I did not want to let too much more time pass before registering this tribute to singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka, who died last month at the age of 86.
A musical prodigy on the piano, Sedaka teamed with his Brooklyn high school classmate and friend, Howard Greenfield, and together they produced hit records out of New York's Brill Building like "Oh Carol", "Happy Birthday, Sweet 16", "Calendar Girl", and perhaps his biggest hit, "Breaking Up Is Hard to do", which was Number 1 on Billboard Top 100 in 1967. Like many of his contemporaries, Sedaka was swept away by the British tidal wave of bands and singers that was led by the Beatles in 1963. Sedaka continued to write music and perform, but his days as a star appeared be over.
In the mid-seventies, however, it was one of those British stars, Elton John, who encouraged Sedaka to come back, and John helped produce the album "Sedaka's Back", the album that brought Sedaka back into mainstream popular music, and after that, he never really went away. His comeback was also helped immensely when the duo of The Captain and Tennille recorded his song, "Love Will Keep Us Together", a song that became one of the biggest hits of the decade of the 1970's. (If you listen closely to the closing chorus, you will hear them sing the words "Sedaka is back".) In one of his obituaries he was quoted as saying that after "Love Will Keep Us Together", he went from an annual income of about $50,000 to one of over $4 million. He even re-recorded his biggest hit, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", this time as a slower, more romantic ballad, and it once again hit the Billboard Top Ten in 1975.
Neil Sedaka had a long and prolific career, he was said to had written close to a thousand songs, but I will close by saying that my own personal favorite of his was "Laughter In The Rain". You can see him singing it live in a performance recorded in 1975 HERE. The fashions and the hairstyles are way out of date, but that song never will be.
RIP Neil Sedaka.
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