Various Artists - Covered: Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Volume 1: 1960-1964

The Covered series continues, looking at the best songs from the best songwriters of all time who didn't record their own songs. This time, it's the songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Clearly, they're one of the best and most famous songwriting teams. Rolling Stone magazine put out a list of the top 500 rock songs of all time, and there were six Barry and Greenwich songs on it, more than any other non-performers.

I don't want to recap the entire lives and careers of Barry and Greenwich. So here are some Wikipedia links if you want to learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Barry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellie_Greenwich

But in brief, Barry and Greenwich began songwriting separately in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They had a few minor successes. Then they married in late 1960s and began songwriting together, and they really took off. Their banner years were 1963 and 1964. In 1964 alone, they had 17 songs on the US singles charts. Unfortunately, their marriage began falling apart in 1965, and they got divorced in 1966. They continued to work together through the end of the 1960s, but more as producers than songwriters. (They were very successful producers as well.)

I found enough songs that I like to fill two albums of about 50 minutes of music each. This one documents the first half of their career. The first couple of songs were written by either Barry or Greenwich, and some of the other songs had additional co-writers (especially producer Phil Spector). But the vast majority of these are Barry-Greenwich songs.

As you can tell if you give this a listen, Barry and Greenwich specialized in a poppy "Girl Group" sound. In fact, they pretty much dominated the Girl Group genre as long as it lasted, and they worked with most of the major artists in that genre.

By the way, one girl group, the Raindrops, was really just Barry and Greenwich, with Greenwich doing the lead vocals. They had a couple of hits in 1963, and then put out an album to support them.  Since they were supposed to be a girl group, they had Greenwich's younger sister appear in promo photos with them. When they played the occasional concert, the sister sometimes showed up and sang into a dead microphone!

01 Tell Laura I Love Her (Ricky Valance)
02 Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Heart (Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans)
03 Be My Baby (Ronettes)
04 [Today I Met] The Boy I'm Gonna Marry (Darlene Love)
05 He's Got the Power (Exciters)
06 Hanky Panky (Tommy James & the Shondells)
07 Da Doo Ron Ron [When He Walked Me Home] (Crystals)
08 Christmas [Baby Please Come Home] (Darlene Love)
09 I Have a Boyfriend (Chiffons)
10 Look of Love (Lesley Gore)
11 Baby, I Love You (Ronettes)
12 The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget (Raindrops)
13 Then He Kissed Me (Crystals)
14 Leader of the Pack (Shangri-Las)
15 Another Boy like Mine (Raindrops)
16 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
17 Do Wah Diddy Diddy (Manfred Mann)
18 Chapel of Love (Dixie Cups)
19 I Wanna Love Him So Bad (Jelly Beans)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175735/COVRDBRRYGRENWCH1960-1964Vlum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EyXeTKfo

Sigh. I get so frustrated trying to find any color photos of some of these songwriters. I found one low-res color photo of Jeff Barry in the 1960s, and that's it. So I've had to resort to using a black and white one, which I colorized. I believe it dates from around 1963.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.