October 23, 1940,---August 26, 2009

Along with the other legendary Brill Building songwriters (Carole King/Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil) Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry wrote dozens of Top Forty Hits in the early 60s. If you've ever played musical roulette on your radio dial, you've heard a hundred songs written in tiny cubbyholes jammed with a piano and desk at 1619 Broadway, New York, New York. These young songwriting teams in their twenties toppled the reign of the schmaltzy and stuffy Tin Pan Alley writers of the earlier generation.

Here's just a few of Greenwich and Barry's hits:

Be My Baby
Da Doo Ron Ron
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Not Too Young To Get Married
Baby I Love You
And Then He Kissed Me
Hanky Panky
Doo Wah Diddy Diddy
Chapel of Love (written with Phil Spector)
Leader of the Pack (written by Shadow Morton, produced by Greenwich /Barry)

The Brill writers' took the R&B they loved, added a sweeping pop formula and turned it into chartopping hit after hit. Quite a bit of their material was performed by the black girl groups (the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Dixie Cups...) who briefly ruled the airwaves. This amazing body of work was responsible for pushing the color barrier even further than people like Little Richard or Chuck Berry, who were considered too dangerous by the parents of record buying teenagers. That's quite an accomplishment for a bunch of Jewish  kids from Brooklyn who had graduated high school together only a few years before!  In the words of Gerry Goffin, " In the early sixties, God was a young black girl who could sing."

i'm not saying black pop music initiated civil rights but i do know as a little white kid (and a Yankee, just  minutes from Manhattan), it was next to impossible to believe the shit going on in the deep south. There was no way to see another race as "different" when the girl groups (and Motown) were  constant companions in our ears and on our televisions.

The Brill Building streak was cut short by the appearance of the Beatles. Although they covered quite a bit of American R&B and pop early on, the Beatles changed the equation by writing their own material. From then on, few pop musicians of any real talent  turned to songwriting mills.

Greenwich also found time to pursue her own singing career, both solo and as part of the Raindrops with her husband Jeff Barry. Her own performances hit the charts although not as hard as her material performed by other artists but she has a special place in my collection. I grew up with this music. You couldn't help it in those days. It was everywhere. It sounds trite but you had to be there.



thank you Mandy Mullins for posting the (sad) news which i hadn't heard . i realize eveyone's upset about the latest dead Kennedy but i know what Mandy and i will both be listening to tonight!