Music biz vet, entertainment writer
Posted: August 26, 2009 04:59 PM
Huffington Post

Songwriting Legend Ellie Greenwich Gone At 69

Rock 'n' roll songwriter Ellie Greenwich has passed away from a heart attack this morning in St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York where she had been treated for pneumonia. Greenwich became one of the U.S.'s top songwriters in the sixties, and she is most famous for having co-penned classics such as "Be My Baby," "Chapel Of Love," "River Deep, Mountain High," and "Maybe I Know." With her Brill Building contemporaries--Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Carole King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Neil Sedaka, and former husband Jeff Barry--she supplied the soundtrack for half a decade, heavily contributing to and influencing what would become known as the "Girl Group" sound.

Born in Levittown, Long Island, Ellie Greenwich first dabbled with music on the accordion, switching to piano on which she started writing in her teens. She scored a record contract with RCA Records at seventeen, and under the pseudonym "Ellie Gaye," her first single was the original "Silly Isn't It?" released in 1958. It never became a national hit, but it was the beginning of a career that continued well into the nineties. Her future husband and writing partner Jeff Barry entered the picture while she was attending Hofstra University, their having shared a Thanksgiving dinner at which the pair played their first music together. Romance eventually bloomed, but the pair pursued separate careers with Greenwich getting her songwriting break in 1962.

Visiting New York's famed Brill Building at 1619 Broadway--an address containing successful music publishing companies that embraced workshop environments among its staffs--Greenwich lucked into a meeting with writer John Gluck, Jr. (co-writer of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party") who kept the ambitious songstress waiting in an adjoining office with a piano. Passing her time, Greenwich began playing the instrument, and Jerry Leiber (of Leiber and Stoller fame) came into the area expecting Carole King to be at the keyboard. She explained she was a songwriter, and after being introduced to Mike Stoller and auditioning some tunes for the industry moguls, she was offered the use of their musical facility in exchange for a right of first refusal on her songs. She agreed, and after some time, Ellie Greenwich was signed as a staff member to Leiber and Stoller's publishing company Trio Music.

With her father driving her between Manhattan and Levittown, she began writing and co-writing, especially with Tony Powers, their biggest hits being "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" and "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?" (songwriting credit also extended to producer Phil Spector). But she also was a great singer, and behind the scenes, she was given the nickname "New York's Demo Queen" for singing on everything she could get her voice on. In fact, she became the go-to background singer, along with her pal Mikey Harris, in the seventies and eighties--most notably appearing on Blondie and Cyndi Lauper records (including "Girls Just Want To Have Fun") and with Tasha Thomas and producer/songwriter Tommy West as the soulful "crowd" that backed Jim Croce's hits such as "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown."

"It's a terrible loss for the industry," West commented today after receiving the news. On her fateful years with Jeff Barry, West's liner notes for Ellie Greenwich's anthology I Can Hear Music: The Ellie Greenwich Collection continues the story in her own words: "At this time, I was dating Jeff Barry and we were planning to marry, so I had a feeling that we would work together. We wrote 'Hanky Panky' but didn't seriously collaborate until I began to work with Phil Spector. We wrote 'What A Guy' with The Sensations in mind while riding the 'E' train from Queens and Lefrak City, and went straight to Associated Studio B to demo it. Jeff played drums, I played piano, we did some vocals, and brought the tune back to Leiber and Stoller who loved it, as did Spector. They liked our demo so much that a deal was made with Jubilee Records, and we became the group The Raindrops."

Though The Raindrops only recorded a few tracks such as "The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget," Greenwich and Barry also covered "Doo Doo Ron Ron" and "Hanky Panky" as well as other future staples. And their relationship with Phil Spector grew, resulting in the producer employing his wall of sound techniques to the Barry-Greenwich original "Be My Baby" with his Ronettes. A string of hits with various artists both in and out of the Spector camp followed, including the aforementioned titles, plus instant classics like "Leader Of The Pack," "Then He Kissed Me," "Wait 'Til My Bobby Gets Home," "If You Loved Me Once," "I Can Hear Music," "Do-Wah-Diddy," and "The Sunshine After Then Rain."

fter the British Invasion occurred and "Chapel Of Love" hit #1, Leiber and Stoller teamed with George Goldner to create Red Bird Records, a company where Greenwich would bloom as a record producer. "Ellie was a real pioneer both as a songwriter and producer," Tommy West explained. "She was one of the first women to break through the exclusive men's production club. Sometimes she had to get down to a man's level to get them to listen, and there were times when she would cry after a session because they wouldn't listen to her as readily as they would a man. But her legacy is one that will never be duplicated." In West's liner notes, Greenwich explained her production experience further: "Men had problems taking direction from a woman...it was difficult not knowing if they took me seriously, listening to the jokes, etc. But sometimes it would work to my advantage. I could use my femininity. My mother...gave me a bit of advice. 'When you walk into a session your whole attitude will change if you picture all the musicians sitting around nude.' So I became one of the guys. I'd tell a joke. I bought this lipstick in the shape of a penis and I would 'freshen-up.' They would crack up laughing. It would break the ice."

Some of her most famous productions included records by Neil Diamond. With her husband/partner Jeff Barry, Greenwich "...went to Bang Records where Bert Berns gave us a budget to cut two sides, 'Solitary Man' and 'Cherry Cherry.' I played piano and sang backup, Neil played acoustic piano." Another interesting contribution she made to pop music is her background vocal arrangement using the Sweet Inspirations on Aretha Franklin's "Chain Of Fools." She was hired after Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler asked her to fix the track.

Ellie Greenwich was a hit machine behind the scenes, but Ellie Greenwich the recording artist never really took off. She released many singles and two albums--Composes, Produces & Sings for United Artists in 1968, and Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung... for MGM/Verve in 1973. Sadly, between songwriting and singing, her schedule never allowed her to fully commit. "She was a phenomenal singer," West remembered. "She never realized her full potential as an artist because she never concentrated on it." But it also was partly due to her attitude following her being sold by Leiber and Stoller to UA for her first album. Greenwich revealed in West's liner notes that she "felt like a piece of meat" even though she continued with her session work to complete the project. However, after fellow former Brill Building writer Carole King had a mega-hit with Tapestry, an album that included her versions of hits written for others, Greenwich recalled, "...my phone began to ring. Companies thought I should take a similar approach with some of my old songs and some new ones." That resulted in Let It be Written, Let It Be Done..., and in West's notes, the artist revealed one more puzzle piece as to why her own recording career might have suffered: "I think this album would have done pretty well but I was afraid to perform."

Twenty years later, The Leader Of The Pack musical was created based on Greenwich's hit songs. "I agreed to do the show for three nights in January 1984 and again for one month" she stated in West's notes. But it was a huge success, and after debuting at The Bottom Line, it ran on Broadway for another five months. "It was very exciting. I had become recognizable to people after years behind the scene." As to how she saw the future in 1999, Greenwich told West, "I didn't know what I was doing when I came into this business and I still don't. But if it feels good and right, you just do it. Music has been my best friend. It doesn't lie. I don't have much of an ego except when you try to take what I've done away from me. I'm very proud of what I've done."

wow, another loss.
she definately helped create an entire genre,
first with the Brill Buidling, and later with girl groups like the Shang-ri-las....

don't forget these:


Shangri Las

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMRN47sAyzo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuNlEGbAKf0

KAFM NOTES: Ellie's place in the pantheon
Craven Lovelace
KAFM NOTES
Friday, September 4, 2009

Wanna know another reason the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a big fat joke?

I mean besides the fact that it holds its induction ceremony at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, an environment exceeded in its sheer lack of hipness only by your grandmother's doily drawer ... or that I.M. Pei's architectural design for the Hall of Fame makes it look like the Tyrell corporate headquarters from “Blade Runner,” which might be cool in an existentially tortured replicant kind of way but seems ridiculously overstated for a genre born in garages and speakeasies... or that Jann Wenner, the self-involved rich kid who founded the Hall of Fame (as well as that geezer rag known as Rolling Stone), and who gets to nominate — or block — artists from consideration for the museum, wouldn't know real rock n' roll if it came up and El Kabonged him in the head with Pete Townsend's stratocaster. (Something which will, of course, never happen -- but hey, a fella can dream, can't he?)

No, forget all that. Disregard the rumors of vote-fixing, accusations of provincialism, or the fact that the always cogent Sex Pistols refused to attend the ceremony in 2006 when they were inducted and famously referred to the institution as a urine stain (only they used a word other than “urine” and affixed a few other fine, ripe epithets as well to their hand-scrawled refusal letter). All you have to know to realize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a sham, a travesty, an irrelevance -- a urine stain, even -- is Ellie ain't in it.

That's Ellie as in Ellie Greenwich, who passed away last week at the age of 69 after suffering a heart attack. Not everybody who loved her work knew her name, because Ellie's principal claim to fame came as a songwriter, and in the early 1960s, when Ellie was at the top of her game, you had to be a special kind of pop music nerd to pay attention to songwriting credits on a 7-inch single.

But if you were around in 1964, chances are Ellie's songs will still mean something to you — she placed 17 songs in Billboard's Hot 100 chart that year alone, in partnership with her then husband, Jeff Barry. “Be My Baby”... “Then He Kissed Me”... “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”... “River Deep, Mountain High”... “Baby I Love You”... “Da Doo Ron Ron”... “Leader of the Pack”... these are just a few of the classic hits to bear the Greenwich mark.

Heck, in 2004, Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone itself included six Greenwich-Barry compositions in its list of the Greatest Rock Songs — that's more than any other non-performing songwriting team. And yet, while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has found room in its pantheon for the likes of the Four Seasons and Rod Stewart and Queen, it has deigned to ignore the astonishing oeuvre of Ellie Greenwich. Which, I reiterate, makes it a big fat joke. An unfunny joke at that. Because as fine as Leonard Cohen and Traffic and Run DMC are, when it comes to pop music greatness, it was Ellie Greenwich who was Leader of the Pack.

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Simply Brill: the women who shaped rock'n'roll

Laura Barton
The Guardian,      
Friday 4 Sept

Number 1619 stands gold-fronted and 11 storeys high, looking out over the clatter of Broadway. Better known as the Brill Building, it occupied prime position in the few short blocks that constituted the heart of New York's music scene in the 1960s; there were 165 music businesses in the Brill Building alone, and yet more in the buildings at 1650 and 1697, just along the street. This building, and the small stretch between 49th and 53rd streets, changed not only popular music, but also the role of women in songwriting.

Carole King, Cynthia Weil and Ellie Greenwich – who died last week at the age of 68 – were three of the Brill Building's finest songwriters, and some of the first women to embed themselves in the pop machine. Writing alone or in partnerships, they were responsible for hits such as Will You Love Me Tomorrow? and The Loco-Motion (King), You've Lost That Loving Feeling and We Gotta Get Out of This Place (Weil) and Leader of the Pack and River Deep, Mountain High (Greenwich). Their compositions in the 60s defined the era – full of all the doo-wop and sweet kisses, heartache and innocence of teenage love affairs – and gave a voice to many young female music fans.

"Today, we tend to overlook and write off the Brill Building era as that girly period between Elvis and the Beatles," says Professor Mary E Rohlfing, author of Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby: A Re-evaluation of Women's Roles in the Brill Building Era. "The passing of Ellie Greenwich has begun what I hope will be a more serious look at how women shaped rock'n'roll and how that sound continues to permeate and matter to the music today."

The Brill Building's relationship with songwriting began soon after its completion in 1931, when the Depression forced its owners to rent out office space to music publishing companies. Many of the Big Band era hits were written here, and the path for King, Weil and Greenwich was arguably paved by Rose Marie McCoy. One of the most influential songwriters of the 50s and 60s, she wrote hits for Elvis Presley and Ike and Tina Turner and, as a black female songwriter from the American south, had to fight harder than anyone to get her songs heard. "She knew how to hang in there with the big boys," soul singer Maxine Brown explains. "Everyone was scrapping to get there, but it was always men. They were the producers, they were the promoters, they were the piano players. Women didn't have a place, so she made a place for herself."

In 1958, Don Kirshner, a mildly successful songwriter, formed Aldon Music with his business partner Al Nevins. Their aim was to take the professional, conveyor-belt approach to songwriting, perfected by Tin Pan Alley, and apply it to rock'n'roll. It was Aldon who signed up many of the songwriters associated with the Brill, beginning with Neil Sedaka and going on to include Weil, Greenwich and King. Many wrote in teams or duos, and for the women of the Brill Building, this meant writing with their husbands. Greenwich wrote with Jeff Barry, King (an ex-girlfriend of Sedaka, and the inspiration behind his hit Oh Carol) with Gerry Goffin, and Weil with Barry Mann. "In addition to writing, Greenwich and King, especially, became arrangers and producers, crafting not just the songs but ultimately how the records too would sound," notes Rohlfing. "Greenwich recalled that when she first started telling male musicians what to do and when, they balked, but as they recognised that she knew what she was doing, they listened and responded to her."

King, a native New Yorker, later reinvented herself as a singer, embodying the new breed of female singer-songwriters in the 70s. But she cut her teeth at the Brill, writing songs such as Pleasant Valley Sunday for the Monkees and Up On the Roof for the Drifters. "Every day we squeezed into our respective cubbyholes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky," she recalled in Simon Frith's book The Sociology of Rock. "You'd sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubbyhole composing a song exactly like yours. The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific – because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He'd say: 'We need a new smash hit' – and we'd all go back and write a song and the next day we'd each audition for Bobby Vee's producer."

Weil, meanwhile, was a dancer and actor before she found her songwriting ability. She and Mann were the beatniks of the Brill, and their songs often reflected the darker strains of pop culture, influenced by the underground scene of jazz and poetry spilling out of Greenwich Village in the early 60s. Their songs reflected the prevailing sense of change – the Animals' We Gotta Get Out of This Place, for instance, or Shape of Things to Come, a hit for Max Frost and the Troopers. "There are changes/Lyin' ahead in every road," it ran. "And there are new thoughts/ Ready and waiting to explode." Unlike King and Goffin and Greenwich and Barry, the couple remained married and later moved to the West Coast, continuing to write film scores and pop music.

Greenwich grew up in Long Island, and had been working for music publisher Leiber and Stoller for three years when she met Barry in 1960. He was already a successful songwriter, having just notched up a hit with Tell Laura I Love Her, but his collaborations with Greenwich had a different flavour. "Their quality has to do with Greenwich's gift for capturing the frisson of a decision almost made, a change that hasn't quite come, and which could still go either way," the music critic Ann Powers wrote in Greenwich's obituary for the LA Times. "The voices for which she wrote, young and nearly always female, had a natural waver. They belonged to the kids who would change everything."

"To hear Greenwich and King talk about it, their music wasn't specifically female," says Rohlfing. "They were simply doing a job, supplying songs to a hit-making machine. That said, it has to have mattered to the women singers to have had those women in the studio." It was a thrilling time to be young and female in America – not only was the air charged with rock'n'roll and its burgeoning counterculture, there was also immense social change: the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and great strides in women's liberation.

Greenwich, Weil and King gave a voice to the young people of this era, particularly to its young women – to Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las, Dolores 'LaLa' Brooks of the Crystals, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes – women with one foot in tradition and one foot in their increasingly liberated future; they sang of change and the thrill of a new era, but they sang also of chapels of love, and deaths on motorcycles, and of how everybody wants to be somebody's baby. "I am a very firm believer in equality, women and men: if you can do the job, by all means go ahead and do it," Greenwich said in an interview in 1990. "But I still feel it would be nice if that romance can be there, birds could sing if you fell in love, and you could hear violins."

By the end of the 60s, music had shifted again. Led by the likes of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, singers were choosing to write their own songs rather than rely on the teams of pop writers at offices such as the Brill. While King forged a new solo career and Weil carried her career to California, Greenwich never really found a new footing. Perhaps this was because her songwriting voice, more than any of her peers, belonged to those years and succeeded in distilling the uncertainty of the time, because, as Powers put it, hers was a voice that held a "natural waver".

Reflecting on the social change of the 60s and the end of the Brill Building days, Greenwich seemed to pine just a little for the long, sweet days of the Dixie Cups and Da Doo Ron Ron: "I think, with the loss of innocence, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and all that happening, people got very cynical and very bitter. And, of course, a lot of the music reflected that," she said. "Progress is wonderful, but boy, it can ruin some nice things."

Who took the fun out of rock?
Remembering Ellie Greenwich and girl groups

By Cory Franklin
September 6, 2009

When it started out, rock 'n' roll was meant to be fun. Somewhere along the line everyone started taking it too seriously. It probably began when Bob Dylan abandoned the acoustic guitar for electric. Then the Rolling Stones started singing lyrics like "I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me." Things got worse when universities started offering credits for studying rock music and Oliver Stone made a quasi art film about Jim Morrison and The Doors. The epitome of taking it too seriously is The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

Back when rock 'n' roll was fun, Ellie Greenwich was one of those who made it that way. Greenwich, who died recently, wrote or co-wrote some of the rock era's greatest hits. Her specialty was girl-group classics, including "Da Doo Ron Ron" by the Crystals, "Chapel of Love" by the Dixie Cups and "I Can Hear Music" by the Ronettes (remade by the Beach Boys). Think big hair and high heels.

Greenwich was also responsible for the ne plus ultra of teen tragedy songs, "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las, as well as the great holiday song, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love. Perhaps Greenwich's most memorable work was the Crystals' "Be My Baby," featuring rock music's greatest drum intro. (Go ahead, find a better one). The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson said he once had a jukebox in his house and no matter which of the 100 selections you pushed, "Be My Baby" was the only song that played.

Greenwich worked with her husband, Jeff Barry, in the Brill Building in Manhattan, right down the hall from Carole King. The competition to produce hits was intense but exhilarating. Greenwich succeeded. According to The Daily Telegraph, Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs of all time (another bit of rock pretension) includes six by Greenwich and Barry -- more than any other non-performing songwriting team.

Besides her songwriting, she worked alongside music producer Phil Spector before he . . well, you know. She co-wrote one of rock's underappreciated classics, "River Deep, Mountain High" for Ike and Tina Turner.Working with strange birds like Spector and Ike Turner may have helped take the fun out of rock for Greenwich. Also, by then, the Beatles and the "British Invasion" ushered in a new era of music. The public wanted to hear songs about war, peace and drugs. Girl groups and confectionary teenage love songs were passe. Music was turning serious.

But before she was done with songwriting, Greenwich discovered a young Brooklyn songwriter who auditioned for her. She recommended the unknown for a record contract and was so convinced of his talent she produced and promoted his early recordings. That unknown, Neil Diamond, became one of the world's most successful recording artists.

In her later years, virtually unrecognized, she told of going to a beauty parlor where the sound system played her first three hits in succession. She casually informed the hairdresser that she wrote those songs and the hairdresser thought she was from Mars, Greenwich said.

But her tunes endured. In the 1980s, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis made a shambles of the military in the movie comedy "Stripes." To the consternation of their drill instructor, when they march they keep military cadence by leading their platoon in singing "Doo Wah Diddy." In another scene, Ramis tries to teach English to new immigrants but gives up quickly and has them dancing to the lyrics of "Da Doo Ron Ron." Both Ellie Greenwich songs. Still fun.

Rock 'n' roll has moved on from the days of Greenwich, branching off into dozens of genres. Purists and those of a certain age lament the passing of the sound she helped create.

Rock 'n' roll may never be as much fun as it was when Ellie Greenwich was writing about young love, hanky panky and boyfriends dying tragically in motorcycle accidents. But it could explain why she's not in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Probably not serious enough.

Cory Franklin lives in Wilmette. Eric Zorn is on vacation.

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0906rocksep06,0,7494241.story