O/T The Music Thread

I thought I'd bring the Sadecki/Sedaka fol-de-rol over here from the Miscellaneous Thread.  As far as I have been able to figure out, there are only two pop/rock artists who had Top 40 hits on The Billboard charts in the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.  And they aren't artists most people would guess.

One is Neil (Don't Call Me Ray) Sedaka.  He had multiple hits in the 50s and 60s, and also quite a few in the 70s (including the aforementioned "Bad Blood," which went to Number One in the Fall of 1975 and the remake of "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," which went to Number Eight in early 1976; "Laughter In The Rain" also went to Number One in late 1974.)  He made it to Number Nineteen in the Spring of 1980 doing a duet with his daughter Dara, "I Should Have Never Let You Go."  The first released recording Sedaka appeared on was playing chimes on a 1956 doo-wop classic "Church Bells May Ring" by The Willows.  He also played piano on Bobby Darin's big 1959 hit "Dream Lover."  There will be a test on this later.

The other artist who met this criteria is even more unlikely.  It's British crooner Cliff Richard, who was huge in the UK, but not so much here.  He made the Top 40 in the 50s and 60s one time each with deservedly-forgotten songs "Living Doll" in 1959 and a remake of "All In The Game" in 1964.  Then he disappeared from the U.S. charts for 12 years before reappearing in 1976 with a big hit "Devil Woman" and again in 1979 "We Don't Talk Anymore."  Some of you guys might remember those.  He had a Number Ten hit in 1980 with "Dreamin'."

I'm not a particular fan of either of them, but there they are.  There may be others who achieved this, but I haven't been able to find anybody.

Remember when we didn't care about looks, only about the sound?

Sedaka attended Julliard, which doesn't accept just anybody, so he knew what he was doing on those 88s.  I was not aware of his Stephen Foster tribute -- I think Foster was to American music kind of what Old Tom Morris was to golf -- maybe not the first, but the one who set the course.  I suppose that's why his songs are still played nearly 160 years after his death. 

For sure, I think "Solitaire" was just what it claimed to be, a rather moving ballad about loneliness.  It is one of the few Carpenters songs I will listen to -- also "Goodbye To Love" because of that great extended guitar solo that comes out of nowhere.  When I learned a few years ago that John Lennon loved Karen Carpenter's vocals, I felt a bit less disturbed about sneaking an occasional listen on a dreary day.

For some extra credit on ingers pop quiz, Neil Sedaka was part of the Brille Building set of writers along with Neil Diamond, Carol King, Boyce & Hart among others. Supposedly, he dated Carol King in high school and several of his songs were about her or inspired by her ("Oh, Carol" comes to mind). He also wrote the song "Where the Boys Are" made famous by Connie Francis. I've always found Sedaka's songs to be well crafted, tuneful and basically a guilty pleasure. Great harmonies as well.

I didn't remember that Sedaka had written "Where The Boys Are."  I do know Connie Francis recorded several of his songs, among them "Stupid Cupid," which sounds very Sedakian.  He wrote many of The Captain and Tennille's hits, most obviously "Love Will Keep Us Together."  He also wrote an early Monkees song "When Love Comes Knockin' At Your Door."  He is second-cousin to 50s-60s pop singer Eydie Gorme, the kind of singer who was always showing up on variety shows like Merv Griffin's or Steve Allen's.

Yeah, The Brill Building.  We could use a lot of bandwidth running down the list of songs and songwriters based there.  I think half the songs that were hits from the late 50s through the 60s were written there.  A bunch of husband and wife teams -- Goffin/King, Mann-Weil, Barry/Greenwich -- plus Sedaka with Howard Greenfield -- Paul Simon worked there, Bacharach/David, Lieber/Stoller, on and on.

The ground floor of that building was occupied for many years by Jack Dempsey's Restaurant.  I was in there in the early 1970s, but alas the great pugilist himself wasn't (he often was.)  Charles de Gaulle was a regular consumer of Dempsey's cheesecake!  He had it flown over several times a year.

Karen had a three-octave range, although clearly she spent a lot of time at the lower end of it.  I once read a great quote from her about that -- "The money's in the basement."