Neil Sedaka
American Singer-songwriter and Pianist
| Date of Birth | : | 13 Mar, 1939 |
| Place of Birth | : | Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Profession | : | Songwriter, Composer, Record Producer, Singer-songwriter, Multi-instrumentalist, Pianist |
| Nationality | : | American |
| Social Profiles | : |
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Neil Sedaka is an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Since beginning his musical career in 1957, he has sold millions of records worldwide and has written or co-written more than 500 songs for himself and other artists, primarily collaborating with lyricists Howard "Howie" Greenfield and Phil Cody.
After a brief tenure as a founding member of the doo-wop group Tokens, Sedaka achieved a string of hit singles in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Oh! Carol" (1959), "Calendar Girl " (1960). ), "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" (1961) and "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (1962). His popularity waned in the mid-1960s, but revived in the mid-1970s, solidified by the 1975 US Billboard Hot 100 number one hits "Laughter in the Rain" and "Bad Blood". Sedaka maintained a successful career as a songwriter, writing hits for other artists, including "Stupid Cupid" (Connie Francis), "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo" (Tony Christie), and "Love Will Keep Us Together" (Captain & Tennille ). ). He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983 and continues to perform, hosting mini-concerts on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Early life: Juilliard and the Brill Building
Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Mordechai "Mac" Sedaka, was a taxi driver of Lebanese Jewish descent. Sedaka's paternal grandparents came to the United States from Istanbul in 1910. Sedaka's mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish and Russian descent. He grew up in Brighton Beach. His father's cousin, Rachel Gorman (née Cohen), daughter of Isaac Cohen and Calo Cohen (née Sedaca or Sedaka), was married to Morris Gorman (né Garmezano; paternal uncle to singer Eydie Gormé). Gormé's mother was of Lebanese Jewish descent.
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 had wanted him to become a classical pianist like his contemporary Van Cliburn, and Sedaka continued to show fondness for (and capacity to play) classical music throughout his life.
At the same time, to his mother's dismay, Sedaka was discovering pop music; his mother eventually acquiesced when Sedaka received a five-figure royalty check for his hit "Calendar Girl" in 1961. 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 Brill Building's composers.
Sedaka and Greenfield wrote songs together throughout much of their young lives. Before rock and roll became popular, Sedaka and Greenfield found inspiration from show tunes. When Sedaka became a major teen pop star, the pair continued writing hits for Sedaka and numerous other artists. When the Beatles and the British Invasion took American music in a different direction, Sedaka was left without a recording career. In the early 1970s, he decided a major change in his life was necessary and moved his family to Britain. Sedaka and Greenfield mutually agreed to end their partnership with "Our Last Song Together". Sedaka began a new composing partnership with lyricist Phil Cody, from Pleasantville, New York.
Early career
Rise to fame with RCA Victor: the late 1950s
After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School, Sedaka and some of his classmates formed a band called the Linc-Tones. 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 his solo career and left the group in 1957. The Linc-Tones, later renamed the Tokens near the end of Sedaka's tenure with the group, went on to have four top-40 hits of their own without Sedaka. 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 Victor, "The Diary", was inspired by Connie Francis, one of Sedaka and Greenfield's most important clients, while the three were taking a temporary break during their idea-making for a new song. Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked if he could read it, and Connie said no. After Little Anthony and the Imperials passed on the song, Sedaka recorded it himself, and his debut single hit the Top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 14 in 1958.
His second single, a novelty tune titled "I Go Ape", just missed the Top 40, peaking at No. 42, but it became a more successful single in the United Kingdom with a No. 9. The third single, "Crying My Heart Out for You", was a commercial failure, missing the Hot 100 entirely, peaking at No. 111 but reaching No. 6 on the pop charts in Italy. RCA Victor had lost money on "I Go Ape" and "Crying My Heart Out For You" and was ready to drop Sedaka from their label; Sedaka feared he was headed for one-hit wonder status. Sedaka and his manager, Al Nevins, persuaded the RCA executives to give him one more chance.
Big hits in the early 1960s
After establishing himself in 1958, Sedaka wrote many more hits from 1960 to 1962. His flow of Top 30 hits during this period included: "Stairway to Heaven" (No. 9, 1960); "You Mean Everything to Me" (No. 17, 1960); "Run, Samson, Run" (No. 27, 1960); "Calendar Girl" (No. 4, 1961; also reached No. 1 on the Japanese and Canadian pop charts); "Little Devil" (No. 11, 1961); "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" (No. 6, 1961); his signature song, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" (No. 1, two weeks: August 11 and 18, 1962); and "Next Door to an Angel" (No. 5, 1962). For several of those songs, Sedaka was paired with Stan Applebaum and His Orchestra. Singles not making the Top 30 during this period included "Sweet Little You" (No. 59, 1961) and "King of Clowns" (No. 45, 1962). RCA Victor issued four LPs of his works in the United States and Great Britain 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. His second LP was an album mostly of old standards. He made regular appearances on such TV programs as American Bandstand and Shindig! during this period.
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 Records over the ownership of Sedaka's original late 1950s/early 1960s hits, in 1991, Sedaka re-recorded those early recordings.
In early 2007, Sedaka signed his first recording contract in nearly 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 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. It also includes "It Hurts to Be in Love", Sedaka's version of the Gene Pitney hit.
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 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. "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 one of several titles dedicated to his wife and career guide of over 50 years, Leba.
Personal life
Sedaka attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, from which he graduated at the age of 17 in 1956.
He married Leba Strassberg in 1962. The couple have a daughter (Dara) and a son (Marc). Dara is a recording artist and vocalist for television and radio commercials who sang the female part on the Sedaka Billboard Top 20 hit duet, "Should've Never Let You Go" from 1980, and "Angel Queen" on the Queen Millennia soundtrack. Marc is a Los Angeles–based screenwriter who has three children with his wife, Samantha.
Sedaka's nephew, through his marriage to Strassberg, is CNN Politics writer Harry Enten. Sedaka underwent a procedure to remove a benign skin tumor from his nose in March 2021.
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