to an eruption of cheers from the audience, and after the successful duet performance, the two men walked offstage together as the first half of Sedaka's concert came to a close – with the entertainer the latest recipient of a new Guinness World Record.
In early 2007, Sedaka signed his first recording contract in more than two decades with Razor and Tie Records, a small-but-growing, New York-based independent label with a talent roster that also includes Joan Baez
, Vanessa Carlton
, Foreigner
, Joe Jackson
, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo
. The first release was The Definitive Collection, a life-spanning compilation of his hits, along with outtakes and songs previously released but unavailable in CD and/or download format. It debuted in the Top 25 on Billboard
s Top 200 Albums chart in May 2007, one of the highest-charting albums of his entire career. Best known as a "singles artist," this album chart activity was considered a significant comeback for the veteran entertainer. The last time Sedaka had an album on the Top 200 albums chart was in 1980, with his '79 album In the Pocket – when "Should've Never Let You Go," the 1980 duet with Sedaka and daughter Dara, was Sedaka's last Top 20 hit on the Hot 100 singles chart.
Waking Up Is Hard to Do was Sedaka's next release with Razor and Tie, hitting the albums chart in May 2009. The CD was a children's album that used the melodies of many of Sedaka's best-known songs but changed the lyrics to fit, and hopefully have fun with, the everyday lives of babies and toddlers, along with their parents, grandparents, babysitters, and other caregivers. The CD title is an example. Lastly, The Music of My Life entered the albums chart in February 2010 and comprised almost all new material. The first track, "Do You Remember?," is Sedaka's first foray into spicy salsa and was produced by music producer, composer, and pianist David Foster
. "Right or Wrong," co-written with original music partner Howard Greenfield
, was done in traditional street-corner, layered doo-wop vocal harmonies with Sedaka overlaying his own voice to achieve the effect for which he was well known in his "early" heyday of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The final track, "You", has been previously released, but was remastered for this project and is often one of several titles dedicated to his wife and career guide of nearly 50 years, Leba. Neil Sedaka Music continues to be listed as co-producer along with Razor and Tie.
A concert performance on 26 October 2007 at the Lincoln Center in New York City paid homage to the 50th anniversary of Sedaka's debut in show business. Music impresario (and producer for The Music of My Life track "Do You Remember?") David Foster served as emcee. Other guests included The Captain and Tennille; Natalie Cole
; Connie Francis
; recording legend and decades-long Sedaka friend and former manager Don Kirshner
; and new Solitaire "owner" Clay Aiken
, amongst many others.
During his 2008 Australian tour, Sedaka premiered a new classical orchestral composition entitled "Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life)." Sedaka also toured The Philippines for his May 17, 2008 concert at the Araneta Coliseum
.
In early 2010, his original uptempo version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (performed by a group of uncredited singers) was being heard as the impetus for a series of insurance TV commercials, featuring actor Dennis Haysbert
assuring that TV viewers not insured by Allstate
can break up with their current insurer without much ado at all.
On September 11, 2010, Sedaka performed to a public and TV audience at the Hyde Park, London, venue of the "Proms in the Park" for the BBC. The UK continues to be probably Sedaka's most welcoming nation, and has been since first moving his family there (temporarily) four decades ago. The irony of the place whose music scuttled his "first" career, namely The Beatles and the British Invasion, and yet has constantly welcomed him with open arms for more than 40 years, is not lost on him, he has stated in many interviews. Indeed, it was his work with the musicians who would, in a few years, become the hit-making group 10cc
that brought him back to the U.S. as a major star with #1 hits and a number of other major Top 40 singles. The UK always takes up a major portion of Sedaka's touring year in the 21st century.
In early 2011, Sedaka recorded two duets ("Brighton" and "The Immigrant
") with singer Jim Van Slyke for his Neil Sedaka tribute album, The Sedaka Sessions. LML Records released this album in August 2011.
who lives in Los Angeles
with his wife Samantha and three children.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
pop/rock
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
singer, pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricist
Lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who specializes in lyrics. A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.-Collaboration:...
s Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...
and Phil Cody.
Early life: Juilliard and The Brill Building
Sedaka was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His father, Mac Sedaka, a taxi driver, was of Sephardic Turkish-Jewish
History of the Jews in Turkey
Turkish Jews The history of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey covers the 2,400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey. There have been Jewish communities in Asia Minor since at least the 5th century BCE and many Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from Spain were welcomed to the...
descent. ("Sedaka" is a variant of tzedaka, which translates in both Hebrew and Arabic as the word charity). Sedaka's mother, Eleanor Appel Sedaka, was of Polish-Russian Jewish descent (or generally referred to as Ashkenazi-Jewish descent). He grew up in Brighton Beach. Sedaka is a cousin of singer Eydie Gormé
Eydie Gormé
Eydie Gormé is an American singer, specializing, with her husband, Steve Lawrence, in traditional pop music, in the form of ballads and breezy swing. She has earned numerous awards, including the Grammy and the Emmy...
.
Sedaka demonstrated musical aptitude in his second-grade choral class, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus
Abraham & Straus
Abraham & Straus was a major New York City department store, based in Brooklyn. Founded in 1865, in 1929 it became part of Federated Department Stores, which eliminated the A&S brand shortly after its 1994 acquisition of R.H. Macy & Company...
department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright. In 1947, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music's Preparatory Division for Children, which he attended on Saturdays. His mother wanted him to become a renowned classical pianist such as the contemporary of the day, Van Cliburn
Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at age 23, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War....
, but Sedaka was discovering pop music. When Sedaka was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...
, an aspiring poet and lyricist. They became two of the legendary Brill Building
Brill Building
The Brill Building is an office building located at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, just north of Times Square and further uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood...
's composers. There were technically two "Brill Buildings" — the original located at 1619 Broadway at 49th Street in Manhattan, and a second building that also took on the moniker of a "Brill Building", located at 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, unofficially known as "Allegro Studios".
Sedaka and Greenfield wrote songs together throughout much of their young lives, with Sedaka going on to being a major teen pop star and the pair also writing hits for a litany of other artists as well as for Sedaka's own career. However, when The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and the British Invasion
British Invasion
The British Invasion is a term used to describe the large number of rock and roll, beat, rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the time period from 1964 through 1966.- Background :...
took American music in a different direction, Sedaka was left without a recording career and decided a major change in his life was necessary, moving his family to the UK in the early 1970s. Sedaka and Greenfield mutually agreed that their partnership reached an end with "Our Last Song Together". Sedaka began a new composing partnership with British lyricist Phil Cody. After Sedaka returned to the US, however, the Sedaka-Greenfield team eventually reunited and continued until Greenfield's death in 1986.
Rise to fame
After graduating from Lincoln High School, Sedaka and some of his classmates formed a band called The TokensThe Tokens
The Tokens are an American male doo-wop-style vocal group from Brooklyn, New York. They are known best for their chart-scoring 1961 single, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" .-Career:...
. The band had minor regional hits with songs like "While I Dream", "I Love My Baby", "Come Back Joe", and "Don't Go", before Sedaka launched out on his own in 1957. However, after a few personnel changes, in 1961, The Tokens would hit #1 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
pop charts with the international smash "The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight", also known as "Wimoweh" and originally as "Mbube", is a song recorded by Solomon Linda and his group The Evening Birds for the South African Gallo Record Company in 1939. It was covered internationally by many 1950s pop and folk revival artists, including The Weavers,...
". Meanwhile, the very young Sedaka's first three solo singles, "Laura Lee", "Ring-a-Rockin'", and "Oh, Delilah!" failed to become hits (although "Ring-a-Rockin'" earned him the first of many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand
American Bandstand
American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...
). But they demonstrated his ability to perform as a solo singer, so RCA Victor signed him to a recording contract.
His first single for RCA, "The Diary
The Diary (song)
"The Diary" is a song by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield and is Neil Sedaka's debut single in 1958. It was issued on his 1959 debut solo album Rock with Sedaka on RCA. It was reissued on his 1961 album Neil Sedaka Sings Little Devil and His Other Hits and again in 1963 on the album Neil Sedaka...
", a song that he had previously offered to Little Anthony and the Imperials, reached #14 on the Billboard charts for Sedaka in 1958. His second single, "I Go Ape
I Go Ape
"I Go Ape" is the second single of Neil Sedaka immediately following his success with the debut single "The Diary" and was written by Neil Sedaka himself and Howard Greenfield...
", was a modest success at #42, and his third single, "Crying My Heart Out for You
Crying My Heart Out for You
"Crying My Heart Out for You" was the third single of Neil Sedaka immediately following his success with the debut single "The Diary" and follow up sigle "I Go Ape" and immediately before his major success with Oh! Carol". The hit written by Neil Sedaka was released in 1959 reaching #111 on the US...
", was a flop at #111 (although it went to #6 on the pop charts in Italy). Desperate for another hit, he bought several hit singles and listened to them repeatedly, studying the song structure, chord progressions, lyrics and harmonies — and he discovered that the hit songs of the day all shared the same basic musical anatomy. Armed with his newfound arsenal of musical knowledge, he set out to craft his next big hit song, and he promptly did exactly that: "Oh! Carol
Oh! Carol
"Oh! Carol", sometimes just "Oh Carol" is an international hit written by Neil Sedaka in 1958 about his then-girlfriend, Carol Klein, later to become Carole King. The song was co-written with Howard Greenfield. The song reached #9 in the American charts in 1959. It also earned Sedaka his first #1...
" delivered Sedaka his first domestic Top 10 hit, reaching #9 on the Hot 100 in 1959 and going to #1 on the Italian pop charts in 1960, giving Sedaka his first #1 ranking. The song was dedicated to his then-girlfriend, Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...
, a fellow Brill Building composer and rising pop star of her own. King would respond with her own novelty song, "Oh! Neil" later that year.
After establishing himself in 1958, Sedaka kept churning out new hits from 1960 to 1962. His flow of Top 30 hits during this period included: "Stairway to Heaven
Stairway to Heaven (Neil Sedaka song)
"Stairway to Heaven" is a song written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield from Neil Sedaka's album Neil Sedaka Sings Little Devil and His Other Hits. It became a hit for Sedaka after "Oh! Carol" and in 1960, repeated the performance of the previous single by peaking at number nine on the US...
" (#9, 1960); "You Mean Everything to Me
You Mean Everything to Me (song)
"You Mean Everything to Me" is a song written and sung by Neil Sedaka. It was released in 1960. It became a hit in the US reaching #17 on the US Billboard Chart....
" (#17, 1960); "Run, Samson, Run" (#27, 1960); "Calendar Girl
Calendar Girl (song)
"Calendar Girl" is a song written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield and was a hit single for Neil Sedaka. It was released in 1961 reaching #4 on the US Billboard chart, making it one of the better-known Sedaka songs alongside "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen" "Oh! Carol", and "Breaking Up Is Hard...
" (#4, 1961); "Little Devil" (#11, 1961); "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen" (#6, 1961); his signature song, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Breaking Up is Hard to Do
"Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" is a song recorded by Neil Sedaka, and co-written by Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. Sedaka recorded this song twice, in 1962 and 1975, in two vastly different arrangements.-1962 version:...
" (#1, 1962); and "Next Door to an Angel" (#5, 1962). Singles not making the Top 30 during this time period included "Sweet Little You" (#59, 1961) and "King of Clowns" (#45, 1962). RCA issued four LPs in the US and Britain of his works during this period, and also produced Scopitone
Scopitone
Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. Scopitone films were a forerunner of music videos. The Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Color-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time....
and Cinebox
Cinebox
The Cinebox was a coin operated Italian 16mm film projector juke box type machine invented in 1959 that appared in Europe to rival the French made Scopitone that appeared in 1960.The Cinebox was manufactured in Rome by Ottico Meccanica Italiana....
videos of "Calendar Girl" in 1961, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" in 1962, and "The Dreamer" in 1963. He made regular appearances on such TV programs as American Bandstand
American Bandstand
American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...
and Shindig!
Shindig!
Shindig! was an American musical variety series which aired on ABC from September 16, 1964 to January 8, 1966. The show was hosted by Jimmy O'Neill, a disc jockey in Los Angeles at the time who also created the show along with his wife Sharon Sheeley and production executive Art Stolnitz....
during this period.
Connie Francis
When Sedaka was not recording his own songs, he and Howard Greenfield were writing for other performers, most notably in their earliest days Connie FrancisConnie Francis
Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...
. Francis began searching for a new hit after her 1958 single "Who's Sorry Now?
Who's Sorry Now?
"Who's Sorry Now?" is a popular song with music written by Ted Snyder and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It was published in 1923."Who's Sorry Now?" was featured in the Marx Brothers film A Night in Casablanca , directed by Archie Mayo and released by United Artists.The song has been...
". She was introduced to Sedaka and Greenfield, who played every ballad they had written for her. Francis began writing in her diary while the two played the last of their songs. After they finished, Francis told them they wrote beautiful ballads but that they were too intellectual for the young generation. Sedaka suggested to Greenfield a song they had written that morning for a girl group. Greenfield protested because the song had been promised to the girl group, but Sedaka insisted on playing "Stupid Cupid
Stupid Cupid
"Stupid Cupid" is a song written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka which became a hit for Connie Francis in 1958.In the spring of 1958 Francis had hit #4 with her breakout hit, a rock ballad version of the standard "Who's Sorry Now?"...
". Francis told them they had just played her new hit. Francis' song reached #14 on the Billboard charts.
While Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked her if he could read what she had written. After she refused, Sedaka was inspired to write "The Diary", his own first hit single. Sedaka and Greenfield wrote many of Connie Francis' hits, such as "Fallin'" and the "Theme from Where the Boys Are
Where the Boys Are
The kind of cool modern jazz popularized by such acts as Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Chico Hamilton, then in the vanguard of the college music market, features in a number of scenes with Basil...
", the film in which she starred. Although the latter hit the Top 5 on the Billboard pop singles chart and Francis had several #1 singles, "Where the Boys Are" eventually became her signature song.
Jimmy Clanton
Sedaka and Greenfield also wrote some of Jimmy ClantonJimmy Clanton
Jimmy Clanton is an American singer who became known as the "swamp pop R&B teenage idol". His band recorded a hit song "Just A Dream" which Clanton had written in 1958 for the Ace Records label. It reached number four on the Billboard chart and sold a million copies...
's hits, such as "Another Sleepless Night", "What Am I Gonna Do?", and "All the Words in the World". Sedaka himself recorded each of these three songs: "Another Sleepless Night" appears on his Rock With Sedaka debut album; "What Am I Gonna Do?" was the B-side of "Going Home to Mary Lou" and appeared on his 1961 album Neil Sedaka Sings "Little Devil" and His Other Hits; and "All the Words in the World" was recorded but was kept in the RCA vaults until 1977, at the height of Sedaka's return to popularity, when it was released on the album Neil Sedaka: The '50s and '60s.
Foreign-language recordings
Neil Sedaka was very popular in ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Many of his English-language records were released there and proved quite successful, especially "Crying My Heart Out For You
Crying My Heart Out for You
"Crying My Heart Out for You" was the third single of Neil Sedaka immediately following his success with the debut single "The Diary" and follow up sigle "I Go Ape" and immediately before his major success with Oh! Carol". The hit written by Neil Sedaka was released in 1959 reaching #111 on the US...
" (Italian #6, 1959) and "Oh! Carol
Oh! Carol
"Oh! Carol", sometimes just "Oh Carol" is an international hit written by Neil Sedaka in 1958 about his then-girlfriend, Carol Klein, later to become Carole King. The song was co-written with Howard Greenfield. The song reached #9 in the American charts in 1959. It also earned Sedaka his first #1...
" (Italian #1, 1960).
In 1961, Sedaka began to record some of his hits in Italian, starting with "Esagerata" and "Un Giorno Inutile", local versions of "Little Devil" and "I Must Be Dreaming". Other recordings were to follow, such as "Tu Non Lo Sai" ("Breaking Up Is Hard to Do"), "Il Re Dei Pagliacci" ("King of Clowns"), "I Tuoi Capricci" ("Look Inside Your Heart"), and "La Terza Luna" ("Waiting For Never"). "La Terza Luna" reached #1 on the Italian pop charts in April 1963. Cinebox
Cinebox
The Cinebox was a coin operated Italian 16mm film projector juke box type machine invented in 1959 that appared in Europe to rival the French made Scopitone that appeared in 1960.The Cinebox was manufactured in Rome by Ottico Meccanica Italiana....
videos exist for "La Terza Luna" and "I Tuoi Capricci". From a language standpoint, his recordings in Italian had very little American accent. RCA Victor's Italiana office distributed his records in Italy and released three compilation LPs of Sedaka's Italian recordings.
Sedaka also recorded in Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Japanese. He enjoyed popularity in Latin America for his Spanish-language recordings. Many of these were pressed onto 78 rpm discs.
The mid-1960s and The British Invasion
The year 1962 provided Sedaka with one of his career's most important years, as "Next Door to an Angel" made the Top 5 and "Breaking Up Is Hard To DoBreaking Up is Hard to Do
"Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" is a song recorded by Neil Sedaka, and co-written by Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. Sedaka recorded this song twice, in 1962 and 1975, in two vastly different arrangements.-1962 version:...
" hit #1. But after 1962, Sedaka's popularity began to wane. While 1963 singles "Alice In Wonderland" (#17), "Let's Go Steady Again" (#26), and "Bad Girl" (#33) all managed to hit the Top 40, "The Dreamer" (#47) did not, and it would be more than another decade before Sedaka would see one of his singles hit the Top 10 again. After the release of "Bad Girl", Sedaka's career went into a sharp decline, hastened by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' arrival on the radio and especially their much-hyped February 1964 appearance on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
' The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
and the rest of the British Invasion. When describing The Beatles' effect on his career in the mid-'60s, he puts it brusquely: "The Beatles — not good!" This negative effect is seen in the fact that from 1964–66, only three of his singles even made it onto the Hot 100 at all: "Sunny" (#86, 1964), "The World Through a Tear" (#76, 1965), and "The Answer to My Prayer" (#89, 1965).
In the summer of 1964, after Sedaka had recorded "It Hurts to Be in Love", with the entire orchestration including himself on the piano and backing vocals along with a set of female backing vocals, the song instead became the third Top 10 hit for rising star Gene Pitney
Gene Pitney
Eugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...
. By then, with the British Invasion already underway and RCA Victor clearly not pleased with Sedaka's recent declining performance on the record charts, the fact that Sedaka did not record the master recording track of the song in one of RCA's own studios — a well-understood requirement under the terms of his recording contract — RCA refused to accept Sedaka's radio-ready master recording, neither producing and distributing the single at retail nor promoting the song at major radio markets. Allegedly Sedaka was particularly angry about RCA's decision to let this song go, especially since it had been all of Neil's work, and he was convinced that it would be his "comeback" song (even though he had #1 and #5 singles less than two years earlier; output in the early 1960s was demanding). As it turned out, his premonition was correct. Pitney was also eager for a hit single after a lengthy (by 1960s standards) dry spell, and since Gene had a similar, high-tenor vocal range to Neil's, the newly-available acquisition of Sedaka's master track of "It Hurts to Be in Love" allowed Pitney and his record label, Musicor
Musicor Records
Musicor Records was a New York City based record label, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The label was founded by songwriter Aaron Schroeder and distributed by United Artists Records...
, a perfect opportunity to recharge his own career. The only thing needed to do was to remove Sedaka's lead vocal track and replace it with Pitney's. Both Sedaka's original piano and backing vocals remained exactly intact, along with the female backing vocals. Once Pitney's "Sedaka version" of the single was out and was a hit, he and his record company recorded new, alternate versions of "It Hurts to Be in Love", especially varying the drum tracks. But the main issue was to not let Pitney's popularity wane, so by issuing Sedaka's version with Pitney's vocal as quickly as possible, Pitney hit the Top 10, and the objective was achieved.
The same, however, could not be said for Neil Sedaka. When his contract with RCA expired at the end of 1966, RCA chose not to renew it, leaving Sedaka without a record label.
Although Sedaka's stature as a recording artist was at a low ebb in the late 1960s, he was able to maintain his career through songwriting. Thanks to the fact that his publisher, Aldon Music, was acquired by Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
, two of his songs were recorded by The Monkees
The Monkees
The Monkees are an American pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork,...
, and other hits in this period written by Sedaka included The Cyrkle
The Cyrkle
The Cyrkle was a short-lived American rock and roll band active in the mid-1960s. The group charted two Top 40 hits, "Red Rubber Ball," and "Turn Down Day"...
's version of "We Had a Good Thing Goin'" and "Workin' on a Groovy Thing", a Top 40 R&B hit for Patti Drew
Patti Drew
Patti Drew is an American pop singer who achieved brief success in the late 1960s.Drew was raised in Nashville, Tennessee and Evanston, Illinois, where she sang in church with her sisters, Lorraine and Erma...
in 1968, and a Top 20 pop hit for The 5th Dimension in 1969. Also, "Make the Music Play" was included on Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli is an American musician, most famous as frontman of The Four Seasons. He is well-known for his unusually powerful falsetto singing voice...
's charting album Timeless.
On an episode of the quiz show I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...
in 1965, Sedaka's secret was that he was to represent the United States in classical piano at the 1966 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, and he impressed the panelists with his performance of Frederic Chopin's "Fantaisie Impromptu" on the show. Prior to his piano performance, panelist Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
challenged Sedaka with the fact that the Soviet bureaucracy despises — and, in fact, outlaws — rock 'n' roll music and that any Western music that young Russians have was by underground smuggling. This exchange continued before the panel learned that Sedaka was to represent the USA at the Tchaikovsky classical piano competition, which Van Cliburn
Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at age 23, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War....
had won in 1958. Unfortunately, Morgan's warning turned out to be true. Despite Sedaka's classical roots, because of Sedaka's "other" life as a pop star, he was disqualified by the USSR as the US entrant for the competition.
Sedaka also made an appearance in the 1968 movie Playgirl Killer, with a scene of him performing a song called "The Waterbug".
The late 1960s to early '70s
Sedaka worked to revive his solo career in the early 1970s. Despite his waning chart appeal in the USA in the late 1960s, he remained very popular as a concert attraction, notably in the UK and Australia. Years later he thanked Bob RogersBob Rogers (disc jockey)
Bob Rogers OAM is an Australian disc jockey and radio broadcaster. He currently presents the Bob Rogers Show, Monday to Friday between 9am-12 noon and the 6-hour Saturday evening Reminiscing program on Sydney radio station 2CH....
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
for standing by him. "... You know, Bob, in my lean years — I called them The Hungry Years
The Hungry Years
The Hungry Years is an album by Neil Sedaka, the title of which is an eponymous track from the album. It was released on the Rocket Records label in 1975.The album is the American edition of Overnight Success, with two songs being replaced....
— it was Bob Rogers and Australia who welcomed me." He made several trips to Australia to play cabaret dates, and his commercial comeback began when the single "Star-Crossed Lovers" became a major hit there. The song went to #5 nationally in April 1969 — giving Sedaka his first charting single anywhere in four years. It also came in at #5 in Go-Set
Go-Set
Go-Set was the first Australian pop music newspaper, published weekly from 2 February 1966 to 24 August 1974, and was founded in Melbourne by Phillip Frazer, Peter Raphael and Tony Schauble...
magazine's list of the Top 40 Australian singles of 1969.
Later that year, with the support of Festival Records
Festival Records (Australia)
Festival Records was an Australian music recording and publishing company which was founded in Sydney in 1952 and operated until 2005....
, he recorded a new LP of original material entitled Workin' on a Groovy Thing (released in the United Kingdom as Sounds of Sedaka) at Festival Studios in Sydney. It was co-produced by Festival staff producer Pat Aulton
Pat Aulton
Pat Aulton was a noted Australian record producer, musician, arranger and songwriter.He is best known for the successful pop and rock singles and albums he produced for Australian and New Zealand artists in the 1960s and early 1970s on the Sunshine and Spin Records labels...
, with arrangements by John Farrar
John Farrar
John Farrar is a music producer, songwriter, music arranger, singer and guitarist who is best known for his work with Olivia Newton-John with whom he wrote and produced many hit songs....
(who later achieved international fame for his work with Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
) and backing by Australian session musicians including guitarist Jimmy Doyle (Ayers Rock
Ayers Rock (band)
Ayers Rock was a jazz fusion/progressive rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group formed in 1973, and included many well-travelled rock performers; drummer Mark Kennedy had previously played in Spectrum, and played on sessions for King Harvest and Friends...
) and noted jazz musician-composer John Sangster
John Sangster
John Sangster was an Australian jazz composer, arranger, drummer, cornettist and Vibraphonist born in Melbourne, most well known as a composer though also a gifted multi-instrumentalist...
.
The single lifted from the album, "Wheeling, West Virginia," reached #20 in Australia in early 1970. The LP is also notable because it was Sedaka's first album to include collaborations with writers other than longtime lyricist Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...
; the title track featured lyrics by Roger Atkins and four other songs were co-written with Carole Bayer Sager
Carole Bayer Sager
Carole Bayer Sager is an American lyricist, songwriter, singer, and painter.-Introduction:Born in New York City, Sager graduated from New York University, where she majored in English, dramatic arts and speech...
, who subsequently embarked on an enormously successful collaboration songwriting with Aussie expat singer-songwriter Peter Allen
Peter Allen
Peter Allen was an Australian songwriter and entertainer. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, Arthur's Theme, winning an Academy Award in 1981...
, who would become known as "The Boy from Oz" in addition to being married to Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
and having the incomparable Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
for a mother-in-law.
In 1971, Sedaka released the Emergence. Singles from that album included "I'm A Song (Sing Me)," "Silent Movies," "Superbird," and "Rosemary Blue." Emergence and the next year's Solitaire album were both released on the RCA Victor label, marking a short-lived reunion between Sedaka and RCA. Good friend and New York music impresario Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...
attempted to make the U.S. release of Emergence a comeback for Sedaka, but the album and single releases had no appreciable success. After the failure of Emergence in the U.S., Sedaka left his hometown of New York and moved his family to the UK.
In 1972, Sedaka embarked on a successful English tour and in June recorded the Solitaire album at Strawberry Studios
Strawberry Studios
-Formation:The facility was originally called Inner City Studios and located above a music store in the town centre. In early 1968 it was bought by Peter Tattersall, a former road manager for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. Tattersall invited Eric Stewart – then lead guitarist and singer of...
in Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...
, working with the four future members of 10cc
10cc
10cc are an English art rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. The band initially consisted of four musicians -- Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme -- who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the "10cc" name...
(best known to American audiophiles for "I'm Not in Love
I'm Not in Love
"I'm Not in Love" is a song written by Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman of the English group 10cc, from the album The Original Soundtrack. The lyric reveals a narrator in denial about the title's ostensible theme.-The 10cc version:...
" and "The Things We Do for Love"). As well as the title track, which was successfully covered by Andy Williams
Andy Williams
Howard Andrew "Andy" Williams is an American singer who has recorded 18 Gold- and three Platinum-certified albums. He hosted The Andy Williams Show, a TV variety show, from 1962 to 1971, as well as numerous television specials, and owns his own theater, the Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri,...
(UK Top 5 singles chart) and The Carpenters
The Carpenters
Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of sister Karen and brother Richard Carpenter. The Carpenters were the #1 selling American music act of the 1970s. Though often referred to by the public as "The Carpenters", the duo's official name on authorized recordings and...
(US Top 20), it included two UK Top 40 singles, including "Beautiful You," which also charted briefly in America, Sedaka's first US chart appearance in ten years; but its minor performance did little to generate interest in restarting Sedaka's career.
The mid- to late 1970s
A year later he reconvened with the Strawberry team, who had by then charted with their own debut 10cc album, to record The Tra-La Days Are OverThe Tra-La Days Are Over
The Tra-La Days Are Over is a 1973 album by American singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka. The album was the second to be produced at Strawberry Studios in England in collaboration with Graham Gouldman, Lol Creme, Kevin Godley and Eric Stewart, who had formed the band 10cc since their first joint venture...
for MGM Records
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...
, which started the second phase of his career and included his original version of the hit song "Love Will Keep Us Together" (also a US #1 hit two years later for The Captain & Tennille). This album also marked the effective end of his writing partnership with Greenfield, commemorated by the track "Our Last Song Together." They would reunite, however, and begin composing together again before Greenfield's death in 1986. From 1974 onward, Sedaka's records were issued in Europe and around the world on the Polydor
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
label. His first album of new material with Polydor was Laughter in the Rain.
In the US, Sedaka's records were issued first on the Rocket
Rocket Records
The Rocket Record Company was a record label founded by Elton John, with Bernie Taupin, Gus Dudgeon and Steve Brown among others, in 1972. The name is from the hit, "Rocket Man"...
label from 1974–77 and on the Elektra
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
label from 1977-81. It was Sedaka's association with Rocket Records that helped resurrect his career in the States, for Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
signed Sedaka to Rocket Records upon discovering that Sedaka had no formal U.S. recording contract. "We couldn't believe our luck," John remembered in Elizabeth Rosenthal's "His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John." Sedaka returned to the U.S. album charts with the release of Sedaka's Back
Sedaka's Back
Sedaka's Back is an album by American singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka. The record, a compilation of his last three albums, which had been released only in the UK, was released on Elton John's Rocket Records label in 1974...
, a compilation of songs from three British albums he had already recorded in Britain, namely "Solitaire," "The Tra-La Days Are Over," and "Laughter In The Rain." It was only the second Sedaka album ever to chart in the U.S. Sedaka was known principally as a singles artist to that point, his only other American charting album being "Neil Sedaka Sings His Greatest Hits," a compilation of his early singles, according to Rosenthal's research.
Although the single was released in the autumn of 1974 and was slow in building, eventually Sedaka found himself once again topping the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Hot 100 singles charts with "Laughter in the Rain
Laughter in the Rain
"Laughter in the Rain" is a song recorded by Neil Sedaka and composed by Sedaka with lyrics by Phil Cody. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 1, 1975. The song also spent two weeks atop the adult contemporary chart.-Covers:...
" in early 1975. One of Sedaka's most well-received compositions during this period was the second single, "The Immigrant
The Immigrant (Neil Sedaka song)
"The Immigrant" is a 1975 single written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody and performed by Sedaka. The single was the second release from his album, Sedaka's Back. "The Immigrant" was dedicated to John Lennon and the immigration problems that he faced. The single peaked at number twenty-two on the...
" (US pop #22, US AC #1). Critics hailed its beautiful orchestration and evocative lyrics: wistful, nostalgic, and no doubt enhanced and embellished by both pride and disillusion with the state of affairs in the contemporary life in the nation in which Sedaka was raised. It was at one time welcoming of strangers from afar, willing to allow emigrants from faraway lands to enter our shores as immigrants, being allowed to try to find a place in that new home of their dreams – possibly not necessarily as perfect as initially hoped – but still the great land called America.
But it was also was a protest ode dedicated to his friend (ironically, a former Beatle who had shooed him across the Atlantic in the opposite direction), John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
. The U.S. Government was repeatedly denying him permanent resident status. Eventually, he did receive that request, only to be assassinated by a deranged fan's bullet in Sedaka's own hometown of New York City, slightly more than five years after this song was on the charts and the radio. The third consecutive Billboard Top 25 hit from Sedaka's Back was the uptempo rocker "That's When the Music Takes Me" (US pop #25, US AC #7). This song was a rarity at the time as it was one of the few songs Sedaka wrote by himself, without a collaborator. It remains today his standard curtain-call concert closer.
Sedaka and Greenfield co-wrote "Love Will Keep Us Together
Love Will Keep Us Together
"Love Will Keep Us Together" is a popular song written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield in 1973. It was first released in the United Kingdom on Sedaka's 1973 LP The Tra-La Days Are Over, which was never released in the U.S. The song arrived in the U.S...
," a No. 1 hit for The Captain & Tennille and the biggest hit for the entire year of 1975. Toni Tennille
Toni Tennille
Cathryn Antoinette "Toni" Tennille is one-half of the 1970s Grammy Award-winning duo Captain & Tennille. Tennille has also done musical work independently of her husband Daryl Dragon. Tennille has a contralto vocal range.-Biography:...
paid tribute to Sedaka's welcome return to music-business success with her ad lib of "Sedaka is back" in the outro while she was laying down her own background vocals for the track. "Captain" Daryl Dragon
Daryl Dragon
Daryl Frank Dragon is a keyboardist, known as Captain in the successful 1970s pop musical duo Captain & Tennille, with his wife, Toni Tennille....
and Toni also recorded a Spanish-language version of the song the same year that cracked the top half of Billboards Hot 100 chart ("Por Amor Viviremos," US pop #49).
In 1975, Sedaka was the opening act for The Carpenters
The Carpenters
Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of sister Karen and brother Richard Carpenter. The Carpenters were the #1 selling American music act of the 1970s. Though often referred to by the public as "The Carpenters", the duo's official name on authorized recordings and...
on their world tour. According to The Carpenters: The Untold Story by Ray Coleman
Ray Coleman
Ray Coleman was a British author and former Editor-in-chief of Melody Maker known for biographies of The Beatles. Besides Melody Maker, Coleman was a participant with music magazines including Disc, Black Music, and Musicians Only, and a contributor to magazines such as Billboard...
, manager Sherwin Bash fired Sedaka at the request of Richard Carpenter
Richard Carpenter (musician)
Richard Lynn Carpenter is an American pop musician, best known as one half of the brother/sister duo The Carpenters, along with his sister Karen Carpenter. He was a producer, arranger, pianist and keyboardist, and occasional lyricist, as well as joining with Karen on harmony...
, allegedly because Sedaka was becoming more popular than the Carpenters. The firing resulted in a media backlash against The Carpenters after Sedaka publicly announced he was off the tour. This, however, was before Karen and Richard recorded Sedaka's "Solitaire" which became a Top 20 hit for the duo. Richard Carpenter denied that he fired Sedaka for "stealing their show", stating they were proud of Sedaka's success. However, Bash was fired as The Carpenters' manager a short time after.
In late 1975, Sedaka earned more chart success with the release of his second Rocket album, The Hungry Years
The Hungry Years
The Hungry Years is an album by Neil Sedaka, the title of which is an eponymous track from the album. It was released on the Rocket Records label in 1975.The album is the American edition of Overnight Success, with two songs being replaced....
. This album was an American edition of Sedaka's British Polydor album "Overnight Success". Near the close of 1975 and lasting into early 1976, Sedaka would have another big single with "Bad Blood
Bad Blood (Neil Sedaka song)
"Bad Blood" was a popular song written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody. The song, with uncredited backing vocals by Elton John, reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975, remaining in the top position for three weeks. It was certified gold by the RIAA and was the most successful individual...
". The song stayed at #1 for three weeks and was certified Gold® by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the most individual commercially successful single of his career. Elton John provided uncredited backing vocals for "Bad Blood" and has been credited by Sedaka as being responsible for his breakthrough back into the US pop music scene.
Another highlight from "The Hungry Years" was Sedaka's new version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." His 1962 original, a #1 hit single, was an upbeat pop song, while the remake was a ballad, based on a similar arrangement used by Lenny Welch when he recorded a version of it in 1970. Sedaka's ballad version hit #8 on the Hot 100 in early 1976, making him the only artist to ever record entirely reworked and rearranged versions of the same song to reach the Top 10 by the same artist. Sedaka's second version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" topped Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in 1976. The same year, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
recorded the Sedaka song "Solitaire". This was followed by Sedaka's Top 20 hit "Love in the Shadows", also from 1976.
Later in 1976, Sedaka released a second (and final) collaboration with Elton John, with Elton once again on uncredited backing vocals on the title song to Sedaka's third and final Rocket album "Steppin' Out". While it would crack the Hot 100's Top 40, it would also signal the beginning of a slowdown in Sedaka's music sales and radio play not unlike what he experienced in 1964 when The Beatles and the "British Invasion" arrived. In this version of another fading of his music sales, it was the arrival of the disco era. In 1977, Sedaka, now with Elektra Records, released his next album "A Song" which had moderate success. While Sedaka attempted to release disco-themed music himself in the late 1970s, his album sales were weak and singles could not get a foothold on the radio. In 1980
1980 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1980.-January–March:*January 1**Cliff Richard is appointed an MBE by Elizabeth II.**The Zorros audition drummer Greg Pedley....
, Sedaka had his final Top 20 hit with "Should've Never Let You Go", which he recorded as a duet with his then 17-year-old daughter, Dara.
Throughout the 1970s, Sedaka's old record company, RCA, would re-issue his 1960s-era songs on several compilation LPs on the RCA Victor and RCA Camden
RCA Camden
RCA Camden was a budget record label of recordings, first introduced by RCA Victor.-History:The label was named after Camden, New Jersey, original home to the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Records. It specialized in reissuing historic classical and popular recordings from the RCA catalog...
labels, a practice which continues to this day. Sedaka also released one final album of new material with RCA, consisting of a live concert he gave in Sydney, Australia. The album was released on the RCA International label in Australia and Europe as Neil Sedaka on Stage in 1974. It saw a US release on the RCA Victor label in 1976 as Sedaka Live In Australia. The songs on the album were mostly cover versions of rock and pop songs from the previous twenty-five years, such as "Proud Mary", "Everything Is Beautiful
Everything Is Beautiful
"Everything is Beautiful" is a song by Ray Stevens. It has appeared on many of Stevens' albums, including one named after the song, and has become a pop standard and common in religious performances. The children heard singing the chorus of the song, using the hymn, "Jesus Loves the Little...
", and "The Father Of Girls." RCA and Sedaka have been at odds for decades over ownership rights over Sedaka's original master tapes from his late 1950s/early 1960s hits. RCA has released assorted repackaging of his old hits, forcing Sedaka to re-record his old hits and make them sound as close and authentic to the originals as possible.
The '80s and '90s: The struggles return
A change in record companies in the early 1980s also required him to, for the first time in his career, record cover versions of other artists' "oldies". Only two singles on two albums, spaced three years apart, managed to land on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart; none charted on the Hot 100 at all. Another duet with Dara, a remake of the Marvin GayeMarvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
-Tammi Terrell
Tammi Terrell
Thomasina Winifred Montgomery, known as Tammi Terrell was an American singer-songwriter most notable for her association with Motown and her duets with Marvin Gaye. As a teenager she recorded for the Scepter–Wand, Try Me and Checker record labels. She signed with Motown in April 1965 and enjoyed...
1967 Top 5 smash "Your Precious Love
Your Precious Love
"Your Precious Love" is a popular song that was a 1967 hit for Motown singers Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Written by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson and produced by Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol, the doo-wop styled recording features background vocals by Fuqua, Gaye, Terrell and Bristol,...
", placed high enough on the AC chart (making the Top 15) for one final album to be released. But the second album's only release did not fare well on the AC chart, barely cracking its Top 40, and by 1985, Sedaka was once again without a recording contract. Concertgoers filled theatre seats while Sedaka created his own music label. That would assure that his catalog of hits would find the marketplace, and he released occasional CDs of self-produced new, original material.
Other successes
Ben FoldsBen Folds
Benjamin Scott "Ben" Folds is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and television personality. From 1995-2000, Folds was the frontman and pianist of the alternative rock band Ben Folds Five. Since the group disbanded, Folds has performed as a solo artist and has toured all over the world...
, an American singer-musician-songwriter and judge on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's hit a cappella vocal-group competition series The Sing-Off
The Sing-Off
The Sing-Off is an American television singing competition featuring a cappella groups. It premiered on NBC on December 14, 2009, and is produced by Sony Pictures Television....
, credited Sedaka on his "iTunes Originals" album as an inspiration for song publishing. Hearing Sedaka had a song published by the age of 13 gave Folds the goal of also getting a song published by his 13th birthday, despite the fact that Sedaka did not actually publish his first song until he was 16.
In 1985, songs composed by Sedaka were adapted for the Japanese anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
TV series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
is a television anime, part of the Gundam series and a sequel to the original Mobile Suit Gundam. The show was created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, with character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, while the series' mechanical designs is split amongst Kunio Okawara, Mamoru Nagano, and Kazumi Fujita...
. These included the two opening themes "Zeta - Toki wo Koete" (originally in English as "Better Days Are Coming") and "Mizu no Hoshi e Ai wo Komete" (originally in English as "For Us to Decide", but the English version was never recorded), as well as the end theme "Hoshizora no Believe" (written as "Bad and Beautiful"). Due to copyright, the songs were replaced for the North American DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
.
In 1994, Sedaka provided the voice for Neil Moussaka, a parody of himself in Food Rocks
Food Rocks
Food Rocks was an attraction at Epcot's The Land pavilion presented by Nestlé in the Walt Disney World Resort. It was a musical stage show, with audio-animatronic figures.-Synopsis:...
, an attraction at Epcot
Epcot
Epcot is a theme park in the Walt Disney World Resort, located near Orlando, Florida. The park is dedicated to the celebration of human achievement, namely international culture and technological innovation. The second park built at the resort, it opened on October 1, 1982 and was initially named...
from 1994-2006.
A musical comedy based around the songs of Sedaka, titled Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, was written in 2005 by Erik Jackson and Ben H. Winters; it is now under license to Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
A biographical musical, Laughter in the Rain, produced by Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright CBE is a leading West End theatre producer and film producer.He is also the Chairman of Everton Football Club, an English professional football club from the city of Liverpool....
and Laurie Mansfield, starring Wayne Smith as Sedaka, had its world premiere at the Churchill Theatre
Churchill Theatre
The Churchill Theatre in Bromley, south east London was built by the London Borough of Bromley to designs by its borough architect's department.It is carefully integrated into the central library complex overlooking Church House Gardens and Library Gardens...
, in the London borough of Bromley, on 4 March 2010. Sedaka attended the opening and joined the cast onstage for an impromptu curtain call of the title song.
The 21st century: Popularity yet again, a golden honor and The Music of His Life
Sedaka maintains a rigorous concert schedule in the second decade of the 21st century, in the U.S. and around the world, despite having passed the age of 70. He was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1983, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of FameHollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
, and was an October 2006 inductee of the Long Island Music Hall of Fame
Long Island Music Hall of Fame
The Long Island Music Hall of Fame is an organization whose office is located in Port Jefferson, New York. It was incorporated in July 2005 under the New York State Board of Regents as a non profit organization and holds a provisional charter to operate as a museum in the state of New York...
. His ardent fans have appealed for his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
in Cleveland, due to his longevity, contributions to contemporary music, and hit songwriting for himself and dozens of other artists.
American Idol
In May 2003, near the end of the second season of the FoxFox
Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
TV series American Idol
American Idol
American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...
, Sedaka appeared as a guest judge and mentor to the five remaining finalists. (The "guest judge" aspect of the series has long since been discontinued.) Several of the contestants' performances from Sedaka's songbook sparked particular praise from the guest judge. One of those performances came from eventual third-place finalist Kimberley Locke
Kimberley Locke
Kimberley Dawn Locke is an American singer-songwriter and model. She has recorded in the dance, pop and adult contemporary music genres....
, who sang the "Theme from Where the Boys Are
Where the Boys Are
The kind of cool modern jazz popularized by such acts as Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Chico Hamilton, then in the vanguard of the college music market, features in a number of scenes with Basil...
." The Sedaka/Greenfield composition was originally recorded by Connie Francis
Connie Francis
Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...
and has gone on to become her signature song. Sedaka termed Locke's performance "ear-licious."
Eventual Season 2 runnerup Clay Aiken
Clay Aiken
Clayton Holmes "Clay" Aiken is an American singer, songwriter, actor, producer and author who began his rise to fame on the second season of the television program American Idol in 2003. RCA Records offered him a recording contract, and his multi-platinum debut album Measure of a Man was released...
chose Sedaka's 1972 song "Solitaire" for his performance. As Aiken explained to the studio and TV audiences, host Ryan Seacrest
Ryan Seacrest
Ryan John Seacrest is an American radio personality, television host, network producer and voice actor. He is the host of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, a nationally syndicated Top 40 radio show that airs on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles and throughout the United States and Canada on Premiere Radio Networks,...
, and the four total judges, "Solitaire" had long been one of his mother's all-time favorite songs. When she learned that Sedaka was going to be a guest judge and that the finalists would be singing Sedaka's songs, she begged him to sing "Solitaire." The performance was uniformly given extraordinarily high praise by the judges (including perennial skeptic Simon Cowell
Simon Cowell
Simon Phillip Cowell is an English A&R executive, television producer, entrepreneur, and television personality. He is known in the United Kingdom and United States for his role as a talent judge on TV shows such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and American Idol...
). Sedaka dissolved into tears, telling Aiken that he officially passed ownership of the performance of "Solitaire" to Clay, offering to record and produce a single of the song or an entire CD with him.
Although it did not appear on his debut CD itself, Aiken recorded and added "Solitaire" as the B-side to the single "The Way
The Way/Solitaire
"The Way"/"Solitaire" is the second commercial double A-side CD single by Clay Aiken released on March 16, 2004, on the RCA label.In the summer of 2004, "Solitaire" replaced "This is the Night" as the bonus track on new versions of Aiken's Measure of a Man.The Way was featured in Scooby Doo 2:...
," whose sales were faltering. "Solitaire" was quickly moved to the A-side, and radio airplay and single and download sales responded immediately. "Solitaire" hit #1 on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Hot Singles Sales chart and was, in fact, the top-selling single for all of 2004. It also hit the Top 5 on Billboards Hot 100. Sedaka was invited back to American Idol to celebrate the success of "Solitaire" several times, as it continued to reach new milestones. Since then, Aiken has mined the Sedaka songbook again, recording a cover of probably Sedaka's best-known song, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," on the "deluxe version" of his 2010 CD release, Tried and True
Tried and True
Tried and True is the fifth full length studio album released by Clay Aiken on June 1, 2010. This album is Aiken's first release on the Decca label. The deluxe edition includes two additional tracks plus a second disk with behind the scenes video and a live performance.-Background:The songs on...
.
Sedaka continues to be seen in the American Idol studio audience on at least an annual basis — most recently on May 19, 2011, when Seacrest had Sedaka stand and greet the audience on-camera during Season 10's "Top 3" results show.
Guinness World Record
When Sedaka moved his family to the UK, British singer Tony ChristieTony Christie
Tony Christie is an English musician, singer and actor. He is best known for his track, "Is This The Way To Amarillo", a double UK chart success.-Career:Tony Christie has sold over 10 million albums Worldwide...
recorded and released the Sedaka/Greenfield composition "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?" in 1971. The song did relatively well on the UK singles chart, peaking in the Top 20. The song would lie dormant for more than three decades, when UK comic Peter Kay
Peter Kay
Peter John Kay is an English comedian, writer, actor, director and producer. His work includes That Peter Kay Thing , Phoenix Nights , Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere , Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and other independent productions which have included two sell out tours.-Early career:Peter Kay...
lip-synched the song for a 2002 video in his TV series Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights
Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights
Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights was a BAFTA-nominated English sitcom about The Phoenix Club, a working men's club in the northern English town of Farnworth, Greater Manchester. The show was written by Neil Fitzmaurice, Peter Kay and Dave Spikey, produced by Goodnight Vienna Productions and Ovation...
. For the 2005 annual Comic Relief
Comic Relief
Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry in response to famine in Ethiopia. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, a biennial telethon held in March, alternating with sister project Sport Relief...
charity drive, he solicited a number of celebrity friends of his and updated the video, and it became an enormous hit. The original 1971 Tony Christie single was re-released to radio and CD/download sales, and hit #1 for seven weeks and was the biggest hit in Britain for all of 2005.
When interviewed for an "extras" feature for a DVD set of a concert filmed in London on 7 April 2006 (see below), Neil jokingly had heard that Christie had retired and was "golfing in Spain." The sudden revival of "Amarillo" summoned Christie back to the UK for an unexpected return to fame. Sedaka also released the song in the U.S. in 1977 as the shortened "Amarillo
Is This the Way to Amarillo
In the United States, a version by the writer of the song Neil Sedaka made to number 44 in the Billboard charts in 1977, and the title was shortened to "Amarillo".-Tony Christie featuring Peter Kay version:...
," but it was only a mid-chart entry, peaking just shy of the Top 40. In early 2006, the song received new life yet again when it received a dance beat and revised lyrics to become a novelty hit for the UK team's FIFA World Cup finals with "Is This the Way to the (England) World Cup?" It was used yet again later that summer by the Central Band of the Royal British Legion prior to the Men's Finals of the 2006 Wimbledon tennis tournament.
On 7 April 2006, Sedaka was appearing at the Royal Albert Hall and filming for the above-referenced CD/DVD package, when he was interrupted mid-concert by a gentleman who walked onstage from the wings. The planned scenario was that Sedaka was to begin performing "Amarillo", and after one verse, the audience was to be surprised by the appearance of Christie for an eventual duet. But at the interruption, a seemingly annoyed Sedaka asked, "What is this?" The interloper was a representative from Guinness Records, and he was there to present Sedaka with an award from Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
: British Hit Singles and Albums for composing "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?", the most successful UK single of the 21st century (up to that date, of course). After the presentation, Sedaka proceeded into "Amarillo", Christie entered onstage to an eruption of cheers from the audience, and after the successful duet performance, the two men walked offstage together as the first half of Sedaka's concert came to a close – with the entertainer the latest recipient of a new Guinness World Record.
New recording contract, new chart success
Since Sedaka had lost his recording contract in the mid-1980s, he had used his own business, 'Neil Sedaka Music,' to finance the recording, production, and distribution of new CDs and repackaging of his existing catalog of music. Because of ongoing disputes with RCA Victor Records over the ownership of Sedaka's original late 1950s/early 1960s hits, in 1991, Sedaka re-recorded those early recordings, note-for-note. Sedaka had taken meticulous care of his voice over the years and still sang in the original keys recorded in his youth (and still does today). This allowed him to repackage his catalog to include both his early recordings along with his mid-to-late '70s hits and later recordings.In early 2007, Sedaka signed his first recording contract in more than two decades with Razor and Tie Records, a small-but-growing, New York-based independent label with a talent roster that also includes Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
, Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Lee Carlton is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Upon completion of her education at the School of American Ballet, Carlton chose to pursue singing instead, performing in New York bars and clubs while attending university. Three months after recording a demo with producer Peter...
, Foreigner
Foreigner (band)
Foreigner is a British-American rock band, originally formed in 1976 by veteran English musicians Mick Jones and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald along with American vocalist Lou Gramm...
, Joe Jackson
Joe Jackson (musician)
Joe Jackson is an English musician and singer-songwriter now living in Berlin, whose five Grammy Award nominations span from 1979 to 2001...
, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a male choral group from South Africa that sings in the vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They rose to worldwide prominence as a result of singing with Paul Simon on his album, Graceland and have won multiple awards, including three Grammy Awards...
. The first release was The Definitive Collection, a life-spanning compilation of his hits, along with outtakes and songs previously released but unavailable in CD and/or download format. It debuted in the Top 25 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
s Top 200 Albums chart in May 2007, one of the highest-charting albums of his entire career. Best known as a "singles artist," this album chart activity was considered a significant comeback for the veteran entertainer. The last time Sedaka had an album on the Top 200 albums chart was in 1980, with his '79 album In the Pocket – when "Should've Never Let You Go," the 1980 duet with Sedaka and daughter Dara, was Sedaka's last Top 20 hit on the Hot 100 singles chart.
Waking Up Is Hard to Do was Sedaka's next release with Razor and Tie, hitting the albums chart in May 2009. The CD was a children's album that used the melodies of many of Sedaka's best-known songs but changed the lyrics to fit, and hopefully have fun with, the everyday lives of babies and toddlers, along with their parents, grandparents, babysitters, and other caregivers. The CD title is an example. Lastly, The Music of My Life entered the albums chart in February 2010 and comprised almost all new material. The first track, "Do You Remember?," is Sedaka's first foray into spicy salsa and was produced by music producer, composer, and pianist David Foster
David Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
. "Right or Wrong," co-written with original music partner Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield
Howard Greenfield was an American lyricist and songwriter, who for several years in the 1960s worked out of the famous Brill Building...
, was done in traditional street-corner, layered doo-wop vocal harmonies with Sedaka overlaying his own voice to achieve the effect for which he was well known in his "early" heyday of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The final track, "You", has been previously released, but was remastered for this project and is often one of several titles dedicated to his wife and career guide of nearly 50 years, Leba. Neil Sedaka Music continues to be listed as co-producer along with Razor and Tie.
A concert performance on 26 October 2007 at the Lincoln Center in New York City paid homage to the 50th anniversary of Sedaka's debut in show business. Music impresario (and producer for The Music of My Life track "Do You Remember?") David Foster served as emcee. Other guests included The Captain and Tennille; Natalie Cole
Natalie Cole
Natalie Maria Cole , is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be ", "Inseparable" and "Our Love"...
; Connie Francis
Connie Francis
Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...
; recording legend and decades-long Sedaka friend and former manager Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...
; and new Solitaire "owner" Clay Aiken
Clay Aiken
Clayton Holmes "Clay" Aiken is an American singer, songwriter, actor, producer and author who began his rise to fame on the second season of the television program American Idol in 2003. RCA Records offered him a recording contract, and his multi-platinum debut album Measure of a Man was released...
, amongst many others.
During his 2008 Australian tour, Sedaka premiered a new classical orchestral composition entitled "Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life)." Sedaka also toured The Philippines for his May 17, 2008 concert at the Araneta Coliseum
Araneta Coliseum
The Smart Araneta Coliseum, known as The Big Dome is an indoor multi-purpose sports arena located in the Cubao area of Quezon City, Philippines...
.
In early 2010, his original uptempo version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (performed by a group of uncredited singers) was being heard as the impetus for a series of insurance TV commercials, featuring actor Dennis Haysbert
Dennis Haysbert
Dennis Dexter Haysbert is an American film and television actor. He is known for portraying baseball player Pedro Cerrano in the Major League film trilogy, President David Palmer on the American television series 24, and Sergeant Major Jonas Blane on the drama series The Unit, as well as his work...
assuring that TV viewers not insured by Allstate
Allstate
The Allstate Corporation is the second-largest personal lines insurer in the United States and the largest that is publicly held. The company also has personal lines insurance operations in Canada. Allstate was founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., and was spun off in 1993...
can break up with their current insurer without much ado at all.
On September 11, 2010, Sedaka performed to a public and TV audience at the Hyde Park, London, venue of the "Proms in the Park" for the BBC. The UK continues to be probably Sedaka's most welcoming nation, and has been since first moving his family there (temporarily) four decades ago. The irony of the place whose music scuttled his "first" career, namely The Beatles and the British Invasion, and yet has constantly welcomed him with open arms for more than 40 years, is not lost on him, he has stated in many interviews. Indeed, it was his work with the musicians who would, in a few years, become the hit-making group 10cc
10cc
10cc are an English art rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. The band initially consisted of four musicians -- Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme -- who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the "10cc" name...
that brought him back to the U.S. as a major star with #1 hits and a number of other major Top 40 singles. The UK always takes up a major portion of Sedaka's touring year in the 21st century.
In early 2011, Sedaka recorded two duets ("Brighton" and "The Immigrant
The Immigrant
The Immigrant is a 1917 American comedy short film starring the Charlie Chaplin Tramp character as an immigrant coming to the United States who is accused of theft on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, and befriends a young woman along the way...
") with singer Jim Van Slyke for his Neil Sedaka tribute album, The Sedaka Sessions. LML Records released this album in August 2011.
Personal life
Sedaka attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, graduating in 1956. He has been married to his wife, Leba (Strassberg), since 1962. They have two children: a daughter, Dara, a recording artist and vocalist for television and radio commercials (who sang the female part on the Sedaka duet "Should've Never Let You Go"), and a son, Marc, a screenwriterScreenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
who lives in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
with his wife Samantha and three children.
Sources
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- Clarke, Donald. The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Viking, 1989.
- Ewen, David. American Songwriters. An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
- diMartino, Dave. Singer-Songwriters, Pop Music's Performer-Composers, from A to Zevon, Billboard Books, 1984.
- Friedrich, Gary; Brown, Len. Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Tower Publications, 1970.
- Lablanc, Michael. Contemporary Musicians, vol. 4, Gale Research, 1991.
- Larkin, Colin. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Macmillan, 1992.
- Lyman, Darryl. Great Jews in Music, J. D. Publishers, 1986.
- Sadie, Stanley; Hitchcock, H. Wiley (Ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 1986.
- Stambler, Irwin. Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul, St. Martin's Press, 1974.
- Sumrall, Harry. Pioneers of Rock and Roll. 100 Artists Who Changed the Face of Rock, Billboard Books, 1994.
- White, Mark. You Must Remember This ... Popular Songwriters 1900-1980, Frederick Warner, 1983.