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Career beginnings, 1960s success
Early life
Sedaka was born in Brooklyn , New York . His father, Mac Sedaka, a taxi driver, was the son of Turkish Jewish immigrants ("Sedaka" is a variant of tzedaka — Hebrew for charity); his mother, Eleanor (Appel) Sedaka, was of Polish -Russian Jewish descent. He grew up in an apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn .[ 1] He is the cousin of singer Eydie Gorme[citation needed ] .
He
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. He
took to the instrument immediately. 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.
He also maintained an interest in popular music, and when he was 13, a
neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield , an aspiring poet and lyricist. The two began writing together.
[edit ] His early career
After
graduating from Lincoln High School, Sedaka and some of his classmates
formed a band called "The Tokens". 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 out on his own. His first three solo
singles, "Laura Lee", "Ring-A-Rockin'", and "Oh, Delilah!" failed to
become hits (although "Ring-A-Rockin'" earned him his 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, "The Diary" (a song he offered to Little Anthony and the Imperials ) reached #14 on the Billboard charts. His second single, "I Go Ape",
was a modest success at #42, and his third single, "Crying My Heart Out
For You", was a flop at #111. Desperate for a hit, he bought several hit
singles and listened to them over and over, studying the chord
progressions and lyrics to figure out what made them so popular. Based
on that, he crafted a new song, "Oh, Carol!", dedicated to his
then-girlfriend and fellow pop-star Carole King . The song reached #9 on the charts. (Carole King would respond with the answer song, "Oh, Neil!" later that year).
Sedaka
kept churning out new hits from 1960 to 1962. The best known are
"Stairway To Heaven" (#9, 1960), "Calendar Girl" (#4, 1961), "Little
Devil" (#11, 1961), "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" (#6, 1961), his
signature song "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" (#1, 1962), and "Next Door To
An Angel" (#5, 1962). He also had modest success with "You Mean
Everything To Me" (#17, 1960), "Run Samson Run" (#27, 1960), "Sweet
Little You" (#59, 1961), and "King of Clowns" (#45, 1962). RCA issued
four LPs in the US and Britain of his works during this period, and also
produced a Scopitone video of "Calendar Girl".
When Sedaka wasn't recording his own songs, he was writing for other performers, most notably Connie Francis . As Francis explains at her concerts, she began searching for a new hit after her 1958 single "Who's Sorry Now? ". She was introduced to Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who played every
ballad they had written for her. Francis began writing her diary while
the two played the last of their songs. After they finished, Francis
told them they wrote beautiful ballads but that they were too
intellectual for the young generation. Sedaka suggested to Greenfield a
song they had written that morning for a girl group. Greenfield
protested because the song had been promised to the girl group, but
Sedaka insisted on playing "Stupid Cupid". Francis told them they had
just played her new hit. Francis' song reached #14 on the Billboard
charts.
While Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked her
if he could read what she had written. After she refused, Sedaka was
inspired to write "The Diary", his first hit single. Sedaka and
Greenfield wrote many of Connie Francis' hits, such as "Fallin'" and the
theme to the film "Where the Boys Are ", in which she starred.
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1970s success
A year later he reconvened with the Strawberry team, who had by then charted with their own debut 10cc album, to record The Tra-La Days Are Over for MGM Records , which started the second phase of his career and included his
original version of the hit song "Love Will Keep Us Together" (a US #1
hit two years later for The Captain & Tennille ). This album also marked the effective end of his writing partnership
with Greenfield, commemorated by the track "Our Last Song Together."
They would reunite, however, and begin composing together again before
Greenfield's death in 1986.
Sedaka worked with Elton John , who signed Sedaka to John's Rocket Records label; during the ensuing years, Sedaka's records would be distributed in Europe on the Polydor label. Sedaka returned to the U.S. with the release of the 1974 album "Sedaka's Back ," a shelf-ready blend of cuts he had already recorded in Britain with
10cc and Elton John. Although the single was released in the autumn of
1974 and was slow in building, eventually Sedaka found himself once
again topping the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts with "Laughter in the Rain " in early 1975, and then later again that year with "Bad Blood " (and continuing into 1976, staying at #1 for three weeks and being
certified gold by the RIAA, the most commercially successful single of
his career). Elton provided uncredited backing vocals for the latter
song. The flipside of "Laughter in the Rain " was "The Immigrant " (US pop #22, US AC #1), a wistful, nostalgic piece dedicated to John Lennon , which recalled the bygone era when America was welcoming of
immigrants, in contrast to the U.S. government's then-refusal to grant
Lennon permanent resident status.[ 6] The third consecutive Billboard Top 25 hitfromSedaka's Back was the uptempo "That's When the Music Takes Me" (US pop #25, US AC
#7); this song is now and has been, for some time, Sedaka's standard
curtain-call concert closer.
Sedaka and Greenfield co-wrote "Love Will Keep Us Together ", a No. 1The Captain & Tennille and was the biggest hit for the entire year of 1975. Toni Tennille paid tribute to Sedaka's welcome return to music-business success with her ad lib of "Sedaka is back" in the outro while she was laying down her own background vocals for the track.[ 7] . "Captain" Daryl Dragon and Toni also recorded a Spanish-language version of the song the same year that cracked the top half of Billboard' s Hot 100 chart ("Por Amor Viviremos," US pop #49). hit for
In 1975, Sedaka was the opening act for The Carpenters on their world tour. According to The Carpenters: The Untold Story by Ray Coleman , manager Sherwin Bash fired Sedaka at the request of Richard CarpenterSolitaire " which became a Top 20 hit for the duo. Richard Carpenter denied that
he fired Sedaka for "stealing their show", stating they were proud of
Sedaka's success. However, Bash was fired as The Carpenters' manager a
short time after. . The firing resulted in a media backlash against The Carpenters after
Sedaka publicly announced he was off the tour. This, however, was before
Karen and Richard recorded Sedaka's "
"Solitaire " would find success again in the 21st century, when American Idol runnerup Clay Aiken sang the song when Sedaka appeared as a guest judge in the second
season. Aiken explained the song was his mother's favorite, and she
begged him to sing it when she learned that Sedaka would be on the show
and that the remaining finalists would be singing songs from Sedaka's
impressive songbook. After Aiken was awarded a recording contract,
although it did not appear on his debut CD itself, he added "Solitaire"
as the B-side to the single "The Way ", whose sales were faltering. "Solitaire" was moved to the A-side and
radio airplay and single and download sales responded immediately. The
single hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Singles Sales chart, the Top 5 on Billboard' s Hot 100, and was one of the biggest hits of 2004. Sedaka was invited back to American Idol to celebrate its success and continues to be seen in the audience.
In 1975, Sedaka recorded a new version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". The 1962 original #1 hit was fast-tempoed and a sort of bouncy teen pop, but the remake was slower and featured a
jazzy, torch-piano arrangement. Lenny Welch had recorded the song in
this style in 1970. Sedaka's new version hit #8 on the Hot 100 in early
1976, making him the first artist to hit the U.S. Top 10 twice with
entirely different versions and arrangements of the same song. Sedaka's
second version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" topped Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in 1976. The same year, Elvis Presley recorded the Sedaka song "Solitaire". This was followed by Sedaka's Top 20 hit "Love in the Shadows", also from 1976.
Later
in 1976, Sedaka released a second (and final) collaboration with Elton
John, with Elton once again on uncredited backing vocals on the title
song to Sedaka's album "Steppin' Out". While it would crack the Hot
100's Top 40, it would also signal the beginning of a slowdown in
Sedaka's music sales and radio play not unlike what he experienced in
1964 when The Beatles and the "British Invasion" arrived. In this
version of another fading of his music sales, it was the arrival of the
disco era. While Sedaka attempted to release disco-themed music himself
in the late 1970s, his album sales were weak and singles could not get a
foothold on the radio. In 1980 , Sedaka had his final Top 20 hit with "Should've Never Let You Go",
which he recorded as a duet with his then 17-year-old daughter, Dara.
Throughout
the 1970s, Sedaka's old record company, RCA, would re-issue his
1960s-era songs on several compilation LPs on the RCA Victor and RCA Camden labels, a practice which continues to this day.
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