Rock 101: The Brill Building

Not everyone is a rock expert, so here is your weekly Thursday primer on the events and happenings that shaped Rock and Roll from J.A. Bartlett of the Hits Just Keep On Comin'...

It's hard to imagine that songwriting could be run on a factory model, but some of the most famous songs in pop history were produced in just that way. Starting in the 1930s, the owners of the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway in New York City, began renting space to music publishers. These publishing companies hired songwriting teams to turn out songs, which were then sold to bandleaders. The true golden era for the Brill Building, however, was the late '50s and early '60s. Approximately 165 music-related firms were based there, and in other buildings within a block or two on Broadway, everybody from music publishers to studios to radio-station representatives.

The most famous Brill Building firm wasn't located in the Brill Building at all, however -- Aldon Music, co-founded by promoter/entrepreneur Don Kirshner in 1958, was located across the street at 1650 Broadway. At Aldon, songwriting teams clocked in at the office every morning and worked all day writing songs, which Kirshner then sold to producers. The list of Aldon's most famous songwriting teams is a who's-who of American pop songwriting:

• Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote Hound Dog and other hits for Elvis Presley, became more famous as writer/producers for the Coasters, the Drifters, and Ben E. King, among others.
• Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman also wrote songs that Elvis turned into hits, including Little Sister and Viva Las Vegas, as well as the Drifters' Save the Last Dance for Me, Dion's A Teenager in Love, and This Magic Moment, also recorded by the Drifters and later by Jay and the Americans.
• The then-husband and wife team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote Will You Love Me Tomorrow, first recorded by the Shirelles; The Loco-motion, first recorded by their babysitter, Little Eva, and later by Grand Funk; Up on the Roof, first waxed by the Drifters and later, James Taylor; the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, and Aretha Franklin's You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman. King went on to her own successful singing career in the 1970s.
• Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, another husband-and-wife team, frequently wrote songs for Phil Spector, including River Deep Mountain High, Be My Baby and Da Doo Ron Ron. Greenwich discovered a Brooklyn kid named Neil Diamond, who was also employed by a Brill Building firm; Barry became one of the gods of bubblegum as producer of the Monkees and the Archies, and the writer of TV themes for The Jeffersons, Family Ties, and One Day at a Time.
• The husband-and-wife team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (pictured with Carole King) wrote You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' and Soul and Inspiration for the Righteous Brothers, On Broadway for the Drifters, and We Gotta Get Out of This Place for the Animals.
• Burt Bacharach and Hal David had a longer career together than any other Brill Building team. They became the most popular and prolific songwriting team in America by the late '60s, writing several enormous hits for Dionne Warwick, as well as Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, What the World Needs Now Is Love, and This Guy's in Love With You.

Music geeks debate whether there's such a thing as a "Brill Building sound." If there is, it's New York urban. Brill Building songwriters rarely wrote about frolicking in the country; they were much more likely to write, "But then he comes uptown each evening to my tenement/Uptown where folks don't have to pay much rent," as Mann and Weil did in the Crystals' Uptown. Since so many of the Brill Building writers were young married couples, their songs were often starry-eyed about love but also conscious of the potential for, or the reality of, heartbreak.

To a rock audience reared in an era when the singer/songwriter and the self-contained writing/performing group is the norm, it might seem odd to celebrate people who wrote songs for other people in exchange for a salary. But the odds are good that even dedicated rock fans know many of the Brill Building's greatest hits. To learn more, check out Ken Emerson's Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era.

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Comments

[Matt]

Leiber and Stoller wrote Hound Dog in 1951 for Big Mamma Thorton (Recorded in '52). Elvis covered it in 1956. It was covered by several country singers before that. If you write to music geeks, expect corrections!

[jabartlett]

Expect corrections? We like 'em. I have no excuse, because not only do I know the Big Mama Thornton version of "Hound Dog," I prefer it to the Elvis version.

That'll teach me to write before I'm fully caffeinated in the morning.

[Richard Astley-Clemas]

The Mann-Weill song We gotta get out of this place was NOT written for the Animals-it had already been turned down by the Righteous Brothers

[Richard Astley-Clemas]

The Mann-Weill song We gotta get out of this place was NOT written for the Animals-it had already been turned down by the Righteous Brothers