Jeff Barry (born
Joel Adelberg, April 3, 1938, Brooklyn
, New York
) is an American
pop music songwriter,
singer, and record
producer.
Biography
Early career
His
parents divorced when he was seven, and his
mother moved him and his sister to Plainfield
, New
Jersey
, where they resided for several years before
returning to New York.
After
graduating from Erasmus Hall High School
, he was in the Army and then returned to New York where
he attended City College, leaning toward a degree in
engineering. His main aspiration was to become a singer, and
he cut his college career short before in 1958 he was signed to
RCA Records, courtesy of the
music publisher, Arnold
Shaw. Around this time, wanting a
showbusiness name, he named himself — borrowing
the new first name Jeff from the
actor,
Jeff Chandler, and
surname, Barry, from friends of his own
family.)
Barry
recorded
several
singles for the
label, including the self-penned "It's Called
Rock and Roll" backed with "Hip Couple," released in 1959.
In 1960,
Barry (the songwriter) landed on the U.S.
Billboard R&B chart with "Teenage Sonata," recorded by
Sam Cooke, and later the same year Barry
enjoyed his first
Billboard Hot
100 hit when
Ray Peterson recorded "
Tell Laura I Love Her" (co-written
with Ben Raleigh) and appeared in the U.S.
Top
Ten.
British
singer
Ricky Valance took the song to #1 in
the UK Singles Chart later that
same year.
By 1963, Barry and
Ellie Greenwich
had joined forces, as husband and wife and as songwriting partners.
They met in late 1959, although it might not have been for the
first time - her maternal uncle was married to his cousin, so they
may actually have known each other since childhood. However, their
first formal meeting as adults was at a Thanksgiving dinner at
their mutual relatives' home (a few sources erroneously show the
year as 1960.) Fueled by their shared interest in music, a
friendship developed between the two and they became involved
romantically some months later, after Barry's first marriage was
annulled.
In the summer of 1960, Barry and Greenwich recorded Barry's, "Red
Corvette," which was released as a single under the name Ellie Gee
and The Jets. Greenwich stayed in college (she would graduate in
1962) and commuted to the Brill Building whenever time permitted.
Songwriter-producers
Jerry Leiber and
Mike Stoller offered her a job as a
staff writer for Trio Music, their publishing company, after Leiber
overheard her singing in an office at the Brill. Barry was
subsequently signed to Trio as well. Barry and Greenwich each
continued to write songs with other partners. In addition, both
became in-demand
demo singers. Some of
Barry's demos ended up in the hands of
Elvis Presley and other major artists of the
day.
Chart success
Barry and Greenwich married in October 1962 and shortly afterward
made the decision to write songs exclusively with each other.
Greenwich introduced Barry to her latest partner,
songwriter-producer
Phil Spector, and
the threesome went on to define the "
Girl
Group" sound of the early 1960s. The Barry-Greenwich-Spector
team composed several of Spector's biggest hits including
The Crystals' "
Da Doo
Ron Ron" and "
Then He Kissed
Me," and
The Ronettes' "
Be My Baby" and "
Baby, I Love You" as well as the holiday
perennial "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" by
Darlene Love.
In early 1963, Barry and Greenwich had chart success with such
songs as "What A Guy" and "The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget,"
recorded by the couple under the name
The
Raindrops (Greenwich provided all the female vocals through the
process of
overdubbing, while Barry sang
backgrounds in a bass voice). In 1964 Leiber and Stoller brought
Barry and Greenwich onboard at their new label,
Red Bird Records, as songwriter-producers.
Out of Red Bird's first twenty releases, fifteen hit the charts;
all were written and/or produced by the Barry-Greenwich team,
including "
Chapel of Love," "People
Say," and "
Iko Iko" by
The Dixie Cups and "Remember (Walkin' In The
Sand)" and "
Leader of the Pack"
by
The Shangri-Las. In 1964 alone,
the duo were responsible for writing 17 singles that reached the
Billboard Hot 100 chart. Barry and
Greenwich also released solo singles under their own names for Red
Bird in 1965, Greenwich the haunting "You Don't Know," and Barry
the uptempo "I'll Still Love You."
Unbeknownst to many people, however, Barry and Greenwich's marriage
had begun to unravel. The couple divorced in late 1965 but would
continue to work together for much of the following year, and
sporadically after that until the late 1960s.
Their professional and
personal partnerships were the subject of the 1985 Broadway
jukebox musical Leader of the
Pack.
In early 1966 Barry and Greenwich discovered a talented young
singer-songwriter named
Neil Diamond and brought him to the attention
of
Bert Berns, one of the principals of
Bang Records. Diamond was signed to the
label, and Barry and Greenwich produced Neil's first hits including
"
Solitary Man," "
Cherry, Cherry," "
Kentucky Woman," and "
Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon."
Both Barry and Greenwich can be heard singing backgrounds on many
of Diamond's Bang recordings.
During this time period, with Phil Spector, the pair also wrote the
classics "
River Deep, Mountain
High" (
Tina Turner) and "I Can Hear
Music" (The Ronettes,
The Beach
Boys). Penning songs (especially love songs) together was
awkward at best given the circumstances, and Barry and Greenwich's
writing partnership soon came to its end. Among Barry's new
collaborators were Marty Sanders, a member of the pop group
Jay and the Americans, and
Bang label CEO Bert Berns, with whom he wrote "Am I Groovin' You?,"
a top
R & B single for
Freddie Scott in 1967.
In late 1966, Barry was asked by music supervisor
Don Kirshner to produce some tracks for the new
Monkees music group. Barry brought with
him a few Neil Diamond-penned tunes for the group to record. One
among them, "
I'm a Believer," under
Barry's production baton, would sail up the U.S. charts to the #1
spot and become one of the biggest-selling records of all time. The
group also had a hit with another Diamond-composed, Barry-produced
single, "
A Little Bit
Me, A Little Bit You." After Kirshner's dismissal from Colgems
Records, however, Barry would not produce for the Monkees again
until 1970's
Changes, which in fact
contained many songs co-written by Barry.
Having been removed from the Monkees project, Don Kirshner became
music supervisor for a new Saturday morning cartoon,
The Archie Show, in 1968. Kirshner
brought Barry in as producer and main songwriter, and during the
next three years, he composed dozens of songs for the fictional
Archies group, including the show's
theme song, "Everything's Archie," and the Dances of the Week (a
staple of the show's first season). Lead vocals for The Archies
were provided by former
Detergents
member and session singer
Ron Dante.
Barry had
also recently founded his own label, Steed
Records, and one of his most successful recording artists was
Montreal
native
Andy Kim, who had hits with remakes of
Barry's Ronettes tunes "Be My Baby" and "Baby, I Love You."
Barry and Kim collaborated on several tunes for The Archies to
record, including their best-known single, "
Sugar, Sugar," which hit the #1 spot, became
the
RIAA
Record of the Year for 1969, and
earned the group a
gold record.
In 1970, Barry wrote and produced singles and albums for Ron Dante,
Bobby Bloom ("
Montego Bay"), and
Robin McNamara ("Lay a Little Lovin' On Me"),
among others. In addition, Barry penned his first music for motion
pictures (
Hello Down There
(1969) and
Where It's At) and wrote the music for and
produced
Tom Eyen's hit
off-Broadway revue
The Dirtiest Show in
Town.
Production and film work
In 1971
Barry moved from New York to California
, where he had a production and administration deal
with A&M Records for several
years. Between 1972 and 1975, he produced hit singles for
Nino Tempo and
April Stevens (together and separately) and
the a cappella vocal group
The
Persuasions. During subsequent years he shifted his focus to
television (writing the theme songs for
One Day at a Time,
The Jeffersons, and
Family Ties) and movies (the score for
1980's
The Idolmaker),
although he continued his work in the pop music field. In 1974,
"
I Honestly Love You," written
by Barry with
Peter Allen, became a #1
hit for singer
Olivia
Newton-John; and, in 1984,
Jeffrey
Osborne and Joyce Kennedy hit the
Top 40
with another Barry composition, "
The Last Time I Made Love" written
with
Barry Mann and
Cynthia Weil.
During the 1970s and 1980s Barry also scored numerous hit songs on
the
country charts, among them "Out Of
Hand" by
Gary Stewart, "Sayin'
Hello, Sayin' I Love You, Sayin' Goodbye" by
Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, "Lie To You
For Your Love" by The
Bellamy
Brothers, a remake of "Chip Chip" (originally a 1962 Gene
McDaniels pop smash) by Patsy Sledd, and "Walkin' In The Sun" by
Glen Campbell.
In 1990, Barry and Goldsmith produced the theme song for the
television series based on
Where's Waldo?. In May 1991,
Barry and Greenwich were inducted into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2004,
Rolling Stone's list of the 500
greatest rock songs included six Greenwich-Barry compositions, more
than by any other non-performing songwriting team.
During the mid-1990s, Barry served as president of the
National Academy of
Songwriters, and in December 1998 he was a recipient of their
Lifetime Achievement Award. In March 2000, Barry filmed a music
special for the
PBS television network,
Chapel of Love: Jeff Barry and Friends. The show featured
performances of Barry tunes by several of the artists who made them
famous, including
The Dixie Cups,
The Crystals,
Ronnie Spector,
Andy
Kim,
Ray Peterson, and
Ron Dante of
The
Archies.
In recent
years, Barry has been involved in several projects, among them the
Broadway bound
musical comedy Knight Life. Knight Life
(subtitled
The Girl Who Would Be King) was written by
Prudence Fraser and Robert Sternin — best known for their writing
and production work on the CBS series
The Nanny.
Knight Life
had its official world premiere in Vero Beach
, Florida
.
References
- Telegraph.co.uk
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