All this took place in conversation with the increasingly urgent civil rights movement, fear of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (weapons testing resumed in Nevada in September 1961 after the USSR broke a three-year worldwide moratorium), and gradual awareness that the United States was surreptitiously entering into what would be one of the most controversial wars in its history, in Vietnam. The assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 added further distress to unsettling, yet economically abundant, times. A youth counterculture would gel by mid-decade, setting the terms of youth engagement with authority for many decades, deeply entwined in the new styles of rock and soul.
INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS, THE BRILL BUILDING, AND TEEN IDOLS
One of the major developments that took shape in the years between Elvis and the Beatles (late 1950s–early 1960s) was the surge of pop songs associated with independent songwriters and producers working in Midtown Manhattan.1 The Brill Building, located at 1619 Broadway (at Forty-Ninth Street), was part of a small network of buildings on Broadway between Forty-Ninth and Fifty-Third Streets, including 1650 Broadway (at Fifty-First Street, home to Aldon Music), which housed offices for songwriters, publishers, arrangers, producers, talent agencies, and record labels. The Brill Building gave its name to a genre, which kept the focus on the single pop song that could be shopped around to different labels and artists. It was the major music-production center in New York City in the late 1950s and 1960s wherein songwriters would work during the day and pitch their product to a publisher, record label, and talent agent (who would supply the artists) and even record a demo (using in-house arrangers) all in one place. Production values were generally high.
The Brill Building gave rise to the independent producer, not attached to any single record label. The most well known of the early independent record producers were Jerry Leiber (1933–2011, from Baltimore) and Mike Stoller (1933–, from Long Island, New York), who met as teens in Los Angeles in 1950 and began writing songs together. Their first hit was in 1953, “Hound Dog,” sung by Big Mama Thornton (and later covered by Elvis). Atlantic Records hired them, and they wrote and produced many hits for the Drifters and the Coasters. They moved to New York City about 1957 and about 1961 set up an office in the Brill Building. The role of the producer can be heard to good effect in Leiber and Stoller’s arrangement of Ben E. King’s 1960 “Stand by Me”: the sparse opening gives way to a subtle and steady buildup of instrumental forces that dramatically highlight King’s voice (see figure 24).
About 1960 Phil Spector (1939–, from Bronx, New York) apprenticed with Leiber and Stoller before moving out on his own to become one of the most important producers of the early and mid-1960s. Spector set up his own record label (Philles) and primarily recorded in Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, where he created his trademark “wall of sound,” fully saturating his productions. The group of LA studio musicians that Spector (and many others, including the Beach Boys and the Byrds) employed were known as the Wrecking Crew, including conductor-arranger Jack Nitzsche, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, bassist Carol Kaye, guitarists Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, and pianist Leon Russell. The Wrecking Crew was the house band for the T.A.M.I. Show held in Santa Monica, California, in October 1964, one of the first live rock concert films (Binder 1964-v).
Brill Building songwriters typically worked in teams (composer and lyricist), writing in small offices.2 Some of the more successful writers included Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “I Say a Little Prayer”), whose writing was largely a vehicle for singer Dionne Warwick (niece of Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother); Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman (“This Magic Moment,” “Save the Last Dance for Me”); Carole King and Gerry Goffin (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Up on the Roof”); Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway”); and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (“Be My Baby,” “Da Doo Ron Ron”). These were some of the most memorable hits of the early and mid-1960s (see figure 25).3
The legacy of the Brill Building style was far-reaching (Inglis 2003). It provided an unprecedented voice for young woman songwriters: Carole King, Cynthia Weil, and Ellie Greenwich (part of three songwriting pairs) placed over two hundred songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. It provided important vehicles for African American singers, and particularly women, to reach the top of the pop charts: the Shirelles were the first African American women group to reach #1 on Billboard’s pop chart, with Goffin and King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”; and Dionne Warwick, fueled by the songwriting of Bacharach and David, had the most Top 40 hits of any woman in that era (until Aretha Franklin surpassed her in the 1970s). It provided the songwriting and production model for Motown. And it provided an important context for the rise of the Beatles: they had about a dozen Brill Building songs in their repertory in the early 1960s; they covered three Brill Building songs on their first album; and Lennon and McCartney have expressed great admiration for the songwriting team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
In the void left by the dissipation of the early waves of rock and roll by the late 1950s, a cohort of predominantly white male singers in their mid and late teens, projecting a cleaned-up wholesome version of rockabilly Elvis, helped define a brief post–rock and roll era (see figure 26). Many were Italian Americans from South Philadelphia (Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, and Fabian), New Jersey (Connie Francis, Frankie Valli), and New York City (Dion, Bobby Darin). Eight vocalists produced 174 Top 40 hits between 1957 and 1965. Those from Philadelphia (and the surrounding region) enjoyed exposure on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand television show, which was based there. Frankie Avalon, Ricky Nelson, Fabian, and Bobby Darin also had major careers starring in Hollywood teen films and TV shows. A related trend at the time was white male vocal groups, including Danny and the Juniors (“At the Hop,” 1957); Dion and the Belmonts (“A Teenager in Love,” 1959); and one of the most successful vocal groups of all time, the Four Seasons, led by Frankie Valli (“Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” 1962).4
GIRL GROUPS
In the late 1950s all-women vocal groups combining elements of R&B and rock and roll began to appear on the pop charts. Most were young, often starting their singing careers in high school. Primarily a northern urban African American phenomenon, early signs of this genre were the Bobbettes (from Harlem) in 1957 with “Mr. Lee” (pop #6) and the Chantels (from the Bronx) in 1958 with “Maybe” (pop #15). In 1960 the Shirelles (from Passaic, New Jersey) were the first group in this cohort to hit pop #1 (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow”). The Shirelles inaugurated a new era and had nine more Top 40 hits over the next three years. Their initial pop success was immediately followed by three all-women groups on the new Motown label: the Marvelettes (“Please Mr. Postman,” pop #1, 1961); Martha and the Vandellas (“Heat Wave,” pop #4, 1963); and the Supremes (“Where Did Our Love Go,” pop #1, 1964). The Supremes were the most commercially successful of the groups in this genre (and of any Motown artist) with twenty Top 10 hits through 1970 (see figure 27). Supremes lead vocalist Diana Ross went on to a major solo career beginning in 1970.
Motown’s girl groups were rivaled by two New York groups produced by Phil Spector, who recorded them at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, yielding eleven Top 40 hits between 1962 and 1964: the Crystals and the Ronettes (with lead-singer Ronnie Bennett). “Da Do Ron Ron” (pop #3, Crystals, featuring LaLa Brooks) and “Be My Baby” (pop #2, Ronettes), both released in the second half of 1963, were emblematic of Spector’s wall of sound. The Ronettes had a brief but meteoric celebrity, illustrating differences between how record labels invested in their artists. After “Be My Baby,” they had four Top 40 hits in 1964 (all Spector productions), none of which breached the Top 20, and that was it for them. They were hot in 1964, touring with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Shirelles had a slightly longer trajectory (all on the Scepter label): their Top 40 success lasted from 1960 to 1963, with twelve hits, five of which were in 1962. By contrast, the most successful of these groups, the Supremes, heavily supported by Motown, had twenty-nine Top 40 hits from 1963 to 1970 (twelve of which hit #1), with an average of four hits per year.
Some girl groups were associated with Brill Building writers, such as the Chiffons (from the Bronx), whose “One Fine Day” (written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin)