ellie
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Artist:
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Album:I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine
I am just so sad about the passing of Ellie Greenwich.
A few years ago, at a Burt Bacharach show at Radio City, I turned to emscee and said, "So basically he wrote every song ever written."
A mild exaggeration (though it seemed true at that moment). The rest were written by Ellie and Jeff, Carole and Gerry, Barry and Cynthia, Mike and Jerry. These weren't just records. They weren't just the wondrous jumble of background noise in our childhoods. They were like... air, organic and omnipresent.
These are just a few of Elile's: Be My Baby," "Leader of the Pack," "River Deep, Mountain High," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Do Wah Diddy," "And Then He Kissed Me" [first dance at my wedding], "Chapel of Love," "Hanky Panky," "Christmas, Baby (Please Come Home), "A Fine Fine Boy, "Baby I Love You, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy, "Gee Baby Gee," "I Can Hear Music, "Maybe I Know" [title of a short story I wrote], "Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry," "You Should've Seen The Way He Looked At Me." Et cetera.
But this isn't an official bio, or obit. I can't even make the case that Ellie was a female pioneer, or some feminist role model, or whatnot. The beautiful thing was that it didn't occur to us girls then that there was something unusual in women being part of the creative force behind these records, if we were even aware that there were people behind the names on those magical 45s. We just plain loved these songs.
This is one of the (I think) lesser-known ones. The Ronettes did it first, with Spector commotion, but right now I'm going with this one, and its wistful sorrow.
Comments (4)
That's beautiful. This Orton's voice is lovely. I imagine the Ronnettes' version is not bad either.
I was listening to "Baby I Love You" from Andy Kim when I heard the news. Very sad news for the music world.
:=(
The brilliance of Ellie Greenwich was that she could write both those sophisticated teen operas for Spector and Morton and something as gloriously stupid as 'Hanky Panky'. Burt Bacharach can't do that.
RIP, there is no doubting the power of these tunes..as Susan Douglas points out in the book I'm reading for school, Where The Girls Are?,
"Even though the girl groups were produced and managed by men, it was in their music that the contradictory messages about female sexuality and rebelliousness were most poignantly and authentically expressed."
The Brill Building women were a huge part of that...