Profile of Jeff Barry on Famous Like Me

Jeff Barry (born Joel Adelberg, 1938, Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Ellie Greenwich (born 1940, Brooklyn, N.Y.) comprised one of the most prolific and successful Brill Building song writing and production teams in the early 1960's.

First meeting in late 1959, Barry and Greenwich did some writing together, but kept to separate paths. Barry's first chart success was "Tell Laura I Love Her" recorded by Ray Peterson. At this time Barry was also recording under his own name, but had little success. Greenwich stayed in college until her graduation in 1962, all the while writing songs and travelling to the Brill Building on weekends to cut demonstration records of other people's songs. (She became known as "New York's Demo Queen.") One day Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller heard her singing from the next room, mistook her for Carole King, and subsequently offered her a job as a staff writer for their Trio Music publishing company. Barry, also a Brill Building regular, was subsequently signed to the same company.

A Greenwich pairing with Tony Powers led to a few hits, such as "Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Hearts?" (Bobby Soxx and the Blue Jeans), "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" (Darlene Love), and "He's Got The Power" (Exciters), but after Ellie married Jeff in 1963, they became exclusive writing partners. The duo, in collaboration with Phil Spector, wrote several of his best remembered records: "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Then He Kissed Me," (Crystals) and "Be My Baby" and "Baby I Love You." (Ronettes).

In early 1963, Greenwich and Barry, recording as the Raindrops, had chart success with such songs as "What A Guy" and "The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget." (Through overdubbing, Greenwich supplied the lead and background vocals.) In 1964 Leiber and Stoller put the pair in charge of their newly founded Red Bird Records. Fifteen of Red Bird's first twenty releases made the charts, all written and/or produced by the Barry/Greenwich team, including "Chapel of Love," "People Say," and "Iko Iko" (Dixie Cups), "Walkin' In The Sand," and "Leader of the Pack," (Shangri-Las.)

Barry and Greenwich left Red Bird in early 1966 and with their latest discovery, Neil Diamond, they signed with Bert Berns' Bang Records. There they produced Diamond's first hits: "Cherry, Cherry," "Solitary Man," "Kentucky Woman," and "Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon." With Phil Spector, they also continued to write classics like "River Deep, Mountain High" (Ike and Tina Turner) and "I Can Hear Music' (Ronettes, Beach Boys), but with their marriage having ended the year before, they found it difficult to continue their collaboration. Barry subsequently moved to California and in the late sixties, in partnership with singer Andy Kim, wrote and produced the musical material used on TV's The Archie Show ("Sugar, Sugar"). He also produced several songs for the Monkees ("I'm A Believer"). He also founded his own label, Steed Records.

In 197l, Greenwich made her first solo album, "Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung," which included new versions of the hits she'd written with Barry. She wrote and performed in the 1985 Broadway musical, "Leader of the Pack," a tribute to the Brill Building era.

Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich were inducted into the Songwriter's Hall Of Fame in May 1991.

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