Neil Sedaka is 84 years old today.
A pop/rock singer, pianist and composer, Sedaka’s career has spanned 56 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists.
Sedaka collaborated mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.
Born in Brooklyn, Sadaka’s father, Mac Sedaka, was a taxi driver and a Sephardic Jew of Turkish descent. ("Sedaka" and "Sedacca" are variants of tzedaka, which translates in both Hebrew and Arabic as the word charity).
Sedaka's mother, Eleanor, is an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish-Russian descent. He grew up in the then-heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach.
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.
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. His mother wanted him to become a renowned classical pianist such as the contemporary of the day, Van Cliburn, but Sedaka was discovering pop music.
When Sedaka was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield, an aspiring poet and lyricist. They became two of the legendary Brill Building's composers.
Sedaka and Greenfield wrote songs together throughout much of their young lives, with Sedaka going on to being a major teen pop star and the pair also writing hits for a litany of other artists as well as for Sedaka's own career.
However, when The Beatles and the British Invasion took American music in a different direction, Sedaka was left without a recording career and decided a major change in his life was necessary, moving his family to Britain in the early 1970s.
Sedaka and Greenfield mutually agreed that their partnership was at an end with "Our Last Song Together."
Sedaka began a new composing partnership with lyricist, Phil Cody, who was born and raised in Pleasantville, NY.
After Sedaka returned to the U.S., however, the Sedaka-Greenfield team eventually reunited and continued until Greenfield's death in 1986.
His first single for RCA, "The Diary," was inspired by Connie Francis, one of Sedaka and Greenfield's most important clients, while the three were taking a temporary break during their idea-making for a new song. Francis had been writing in her diary. Sedaka asked if he could read it. She promptly replied no.
After Little Anthony and the Imperials passed on the song, Sedaka recorded it himself, and his debut single hit the Top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #14 in 1958.
Desperate for another hit, he bought several hit singles and listened to them repeatedly, studying the song structure, chord progressions, lyrics and harmonies — and he discovered that the hit songs of the day all shared the same basic musical anatomy.
Armed with his newfound arsenal of musical knowledge, he set out to craft his next big hit song, and he promptly did exactly that.
"Oh! Carol" delivered Sedaka his first domestic Top 10 hit, reaching #9 on the Hot 100 in 1959 and going to #1 on the Italian pop charts in 1960, giving Sedaka his first #1 ranking.
The song was dedicated to his girlfriend at the time, Carole Klein, later to become Carole King, a fellow Brill Building composer and future pop star.
For the title, however, Sedaka and Greenfield used the more traditional spelling of the word "Carol" without the "e." King would respond with her own novelty song, "Oh! Neil," later that year.
After establishing himself in 1958, Sedaka kept churning out new hits from 1960 to 1962.
His flow of Top 30 hits during this period included: "Stairway to Heaven" (#9, 1960); "You Mean Everything to Me" (#17, 1960); "Run, Samson, Run" (#27, 1960); "Calendar Girl" (#4, 1961); "Little Devil" (#11, 1961); "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" (#6, 1961) and his signature song, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" (#1, two weeks: August 11 and 18, 1962). Then came "Next Door to an Angel" (#5, 1962).
Singles not making the Top 30 during this time period included "Sweet Little You" (#59, 1961) and "King of Clowns" (#45, 1962).
RCA issued four LPs in the U.S. and Britain of his works during this period, and also produced Scopitone and Cinebox videos of "Calendar Girl" in 1961, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" in 1962 and "The Dreamer" in 1963.
Sedaka made regular appearances on such TV programs as American Bandstand and Shindig! during this period.
Today, Sedaka maintains a rigorous concert schedule.
