Covered: Neil Sedaka & Howard Greenfield, Volume 2: 1970-2011

Just yesterday, I posted "Volume 1" of the songwriter series for Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. Here's "Volume 2" already.

Sedaka and Greenfield wrote a steady stream of hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, both for Sedaka's very successful music career and for other musical acts. Sometimes they wrote together, and sometimes they wrote with others. But in the late 1960s, the hits were few and far between. Musical styles had changed, but their songwriting style didn't follow those changes. Sedaka later referred to this time as his "hungry years," though he did have some success in Australia.

As I mentioned in my write-up for Volume 1, by 1970, it seemed the hits for Sedaka and Greenfield were behind them. A couple of times in the early 1980s, Sedaka couldn't even find a record company willing to sign him. But he began slowly working his way back to fame. In 1972 and 1973, he recorded two studio albums that were produced and largely performed by the four people who made up the band 10cc, right before they got famous with that band. Those didn't have any hits for Sedaka. But one song, "Solitaire," was a big hit for Andy Williams. And another, "Love Will Keep Us Together," would be a Number One hit for Captain and Tennille a couple of years later, in 1975.

Sedaka's big break came in 1973, when he happened to run into Elton John at a party. John had always been a big Sedaka fan, and when he found out Sedaka didn't currently have a record contract, he signed him up to his own label. The next album, "Sedaka's Back," took the best songs from the three albums Sedaka had released in the early 1970s, included the two produced by the members of 10cc. It took a while, since Sedaka's name was perceived as very uncool at the time, but eventually one song from that album, "Laughter in the Rain," went all the way to Number One in the U.S.! Then, in 1975, the song "Bad Blood" also went to Number One in the U.S. It had uncredited backing vocals by Elton John. A totally revamped version of his earlier hit "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" hit the Top Ten as well. Sedaka had a few more hits through 1980.

Unfortunately, Greenfield missed most of Sedaka's comeback. Greenfield did co-write some songs presented here, like "Puppet Man," "Love Will Keep Us Together," "You Never Done It like That," "The Hungry Years," and "Solitaire." They had another huge hit with "(Is This the Way To) Amarillo." In 1971, Tony Christie had a big hit with it in some countries (mostly in mainland Europe, but only a minor hit with it in other countries. Sedaka himself had a hit with it in 1977. But in 2005, the Christie version was rereleased with a funny video of comedian Peter Kay miming the words. This time, it not only reached Number One in Britain, but it was the best selling song of the year there.

But Greenfield and Sedaka increasingly argued with each other. They agreed to end their songwriting partnership in 1973, after writing one last song, fittingly titled "Our Last Song Together." However, they did reunite to write a few more songs in the late 1970s, and wrote one more hit together, "Should've Never Let You Go," which reached the Top Twenty for Sedaka in the U.S. in 1980. Instead, Sedaka co-wrote most of his 1970s comeback hits with another professional songwriter, Phil Cody.

One oddity you may notice here is an ABBA song, "Ring Ring." ABBA is known for writing all their own songs. They did write that one, but with the lyrics in Swedish. This was in 1973, near the start of their career, when apparently their English was a bit rough. So they contacted Sedaka and his songwriter partner at the time, Phil Cody, and had them come up with English lyrics. 

Another song worth mentioning is "Crying in the Rain." This was actually cowritten by Greenfield and Carole King back in 1961. At the time, both King and Greenfield were doing their writing in the famous Brill Building in New York City, with many other professional songwriters. For a lark, they agreed to work with different songwriters for a single day, and that was the song they came up with. It was a big hit for the Everly Brothers at the time. But I put that on my Covered series for King and her usual songwriting partner Gerry Goffin. So for this album I chose a 1981 country hit version by Tammy Wynette.

Greenfield was openly gay (unusually for the time), and had the same domestic partner from the mid-1960s until his death. Both he and his partner died of complications from AIDS in 1986, shortly before Greenfield's 50th birthday. Sedaka has had better luck with his health and is still alive at the age of 86 as I write this in April 2025. 

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Puppet Man (5th Dimension)
02 [Is This the Way To] Amarillo (Tony Christie)
03 Ring Ring (ABBA)
04 Laughter in the Rain (Lea Roberts)
05 Bad Blood (Neil Sedaka)
06 Love Will Keep Us Together (Captain & Tennille)
07 Solitaire (Carpenters)
08 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do [1975 Version] (Neil Sedaka)
09 Lonely Night [Angel Face] (Captain & Tennille)
10 The Hungry Years (Rita Coolidge)
11 You Never Done It like That (Captain & Tennille)
12 Crying in the Rain (Tammy Wynette)
13 The Immigrant (Jim Van Slyke)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ve9kWZbX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Pjs4B7554RjPEpA/file

As with "Volume 1," the cover photo consists of two photos that I put together. I don't know the years the photos were taken, but they look older than they do in the Volume 1 photos. Both of the originals were in color this time. I used the Krea AI program to improve the detail. Greenfield is the one with the moustache.

Covered: Neil Sedaka & Howard Greenfield, Volume 1: 1958-1970

I have to admit that, until very recently, I hadn't given much thought to the musical career of Neil Sedaka. I just assumed he was one of many pop stars that had hits mostly or entirely written by others from the 1960s, like Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. But it turns out that he not only wrote most of his hits, but he wrote plenty of hits for others. Most of his songwriting was done with Howard Greenfield, who avoided the spotlight and didn't have a recording career of his own. I found enough for two volumes. Here's the first one.

Neil Sedaka grew up in a middle class Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. From a young age, he developed a talent for playing classical music on the piano. He even won a piano scholarship for the prestigious Julliard's School of Music as a teenager, and he's retrained an interest in playing classical music his entire life. While only 13 years old, he met another teenager living in the same apartment building, Howard Greenfield, who already was an aspiring lyricist and poet. 

The two started writing show tunes, but they soon got turned on to pop music. In 1958, they got hired to be professional songwriters for a company that eventually moved their offices to the Brill Building, a building in New York City where as tremendous number of hit songs were written. But Sedaka also got signed by a record company as a recording artist. He began having hits almost immediately. Eventually, he would sell over 25 million records on his own. Soon, much of Sedaka's time was taken up with promoting and touring to support his recordings. His songwriting with Greenfield continued. But Greenfield had more free time, so Sedaka was okay with Greenfield cowriting with others when Sedaka was too busy. In particular, Greenfield often wrote songs with another professional songwriter named Jack Keller.

The point of my "Covered" series is to focus on songwriting careers. So I've tried hard to avoid having lots of songs here performed by Sedaka. I managed to include only one in this volume, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." But I didn't have that self-imposed rule, probably more than half of the songs here would have been performed by him. Sometimes I had to look hard to find good versions of songs that he had a hit with. But there are plenty of songs here that were first hits for others, such as the four performed by Connie Francis.   

From 1958 to 1963, Sedaka and Greenfield had hit after hit after hit, both recorded by Sedaka and by others. I've only included some of the best and most popular ones here. But then in 1964, their songwriting style fell out of fashion, when the Beatles and Bob Dylan drastically changed things. For much of the rest of the 1960s, they struggled. 

However, they still did find some successes. For instance, Greenfield wrote some popular TV show themes with Jack Keller (who I already mentioned above). That's represented by the inclusion of "Theme from Bewitched" here. They also had some successes with songs recorded by the Fifth Dimension. That includes "Puppet Man," which appears on Volume 2. They also had a quirky minor hit in 1970 with "Rainy Day Bells," which has a throwback sound to an earlier era. It was supposedly recorded by the comedic basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters. But in fact it was recorded by some professional soul singers.

But still, by 1970, it looked like most of the successful years of both Sedaka and Greenfield were behind them, due to changing musical trends. However, they would come back with many successes in the 1970s, which will be dealt with in Volume 2. 

Here are the Wikipedia pages of both:

Neil Sedaka - Wikipedia 

Howard Greenfield - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Stupid Cupid (Connie Francis)
02 Since You've Been Gone (Clyde McPhatter)
03 My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own (Connie Francis)
04 Stairway to Heaven (Gary Sherbert)
05 Everybody's Somebody's Fool (Connie Francis)
06 Fallin' (Wanda Jackson)
07 Where the Boys Are (Connie Francis)
08 Oh Carol (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
09 Venus in Blue Jeans (Jimmy Clanton)
10 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Neil Sedaka)
11 Foolish Little Girl (Cookies)
12 Calendar Boy (Dee Dee Sharp)
13 Get Rid of Him (Dionne Warwick)
14 It Hurts to Be in Love (Gene Pitney)
15 Theme from Bewitched (Warren Barker)
16 Workin' on a Groovy Thing (5th Dimension)
17 Rainy Day Bells (Globetrotters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4jCdUgiy

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/haQxxsNreehnreo/file

The cover image is a composite that I made. The picture of Sedaka is from 1962. I don't know when the picture of Greenfield was taken, but clearly it's from when he was young. (He's the one with the visible tie.) Both pictures I started with were in black and white. But I converted them to color with the use of the Kolorize program.