The photos that were issued featured Barry and Greenwich, and Ellie's younger sister Laura, who otherwise had nothing to do with the group whatsoever. Now there was demand for the Raindrops, including publicity stills. The next Raindrops single, "The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget," got to number 17, an unabashed hit. Their demo was considered so good that the record company, Jubilee, decided to release it, and chose the credit it to "the Raindrops." The demo got to number 41 on the charts, considered a respectable beginning in those days, especially for a non-existent group - Barry would someday get considerably more experience writing for non-existent groups, but that's later in the story. They began recording together commercially with "What a Guy," a song originally intended for a vocal group called the Sensations. They finally linked up in business a year later, and spent much of that time collaborating with Phil Spector on such songs as "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Then He Kissed Me," "Be My Baby," and "Baby I Love You." Their marital partnership began on October 28, 1963, but their songwriting partnership had to wait, as each was signed to a different publishing company. Meanwhile, Barry recorded as a singer with several groups, including the Redwoods and the Spartans. Greenwich graduated Hofstra into a publishing career, and in collaboration with writers like Ben Raleigh (who also worked with Barry) and Tony Powers, got a half dozen of her songs recorded. By the end of 1960, Barry was divorced, and he and Greenwich began dating, writing, and recording demos together at the Brill Building, where Barry's publisher employer was based. Barry's first big success came along the next year with the song "Tell Laura I Love Her," one of the most haunting and notorious of the teenage "death songs" that became popular in the early '60s - Ray Peterson scored a huge hit with it that year, and soon after British pop singer Ricky Valance also recorded it for the English market. Marks Publishers.īarry and Greenwich later met once again at a Thanksgiving dinner in 1959 - Barry was married at the time, but he introduced Greenwich to a friend, and they started dating. Barry entered the music business in a more successful manner in 1959 as a songwriter working for E.B. Greenwich was studying at Queens College at the time, and one of her professors so disliked the song that he humiliated her in front of a class over it, and she subsequently changed colleges. Meanwhile, Greenwich released her very first commercial recording in 1958 (under the name Ellie Gaye), entitled "Cha-Cha-Charming," on RCA. Barry graduated from high school in 1955, put in some army service, and afterward attended City College in Manhattan. Greenwich, who grew up in Levittown, Long Island, began writing songs in junior high school even as she studied music, and led a girl trio called the Jivettes while still in high school - Greenwich's instrument at the time was the accordion. Both showed a precocious interest in the creative side of music, and before he was eight years old, Barry (who was influence heavily by country & western music) had written his first song. On the other hand, as a studio singing group, they assembled one of the more impressive bodies of popular vocal music of the early '60s to come out of that edifice known as the Brill Building, the early-'60s successor to Tin Pan Alley of the 1920s, which also served as proving grounds for the likes of Phil Spector, Don Kirshner, and numerous other luminaries of American pop/rock.īarry (born Jeffrey Adelberg, April 3, 1939, Brooklyn, NY) and Greenwich (born October 23, 1940, Brooklyn, NY) were from two families related by marriage, and first met when they were age five and four, respectively. The Raindrops are, on one level, little more than a footnote in the much broader musical careers of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry.
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