So yesterday we had a Phil Spector-influenced song...

How about an actual Phil Spector song? "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Phil Spector, sung by (a quite young) U2:

Video posted by Justin Duarte

And sung by the original singer, Darlene Love (with Patti LaBelle), just a year ago:

Video posted by The View

According to Rolling Stone (2010), if you're looking for the best rock 'n' roll Christmas song of all time look no farther because you've just heard it. And if it reminds you of "Be My Baby" or "Da Doo Ron Ron" you have a good ear, because those were written by the same three songwriters.

***

Phil Spector (who is Jewish) was born in the Bronx and grew up in California. He formed a music group, The Teddy Bears, with three high school friends, and one of their songs reached #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. That was pretty much it for them, though, so they disbanded in 1959, at which point Spector started working as an apprentice for Leiber and Stoller and his music career took off. Of course, Spector is primarily famous for his impressive and enormously influential career as record producer and musical "architect"--he developed the "Wall of Sound" and produced more than 25 Top 40 hits in the 1960s (can you say "Girl Groups"?). He is, alas, secondarily famous for his 2009 murder conviction, which is not Christmas-y at all, so let's turn to his collaborators on this song.

Ellie Greenwich (also Jewish) got into music by playing accordion as a child, and was composing songs by her teens. By her own telling, she met Archie Bleyer (owner of Cadence Records) when she was 14, and he liked her songs but told her to continue her education before trying to crack the music world. In high school she joined a couple of friends in a singing group, and by age 17 she had released a self-written single. When in college, she met Jeff Barry--they were distantly related, but only met formally then. Barry (originally Joel Adelberg, and Jewish as well) had served in the army after graduating high school, and on his return to New York started college only to leave to pursue his dreams of a music career. He recorded a number of singles and had some success as a songwriter. After meeting with Greenwich, the two of them began writing songs together as well as with other songwriting partners (which for Greenwich included Phil Spector). When Barry and Greenwich got married a few years later, they decided to write only together.

It was during their marriage that Greenwich and Barry wrote "Christmas"--and a great many other hit songs, both with and without Spector--and helped create the "Girl Group" sound. Although the marriage didn't last, and both were successful as songwriters both before and after their marriage, as a team they were extraordinary, co-writing 25 songs that went gold or platinum. They received the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ahmet Ertegun Award in 2010 for helping define the Brill Building sound.



[Note of interest to me personally: I worked in the Brill Building for a while, although not, alas, in the music industry.]

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