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"ALWAYS MAGIC IN THE AIR":
A TRIBUTE TO DON KIRSHNER AND
’THE BRILL BUILDING SOUND’
(1958-1965)
DON KIRSHNER
(born Donald Kirshner, 17 April 1934, The Bronx, New York City, NY)
DON KIRSHNER was quite possibly one of the 10 most successful men in the entertainment industry for much of the 60’s and 70’s. As the head of first ’Aldon Music’, then ’Screen Gems Publishing’, KIRSHNER employed some of the best writers in the business. KIRSHNER attended New York’s City College for a time before earning a B.A. in business administration. He was a friend of Bobby Darin, then a struggling singer-songwriter. Darin and KIRSHNER had already written songs separately before they decided to team up in 1956, writing songs and jingles for commercials.
One of the first fruits of their collaboration was "My First Real Love", which became Connie Francis’s fourth single ; KIRSHNER would soon become Connie’s manager. Other songs they wrote together include "Love Me Right" (recorded by LaVern Baker), "Wait A Minute" (for the Coasters, recorded in late 1957, but not released until 1961), "Wear My Ring" (Bobby Darin, Gene Vincent) and several other pre-"Splish Splash" Atco recordings by Bobby.
In 1958, KIRSHNER met Al Nevins, a successful composer, guitarist and recording artist, who had many pre-rock era hits as a member of The Three Suns, a trio that had recorded the original version of "Twilight Time" (1944) and had a 1 hit with "Peg’O My Heart" in 1947. KIRSHNER sold Nevins on the idea that publishing new material for teenage record buyers could be an extremely profitable venture. In May 1958, ’Aldon Music’ was born, originally located at 1650 Broadway, later at the famous Brill Building across the street.
Among the first writers to be signed by ’Aldon Music’ were Neil SEDAKA and Howard GREENFIELD. The duo wrote Aldon’s first big hit, "Stupid Cupid" by Connie Francis ( 14 in the US, 1 in the UK). Soon ’Aldon Music’ signed Carole KING, Gerry GOFFIN, Barry MANN, Cynthia WEIL, Jack KELLER and several other writers. Most had some experience to one degree or another, but what they really had in common : they were extremely young. By 1962 ’Aldon’ had on staff 18 writers, aged nineteen to twenty-six. Contrary to what most believe, most of the writers were not brought in as teams. Eventually teams did form based on personal ties as much as by professional or artistic merits.
After six months, ’Aldon Music’ was well established. Now KIRSHNER began working on his long-term goal, catering to the growing market for teenage songs, through building a group of first class songwriters and making affiliations with the hundreds of record labels. ’Aldon Music’ was constantly adding more cubicles, each with a standup piano, and filling them with young songwriters willing to work for $150 a week or less.
They would compose, cut demos, and play them for each other at the end of the day, making comments, suggestions and criticisms as they went along. KIRSHNER who had a good ear and commercial pop sensibility, usually had the final say.
The songwriters he hired prove today to be some of the biggest legends of the time. Apart from Sedaka/Greenfield, Goffin/King and Mann/Weil, they included Neil DIAMOND, Jeff BARRY, Ellie GREENWICH, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Andy Kim, Ritchie Adams, Ron Dante, Gene Allan, Toni WINE and many others.
"The Brill Building Period" is the term used for the incredible catalog of hit after hit that Kirshner published in the pre-Beatles years of the 60’s.
KIRSHNER’s catalog includes hits by the Shirelles, the late Little Eva, the Drifters, the Ronettes, the Crystals and the Shangri-Las, with songs such as "Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow?", "On Broadway", "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", and "The Loco-Motion". In a smart move, KIRSHNER also set up his own label, ’Dimension Records’, to feature songs that his own publishing company controlled. By the time Columbia Pictures bought ’Aldon Music’, KIRSHNER was rich enough to retire, yet he stayed on at Columbia, becoming president of ’Screen Gems’, the prestigious song publishing wing of Columbia Pictures.
At Columbia KIRSHNER ran ’Screen Gems’ while overseeing both ’Dimension’ and ’Colpix’, a label created specifically for Columbia artists in 1958. ’Dimension’ was renamed ’Calendar Records’ in 1965.
KIRSHNER was instrumental in the creation of the Monkees (1966) and the Archies (1969), both highly manufactured, but hugely successful groups, both on record and on TV. It was the success of the Archies that gave KIRSHNER enough capital to launch ’Kirshner Entertainment Corporation’.
After the Archies ran their course, KIRSHNER formed ’Don Kirshner Productions’ in 1972 to produce "Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert". Unhappy with his association with RCA, KIRSHNER struck a deal with CBS to distribute his productions. Closing out the decade, KIRSHNER began selling off the licensing end of his publishing catalog and went into self-elected retirement where he has remained ever since.
On June 7, 2007 he received the first ever ’Abe Olman Publisher Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Music Industry’.
"THE HOUSE THAT BUILT
POP MUSIC".
The BRILL BUILDING (built 1930 and named after the Brill Brothers) is an office building located at 1619 Broadway in New York City, just north of Times Square. In the years after World War II it became a centre of activity for the popular music industry, especially music publishing and songwriting.
The BRILL BUILDING’s name been widely adopted as a shorthand term for a broad and influential stream of American mainstream popular song (strongly influenced by Latin music and rhythm and blues) which enjoyed great commercial success in the late 1950’s and throughout the 1960’s.
Many significant American and international publishing companies, music agencies and recording labels were based in New York, and although these ventures were naturally spread across many locations, the BRILL BUILDING was regarded as probably the most prestigious address in New York for music business professionals.
The term "The Brill Building Sound" is somewhat inaccurate, however, since much of the music so categorised actually emanated from other locations -- music historian Ken Emerson nominates buildings at 1650 Broadway and 1697 Broadway as other significant bases of activity in this field.
By 1962 the BRILL BUILDING contained 165 music businesses: a musician could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record, and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building.
The creative culture of the independent music companies of the BRILL BUILDING and the nearby 1650 Broadway came to define the influential "Brill Building Sound" and the style of popular music songwriting and recording created by its writers and producers.
CAROLE KING described the atmosphere at the ’BRILL BUILDING’ publishing houses of the period:
"Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, and maybe a chair for the lyricist if you were lucky. You’d sit there and write and you could hear someone in the next cubby hole 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."
— quoted in "The Sociology of Rock" by Simon Frith (1978, ISBN 0-09-460220-4).
Many of the best works in this diverse category were written by a loosely affiliated group of songwriter-producer teams -- mostly duos -- that enjoyed immense success and who collectively wrote some of the biggest hits of the period.
Many in this group were close friends, as well as being creative and business associates -- and both individually and as a duo, they often worked with each other and with other writers in a wide variety of combinations:
• Burt BACHARACH and Hal DAVID
• Jerry LEIBER and Mike STOLLER
• Doc POMUS and Mort SHUMAN
• Gerry GOFFIN and Carole KING
• Ellie GREENWICH and Jeff BARRY
• Barry MANN and Cynthia WEIL
• Neil SEDAKA and Howard GREENFIELD
• Hugo (Peretti) and Luigi (Creatore)
• Tommy Boyce and Bobby
Hart
"I’m A Believer" - The Monkees (words & music by Neil Diamond - 1966)
..quot;>
Some other famous ’Brill Building’ individual songwriters include:
• Phil SPECTOR
• Neil DIAMOND
• Bobby Darin
• James Taylor
• Gene Pitney
• Artie KORNFELD
• Paul Anka
• Jim Croce
• John Denver
• Billy JOEL
• Kris Kristofferson
• Joni Mitchell
• Carly SIMON
• Paul SIMON
Many of these writers came to prominence while under contract to ’Aldon Music’, a publishing company founded ca. 1958 by aspiring music entrepreneur Don KIRSHNER and industry veteran Al Nevins.
’Aldon’ was not initially located in the BRILL BUILDING, but rather, a block away at 1650 Broadway (at 51st St.). In fact, 1650 was built to be a musician’s headquarters, so much so that the laws at the time required that the "front" door be placed on the side of the building due to laws restricting musicians from entering buildings from the front.
Most so-called ’Brill BUILDING’ writers began their careers at 1650, and the building continued to house many record labels throughout the decades.
Among the hundreds of hits written by this group are
• LEIBER and STOLLER’s "Yakety Yak";
• SHUMAN and POMUS’ "Save The Last Dance For Me";
• BACHARACH and DAVID’s "I Say A Little Prayer";
• SEDAKA and GREENFIELD’s "Calendar Girl";
• GOFFIN and KING’s "The Loco-Motion";
• MANN and WEIL’s "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", and
• SPECTOR, GREENWICH and BARRY’s "River Deep Mountain High".
Click HERE to join "the Brill Building" Yahoo! Group.
(Click the pictures to view the SHOF Biographies...)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"Hitmakers: The Teens Who Stole Pop Music"
(A&E Home Video, 2001)
"A bunch of smart kids from Brooklyn jump-started the music business in the 1960’s, and it’s never been the same.
"Hitmakers" is a fabulously entertaining look at these "teens who stole Pop music". The amazing convergence of songwriting talent at Manhattan’s BRILL BUILDING created a competitive but prolific community of songwriters, almost all of them Jewish, and few of them older than 27.
Many of them worked for music producer Don KIRSHNER, who had tapped into the zeitgeist of 1960’s youth, and understood that young teen audiences wanted to buy records by both white and black artists. These were magical years.
At the BRILL BUILDING, wordsmiths like Jerry LEIBER and Mike STOLLER ("Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock") wrote hit songs for teen idols such as Elvis Presley*, and increasingly for explosively talented black artists like Aretha Franklin*, Dionne Warwick*, and The Shirelles.
Songwriting team Carole KING (later to become a renowned singer) and husband Gerry GOFFIN ("Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?") composed at an upright piano in a small cubicle; their friends and rivals, Barry MANN and Cynthia WEIL ("You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling") were hard at work just a few millimeters of pressboard away in the next cubicle. Burt BACHARACH, Hal DAVID, and Neil SEDAKA were riffing down the hall.
Actor John Turturro* narrates this narrates this toe-tapping documentary about a formative period in the history of American music, race relations and the nascent record industry".
[Running Time: 90 min - Directed by: Morgan Neville - Studio: A&E Home Video; Sept. 2001]
www.sedaka.be/neil_sedaka_petition"
PLEASE DON’T HESITATE: VOTE NOW!! xoxo
"Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era" by Ken Emerson (Viking Penguin, 2005)
 
"Hound Dog" - Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (Leiber/Stoller)
"Jailhouse Rock" - Elvis Presley (Leiber/Stoller)
"One Fine Day" - The Chiffons (Goffin/King)
"I Say A Little Prayer" - Aretha Franklin (Bacharach/David)
"Be My Baby" - The Ronettes (Spector/Greenwich/Barry)
"Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do" - Neil Sedaka (Greenfield/Sedaka)
"(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" - Carole King (Goffin/King)
"Is That All There Is?" - Peggy Lee (Leiber/Stoller)
"Don’t Be Cruel" - Elvis Presley (Leiber/Stoller)
"River Deep, Mountain High" - Ike & Tina Turner (Spector/Greenwich/Barry)
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" - The Shirelles (Goffin/King)
"You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling" - Righteous Brothers (Mann/Weil)
"Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" - Neil Sedaka & Neil Diamond (Greenfield/Sedaka)
"He’s So Fine" - The Chiffons (Ronald Mack)
FEATURED LINKS:
Tin Pan Alley MySpace Group
CAROLE KING’s MySpace
BACHARACH & DAVID MySpace
Click HERE to join "the Brill Building" Yahoo! Group. XO
Copyright © 2006-2007 Saul A. Schoenbrodt - Many thanks to Wim, Laura Pinto, A.K., Lisa, and Boris-A. Lancel for their help in creating this project.
The petition is hosted at: www.Sedaka.be as a public service. © 2005 J. Van Gorp.
NOTE: any posted Topic/Bulletin which is NOT related to the Brill Building Sound will be deleted! xoxo
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