Brill Building Smackdown!

All great teams, but I'll always choose Bacharach/David in any fight.

king/goffin were p tight, love bacharach/david, not immediately familiar with the others. rec'd?

this poll is too hard.
requires effort on finding out who wrote what.
bottom line : they're all brill-iant.
sorry.

Great idea!

Jerry Lieber/Mike Stoller for volume of recordings, the work they did with the Coasters alone was great! But Carole King/Gerry Goffin wrote amazing songs together too. And of Burt Bacharach/Hal David came to define a certain 60's pop. I dunno.

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" - The Righteous Brothers (written by Mann, Weil and Phil Spector)

Goffin & King
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S510spFwA8M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAuSLEmEKM

All great teams, but I'll always choose Bacharach/David in any fight.

― Trey Imaginary Songz (WmC), Saturday, May 26, 2012 1:46 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

enjoying the mental image of burt bacharach in a knife fight right now

Leiber/Stoller for me.

the skinny:

Lieber/Stoller: "Hound Dog", "Young Blood", "Yakety Yak", "Spanish Harlem" (w/ Phil Spector), favored songwriters of Elvis Presley Phase 1 (pre-military)

Sedaka/Greenfield: "Stupid Cupid", "Oh! Carol", "Calendar Girl", "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", "Next Door To An Angel", favored songwriters of Connie Francis

King/Goffin: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "Take Good Care Of My Baby", "The Loco-Motion", "Some Kind Of Wonderful", "Up On The Roof", "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)"

Pomus/Shuman: "I'm A Man", "Turn Me Loose", "Teenager In Love", "This Magic Moment", "Save The Last Dance For Me", favored songwriters of Elvis Presley Phase 2 (pre-Vegas)

Bacharach/David: good Lord, where to start, "Walk On By", "Don't Make Me Over", "Make It Easy On Yourself", "24 Hours From Tulsa", "The man Who Shot Liberty Valance", pretty much every Dionne Warwick song of note

Mann/Weil: "Uptown", "On Broadway", "He's Sure The Boy I Love", "Blame It On The Bossa Nova", a bunch of tunes w/ Phil Spector ("You, Baby", "Walkin' In The Rain", "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'")

Barry/Greenwich: the motherlode (with Shadow Morton, pretty much all the great Shangri-La's tracks; with Phil Spector, songs like "River Deep Mountain High", "Girls Can Tell", "Baby, I Love You", "Then He Kissed Me", "Chapel Of Love", Da Doo Ron Ron" and, ahem, "Be My Baby")

and, of course, the myriad songs that were composed individually or by some combination of the above

Leiber & Stoller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj3OXBVPel0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKAq33q2k7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuszDqPhEL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnkh2OTtAk&feature=related

enjoying the mental image of burt bacharach in a knife fight right now

― some dude, Saturday, May 26, 2012 1:42 PM (12 minutes ago)

Fighting the winner of Carl Perkins vs. David Bowie!

i did this thing recently and Lieber & Stoller lost to Alicia Keys :(

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/03/new_york_musician_tournament_lieber_stoller_alicia_keys.php

and really love this girl pop song by Goffin & King
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3wubPFy41w

This is gonna be a squeaker.

Was Bert Burns not a part of the Brill Building Team?

Pomus And Shuman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAYrMsxMKp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B-7XZIHNd4

Drunkenly impulse voted for Mann/Weil - wrote both Vashti Bunyan's "Coldest Night Of The Year" (great cover by Dudley Benson) & the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", as well as those henry's already mentioned.

Can I recommend Ken Emerson's Always Magic In The Air as a good overview of the Brill Building era, and fish for any further reading on the subject?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61P369991XL._SS500_.jpg

well worth it

http://oldies.s3.amazonaws.com/i/boxart/large/bk/bk2824.jpg

lots of overlap with Brill Building songwriters in here:

http://amongoodfriends.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/100326-rise-and-fall-of-phil-spector.jpg

would love to have an English translation of this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517nEdrf78L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

haven't read this yet; anybody wanna rep for it?

http://www.di-arezzo.co.uk/multimedia/images/omnibus/couv/op53658.jpg

i did this thing recently and Lieber & Stoller lost to Alicia Keys :(

insanity!

Boyce & Hart would have almost merited consideration on this ballot. "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", "Hurt So Bad", "Words", "Last Train to Clarksville" the Monkees theme, etc.

Was Bert Burns not a part of the Brill Building Team?

Indeed, Bert Berns was a major Brill Building player ("Twist And Shout", "I Want Candy", "Here Comes The Night", "Everybody Wants Somebody To Love"). Many others too, of course. Not included in the poll because he mainly wrote alone and, unless he was strapped, would be outmanned in a square go against any of the teams listed above.

Boyce & Hart would have almost merited consideration on this ballot. "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", "Hurt So Bad", "Words", "Last Train to Clarksville" the Monkees theme, etc.

Definitely! "Be My Guest" by Fats Domino too. They seem to get left out of the Brill Building discussion a lot, probably because they hit their stride a few years after the Brill Building heyday, and were seen as more "west coast" given their TV industry connection.

That Pomus bio looks great, henry, and my local library in NZ has it - hopefully I'll remember to take a look for it when I'm back late July. Cheers!

I'll rep for that Pomus bio, the guy is a very good writer and had access to Doc's diaries so is really able to capture the way he spoke and thought. In a way it is a sequel to the great Ken Emerson book that was also mentioned. Hound Dog is also well worth reading, although you get the feeling that they pulled a few punches now and then which is why you should also read that article Josh Friedman wrote about them.-

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Goffin/King narrowly edged out by Bacharach/David. Because nobody who writes a song this exquisite should be allowed to lose a poll....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq_tlaTkAAY

this thread is going to make my brain explode.

sentimental reasons push me toward pomus/shuman

but goffin/king are amazing

probably have to give it to bacharach/david though, they're kind of next level

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Forgot to vote. Probably should have gone with Doc and Mort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=741qjvkUxwg

surprised bacharach didn't come out on top

saw a documentary AKA Doc Pomus, familiar bio-style but I learned a lot. It'll be getting a release later this year I hope.

http://akadocpomus.com/

Dying to see that. Walked by some kind of special screening a while back that was not open to the public and saw the poster and ever since then.

One of the interviewees is Pomus protege Scott Fagan (Stephin Merritt's father).

Interesting. I wanna see that too

Pomus doc plays NY, LA, SF, DC, Sea in the fall

http://akadocpomus.com/screenings/

One day only for us.

One day only for DC too. Lotsa one showing only at festival screenings.

I enjoyed that Pomus doc.

A book launch event -- for Joel Selvin's ' Here Comes The Night' about Bert Berns -- has been organised at the Bitter End Club (Greenwich Village) on Tuesday 22nd April. The cast of the upcoming 'off-Broadway' show 'Piece Of My Heart' will be performing along with Betty Harris, Kenny Hamber & Brenda Reid.

The book states that it tells the tale of the dark side of Bert Berns & the dirty business of Rhythm & Blues !! Blurb on the book ..... Here Comes the Night is both a definitive account of the golden age of rhythm and blues of the early '60s and the harrowing, ultimately tragic story of songwriter and record producer Bert Berns, whose meteoric career was fueled by his pending doom. His heart damaged by rheumatic fever as a youth, Berns was not expected to live to see 21. Although his name is little remembered today, Berns worked alongside all the greats of the era--Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, Burt Bacharach, Phil Spector, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, anyone who was anyone in New York rhythm and blues. In seven quick years, he went from nobody to the top of the pops--producer of monumental r&b classics, songwriter of "Twist and Shout," "My Girl Sloopy," "Piece of My Heart," and others. His fury to succeed led Berns to use his Mafia associations to muscle Atlantic Records out of their partnership and intimidate new talents like Neil Diamond and Van Morrison, whom he had signed to his record label. Berns died at age 38 from a long-expected (?) heart attack, just when he was seeing his grandest plans and life's ambitions frustrated and foiled.

My understanding is that there were some "silent partners" in Bang records- maybe Berns had a gambling problem?- and when things went bad they took over the whole thing from the Erteguns and Jerry Wexler.

Thanks, I will take your word for it. I'm just mostly a newbie re Berns.

Joel Selvin on Legendary R&B producer Bert Berns, Monday, April 28th at Moe's Books in Berkeley. But no appearances near me

You can read a little about this stuff in the recent bio of Ahmet Ertegun The Lasf Sultan.

Sitting in my stack of books to read, along with "Always Magic in the Air"! I know some of the music, just not much re its creation

*bump*

Leafing through the Bert Berns book. Now I remember where I saw the author's name before- he wrote an apparently nasty book about Ricky Nelson that I avoided in favor of two other books about him which I can recommend to you. This writer seems to have a lot of annoying ticks, applying the hyperbolic, too much coffee style, and the book retells some of the same old stories you can read elsewhere, featuring pages and pages where Berns is not even mentioned, so it really is more Another Brill Building Book, This One Highlighting Bert Berns Since That's What The Contract Was For, but it features lots of (gory) detail that I don't think I've seen before so I'll take it.

I guess the book is a tie-in of sorts with an upcoming just off-Broadway musical that Selvin contributed to, "Piece Of My Heart: The Music Of Bert Berns."

Yep.

I have this vague recollection of folks I know in the San Francisco area disliking author Selvin, who lives out there and writes for various newspapers and sites out there too

On a Yahoo soul group email, contributors were real excited that Betty Harris would be singing at the April 22 Bitter End club event

Among his many annoying tics is not seeming to make enough effort to identify everybody that appears in a photo.

Wondering if that isn't Eydie Gorme on the left in the photo at the end of Chapter VIII.

Anyway some interesting info buried in here. According to Selvin, Berns discovered Paul Griffin, in the sense that he was the first to use him on a recording date, although the story as recounted doesn't totally make sense.

http://time.com/28468/paul-mccartney-video-bert-berns-songwriter/

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

Which links to this, which is kind of interesting: https://paulevans.com/recollec.htm

Oh cool.

So a documentary film was made based on the Bert Berns story. Pretty entertaining. Talks about the mob connections and more importantly all the amazing songs he wrote and/ or produced.