Classic Pop Icons

When Tony Orlando was interviewed for Ken Emerson’s terrific history of the Brill Building, “Always Magic in the Air”, he recalled the contribution that song publisher/plugger Don Kirshner made to productions of songs written and produced by the talented group of composers he’d assembled for his Aldon publishing company and Dimension record label. “When Donnie closed his eyes and swayed his head, you knew you’d hit the pocket. He’d get this look of delight like someone tasting a fine wine, and you’d go ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a hit!’ But if he didn’t do that you were still searching.”

Orlando’s anecdote reveals Kirshner to have been that rarest of all species, the pop music mogul who genuinely loved pop music. That makes Kirshner’s passing on January 17 all the sadder. Despite the fact that Kirshner couldn’t play, read or sing, he was one of the key figures in the industry in the early 1960s. And his love of his music helped chart the course of rock and pop music for the remainder of its history.

The son of a Harlem tailor, the Bronx-raised Kirshner was a star athlete in high school and won a basketball scholarship to college. A meeting with Frankie Laine encouraged him to make a demo in an attempt to build a career as a lyricist. Using an existing melody, Kirshner racked up his first publication although no one recorded it.

Bobby Darin & Don Kirshner

Around the time of his graduation from college in 1956, Kirshner started a collaboration with a pre-fame Bobby Darin, a fellow Bronx native. The pair had some success in placing some songs with name artists like Gene Vincent and Lavern Baker, but nothing to encourage Kirshner that he had a future as a songwriter.

A meeting with Doc Pomus convinced Kirshner that publishing might be his best chance for a pop music career. Kirshner often conceded in interviews that while he had no talent, he had an uncanny gift for finding it in others.

To that end, he set up a publishing company Aldon Music in 1958. The Al in Aldon was Al Nevins, a former member of the 1940 instrumental group the Three Suns. Nevins was 43 and in ill-health but wanted to stay a viable part of the then rapidly changing music scene. Kirshner, a young pop music junkie, provided him a channel to gauge what would and would not hit. He also had endless energy and balls of brass. Nevins provided the formal musical knowledge that Kirshner did not possess. It was a perfect partnership.

Not long after they opened shop at 1650 Broadway, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield knocked on their door after being rejected by other publishers in the building. When Kirshner was able to place their “Stupid Cupid” with Connie Francis and scored a Top 20 hit, the new company had its first songwriting team. This started a five year hot streak of Kirshner finding and, along with Nevins, developing new talent including Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, among others.

Connie Francis – “Stupid Cupid”

Kirshner not only gave the songwriters a home, money and outlet for their songs; he also provided advice and comfort, often playing a father figure role even though he was just a few years older than they were. He also provided inspiration. “He was like our father,” Sedaka told Emerson. “He got very excited over music and it was infectious. We would all go in his office and play our songs at the end of the day.”

In this role, Kirshner was, along with his partner Nevins, Phil Spector and Leiber and Stoller, one of the most important figures in establishing the Brill Building sound that defined much of the early 1960s. It was a sound that set the stage for pop music’s later history.

Like Kirshner, nearly all of Aldon’s signings were middle class Americans. This represented an expansion of the pool of talent in the new music. Nearly all of rock’s first generation came from America’s underclass – blacks and poor disenfranchised whites. Through the artists who composed and produced from the Brill Building, the American middle class found a direct voice in the music. Previously (save Ricky Nelson) the voice that middle class teenagers found in the music came via their consumption. Now they were also creators, who expressed themselves directly, rather than indirectly, through the music. It was the final step in making rock ‘n’ roll the music of all youth.

Another characteristic that most of Kirshner’s signings shared that separated them from the first generation of rockers was that they had at least some formal education and formal training in music. This brought a tremendous self-conscious sense of craft to the music. A track like Goffin and King’s masterpiece “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” shows the maturation that the Brill Building brought to the rock form. Rock had brought sex into the pop mainstream. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” eloquently expresses the meaning of sex after the act. It’s a crucial step to the more intellectualized music that would come in the wake of Bob Dylan.

The Shirelles – “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”

The greater sense of pure musical and lyrical craft that the Brill Building masters brought to rock ‘n’ roll also created in Phil Spector the first self-conscious statement of the music as art, more than dance music. Without Spector and his “little symphonies for the kids” you don’t get to the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper. And you don’t get to Phil Spector without Kirshner and his talented group of Aldon songwriters, many of whom provided the West Coast genius with his finest moments. If, as Brill Building advocate Emerson suggests, this legacy erased some of rock’s wild edge, I would say that Sgt Pepper did the same thing.

If that wasn’t legacy enough, there was also Kirshner’s glorious ear. Kirshner knew a hit when he heard one and was almost always able to place his compositions with the right artists (even if as in a case like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” he wound up there in a circuitous route). He placed hits with the Drifters, Spector, Dion, the Shirelles, Bobby Vee and dozens of others. Some of these including the Crystals’ “Uptown,” the Drifters’ “Up on the Roof” and the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” were not only some of the finest compositions of their era, but the finest recordings as well.

Don Kirshner, Carole King & Gerry Goffin

Ultimate proof of the felicity of Kirshner’s taste and vision is Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion.” Goffin and King intended the song for a professional singer, perhaps someone on the heavily dance oriented Cameo-Parkway label. They made an excellent demo with their babysitter Little Eva Boyd singing lead. When Kirshner heard the demo, he ordered King and Goffin to release the demo on Dimension with Eva on lead and only a few additional overdubs. With its blaring horns, propulsive drum beat, staggering volume, compulsive rhythm and Little Eva’s jittery amateurish vocal, “The Loco-Motion” was a force of nature as much as a pop record. It’s Spector’s Wall of Sound before he fully invented it. Its mix of direct simplicity and sophistication (particularly in the use of saxes) makes it a perfect marriage between rock’s first and second era. On some days I think it’s the greatest record ever made. Without Kirshner’s soul deep love and appreciation of popular music, we might never have heard it. Kirshner told the New Yorker he had a “golden ear” and he was right.

Little Eva – “The Loco-Motion”

That appreciation is so much more astounding because it is so rare for a man who occupied a position like Kirshner’s. When the mogul came of age in the 1950s, two of the top song publishers in rock and blues were Morris Levy and Don Robey, gangsters whose only care about popular music was the profits it generated. The best known musical mogul of the era was Colonel Tom Parker who viewed all show business as a carny hustle. Today, the picture isn’t much brighter with mostly bean counters occupying the decision-making positions. Can anyone picture Simon Cowell’s head swaying back and forth because he’s so moved by a performance that hits it just right?

There is no doubt that Kirshner loved a dollar. He also wasn’t especially generous in sharing publishing and royalties as the ‘60s wore on. However, there is no doubt that he decided to make his dollars where he made them because music was where his heart was. That heart helped him develop a stable of talent that brought us some of the best popular music we’ve ever heard. The world doesn’t too often mourn the passing of industry suits. This is one time we should make an exception. Unlike a Morris Levy or a Colonel Parker things are better because this guy was here.

The primary biographical source for this article was Emerson’s book “Always Magic in the Air.”