Скачать с ютуб Walk On By - The Story Of Popular Song (BBC Documentary 10/23) в хорошем качестве

Walk On By - The Story Of Popular Song (BBC Documentary 10/23)

Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Mac Sedaka, a taxi driver, was of Sephardic Turkish-Jewish descent. ("Sedaka" is a variant of tzedaka, which translates in both Hebrew and Arabic as the word charity). Sedaka's mother, Eleanor Appel Sedaka, was of Polish-Russian Jewish descent (or generally referred to as Ashkenazi-Jewish descent). He grew up in an apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.[1] Sedaka is the cousin of singer Eydie Gormé, who retired from her professional career in 2009; her husband and former music duo partner, Steve Lawrence, continues to perform as a solo act. Sedaka 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. It was his mother's dream for him to become a renowned classical pianist such as the contemporary of the day, Van Cliburn. But although he practiced faithfully, another type of music was also becoming of interest. He was becoming interested in pop 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. They became two of the legendary Brill Building's composers, often remembered with the Tin Pan Alley music of the early 20th century. But as many people don't know, there were technically two "Brill Buildings" — the regal original located at 1619 Broadway at 49th Street in Manhattan, and a second building that also took on the moniker of a "Brill Building," located at 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, unofficially referred to as "Allegro Studios." [2] It was at this second location, at music titan Don Kirshner's Aldon Music, from where most of the biggest hits of the late 1950s, well into the late '70s and beyond, actually emanated. In this 1½-block stretch of Broadway, the "Brill Building Sound" was brought forth, all with legendary composers working within roughly the same decade: Burt Bacharach & Hal David; Boyce & Hart; Neil Diamond; Carole King & Gerry Goffin; Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry; Leiber & Stoller; Laura Nyro; Paul Simon (working solely as a songwriter during this period); and Phil Spector. [3] This is just a small list of the contemporaries that Sedaka and Greenfield worked among in the "Brill Building Sound"; they worked for Kirshner at Aldon Music, but routinely interacted with songwriters from everyone from the Brill music area. They 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 and took American music in a wildly different direction, Sedaka was left without a recording career and decided a major change in his life was necessary, moving his family to the UK in the early 1970s. They mutually agreed that their partnership reached an end with "Our Last Song Together," and Sedaka began a new, equally successful composing partnership with British lyricist Phil Cody. After Sedaka returned to the US, however, the Sedaka/Greenfield team would eventually be reunified and continue until Greenfield's death in 1986.