I Live My Life The Way I Want

Oh, my, how many times in my life have I been forced to utter: "I'm Not Just One Of Your Many Toys...


Today marks the 66th birthday of Lesley Sue Goldstein. She is a thinly disguised character, played by Bridgett Fonda, in a favorite movie at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia- Grace Of My Heart. The film deals with the struggles with her sexuality, but in real life Leslie Gore didn't come out as gay until 2005. 

"I'm free & I love to be free

"To live my life the way I want

To say & do whatever I please"

Leslie Gore was discovered, nurtured & her early work was produced by Quincy Jones, & what a catalogue of 1960s hits! She was 16 when she had her first hit- It’s My Party.  After she recorded It's My Party, she was told not to be disappointed if it was never released. She didn't think much would become of it until she heard it on the radio. Gore was something of an anomaly in the pop music world, a solo female artist in an age of girl-groups. Gore has lived in NYC with her partner of 32 years- Lois, a jewelry designer. One of her songs has been a personal anthem, sung by your host with conviction & tears, all alone in the house. I love her sound, & I was crazy for her music in the 1960s & I am crazy about it now:


It’s My Party
Judy’s Turn To Cry
She’s A Fool
You Don’t Own Me
I Don’t Know Anymore
That’s The Way Boys Are
Maybe I Know
The Look Of Love
Sunshine, Lollipops, & Roses
Young Love
California Nights

You don't own me,

 I'm not just one of your many toys

You don't own me,

 don't say I can't go with other boys

& don't tell me what to do

& don't tell me what to say

& please, when I go out with you

Don't put me on display, 'cause

You don't own me,

 Don't try to change me in any way

You don't own me,

 Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay

Oh, I don't tell you what to say

I don't tell you what to do

So just let me be myself

That's all I ask of you

I'm young & I love to be young

I'm free & I love to be free

To live my life the way I want

To say and do whatever I please

& don't tell me what to do

& don't tell me what to say

& please, when I go out with you

Don't put me on display

I don't tell you what to say

& don't tell you what to do

So just let me be myself

That's all I ask of you

I'm young & I love to be young

I'm free & I love to be free

To live my life the way I want

Madoroa/White

1963

Summer Song #8... Up On The Roof

When this old world starts getting me down
& people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
& all my cares just drift right in to space

On the roof it's peaceful as can be
& there the world below can't bother me

Let me tell you now
When I come home feelin' tired & beat
I go up where the air is fresh & sweet
I get away from the hustling crowds
& all that rat race noise down in the street

On the roof's the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Oh, let's go
Up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free &
darling, you can share it all with me

I keep on telling you
Right smack down in the middle of town
I found a paradise that's trouble proof
So if this world starts getting you down
there's room enough for 2
 Up on the roof

Up on the roof
Everyhting's all right
Up on the roof
Oh, come on baby
Up on the roof

Gerry Goffin & Carole King
1962



Born On This Day- April 25th... Lyricist Jerry Leiber

Jerome Leiber is one of the most important & influential songwriters of the 1950s, 1960s, & 1970s. He was a member of The Brill Building stable, & along with his writing partner- Mike Stoller, wrote some of the biggest hits of their era:
There Goes My Baby
Hound Dog
Kansas City
Smokey Joe's Cafe
Yakety Yak
Poison Ivy
Charlie Brown
Ruby Baby
Stand By Me
Jailhouse Rock
Love Potion #9
Searchin
Young Blood
Is That All There Is?
On Broadway
Spanish Harlem

Here is one of my favorite Leiber lyrics:

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes in a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
& they say
That she once was a winner in a contest

Pearl's a singer
& they say that she once
Cut a record
They played it for a week or so
On a local radio
It never made it

She wanted to be Betty Grable
But now she sits there
At the beer stained table
Dreaming of the things she never got to do
All those dreams that never came true

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes in a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes
... in a nightclub

Jerome Leiber 1977

Born On This Day- October 23rd... Songwriter Ellie Greenwich

I have enjoyed a life long fascination with the workings of the heyday of life at the Brill Building & the advancement of the American Popular Song. The Brill Building is an office building located at Broadway & 49th Street in Manhattan. It is famous for housing music industry offices & studios where some of the most popular American tunes were written.




In the 1960s the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses. A musician could find a publisher, printer, cut a demo, promote the record, & cut a deal with radio promoters, all within the building. The creative culture of the independent music companies of Brill Building gave birth to the influential "Brill Building Sound" & the style of popular music songwriting& recording created by its artists & producers. The songwriters included: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Neil Diamond , Gerry Goffin, Carole King , Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Laura Nyro, Neil Sedaka, Paul Simon, Phil Spector.


Carole King: "Every day we squeezed into our respective cubby holes with just enough room for a piano, a bench, & maybe a chair. You'd sit there & write & you could hear someone in the next cubby hole composing a song exactly like yours.”


Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time included 6 by Ellie Greenwich & her husband/writing partner, Jeff Barry, more than by any other songwriting team. They had 17 singles in the pop charts of 1964, surpassed only by Lennon/McCartney.

Oh, How I loved these tunes. Little Steve singing- Be My Baby in the bathroom mirror, with a shampoo bottle microphone!


In 1962, the songwriter Jerry Leiber discovered Ellie Greenwich, then 21, singing at a piano in the Brill Building in New York. He thought she sounded like Carole King, but looked more like the Judy Holliday. She young lady wearing a college blazer over a prim blouse with a Peter Pan collar, with her hair teased into a platinum helmet. Very Mad Men.


Her first success was the dance song Hanky Panky, which did well for Tommy James & The Shondells & topped the American charts.




Although 1964 was the year the Beatles conquered America, it was also the apex of the Greenwich-Barry hit factory. The Dixie Cups had a #1 hit with her Chapel of Love in the US, & Greenwich had her first British number #1with Do Wah Diddy – a huge hit for Manfred Mann, who soon followed with Da Doo Ron Ron (written in a day).


Ellie Greenwich considered both Da Doo Ron Ron & Do Wah Diddy to be rooted in the tradition of nursery rhyme: "Everybody of every age can sing them because they are so easy to remember."


Eleanor Louise Greenwich was born in Brooklyn, New York, but moved to Long Island when she was 11. At 14 she formed her own group, the Jivettes, singing at schools & hospitals, & while still a schoolgirl, started writing her own songs. Cha-Cha Charming & Silly Isn't It, were recorded by RCA in 1958, but they flopped.


Rejected by the Manhattan School of Music because it did not accept accordion students, Ellie enrolled at Queens College to study piano & after graduating, she briefly taught English at a high school before choosing a career in music.


She found a place at the Brill Building working with the songwriting partnership of Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, selling her songs for $25 a pop. Greenwich played another of her songs to Phil Spector, but the young producer seemed more interested in preening himself in the mirror. Greenwich: "Listen to me, you little prick, did you come to look at yourself or to hear my songs?"


In 1963, after Spector had recorded her doo-wop song Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Hearts? with The Blue Jeans, Greenwich, hearing her work on the radio for the first time, was so thrilled that she crashed her car into a toll booth. The record reached #38 on the charts, & her follow-up (Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry was at #39 that year.

(And) Then He Kissed Me & Da Doo Ron Ron were both recorded by the Crystals, with Spector. Then came- Be My Baby, a huge hit for the Ronettes, reaching #2.


Spector's collaborations with Ellie Greenwich & Jeff Barry were already waning by 1965 & a week-long songwriting session between them produced only 3 songs, but 1 of those songs was a little ditty called River Deep – Mountain High, recorded by Ike & Tina Turner in February 1966, which perhaps more than any other Spector production defined his "Wall of Sound".


Ellie Greenwich had recorded one of her own songs- You Don't Know, & there was talk of launching her as an American Dusty Springfield & touring Britain. But the record flopped, the idea was dropped. She divorced Barry in December 1965.


Although the Greenwich/Barry writing partnership foundered with the marriage, the pair enjoyed continued success as producers of Neil Diamond's early hits. Ellie Greenwich had discovered Diamond & persuaded Leiber & Stoller to give him a songwriting contract. With Diamond & Barry, she formed a company to publish & promote Diamond's songs.  She produced & sang backup on most of Diamond's 1st decade of hits.


In the late 1960s Ellie Greenwich again tried unsuccessfully to launch a solo singing career, but suffered a nervous breakdown & turned to writing & singing commercials & jingles.


Ellie Greenwich died in the summer of 2009. She was a member of the American Songwriters' Hall of Fame. Besides the hits mentioned before, this is the legacy that she left us with: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Leader Of The Pack, What A Guy, You Don't Know, I Can Hear Music, Right Track-Wrong Train, Baby Be Mine, A Girl Like That, Baby I Love You, Chapel Of Love, Don't Stop My Heart, I Wonder, Midnight Feeling, Take Me Home Tonight, Going To The Chapel, & countless jingles & commercials. Which one is your favorite?