Re: Jewish songwriters (& the Brill Building)

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

>You are right.  King was originally Klein.  Virtually all the Brill
>Building sonwriters were Jewish.  That this goes unmentioned (they are
>all described simply as 'white') in the textbook I use in my history of
>rock music class I find unfortunate.  The text, which is fine in many
>ways, tends to racialize everything, but merely in terms of black and
>white that can be reductive and essentializing, when questions that
>probe more deeply into ethnicity, nationality, and culture could be very 
>interesting.  I spend a lot of time exploring the Jewish roots of
>artists who work in 'mainstream' idioms and at the very least have come
>to appreciate the size of the Jewish contribution.  I would appreciate
>it being better known.


Their Jewishness (by birth, anyway) *doesn't* go unmentioned in the 
wonderful film

Hit Makers: The Teens Who Stole Pop Music

originally shown on A&E television (for one night) and just featured (also 
for one night) at the Boston Jewish Film Festival (which also had a film, on 
one Cuban-born Jew's search for roots--called "Adio, Querida").  It's an 
exhilarating movie and I encourage you to see it if you have any love or 
feel for the music of this era (largely pre-Beatles rock 'n roll, sort-of) 
and have a chance to.  You want to sing along with it constantly.  And the 
mini-stories behind some of the songs are wonderful.  BJFF website summary:

"They were young, Jewish, and straight out of Brooklyn. The early 1960s saw 
an amazing convergence of songwriting talent at Manhattan's Brill Building. 
There, "fathers of rock 'n' roll" Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller wrote hit 
songs for Elvis Presley, such as "Hound Dog." Songwriting team Carole King 
and husband Gerry Goffin ("Will You Love Me Tomorrow?") composed at an 
upright piano in one cubicle; their friends and rivals, Barry Mann and 
Cynthia Weil ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling") were hard at work at the 
next. Burt Bacharach, Hal David, and Neil Sedaka could be heard down the 
hall. They worked for Don Kirshner, and all agree that those years were 
magical. John Turturro narrates this terrifically entertaining documentary 
about a memorable period in the history of rock 'n' roll. It features 
extensive interviews and archival footage of performers such as The 
Drifters, The Shirelles, and The Righteous Brothers."


rlc commentary:  The worst of the songs of this period were, and are, dreck. 
  But what's so exhilarating is that the *best* of them were, and are, 
magical--and the kids (and most of them *were* kids) involved knew it, sort 
of--knew they were creating magic.

What's most endearing, and energizing, about the movie is that, even when 
they weren't writing dreck--and especially when they were making magic--the 
songwriters of the Brill Building and thereabouts *loved* what they were 
doing--they may have been churning them out, but they weren't *just* 
"churning them out"--and their joy and delight in what they were doing 
really comes through.  I looked around as I was leaving the theater:  
*Everyone* had a smile, or more.  The joy was infectious.  And, truth to 
tell, I knew that *before* I looked around, and before the lights came on.  
You could feel, and hear, it.

Carole King & then-husband Gerry Goffin, according to the film, came to work 
one day and found a note on the piano:  "Don (Kirschner) needs a song for 
the Shirelles by *tomorrow.*"

So they wrote:  "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?"

Is that magic, or what?

--Robert Cohen

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