By Sally Deering

Mr.Sedaka’s Facebook page

The River View Observer extends our condolences to the Sedaka family on the passing of Neil Sedaka

Our  Love Will Keep Us Together, Where the Boys Are,  Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Laughter in the Rain. Back in the day, these songs swept teens off their feet and into the world of Grammy-winning singer/songwriter and international legend, Neil Sedaka.

Accompanying himself at the piano, Sedaka wrote and sang soulful love songs that made teen girls cry and filled teen boys with youthful longing for that special sweetheart. With a voice like buttercream frosting on a 7-layer cake, Sedaka’s sweet vocals keep on going, and at 75, Sedaka will be back at the piano crooning his oldies and most recent recordings on Fri, Dec. 12 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood.

Sedaka will be in the spotlight for one night only to give the audience a chance to hear a master songwriter in an intimate setting. With a look back, Sedaka will sing songs that made him famous and those he wrote that were performed by legends like Elvis, Connie Francis, and the Captain and Tennille. During his 50-year career, Sedaka has sold millions of records and penned hundreds of tunes with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.

Looking ahead, Sedaka will also perform songs from Solitaire his recent album. And while on tour, Sedaka is also working on a new musical slated for Broadway about his life and career that began in Brooklyn, where he lived with his family and studied the piano.

Accepted to Juilliard to study the classics, Sedaka grooved more to Elvis than to Beethoven. He began working with music groups, and then in the late 1950s, he teamed up with lyricist Howard Greenfield, and the two began writing songs that soon became Billboard hits on the Top 40 chart.

Sedaka soon had an office in the famous Brill Building in New York, where he and his partner wrote hit songs, but in the late 1960s and early ‘70s Sedakaâ€s career went through a dry spell. It wasn’t until the mid- 70s when Elton John rediscovered  Sedaka and signed him to his new record label, Rocket Records. Sedaka recorded two albums, Sedaka’s Back in 1974 and The Hungry Years in 1975, which became top-sellers and brought Sedaka back to the music scene for real.

Today, Sedaka has 106 albums listed on Amazon.com, includingThe Real Neil, a new release. Visit his website, www.neilsedaka.com, you’ll see pics of Sedaka with Sir Paul McCartney (of The Beatles), England Prince Charles, and his wife Camilla, and more. And lucky for us, on a recent afternoon, Sedaka found time in his busy schedule to share what it’s like to be a music legend still performing and trying new things.

RVO: Your concert at Bergen PAC on Dec. 12 will be you and a piano, that’s all?

NS:   very upfront and personal. I tell stories of how I write, why I write, and about my career. The audience is into the personal side.

RVO  And you’ll be singing some of your older tunes?

NS: I never get tired of singing the original hits.

RVO: When you were starting in the 50s, you appeared on American Bandstand with Dick Clark. What was it like to be on the show in its early years, and what was Dick Clark like?

NS: It was the thrill of a lifetime for a kid. I used to run home from school to watch the show. Dick Clark was very polished, very classy. He started me off, he had me on the ˜Beechnut Saturday Night show. The first hit I did wasThe Diary.  I knew him through the years. I did the first Rockin’ New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark. He loved the music. It was a great show, and he was one of the American Institutions. It was also a thrill to be on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Carol Burnett Show. I was on Sonny and Cher, Merv Griffin, and Mike Douglas.

RVO: Can you tell our readers what it was like working in the famous Brill Building in New York City?

NS: Howie (Greenfield) and I were teenagers. I was dating Carol King at the time. I brought her up there. At first, we went there five days a week, and we sang songs. It was terrific training.. I was the first at the Brill to sing my own songs. This was from 1958-63.

RVO: Who was the greatest person you ever met, musically, who affected you?

NS: Arthur Rubenstein. Being a child prodigy, I was studying at Juilliard when I met Arthur Rubenstein, the greatest pianist in the world.

RVO: Did you ever meet Elvis?

NS: I met Elvis, and he invited me to the MGM hotel, where he was performing. My wife and I went backstage. I sat at the piano, and we sang a gospel song together. He eventually recorded Solitaire.

RVO: Your career was revived in the 1970s by Elton John, is that right?

NS: My first career was a voice on TV. The second career, Elton John put me on his label, and I had an incredible comeback because of Elton. It was really something. I was out of work for 13 years. During that time, I raised a family, and there were a few countries that still remembered me, Japan, and South America, but I thought my career was over. Now I do mostly concerts. I live both in New York and L.A., so I can be with my grandkids.

RVO: What music do you listen to when you are  home or in the car?

NS: I like Sam Smith.

RVO: Do you like Lady Gaga?

NS: She’s a little too shrieky. I’m inspired by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

RVO: You just released a new album?

NS: Yes.The Real Neil,– all new. These days, I don’t have to write commercially anymore; I write what I feel. I write from inside; nobody puts words in my mouth.

 RVO: Is it true you’re working on a Broadway musical?

NS: Yes. It’s called “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and it’s the life story of Neil Sedaka. It’s along the lines of the Carole King musical now on Broadway. (The show is called Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.)

RVO: What is the favorite song that you wrote?

NS: I’ve had everybody from Sinatra to Elvis, to ABBA, to Cher, to Shirley Bassey sing my songs. The Captain and Tennille recorded Love Will Keep Us Together, and we won a Grammy. I’ve won a few Grammys, but I’ve been nominated a lot more than I’ve won. But I’m still doing it and still loving it. My life has been very blessed.

The Show was on December 12 th 2014

For more information on Neil Sedaka and his incredible talent and life, visit: www.neilsedaka.com

The post THE COMEBACK KID-Everything Old is New Again when Neil Sedaka Performed at Bergen PAC on December 12th, 2014 first appeared on River View Observer.

New Play at LaMama in New York based on The Carmelettes, the 1950s All-Girl Doo-Wop Group from Jersey City

 

“When I was 15, I started writing my own material,” Murphy says, “and somehow I knew I was going to come to this story at some point in my life.”

Murphy’s full-length play about her mother’s experience as a doo-whop singer began 20 years ago, she says, when she was invited to perform a 10-minute monologue on her story of choice and she chose to talk about her mother’s singing career. Ten years later, she started thinking of that monologue and the play began to take shape.

“I always had my mother’s records and they were always fascinating to me,” Murphy says. “It was family history and even more, it was my voice that I heard on those records. When I would research songs for the kind of music that I perform, I always came back around to my mother’s music and that’s when I decided that I needed to tell this story. And the more I worked on this play, the more I began to think about all the other uncelebrated people in this world. We live in an ‘American Idol’ society and there are people sitting behind desks, teaching school, who have amazing gifts and you just don’t know about them. That’s become very interesting to me.”

Growing up, Murphy wanted to be a rock star, she says. And because of her experience as an undergrad in the experimental theater division of NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts, Murphy’s career path turned into a search for belonging that included singing in New York’s cabaret rooms like the Eighty Eights and doing theater and music gigs that didn’t fit one particular genre.

“I was never a cabaret performer, per se,” Murphy says. “I would sing in cabarets and end up doing a U2 song. Then I would sing Standards in rock clubs. My tastes were eclectic.”

During all that time, Murphy says, the stories of her mother’s life as a doo-whop singer would always come back to her. Even though the play is called “Girl/Group…” her mother’s trio, The Carmelettes was really a pre-girl group. pre-Supremes, pre-Shirelles and pre-Shangri-Las.

In the mid-1950s, The Carmelettes received their name from their parish priest at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel church where they sang in the choir. They signed with Alpine, a subsidiary of Epic Records and recorded their first songs. That’s when Neil Sedaka chose them to sing back up for his song “Oh Carol,” a tune he wrote about singer/songwriter Carole King.  Although not much is written about The Carmelettes, according to Angela LaPrete Murphy, “We sang backup on ‘Oh Carol’ and then were asked to duplicate the sound on ‘Oh, Neil.’ At that time, Virginia had already left the group. Vicky and I did a great deal of backup with Carole King for other artists.”

Beatrice Verdi, Virginia Verga’s sister wrote songs for them, arranged the vocals, and went on to become a successful songwriter, Susan Murphy says: “She was unbelievable. She was writing four-chord doo-wop stuff, the harmonies were insane and these little girls did them. One of their records is now up on eBay for 50 bucks.”

The Carmelettes continued to do back up and record their own songs. When they recorded “Promise Me a Rose” at Columbia Studios in New York, singer Anita Bryant recorded the same song and the DJ pulled The Carmelettes version off the air. Similar to most girl groups like the Shangri-Las, The Carmelettes/Kittens disbanded and moved on with their lives.

“It’s because of The Carmelettes that I discovered a personal love for all types of music,” Murphy says, “and a deep respect for the path my mother paved all those years ago so that other girl groups could follow.”

And although her career as a doo-whop singer became a treasure trove of memories in a box of 45s, Angela LaPrete Murphy made sure the music never stopped playing in the Murphy household.

“I always knew doo-wop because it was always playing in our house,” Murphy says. “And my mother always sang. In fact, everybody always sang in my house. Even though we weren’t music professionals – except for my mom – we would bust out in songs.”

Girl/Group: A Daughter’s Tale

June 17-26,

Fri & Sat 10 pm; Sun 5:30 pm

Tickets $18

LaMama’s The Club

74A East 4^th Street

(Btw Bowery & 2^nd Ave)

New York City

212-475-7710

Tickets can be purchased online at www.lamama.org/theclub

 

To view a short video about the show on YouTube, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfqW2Toh9A

 

 

 

 

           

 

The post Golden Girls of Doo-Wop- The Carmelettes inspire new play first appeared on River View Observer.