Ellie Greenwich

The Pop Culture Cantina Celebrates the First-Time CD Release

of a Classic Broadway Cast Album:

Leader Of The Pack

Reviewed by Laura Pinto

Leader Of The Pack, a musical covering the life and career of songwriter/producer Ellie Greenwich, had its origins at New York's Bottom Line Cabaret a year before making its Broadway debut in 1985. Originally conceived by Bottom Line owner Allan Pepper as a revue, the play was revamped for the Big White Way with an expanded cast and a new production choreographed and directed by the late Michael Peters. A two-record cast recording was subsequently released on LP. Now, twenty-four years later, this cast recording is finally available on CD. The songs sound as fresh and vibrant as they did almost a quarter of a century ago, and as they had more than twenty years before that.

The name Ellie Greenwich may not be known to a lot of people, but the majority of songs written by the lady with that name are as familiar to most folks as their own reflections in the mirror. Miss Ellie, along with her then-husband, Jeff Barry, was one of the major forces of the Girl Group sound during the early-to-mid 1960s. Greenwich and Barry composed songs for The Crystals, The Ronettes, Darlene Love, Connie Francis, Lesley Gore and The Dixie Cups among others. Leader Of The Pack, which to this day is still being performed by theatre groups around the world, tells the story of Ellie's life, marriage to (and divorce from) Jeff Barry, and their shared musical career at Manhattan's famous Brill Building in a series of clever musical vignettes.

The play's full name is actually Leader Of The Pack: The Ellie Greenwich Musical, and if the first part of the title rings a bell, it's because "Leader of the Pack," originally recorded by the Shangri-Las, is one of many hit tunes co-written by Miss Ellie. Others are "Da Do Ron Ron," "Be My Baby," "Baby, I Love You," "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," and "River-Deep, Mountain-High" to name only a few. All of these songs, performed by cast members Dinah Manoff (who portrayed the young Ellie Greenwich), Patrick Cassidy (Jeff Barry), Annie Golden, Darlene Love, and Ellie Greenwich herself, can be heard on this album, excellently produced by Miss Ellie in collaboration with Bob Crewe and arranger Jimmy Vivino. None of the magic and vitality of the performances was lost; it all sounds fresh and exciting, and instantly transports one back to the days of sock hops, beehive hairdos, malt shops and lovers' lanes.

Although a bit of poetic license was taken in the stage production (the chronology of some events in Miss Ellie’s life was slightly altered for the sake of flow, and at least one character, Gus Sharkey, is a composite of several people who influenced her career), the songs of Ellie Greenwich are ordered in an ingenious way as to unfold the plot with a minimum of dialogue, as with "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry," " Then He Kissed Me, "Hanky Panky," "Chapel of Love," and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Other songs include the charming "A ... My Name is Ellie" (performed by young Ellie as she practices her accordion), the inspirational "We're Gonna Make It (After All)" (sung at the finale), and the heart-wrenching "Rock of Rages," which chronicles Ellie's nervous breakdown after her mother's passing and her former husband Jeff's remarriage.

It was immediately after this number, in the original Broadway play, when the real Ellie Greenwich made her triumphant entrance, showing the world that while she may have been defeated, she was far from destroyed. As heard on this Grammy-nominated album, Miss Ellie sang a few songs, answered a few questions, kidded around with the cast members, and generally showed the world that she was made of strong stuff, indeed. What’s more, she was loaded with heaps of talent, which nobody could take away from her.

Ellie Greenwich passed away on August 26, 2009, just a couple of weeks after the release of this CD. I heartily recommend this album to anyone who has been touched by her music over the years. Leader Of The Pack: The Ellie Greenwich Musical is a fitting tribute to the legacy of this talented lady and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee. Miss Ellie's voice has been stilled forever, but her work will live on.

Buy the Leader Of The Pack cast album at amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Leader-Pack-Original-Broadway-Cast/dp/B002CL36B0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1254332453&sr=1-1

Jeff Barry (Part One)

Why Jeff Barry Belongs
in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
. . . and Why Ellie Greenwich Does, Too
by Don Charles Hampton

First, a little guitar
And then some bass
Now, here come the drums
Add a little organ
©Copyright 1969 Kirshner/CBS Music Publishing (BMI)

That's the recipe for "Rock And Roll Music", taken from a 1969 Archies album. But wait, there's more! Add a pinch of Folk music, a dash of the Blues, and a smidgen of Country 'n' Western. Fold in some 1950s Doo-Wop harmonies, and some handclapping and tambourine shaking for an old-fashioned Gospel feeling. Flavor the mix with a bit of Latin America and the Caribbean. Most important of all, keep the arrangement simple, and make it easy to dance to. Serve this dish steaming hot to the best record promotion people you can find. This is the recipe for a Jeff Barry Pop production. It's a sound that you'll find in hits by The Monkees, The Archies and the early hits of Neil Diamond, a sound that was an essential ingredient of American Pop and Rock music during the 1960s.

Jeff Barry is best known as a songwriter, along with his former wife and collaborator, Ellie Greenwich. Who hasn't heard "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and The Shondells? "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann? The Dixie Cups' "Chapel Of Love" (now the unofficial anthem of the marriage equality movement)? The Shangri-Las' "Leader Of The Pack" (inspiration for a Broadway and West End musical several years back)? And who can forget the string of hits written by Barry and Greenwich and produced by Phil Spector during the early 1960s? The Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me"? The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and "Baby, I Love You"? Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)", popularized on "The David Letterman Show" and now a yuletide staple? Fast-forward into the 1970s for more samples of Jeff Barry's hitmaking magic: The Staple Singers' "Heavy Makes You Happy." Bobby Bloom's "Montego Bay". Olivia Newton-John's first #1 smash, "I Honestly Love You". And let's not overlook the biggest hit of 1969, The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar".

But Jeff Barry is also a producer, a fact that isn't as well-known. Why this is so is puzzling. Record production isn't just something Barry did on the side in addition to writing songs; a good number of the hits he wrote were also produced by him. In fact, Barry was one of the recording industry's top producers, and was recognized as such by Billboard Magazine in its Year End issue of 1970. He ranks alongside men like Phil Spector, Bob Crewe, Felton Jarvis, Norman Whitfield and Quincy Jones. Try these statistics on for size: Jeff Barry produced four #1 Pop records, three of which he also wrote ("Chapel Of Love", "Leader Of The Pack" and "Sugar, Sugar"). Twelve of his productions were Top Ten best-sellers and 21 of them hit Billboard's Top Twenty. Barry has seen 33 of his productions reach the national Top Forty. Between the years 1963 and 1973, he produced over 60 chart singles. This is hardly the record of a songwriter who occasionally dabbles in production. Here's the story of "Jukebox" Jeff Barry and the hit sound he created.

It's Called Rock 'n' Roll

He was born Joel Adelberg on April 3, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York. The Adelberg family relocated to a New Jersey suburb a few years after baby Joe's birth. "I'd get out of school, run home, hide under the bed and wait for the future to get here," Barry told interviewer Joe Smith a few years back, recalling his teens in a typically wry manner. "But I wrote songs. Did so since I was a kid. My mother has a song I wrote when I was seven. It's about my favorite things . . . girls and horses!" Little Joe's songwriting was inspired by the Country 'n' Western tunes he grew up hearing on the radio during the 1940s and '50s. He also got a hefty dose of Rhythm 'n' Blues, an exciting new sound which emanated on a regular basis from the houses of neighboring Black families. At the same time Country music and R & B were fusing with Latin music to create Rock 'n Roll, they were separately firing the imagination of a boy who would become one of America's greatest Rock tunesmiths.

Upon graduating from Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School in 1955 (whose other alumni include Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond), Joel Adelberg served a hitch with the United States Army; tantalizingly, he was stationed at Fort Knox for much of that time. Following his discharge, he enrolled in New York's City College with an engineering degree in mind. However, by now the young man was hooked on Doo-Wop groups like Dion and The Belmonts, and he was harboring Rock star ambitions. While still a college student, he made his initial forays into the East Coast record business. Somewhere along the way, he dropped his birth name in favor of something with a more cosmopolitan sound. With a new first name swiped from '50s matinee idol Jeff Chandler, and a new last name borrowed from a family friend, "Jeff Barry" was born.

In his seminal book Girl Groups: The Story Of A Sound, the late author Alan Betrock described an occasion when Barry auditioned for a record company in the hope of landing a contract. According to Betrock, he was turned down, but the label liked the song he was singing, one of his own compositions called "Tell Laura I Love Her" and bought it from him. There's a bit of truth to this account, but it omits more of the story than it tells. Late in 1958, Jeff Barry met Arnold Shaw, who would later become an important Rock and Pop historian. At the time, he was president of the EB Marks publishing firm and a seasoned record industry veteran with important contacts. Barry reasoned that if he sang for Arnold Shaw and Shaw liked what he heard, one of those contacts might lead to a recording deal.



ARNOLD SHAW

Decades later, he recounted that fateful meeting to Joe Smith: "I sat down for Arnold Shaw and played a few songs. All in (the keys of) G and C. I only knew two chords! I couldn't play anybody else's songs, so I wrote my own. He said, 'you sing OK, but what are these songs you're playing me? Got any more in G and C?' I played him all kinds of songs, all in G and C. He said, 'you mean you don't know any other chords?' I said, 'No, I don't know what I'm doing!' Then he said, 'Do you want to be a songwriter?'" On the spot, Shaw offered him a staff writer's job at EB Marks with a $75-a-week salary. Having recently gotten married to a girl named Lenore Rosenblatt, Barry was thinking of having a baby; the thought of future financial obligations made the decision easy for him. The young newlywed leapt at the chance for steady income, quit CCNY just a few credits shy of his undergrad degree, and became a full-time music writer.

He also became a part-time demo singer, waxing publisher's demonstration discs of his own songs and others penned by the likes of Ben Raleigh, Beverly Ross and Larry Kusik. This experience led to fulfillment of his momentarily deferred dream: A recording contract. In early 1959, RCA Victor signed him and released the first of three singles, a catchy boogie woogie track called "It's Called Rock And Roll". It's now regarded as a minor Rockabilly classic, and was reissued some years back as the title track of a British roots Rock compilation. The follow-up was "The Face From Outer Space", a goofy Dickie Goodman-inspired disc that quickly became a favorite of novelty collectors. Then Barry tried his chops on a Broadway show tune: "All You Need Is A Quarter" from Jule Styne's current smash Do-Re-Mi. None of these singles clicked on the charts, but his always energetic, very teenage-sounding vocals generated sufficient interest to keep him bouncing from label to label for years. Usually, he recorded as Jeff Barry, but he also cut tracks under assumed names like Timothy Hay, Billy Mitchell and Stevie Temple, Jr. Meanwhile, his songwriting career was heating up.

While Jeff Barry's singles were up-tempo affairs, his first compositions to make an impact in the marketplace were mournful ballads. The earliest to appear was "Paper Crown", a collaboration with Beverly Ross that appeared on the flipside of The Crests' Top Fifty chart entry "A Year Ago Tonight" in December of 1959. Shortly after that record's release, Arnold Shaw heard Barry writing a soulful ballad called "Teenage Sonata". "That would be great for Sam Cooke," he cried, and hurried the flustered composer into a taxi bound for the offices of Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore.

Veteran A & R men Hugo and Luigi had just been assigned to produce Sam Cooke. They'd already met Barry, and in fact had been instrumental in his signing to RCA Victor. Shaw thought it was a good bet that they'd be receptive to his material, and he was right. They liked the ballad, and after hearing Barry demo it live on the piano, so did their artist. Sam Cooke chose it for his debut RCA single. Much to his delight, Jeff Barry found himself hanging out with Cooke's entourage, and he was overjoyed when "Teenage Sonata" broke for a hit, rising to #50 on the Pop charts and scoring at #22 on Billboard's R & B list.



Having his first songwriting success with a singer the calibre of Sam Cooke was heady stuff, but it was small potatoes compared to what happened next. Barry had been collaborating with Ben Raleigh, and by late 1959, they'd come up with "Tell Laura I Love Her", the soon-to-be classic death-and-heartbreak ballad. In the summer of 1960, Ray Peterson took the song to #7 Pop. The song was covered in England by Ricky Valance for Columbia/EMI Records, and by August it stood at #1 on the British charts. There was a fad at the time for "answer songs" to current best-sellers, so Barry and Raleigh penned alternate lyrics for "Tell Laura" that were suitable for a girl to sing. Their extra work paid off: near the end of the year, Marilyn Michaels registered at #110 Pop with "Tell Tommy I Miss Him". Three hits off the same song! Jeff Barry was on top of the world; after a false start, the 21-year-old had landed smack in the middle of the record business, and he'd hit the ground running.

By 1962, he had two more smashes to his credit. The Playmates' 1961 recording of "Tell Me What She Said" flopped in the United States, as did Helen Shapiro's cover version, "Tell Me What He Said". However, back in Shapiro's native England, the up-tempo torch song shot to #2 on the charts. Barry's second American Top Ten winner was another excellent rocker, "Chip, Chip", released as a single by Gene McDaniels in the Spring of '62. That Fall, "Jukebox" Jeff provided Linda Scott with one of her last chart records, a Country-styled weeper titled "I Left My Heart In The Balcony"; it was a solid regional hit, topping out at #74.

Jeff Barry songs were placed with other established singers of the day, including Janie Grant ("Unhappy Birthday"), Della Reese ("Blow Out The Sun"), Frank Gari ("You'd Better Keep Running"), Johnny Cymbal ("The Water Was Red", a minor hit) and R & B legend Ruth Brown, whose recording of his ballad "Anyone But You" was an early Phil Spector production. During this period, some of his best compositions were cut by Tony Passalacqua, former lead singer of the Doo-Wop group The Fascinators. Released under the names Tony Richards and Tony Mitchell, they include the undiscovered Rockabilly classic "Shout My Name"; "A Million Drums"; the early Reggae tracks "Write Me A Letter" and "Candle In The Wind"; and "Caravan Of Lonely Men" b/w "Wind-Up Toy". Jeff Barry believes that the latter record, issued on the Carlton label in 1962, was his first credited production.

He saved some choice rockers for himself, too; Barry cut the singles "Shake, Shake, Sherry" (later covered by The Edsels), "Never Take It Away" and the hilarious "Please, Mr. Scientist" for Epic Records between May 1961 and February 1962. In a tongue-in-cheek reference to his height (he's over six feet tall), they were issued under the fake group name The Redwoods! By now, he'd left EB Marks for a better-paying staff job at Ed Burton's Trinity (soon to be re-christened TM) Music, and Artie Resnick had become his regular writing partner.



The Phil Spector Era

In November of 1959, at a family Thanksgiving dinner, Jeff Barry had met Eleanor Louise "Ellie" Greenwich, a cousin by marriage. His own marriage had begun to falter, but he probably never suspected that Greenwich would become his second wife. She was also destined to be his most celebrated songwriting partner. Like him, she was a would-be recording artist who'd cut her first single ("Cha-Cha-Charming") for RCA Victor in the late '50s; and like him, she wrote songs. Barry was instantly attracted to this effervescent, opinionated blonde. He found that she shared many of his ideas about what elements went into a good Rock 'n' Roll record, and they spent hours on end discussing music. Greenwich was a more proficient piano player than Barry, and when he confessed to her that he only knew two chords, she began giving him lessons. Romance blossomed as they sat practicing the scales. Before long, Barry was using her regularly to sing demos of his songs, and urging her to become a professional songwriter like himself.

In 1961, Barry and Greenwich cut a novelty single together, "Red Corvette", under the name Ellie Gee and The Jets. The pair also sang background on "Palm Of Your Hand" b/w "Don't Play That Dance!", a 1962 single for Herald/Ember artist Chuck Wright that Barry produced. That same year, Greenwich waxed a Jeff Barry tune for RCA Victor ("Big Honky Baby") using the pseudonym Kellie Douglas. However, it would be some time yet before the couple joined forces to write songs. For her own satisfaction, Greenwich wanted to enter the music business independently. Barry continued to collaborate with Artie Resnick but also wrote tunes with Al Kasha, Derek Pretlow, Wayne Rooks and others. Ellie Greenwich was eventually recruited by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to pen songs their publishing firm, Trio Music. By the summer of '62, she was well on her way, teaming up with lyricist Tony Powers to pen material for various acts including Jay and The Americans ("This Is It"), Mike Clifford ("One Boy Too Late"), The Shirelles ("I Didn't Mean To Hurt You") and Marv Johnson ("Keep Tellin' Yourself").



ELLIE GREENWICH

But on October 28, 1962, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich became husband and wife. Subsequently, they decided to make their personal union a professional one as well. Barry and Greenwich were fated to be a consistently successful writing and production unit, on a par with teams like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, and Lamont Dozier with brothers Brian and Eddie Holland. The new combination was properly launched the week of April 27, 1963, when "Da Doo Ron Ron" by The Crystals debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. This Top Five smash was the first of nine charting singles that Barry and Greenwich would write over the next 16 months for the artists on Phil Spector's Philles label. These songs, along with those they would pen the following year for Red-Bird Records, established them as the premier songwriting team working in the early '60s teenybopper Pop genre. Of course, this period is now widely referred to as the Girl Group era.



PHIL SPECTOR

That same week in 1963, another single written by Barry and Greenwich hit the airwaves. Credited to The Raindrops, "What A Guy" broke the R & B Top Thirty and eventually peaked at #41 Pop. The Raindrops were, in fact, a revamped version of Ellie Gee and The Jets featuring Greenwich as lead singer and Barry accompanying her on overdubbed background vocals. But far more important than this group's composition were the credits that were emblazoned across the bottom of its debut single. They read: An Ellie and Jeff Barry Production. Barry's first hit as both writer and producer was followed by four more Raindrops chart records. These included a Top Twenty Pick, "The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget" (played decades later under risqué opening credits for the cult film Beefcake) and "That Boy John", which featured the original version of "Hanky Panky" on its flipside.

The sound of The Raindrops' recordings is brash, noisy and primitive. A booming drum beat (more often than not played by Jeff) is the dominant feature. Some of the tracks are so basic, they're little more than glorified demos. "What A Guy" actually is a demo. These early productions are a far cry from the more polished Neil Diamond, Monkees and Archies hits Barry would be responsible for later in the decade; yet already, some elements are in place that will become standard. For example, Jeff and Ellie's Doo-Wop-influenced vocal arrangements. Also, handclappings as an integral part of the rhythm section. Perhaps more than anything else, handclappings are the definitive trademark of a Jeff Barry production. It should be noted that his production work would never completely lose the primitive quality of these early efforts. There would always be a Rock 'n' Roll "edge" present. While there's usually some overdubbing, it's done subtly; most Jeff Barry records sound as if they were cut live in the studio, in a single take. The wind-tunnel orchestrations and dense sound mixes of Phil Spector's recordings never characterized Barry's style.



Turn over The Raindrops' album, issued in late 1963 on the Jubilee label, and in the back cover credits, you'll find the names of several men whose presence at a Jeff Barry-produced recording session in the '60s was almost a given. Artie Butler, keyboard player and arranger, worked with Barry and Greenwich both together and separately well into the 1970s. Gutiarist, arranger and producer Al Gorgoni, bass player Russ Saunders and drummer Gary Chester (the East Coast counterpart of West Coast skinsmeister Hal Blaine) all went on to play at sessions for Neil Diamond, The Monkees and The Archies. Sound engineer Brooks Arthur, working out of Mirasound Studios in Manhattan, quickly became as important to a Jeff Barry record date as Larry Levine was to one of Phil Spector's marathon sessions at Hollywood's Gold Star Studios. (A few years later, Barry and Arthur acquired joint ownership of another New York recording facility, Century Sound.) While not credited on The Raindrops album, it's known that a young man named Bobby Bloom was assisting Brooks Arthur in the sound booth around this time. Bloom would later step from behind the console to become an in-demand session musician and recording artist; he took part in a number of Archies recording dates and was one of Barry's main songwriting partners in the early 1970s.

Publishing credit on The Raindrops' singles was split between TM Music and Trio Music. With Barry and Greenwich now married and working exclusively with each other, this arrangement obviously couldn't continue indefinitely. Leiber and Stoller would certainly have known about Jeff Barry hits like "Chip Chip" and "Tell Laura I Love Her". They also knew him as a demo singer for their frequent collaborators Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman; they'd even produced a Pomus/Shuman penned single for him in early 1962 ("We Got Love Money Can't Buy"). They got busy luring him into their stable of writers, and by mid-1964, Barry had joined his wife at Trio. A few years ago, he elaborated on his reasons for switching publishers a second time: "Bobby Darin was in the process of buying (TM Music). Bobby brought me out to Los Angeles, wined me and dined me, gave me the corner office, the whole thing. I met Tony Curtis and Hugh Hefner. It was fabulous! (Trio Music owners) Leiber and Stoller gave me one room with one speaker, and half the money. The difference is, at TM (I was) the most knowledgeable guy. I could play you a napkin and make it sound like a hit! But I needed people around me that I couldn't knock out that easily. Which is why . . . I went with Leiber and Stoller."

Thus, "Jukebox" Jeff became a protégé of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose production successes included million-sellers by The Coasters, The Drifters and Elvis Presley. Many years later, Leiber would recall their work together in a BBC radio interview with journalist Charlotte Grieg. "God knows how many hours of studio time and tape Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich burned up before they learned how to make records," he said. "But we were teaching them. They were our students." In October of 1963, Leiber and Stoller chose a Barry/Greenwich tune, "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" (made famous a year later in a cover version by Manfred Mann) for one of their recording acts, The Exciters. Indications are that Barry and Greenwich produced as well as wrote this Exciters single, which peaked at #97 on the Pop chart. If Ellie Greenwich's lead vocals were substituted for those of Brenda Reid, "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" could easily be a Raindrops record. However, Leiber and Stoller were serious about maintaining the teacher-student relationship; they claimed label credit, just as they would when Barry and Greenwich began producing The Dixie Cups later on.

"Jeff Barry" continues with Part Two.

Jeff Barry (Part Two)

Why Jeff Barry Belongs
in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
. . . and Why Ellie Greenwich Does, Too
by Don Charles Hampton



The Leiber-Stoller Era

Around this same time, Leiber and Stoller were operating two fledgling labels, Tiger and Daisy Records. Barry and Greenwich contributed material to the labels' artists, and produced at least two Tiger/Daisy singles, "Big Bad World" by Cathy Saint and "I Won't Be Me Anymore" for teen idol Vic Donna. Then in early 1964, Lieber and Stoller joined forces with Rock 'n' Roll record mogul George Goldner to form Blue Cat Records and its sister label, Red-Bird. It was only natural that they should bring in their protégés, Jeff and Ellie, to write and produce for this new venture. In fact, they did more than that; they allowed the couple to become stockholders in the new company. Red-Bird ultimately proved to be the more successful of the two labels, due in large part to the talents of Barry and Greenwich. The pace was set when Red-Bird Records first release, The Dixie Cups' "Chapel Of Love" ensconced itself atop Billboard's Hot 100 list.



MIKE STOLLER and JERRY LEIBER

Of course, 1964 was the breakthrough year of the British Invasion, when The Beatles and other English Rock bands began knocking aside established American acts like so many tenpins in a bowling alley. The Brits had nothing on Barry and Greenwich, though; their uncredited production of "Chapel Of Love" muscled The Beatles' "Love Me Do" out of the #1 slot. In fact, 1964 was a banner year for the team. Between May and December, they produced 10 Red-Bird releases by The Dixie Cups, The Jellybeans, The Butterflys and The Shangri-Las, and every one landed on the national charts. Six of these made the Top Forty. Two were chart-toppers.

Five months after The Dixie Cups' ode to nuptial bliss made the vaunted climb, lightning struck twice when Rock's first Punk girl group, The Shangri-Las, roared out of the box with their controversial classic "Leader Of The Pack". In addition to their Red-Bird hits, Barry and Greenwich charted two Raindrops singles in 1964 (three, if you count "Let's Go Together", which "bubbled under" the national list at #109), and scored an international best-seller with "Don't Ever Leave Me", a vigorous dance rocker they wrote and produced for Connie Francis (it made #42 Pop stateside). By now, people in the music business were really beginning to take notice of "Jukebox" Jeff. As a producer as well as a writer, he was clearly a force to contend with.

The Red-Bird/Blue Cat catalog is a treasure trove when it comes to the production work of Barry and Greenwich. There is much more of interest to the '60s Pop music collector than just familiar hits like The Dixie Cups' "People Say", The Shangri-Las' "Remember (Walkin' In The Sand)" and The Jellybeans' "I Wanna Love Him So Bad." Under Leiber and Stoller's supervision, Barry sharpened his production skills considerably; the records he created at Red-Bird convey a wide variety of musical influences. There's the fusion of New Orleans Rhythm 'n' Blues with New York Pop on The Dixie Cups' "You Should Have Seen The Way He Looked At Me"; the steady-rocking West Indian rhythms of The Jellybeans' "Baby, Be Mine"; the Motown-inspired grooves of Sidney Barnes' "I Hurt On The Other Side" and The Bouquets' "Welcome To My Heart"; the funky bump-and-grind of The Ad-Libs' "He Ain't No Angel"; and the stunning choral majesty of The Butterflys' "I Wonder" (an often-recorded but seldom heard tune from the Barry/Greenwich/Spector songbook).

The mini-epic "Train From Kansas City", hidden on the flipside of The Shangri-Las' seventh Red-Bird single, is arguably Barry's finest production from this period. Mary Weiss's impassioned lead singing is embellished by a gyrating rhythm track and dramatic steam engine whistles. If you think those authentic sounds were pulled from a sound effects disc, guess again! They were created vocally by "Jukebox" Jeff standing inside a studio echo chamber (as were the seagull noises heard on "Remember"). The song itself, concerning a young bride's rendez-vous with a former lover, is possibly the best Barry ever wrote with Greenwich. Many of their Red-Bird productions were done in collaboration with a third producer, usually Steve Venet, Joe Jones or George "Shadow" Morton. Leiber and Stoller would team their star protégés with newcomers who didn't have as much experience in the studio. Unfortunately, this could result in the new guy getting sole production credit on the record labels; it happened with Shadow Morton on "Give Him A Great Big Kiss" and several other Shangri-Las singles.



SHADOW MORTON
with ELLIE GREENWICH and JEFF BARRY

Some of the best Barry/Greenwich records on Blue Cat were cut with Sammy Hawkins, a Clyde McPhatter-styled Soul singer that George Goldner had brought to the company. Hawkins' first Blue Cat release was "Hold On, Baby", a steamy, Gospel-flavored number. It cracked the R & B Top Ten in the summer of 1965. The flipside, a tough Barry-Greenwich tune propelled by Bluesy piano chords, was called "Bad As They Come"; it anticipated the heavy Blues influences that surfaced later in Barry's work with The Archies ("Truck Driver") and Neil Diamond ("Someday, Baby"). The follow-up single was a more Pop-oriented number, "I Know It's All Right". This record is literally built around the sterling harmonies of Hawkins and Greenwich; in truth, it's a duet. One-hundred-percent street corner Soul, guaranteed to please '50s vocal group enthusiasts! A playful reworking of Leiber and Stoller's 1958 Drifters hit "Drip Drop" titled "It Hurt So Bad" made for another interesting Sammy Hawkins flip.

The third Sammy Hawkins single was slated to be "I'll Still Love You", a soulful handclapper that could easily have been a Tamla/Motown release. For some reason, Hawkins couldn't connect with the tune, so Barry cut it instead. A marked change of pace from his earlier Rockabilly sides, it's easily his best solo release of the '60s. Ellie Greenwich also waxed a solo single in '65; her entry was "You Don't Know," a dramatic, Adult-Contemporary ballad of unrequited love. Today, copies of it sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay, but at the time, it made zero commercial impact; neither did her husband's excellent platter, so the couple headed back to the studio with a new artist: Andrew Joachim, an ambitious young singer/songwriter from Canada. They recorded him as Andy Kim on a tune he co-wrote with them, "(I Hear You Say) I Love You, Baby". While there was no follow-up Andy Kim release, Barry liked the sound of Kim's singing voice and was determined to write with him again at some point. He couldn't have known at the time (or could he?) that within three years, Kim would succeed Ellie Greenwich as his songwriting partner.



ANDY KIM

The Barry/Greenwich express had slowed to a crawl by the middle of 1965. The team scored half as many charted productions as they had the previous year, and only two of these, "Iko Iko" by The Dixie Cups and The Shangri-Las' "Give Us Your Blessings" (originally a hit for Ray Peterson) made the Top Forty. The Girl Group trend, which had been the main vehicle for their work, was passing. The ongoing British Invasion had finally begun to take its toll. To complicate matters, the couple's marriage was on the rocks. Professional tension had spilled over into their personal lives, not an uncommon problem for married business partners; but an even bigger crisis was looming. A casual flirtation between Jeff Barry and Nancy Cal Cagno, the night manager of Mirasound Studios, had escalated into something more serious. In engineer Brooks Arthur's words, Cal Cagno "came between" Barry and Greenwich, hastening their estrangement. Before 1965 was out, Barry would ask his second wife for a divorce.

After their marital separation, Barry and Greenwich's professional relations understandably cooled as well. "We tried to write together after we split up, but it was awful", Greenwich recalled several years ago. "We couldn't . . . with divorce papers sitting right next to us." Reportedly, Phil Spector was responsible for salvaging the team. At his request, they reunited in early 1966 for the writing sessions that yielded Ike and Tina Turner's "River-Deep, Mountain-High" and The Ronettes' "I Can Hear Music" (the final Philles chart single, which Jeff Barry produced). After this project ended, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich re-evaluated their creative partnership and realized it was still viable. They subsequently made the difficult decision to continue working together. However, their prospects were not as rosy as before. With more and more recording artists starting to write their own material, and new sounds being introduced onto the music scene, the changes in Rock 'n' Roll were coming fast and furious. Would the team be able to keep pace? Was there still a place for them on the charts?



The Gang At Bang

The answer to these questions came on 21 May, 1966, when a single called "Solitary Man" appeared on Billboard's Hot 100. The artist was Neil Diamond, and his name was destined to be a familiar one to record buyers for years to come. When Ellie Greenwich first encountered Diamond, he was just another down-on-his-luck songwriter; but both she and Barry thought there was something distinctly commercial about the brooding, introspective songs he wrote. They partnered with him in a new publishing company, Tallyrand Music, and then started shopping for a record deal.

First stop was Red-Bird Records, but much to their surprise, Leiber and Stoller showed little interest in Diamond. In fact, the two men were on the verge of selling their shares in the now-floundering label; on their advice, Barry and Greenwich would soon follow suit. Undeterred, Jeff Barry paid a visit to Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler, and successfully sold him on Neil Diamond's talent. Wexler decided to place the handsome singer on Bang Records, a new Atlantic subsidiary run by writer/producer Bert Berns. Bang's Atlantic affiliation proved short-lived, as did Neil Diamond's time as a Bang artist, but both lasted long enough to launch his stellar recording career. At Bang, Barry and Greenwich began working with him in earnest, polishing their rough Diamond into a star. "Solitary Man" was the first of nine consecutive chart singles they would produce for him in 1966 and 1967.

With "Cherry, Cherry", Neil Diamond's second Bang single, the classic "Jukebox" Jeff sound was born. This record set the standard for Barry's late-60s productions. All the elements were there: The aggressive acoustic guitars, the crisp handclappings, the keyboard hooks, the south-of-the-border twist in Artie Butler's musical arrangement, and the Gospel-tinged, call-and-response backing vocals. This style of production stayed with Neil Diamond even after his association with Jeff Barry ended; you can hear echoes of "Cherry, Cherry" in his later hits for the Uni label like "Two-Bit Manchild",. "Walk On Water" and "Crunchy Granola Suite". By now, Barry/Greenwich session regulars Artie Butler, Al Gorgoni, Russ Saunders and Gary Chester had been augmented by guitarists Hugh McCracken and Don Thomas, bass player Louie Mauro, pianist Stan Free, drummer Herbie Lovelle and percussionist Tommy Cerone from Neil Diamond's band. With Diamond himself contributing acoustic guitar licks, these men formed one wicked rhythm section.

Diamond was a Folk and Country-based songwriter, so the uncluttered backing tracks Barry and Greenwich created for him fit his tunes like a glove. Horns were used as coloring, and were never brassy. On "Kentucky Woman", the horn section is barely discernible. Strings (always a rarity for Jeff Barry productions) were used sparingly, usually to enhance a ballad like "Red, Red Wine" or "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon". Rather than falling back on a routine approach to production, Barry and Greenwich crafted each record to best showcase the singer and the song. Less was more. Barry has called "Solitary Man" his favorite Neil Diamond production, and his reason illustrates his basic musical philosophy. "It's a good example of not over-producing", he said, "(of) letting the song come through."

There's reason to believe that Barry's work with Diamond had a personal aspect to it. Prior to their association, Barry had been producing records mainly for groups of teenage girls with whom he had little in common. With Neil Diamond, he had an artist who was roughly the same age, and from a background similar to his own (both men are Brooklyn natives, as well as graduates of the same high school). Barry obviously identified more directly with Diamond, and some people believe this was reflected in the records they made together. Session horn player Artie Kaplan is one such person. Kaplan contracted the musicians for several early Neil Diamond sessions, and he observed firsthand the interaction between Barry and Diamond in the studio. "The inflections, the mannerisms, the phrasing in (Diamond's) records was really Jeff," Kaplan claims in the Neil Diamond biography Solitary Star. "If the name (on the singles) wasn't Neil Diamond, it might have been Jeff Barry". It's interesting to listen to records like "Shilo" and "Kentucky Woman" in this context and speculate on what might've been had Barry's own recording career not faltered.



JEFF BARRY with NEIL DIAMOND,
ELLIE GREENWICH and BERT BERNS

One thing is known for sure: His work with Neil Diamond led directly to the next phase of his career, which was his association with "bubblegum" Rock groups during the late 1960s. The conduit to those groups was music publisher Don Kirshner, and Diamond was responsible for getting Barry and Kirshner together. As president of Screen Gems Television's music division, Kirshner was supervising music for a new NBC comedy series. "The Monkees" began as small screen spoof of Rock 'n' Roll bands, but the concept quickly escalated into a serious recording enterprise. "Last Train To Clarksville", the first single by the fictional band, had zoomed up the charts, and a national hysteria was building around the four actor/musicians who portrayed the group. Kirshner's ear for commercial songs was legendary in music business circles; during the late '50s and early '60s, he'd overseen the recordings of Neil Sedaka, Barry Mann, Tony Orlando, Little Eva and The Cookies. He loved the sound of "Cherry, Cherry" and Neil Diamond's other Bang hits, so he contacted the singer and solicited material for The Monkees. In the deal that ensued, Jeff Barry was tagged to produce any Diamond songs that the group would record.

When Barry and his session men entered RCA Victor's New York studios in October of 1966 to cut the tracks for "I'm A Believer", he'd never had a surer bet in his life. The Monkees may have been make-believe rockers, but nevertheless, they were the hottest up-and-coming act on the American music scene. Their second single already had advance orders in excess of one million, so it was guaranteed to be a Top Ten hit at the very least. Yet nothing could've prepared "Jukebox" Jeff for the monster "I'm A Believer" became upon its release the following month. The United States was only one of 16 countries where it topped the charts. Time hasn't diminished this record's appeal, either. "I'm A Believer" is one of the top 50 best-sellers of all-time. Its runaway success enhanced Barry's reputation as a producer tenfold, to say nothing for what it did for Neil Diamond's reputation as a songwriter (and for his bank account).

From the moment you hear its lively keyboard intro, it's clear that "I'm A Believer" could never have been anything but a major hit. Although Micky Dolenz's lead vocal was recorded separately from the instrumental track, the vocals and musical backing fit together as smoothly as cogs in a well-oiled machine. Barry's trademark handclappings and tambourine clashes make an ideal complement to the church revival meeting imagery in Diamond's lyrics. Dolenz is so caught up in the arrangement that he bursts out with a spontaneous cry of "I love it!" halfway through the song. Barry wisely kept this ad-lib on the final master. It enhances the record's good-time spirit. Monkees Davy Jones and Peter Tork are equally exuberant on background vocals, chanting the refrain with great fervor.

Davy Jones took the lead on the follow-up single, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Barry energized this noticeably inferior Neil Diamond composition with forceful, prominent handclappings; this record's infectious rhythm simply cannot be escaped. While not as successful as "I'm A Believer" (alas, it peaked at a disappointing #2), "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" was still tremendously popular upon its release in March of 1967, and it remains a favorite of Monkees fans. Davy Jones came into his own as a lead singer on this single. Other producers had pigeonholed him as a light Pop balladeer, but under "Jukebox" Jeff's direction, he proved that he could equal Micky Dolenz at belting out Rock 'n' Roll numbers.

Jones sang lead on most of the other Barry-produced tracks of this period, some of which appeared on the group's More Of The Monkees album ("Look Out! Here Comes Tomorrow", "Hold On, Girl", "The Day We Fall In Love", "Your Auntie Grizelda") and some of which have only recently become available ("Love To Love", "I Don't Think You Know Me"). As it turned out, Barry cut more than just Neil Diamond tunes for Don Kirshner. After "I'm A Believer" exploded, Kirshner had him in the studio recording songs by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, Joey Levine and Artie Resnick, The Tokens and Jack Keller. Even three of Barry's own compositions, "Mustang", "Ninety-Nine Pounds" and "She Hangs Out", made it into The Monkees' repertoire.



Barry's solo productions were everything a Barry/Greenwich production were, save one distinct difference: They were gutsier, had more of a Blues feel. Guitars were edgier, and the beat rocked harder. It was a totally masculine sound. Why Greenwich wasn't involved in The Monkees' recording sessions isn't clear, but this was hardly the only instance of Barry working without her in 1966 and '67. He was writing and producing singles for Gayle Haness, another Bang artist. In late '66, he and Bert Berns co-wrote and co-produced a McCoys chart entry, "I Got To Go Back (Watch That Little Girl Dance), and in May of '67, they teamed up again to produce the Top Thirty R & B hit "Am I Groovin' You" for Freddie Scott (Scott was signed to Bang's sister label Shout Records). The Drifters also benefited from the Berns and Barry magic: "I'll Take You Where The Music's Playing" (#51 Pop in 1965) and the fabulous Rock-a-Reggae floor-shaker "Aretha", a Northern Soul club smash in England. The finest of Jeff Barry's collaborations with Bert Berns is undoubtedly "Soul Motion", an incendiary 1967 Shout single released by The Exciters. In 1970, he'd help Berns' widow Ilene launch a new Bang Records artist named Paul Davis.

In addition to his work for Bang/Shout and Don Kirshner, Barry was producing sessions for Jay and The Americans and others, and he'd begun writing with Marty Sanders, Hank Shifter and Andy Kim. The sight of the tall, cowboy-hatted producer striding into a record date sans his bubbly blonde partner was becoming more and more common. He seemed determined to carve out a solo identity for himself and his work. His window of opportunity with The Monkees abruptly slammed shut in March of 1967 when the group had Don Kirshner dismissed as its music supervisor and subsequently chose Chip Douglas from The Turtles as its regular producer. Had these events not transpired, "Jukebox" Jeff would surely have claimed the latter job, but regardless, an important contact had been made.

Nineteen-sixty-seven was a pivotal year in Jeff Barry's career, and in his life. On January 23, he wed Nancy Cal Cagno. By mid-year, Leiber and Stoller's Trio Music had sold his publishing contract to Unart (United Artists) Music. This move allowed him to establish a tie with the West Coast movie industry and presaged the direction his career would take in the next decade. Around the same time, Barry decided to go to work for himself. He started up his own label, Steed Records, and cut a distribution deal with Randy Wood's Hollywood-based Dot Records. The Steed logo was a black stallion rearing up on its haunches, a reflection of Barry's equestrian interests. Andy Kim would be Steed's star recording act.

Finally, Bert Berns' death and Neil Diamond's defection from Bang Records, both occurring in December of 1967, precipitated the end of the Barry/Greenwich era. By now, Barry was commuting frequently to Los Angeles on business, and Greenwich opted not to duplicate his increasingly bi-coastal lifestyle. A 1968 Parrot Records single by The Down Five ("I'm Takin' It Home") is the last documented Barry/Greenwich co-production, but an October 1967 Atco single "Friday Kind Of Monday" b/w "Right Back Where I Started From" by The Meantime (a new incarnation of The Raindrops) is considered the team's official final outing. Yet, between singing numerous demo sessions, backing vocal dates and TV commercials, and running her own production company with new partner Mike Rashkow, Ellie Greenwich would find time to contribute harmony vocals to a number of Steed Records releases. For some people, the story ends here, but quite the contrary: some of "Jukebox" Jeff's biggest hits were yet to come. Nineteen-sixty-eight marked the beginning of an extremely busy four-year period for him. His work with another "bubblegum" band, The Archies, would account for much of that time.

"Jeff Barry" continues with Part Three.

Jeff Barry (Part Three)

Why Jeff Barry Belongs
in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame
. . . and Why Ellie Greenwich Does, Too
by Don Charles Hampton



The Kirshner Era

Agile as an alley cat, Don Kirshner had landed on his feet following his ejection from the Screen Gems organization. For his revenge, he decided to get mad and get even at the same time! While his lawyers were slinging lawsuits in Screen Gems' direction, he formulated plans for a new TV Rock band that would outsell The Monkees, a cartoon Rock band, no less. It was simply a matter of cutting the right deals, and Kirshner had few peers when it came to dealmaking; but when the contracts had been signed (with Archie Comics, Inc. and Filmation Studios), he still needed two magic ingredients to bring The Archies to life on wax: Hit songs and solid production. Kirshner's clout within the industry was such that he could've called on any number of talented writer/producers, but he only had one man in mind. He put through a call to Jeff Barry.



DON KIRSHNER

When Barry got the assignment to helm The Archies project, he already had more than enough work to keep himself occupied. He was just getting Steed Records off the ground. Now, in addition to running a record company and producing all the acts on his roster, he had to write and produce enough original music to fill up an entire TV season. His workload tripled, but The Archies offered Barry an opportunity he couldn't resist. The cartoon series would expose his production talents to millions of people every week, and on a continuous basis rather than intermittently, as had been the case with The Monkees (other producers had been involved). Even more important, most of the songs were his own compositions, not Neil Diamond's or Carole King's. The prospects for increased royalty income alone had made the job offer tempting; so with his new sound engineer, Mike Moran, in tow, Barry booked RCA Studios for a hectic week in July 1968 and set about revolutionizing the sound of Saturday morning TV.

The Archies was the most vilified recording act of its day. The simple lyrics and catchy melodies of Archies records were not in sync with the social climate. During the civil turbulence of the late '60s, Rock 'n' Roll was required to have revelance to contemporary society. For the most part, Archies records merely entertained. It didn't help that cartoon characters were used to market the records; Rock critics were savage in their attacks. One Rolling Stone reviewer even cited Archies music as an argument against capitalism! Barry shook his head in bewilderment at the uproar. "To review . . . the music of The Archies, which was created for kids, in the same light that you'd review music that was created for adults is ridiculous," he told me in 1998, still fuming at the absurdity of the criticism. Thankfully, demands for political correctness in Pop music have diminished; nowadays, Archies records are not so much hated as they're overlooked. Browsing collectors who encounter their ragged album sleeves in oldies bins tend to pass over them, believing them to be frivolous and not worth spending money on. They couldn't be more mistaken!

The four Archies soundtrack albums that Barry produced between July of 1968 and August of 1970 represent some of his finest work. The songs in their grooves run the gamut of his musical influences: Blues, Country, Rockabilly, Doo-Wop, Latin-American, Gospel. It's the Red-Bird era all over again! To his credit, Barry didn't sweeten his music in order to appeal to a preteen audience. His Archies productions, "You Make Me Wanna Dance", "I'm In Love", "Hide And Seek", "Love Light" and others, rock just as hard as his productions for Neil Diamond or Freddie Scott, if not harder. He set a high standard for children's music that, sadly, has not been maintained.

To Barry fell the task of choosing the lead singer for Archies recordings. After successfully resisting Don Kirshner's desire to cast failed recording artist Kenny Karen in that role, he gave the job to Carmine "Ron Dante" Granito, a session vocalist he'd been working with on various projects. Dante is one of the great, anonymous singing voices of the 1960s. He lent his youthful tenor to many of the era's most popular TV and radio jingles. A songwriter and producer himself (he would later supervise Barry Manilow's hit recordings), his opinions about Pop music sometimes diverged sharply from Barry's; yet they worked closely together for three years, reportedly cutting over 100 Archies tracks. By 1969, Barry was collaborating on songs with Dante and his writing partner, Gene Allan. The following year, he produced Dante's first solo album, Ron Dante Brings You Up.



RON DANTE

There are 11 Archies singles. Eight of them bear Jeff Barry production credits, and seven of these charted in North America. The first was "Bang-Shang-A-Lang", released in September of 1968 to coincide with the debut of the cartoon series. With its slashing Hugh McCracken guitar riffs, it packed a wallop strong enough to propel it to #22 on the Hot 100. Today, a track this raw might be called "hardcore", but in any event, it wasn't what you'd expect to hear on a Saturday morning TV show. Neither was its flipside, the Blues-drenched Rock ballad "Truck Driver". Fast forward to July 1970, and the release of "Sunshine". Peaking at #57, it was The Archies' penultimate chart entry (the last was "Together We Two", which stalled at #122). A full-throttle, Afro-Caribbean-flavored jam, "Sunshine" was Barry's natural progression from the Trinidadian rhythms of The Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko". His powerful bongo-playing, augmented by that of Bobby Bloom, made this track truly primal dance music.

Of course, between "Bang-Shang-A-Lang" and "Sunshine" came "Sugar, Sugar" in the summer of 1969. Eventually selling over six million copies, it was named Record of the Year by the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA). "Sugar, Sugar" was Don Kirshner's sweet revenge on The Monkees: It was the #1 single on music surveys stretching from here to Japan. One reason for its enormous appeal is the instrumental track's throbbing bass line, played by Joey Macho; it's one of the best dance grooves to be found on a '60s Pop single. (That great bass sound may be what attracted Soul legend Wilson Pickett's attention; a year later, his cover of "Sugar, Sugar" landed in the Rhythm & Blues Top Five.) The follow-up, "Jingle Jangle", also ventured past the million-seller mark. This rousing nonsense anthem, sung by a multi-tracked Ron Dante and Toni Wine, and featuring a "Jukebox" Jeff cameo vocal near the end, boasts another killer bass groove; it was as deserving of hit status as its predecessor. Three months later, "Who's Your Baby?", a snarling Country rocker pairing Dante with ex-Columbia recording artist Donna Marie, gave The Archies their final Top Forty platter.



DONNA MARIE

In mid-1971, after Barry had stopped producing the group, Don Kirshner pulled a song from the year-old Sunshine album and marketed it in a picture sleeve adorned with the peace symbol. As its title suggests, "A Summer Prayer For Peace" was an atypical Archies release, a choral Rock ballad that brought their music in line with relevant issues like the Vietnam war; Barry shared spoken-word vocals with Ron Dante. Kirshner's marketing strategy only worked in South Africa, where the single became a monster hit. Elsewhere, though, the public, like Jeff Barry, had shifted its attention to other acts.

The Steed Records Era

Andy Kim co-wrote most of The Archies' hits with Barry. Ninety percent of his own recorded output for the Steed label was also Barry/Kim compositions. If The Archies represented Barry's blatantly commercial aspect, then Andy Kim was the vehicle for a darker, more introspective side of him. The lyrics he wrote for Kim dealt with such heavy topics as marital infidelity, suicidal depression, cynicism, and the declining world condition. It's unfortunate that, during his time as a Steed recording artist, Andy Kim became known as a cover act specializing in old Ronettes hits. His original material, mislabled "bubblegum", deserved closer examination than it ever got.

On Andy Kim's records, Barry let each song dictate what the style of production would be, just as he had done with Neil Diamond. "Rainbow Ride" recreated the guitar sound of The Monkees' "Last Train To Clarksville", while "It's Your Life" was equal parts Gospel and Rhythm and Blues (a combination also used to good effect on Bobby Bloom's follow-up singles to "Montego Bay"). For the ballad "A Friend In The City", dramatic Charlie Calello orchestrations were in order. The recipe for "How'd We Ever Get This Way?" was good old handclappings and tambourines, liberally seasoned with Caribbean island spice. The Barry/Kim fusion of Pop, Adult-Contemporary and Progressive Rock stylings resulted in 10 chart placings for Kim between May of 1968 and July of 1971. The most successful of his 5 Top Forty hits was his 1969 remake of Barry and Greenwich's "Baby, I Love You". For this single, Barry played almost every instrument, and then used his mixing board to create a percussion-heavy approximation of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. His Africanized arrangement was catchy enough to make it outsell The Ronettes' original 1964 release. Similar arrangements powered two subsequent Andy Kim singles, "So Good Together" and a second Ronettes remake, "Be My Baby".

With The Illusion and Robin McNamara, the other main acts on Steed, "Jukebox" Jeff indulged his twin fascinations with the Blues and Gospel music. The Illusion was a Long Island-based bar band with psychedelic leanings, fronted by a gravel-throated singer named John Vinci. While Barry applied a certain amount of Pop gloss to the band's recordings (particularly to its third chart single, "Together"), he never compromised its hard Rock stance. The extended album version of The Illusion's solitary Top Forty hit "Did You See Her Eyes?" is a 6:55 sample of ass-kicking drums and guitar that any Rock band would welcome in its repertoire. Barry vacated the sound booth during the session in order to jam in the studio with guitarists Rich Cerniglia and Mike Maniscalco, bass player Chuck Adler and drummer Mike Ricciardella. Among other exceptional Blues rockers The Illusion cut under his supervision are "Once In A Lifetime", "Lila", "How Does It Feel?", "Why? Tell Me Why" and "Naked Blues".



Shaggy-maned Robin McNamara was a singer/songwriter and actor on the Rock scene's cutting edge. At the same time he began working with Jeff Barry, he snared a leading role in the red-hot Broadway musical Hair. Several of his fellow cast members tagged along for his Steed album dates at RCA Studios. With Ellie Greenwich leading the spirited backing chorus, McNamara came across sounding like the slightly off-key soloist in a Black Baptist church choir! Gospel-tinged his album may be, but McNamara will be best remembered for his lighthearted Pop hit "Lay A Little Lovin' On Me". Issued as a Steed single in the summer of 1970, it just missed Billboard's Top Ten in its 15-week run on the charts. If any one record were chosen to represent what the "Jukebox" Jeff sound is all about, "Lay A Little Lovin" would be a perfect example. So simple and melodic, yet it's so full of hooks, it's addictive.



There were failed acts on Steed Records, too, but their failure had nothing to do with the quality of their releases. Keepers Of The Light, fronted by Alzo Fronte and Ali Noor Uddin, brought a unique Bollywood sensibility to Rock 'n' Roll on their single "And I Don't Want Your Love". The versatile Rich Kids, led by singer Danny Belline, boomeranged from the Reggae-tinged Pop of "I've Got To Find Me A Woman" to the bone-jarring Punk of "You Made Me A Man", both sides penned by Barry and Kim. Duet act Louis St. Louis and Jacqueline Carol had an excellent shot at radio airplay with "One Time For Love", but somehow they missed the brass ring. Guitarist/songwriter Hank Shifter undoubtedly would've been Steed's answer to Neil Diamond had finely crafted releases like "Saturday Noontime" and "Mary On The Beach" found an audience. The hands-down best group on Steed was The Playhouse, a Mamas and Papas clone cobbled together from the remains of two early '60s acts, The Four-Evers and The Candy Girls. To this day, Jeff Barry can't understand why they didn't click with the public; listen to either of their flawless Steed releases ("Just We Two" b/w "C'mon And Ride" and "You Don't Know It" b/w "Love Is On Our Side") and you won't understand either! Indifference to superb sides like these made it easier for Barry to shut down his label when he was inevitably faced with the task.

"Jeff Barry" concludes with Part Four.