There was a mind-boggling four-year period early in rock ’n’ roll — from 1959 to 1962 — when Neil Sedaka had 10 Top Ten records in a row, with sales totalling more than 25 million copies. It was a run so dominant that it is difficult to imagine in today’s fractured music industry. You may know one of those songs well — Oh! Carol, inspired by his then steady girlfriend, Carole King. Or you may remember Connie Francis singing Stupid Cupid. That, too, was written by Sedaka, who died on February 27 in Los Angeles. He was 86.
Sedaka was one of those rare musicians who possessed an instinctive ear for pop music while also being rigorously trained in the classical tradition. He was nine when he received a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York, a distinction that marked him early as something more than a teenage hitmaker. He understood harmony, counterpoint and structure; he also understood what made young listeners swoon.
With his carefully constructed overdubbed harmonies, Sedaka became a defining voice of the late 1950s. After Oh! Carol, he delivered a succession of hits — Stairway to Heaven; Run Samson, Run; You Mean Everything to Me; Calendar Girl; Little Devil; Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen; Next Door to an Angel; and Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. Each of them is now considered a classic.
His knowledge of the piano runs through each of these recordings. Take Breaking Up Is Hard to Do. He counterpointed the main melody against his own playful, almost nonsensical vocal riff — “come-a, come-a, down-dooby-doo-down-down” — layering simplicity with sophistication. This was a musician whose career unfolded in two distinct phases. The first belonged to the buoyant optimism of the 1950s and early 1960s. The second began years later, when he was reintroduced to American audiences by Elton John’s Rocket label.
A prodigy guided by his mother
Sedaka’s career owed a great deal to his relationship with his mother, Eleanor. Dominated by her formidable presence, he rarely made a decision without her consent. While other boys played baseball or stickball in the Brooklyn streets, Sedaka showed little interest in rough-and-tumble games. He was often seen in the company of his sister and her friends instead, more comfortable at the piano than on the pavement. His best friend at the time, Freddie Gershon, would stop by each morning to pick him up on the way to P.S. 253, the routine of schooldays.
His life changed when his chorus teacher, Mrs Glantz, sent home a note saying that Neil had a musical gift. Eleanor took the message seriously. Piano lessons followed, though they came at a cost the family could scarcely afford. Money was tight. Determined not to let her son’s talent wither, Eleanor took a part-time job. After six months she had saved $500 — a considerable sum at the time — to buy a second-hand piano. That instrument would alter the trajectory of her son’s life.
Music opened doors. He was invited to study at the Juilliard School at Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts at the age of seven, becoming one of the youngest scholarship students in its history. He might have become a classical music sensation; the discipline and technique were there. But fate intervened in the form of a neighbour.
One Ella Greenfield heard Sedaka practising in the lobby of the Kenmore Hotel and suggested that her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield, collaborate with him on writing songs. She returned to her apartment at 3260 Coney Island Avenue and urged her son to persuade Sedaka to try songwriting. The pair wrote a new song every day for close to two years, honing a craft that would soon find a national audience.
It was also the period when Sedaka listened faithfully to his favourite radio programme, Make Believe Ballroom, where the disc jockey Alan Freed was introducing a generation to rock ’n’ roll. The music felt urgent and new. Sedaka absorbed it all.
His life shifted again at the Lincoln High Ballyhoo talent show. He performed a song he had written, titled Mr Moon. He did so discreetly, almost furtively; his mother still wanted him to become a classical musician, and he worked behind her back to pursue pop songwriting. In the years that followed, he formed a group called the Linc-Tones with Lincoln High classmates Hank Medress, Eddie Rabkin and Cynthia Zolotin; Jay Siegel later replaced Rabkin.