Rethinking Edith Wharton

DATE April 16, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Songwriter/singer Neil Sedaka talks about his new CD
called "Neil Sedaka: The Definitive Collection," featuring his
original recordings in the late '50s and early '60s
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

In the late 1950s, my guest was one of the songwriters churning out hits in a
Manhattan office building that became known as pop's new "Tin Pan Alley." Neil
Sedaka started out in the music industry 50 years ago. To celebrate that
anniversary, he has a new CD called "Neil Sedaka: The Definitive Collection,"
featuring the original recordings of hits he wrote and sang in the late '50s
and early '60s, including "Oh, Carol," "Stairway to Heaven," "Calendar Girl,"
"Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" and "Next Door to
an Angel." It also includes recordings he made in the '70s, like "Laughter in
the Rain" after Elton John signed Sedaka to John's own label, Rocket Records.
And there's a few demos Sedaka recorded of songs he wrote that became hits for
others, like "Stupid Cupid" and "Love Will Keep Us Together." Sedaka's music
was back on the charts three years ago, after he was a judge on "American
Idol" and Clay Aiken recorded "Solitaire." Let's start with this 1961 Sedaka
hit.

(Soundbite from "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen")

Mr. NEIL SEDAKA: (Singing) "Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Happy birthday,
sweet sixteen. Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Happy birthday, sweet sixteen.
Tonight's the night I've waited for because you're not a baby anymore. You've
turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Happy birthday, sweet sixteen.
What happened to..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Neil Sedaka, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let me just ask you a question
about the record we just heard. Now you're double-tracked, your vocal is
double-tracked on it.

Mr. SEDAKA: Yeah.

GROSS: Why was that done so much in the late '50s and early '60s?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, I learned from listening to some of the greats, Les Paul &
Mary Ford, Patti Page, and I was one of the first in rock and roll in the late
'50s and early '60s to do multiple voices. I'm a lover of harmony singing. I
had a group in high school, in Lincoln High School back in Brooklyn, called
the Tokens, who went on to their own illustrious career, "The Lion Sleeps
Tonight." I think it became a Neil Sedaka trademark. The early records were
very, very happy and very positive, perhaps a little naive, but you could
understand all the lyrics.

GROSS: Now when you were in your teens, or just out of them, you had a knack
for writing songs that would appeal to teenagers, maybe particularly to
teenage girls because the songs often had the message they wanted to hear,
like they're growing up and becoming very desirable. Did you think about that
consciously? Did you think of yourselves as writing songs for teens?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, we were the teenagers of New York coming from the Brill
Building School of Songwriting, and, yes, we were writing for the teenage
market. The early lyrics or collaboration with Howard Greenfield, who was a
marvelous lyricist and who could concise--it was almost the art of writing a
three-minute song, and we could tell a whole story in three minutes, "Happy
Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," from the beginning to the end is a little novelette.

GROSS: Did you always start with a lyrical hook, as well as a musical one?

Mr. SEDAKA: I always wrote the melody first. Being a musician, I started as
a student of the piano at the Juilliard School, so I was a very studied
musician. I always started with the melody first, and I would prepare two or
three melodies for Howie and play them that day and whatever mood he might be
in, he would choose one of those, and then it was a give and take. If the
lyrics didn't fit, I would change a melody or a motif, and then he might
change somethings to accommodate me. It was a very close collaboration.

GROSS: Now, were you in the Brill Building or the building near the building
that's off...(unintelligible)...

Mr. SEDAKA: Sixteen-nineteen.

GROSS: So it wasn't the Brill Building. It was the one next to it.

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes, but we referred to it as the new Brill Building, the young
writers, as opposed to the Irving Caesars in 1615, the old writers across the
street.

GROSS: So you're just like the rock and roll Tin Pan Alley building as
opposed to the Tin Pan Alley, Tin Pan Alley building.

Mr. SEDAKA: Exactly.

GROSS: So this is an office building where a lot of like young songwriters
were working under contract churning out songs. Who else was writing there
when you were there?

Mr. SEDAKA: I'm always asked. People are fascinated with the Brill
Building. I brought Carole King, who I was dating in high school. Howie
Greenfield and I were the first writers to be signed to Olden Music at the
Brill Building, and then I brought Carole King and Gerry Goffin. The others
were Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Neil
Diamond came for a time and Paul Simon. It was a very illustrious group. It
was excellent training. We came into an office, a cubicle. It was a tiny
office, from 10 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon, five days a week, and
we wrote songs for a living, and it was, you know, one day you could come up
with nothing, but the next day you were able to piece it together.

GROSS: Were you all competitive with each other or friendly?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, you know, competition is good and creativity, you bounce
off other creative people. I think people are inspired by other musicians.
So it was a good atmosphere, and at the end of the day, all of us would go
into Al Nevins' office and play the songs, and they would say which artists
are coming up for sessions, whether it be the Righteous Brothers or The
Chiffons or so many groups, and the best song won out.

GROSS: Most of the songwriters there were writing for other singers, and you
wrote songs that other singers recorded, but you wrote a lot of songs that you
recorded yourself. Were you originally hired to write for other people?

Mr. SEDAKA: I came in as a writer, the first six months, and two of my songs
were recorded. Connie Francis did "Stupid Cupid," and before that, Atlantic
Records. Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler took my songs and recorded them with
Clyde McPhatter and LaVern Baker, but about six months to a year into the
contract, I was 19 and I had a great desire to record my own songs, and I was
brought into RCA Victor. Steve Schultz who was the top A&R man, he had just
brought Elvis Presley from Sun Records to RCA, and I auditioned for him with a
song called "The Diary," and he signed me to a five-year contract. And,
Terry, I was very fortunate between 1958 and 1963, to the shock of my family,
after studying at the Juilliard, I sold 40 million records in the five years.

GROSS: Yah.

Mr. SEDAKA: So I did--I was...

GROSS: I'm sure your parents were happy about that in spite of their
classical aspirations for you.

Mr. SEDAKA: My mother, in fact, was not happy at the beginning, but you
know, I bought her her mink stole, so she was very, very happy after that.

GROSS: When you were at the Brill Building, you wrote a song that was
recording by Gene Pitney. It's a great song, "It Hurts to Be in Love." Now, I
didn't know you wrote that.

Mr. SEDAKA: I didn't.

GROSS: You didn't? But...

Mr. SEDAKA: No.

GROSS: But it's demo'ed on here.

Mr. SEDAKA: I know. It was written by Howard Greenfield and Helen Miller.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. SEDAKA: When I heard it, I was so excited, I wanted to record it. At
the time I was recording for RCA Victor, and I brought them in a finished
demonstration record, and they said, `Well, it's good, but in your contract,
it stipulates that you have to record in our studios.' So I went in and tried
to recreate it once again and it failed, and I was very persistent and tried
to persuade them to put out the demo but they wouldn't. At that time, Gene
Pitney came into the picture, a wonderful singer, and he took my voice off the
demo and put his voice on. Subsequently it was a monstrous hit and you can
still hear my demo when you hear his voice, but now it's the original demo on
this definitive collection with my voice.

GROSS: Did...

Mr. SEDAKA: But it's a wonderful song.

GROSS: ...but did you participate in the orchestrations of them?

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes. I played the piano and the handclaps and all of the
background voices. I wish I wrote it.

GROSS: So is it your background voices and the piano that we hear on the Gene
Pitney version?

Mr. SEDAKA: Exactly.

GROSS: Really? So he just like took the whole arrangement, took you out of
the vocals and put his own on?

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes, he took my voice off the track, and it was exactly the same
track, yes.

GROSS: Oh, that's really interesting. Well, let's hear it. This is the demo
that Neil Sedaka recorded before Gene Pitney actually recorded "It Hurts to Be
in Love."

(Soundbite from "It Hurts to Be in Love")

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "It hurts to be in love when the only one you love
turns out to be someone who's not in love with you. It hurts to love her so
when deep down inside you know she will never want you no matter what you do.
And so you cry a little bit."

Unidentified Singers: (Singing in unison) "It hurts to be in love."

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "You die a little bit."

Singers: (Singing in unison) "It hurts to be in love."

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "Day and night, night and day, it hurts to be in love
this way. Our love cannot exist watching lips I'll never kiss. She gives all
her kisses to somebody else. She thinks I'm just a friend..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: We've just heard Neil Sedaka's demo of "It Hurts to Be in Love," which
is included on Neil Sedaka's new anthology, "The Definitive Collection of Neil
Sedaka."

During the era that we're talking about, which is late '50s, early '60s, how
often did you do "American Bandstand"?

Mr. SEDAKA: Oh, five or six times, Terry. Dick Clark was a great friend and
mentor, and he put me on his "Beechnut" Saturday night show. He put me on the
afternoon "American Bandstand." And it was very exciting because I would run
home from school to watch it. Little did I think that I would ever be on. It
was very, very exciting time.

GROSS: What was it like lip-syncing on the show? How would you rehearse to
lip-sync?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, you know, writing the songs and performing them for so
many concerts, I had no trouble lip-syncing. So I take great pride in my old
lip-syncing on those shows. And it was one of those things that you had to
do. There were hops, teenage hops. You did a favor for the disc jockey by
appearing at his sock hop, and in exchange, he would play the record in the
evening on his radio show. Alan Freed and Murray the K and Cousin Brucie. It
was an exciting time.

GROSS: Were there other favors you were expected to do for DJs to get the
airplay?

Mr. SEDAKA: The hop was the big one and maybe sign some autographs and
appear on his radio show.

GROSS: Payola. Was that ever an issue when you were recording?

Mr. SEDAKA: Not to my knowledge. I know that at the very beginning, RCA
gave some refrigerators away and some televisions, but that was the extent of
it. To launch a new artist, I think they did, in those years, give some
gifts.

GROSS: Like give a refrigerator to a DJ?

Mr. SEDAKA: Perhaps.

GROSS: What was it like the first time you heard one of your records on the
radio?

Mr. SEDAKA: The thrill of a lifetime. I'll never forget, my mother and I
were driving in the car down King's Highway in Brooklyn, New York, and there
was a push button AM radio in my car, and "The Diary" had just come out and I
pushed three buttons, three different stations, and I was on three stations at
the same time. Well, that was quite heady stuff for a teenager. It was a
dream come true.

GROSS: My guest is Neil Sedaka. His new CD is called "The Definitive
Collection."

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is songwriter and singer Neil Sedaka. His new CD is a career
retrospective of hit songs that he wrote.

I want to play another song that's included on your new collection, and this
is "Stairway to Heaven." And this is an example of like, you know, an early
rock and roll pop hit that had a pretty elaborate orchestration. I mean, am I
hearing a bass saxophone on here?

Mr. SEDAKA: No...

GROSS: No.

Mr. SEDAKA: It was a baritone sax.

GROSS: OK. OK.

Mr. SEDAKA: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And...

Mr. SEDAKA: And it became a trademark. I called it the "sandwich song,"
because it started with a piece of bread, (singing) "Climb up, way up high."
And then the meat of the song was the actual lyric, (singing) "Well-a, well-a,
well-a, heavenly angel." And it ended again with a piece of bread, (singing)
"Climb up, way up high." And it became a Neil Sedaka trademark, the sandwich
song I call it.

GROSS: Well, another Neil Sedaka trademark is the "Well-a, well-as" or the
"Come, doobie-doobies."

Mr. SEDAKA: Oh, yes, the onomatopoeia. I was fascinated with the syllables
sung to music, and that became sort of a trademark.

GROSS: How did it become a trademark, and how did you figure out what
syllables to use, whether it should be well-a, well-a or doobie-doobie?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, it started early in the career, and it was kind of someone
singing along. Perhaps they were just getting into the song and they didn't
get into the lyric yet, so they were going, (singing) "Down doobie doo, down
down," before they began the actual song, and it was--how did I choose the
syllables? The most important thing in songwriting was the marriage of the
words and music and the syllables had to fit the particular melody, and I was
very keen on that marriage of lyrics or syllables set to music. I think the
great writers, the Jerome Kerns or the Frank Loessers, the Irving Berlins had
that marriage of words and music that was the magic.

GROSS: OK, so here's Neil Sedaka singing his song, "Stairway to Heaven," and
this is one of the songs included on his new collection, "The Definitive
Collection of Neil Sedaka."

(Soundbite from "Stairway to Heaven")

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "Climb up, way up high, climb up, way up high, climb
up, way up high. Ohhhhh. Well-a, well-a, well-a, heavenly angel, I want you
for my girl. When I kissed your sweet, sweet lip, I knew that you were out of
this world. I build a stairway to heaven. I'll climb to the highest star.
I'll build a stairway to heaven 'cause heaven is where you are. Well-a,
well-a, well-a, over the rainbow. That's where I'm going to climb. Way up
high where the bluebirds fly, I'm going to love you all of the time. I'll
build a stairway to heaven. I'll climb to the highest star. I'll build a
stairway to heaven 'cause heaven is where you are..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Neil Sedaka from his new CD, "The Definitive Collection of Neil
Sedaka."

Now, you know, we were talking before we heard that about how one of your
trademarks is the, you know, the scout-like syllable things, "well-a,
well-a"...

Mr. SEDAKA: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...or in the case of the next song we're going to hear "Down doobie
doobie" in "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."

Mr. SEDAKA: Yeah.

GROSS: What was the first song you did that on?

Mr. SEDAKA: Oh, I think it was "Oh, Carol," I did the double voice, but
"Breaking Up" is an interesting song because, I think, I'm the only artist who
has recorded his song twice. I did it first as a rock and roll song in 1962,
and then I rerecorded "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" 15 years later as a slow,
gin mill song, and I don't think anybody else has done the same song in two
different tempos, and by the way, both of them were huge successes.

GROSS: Yeah. We're going to hear them back to back but, before we do, what
made you decide to do a slower and more adult version of the song in 1975?

Mr. SEDAKA: Good question. Lenny Welch, a great singer who had a hit called
"Since I Fell for You"...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. SEDAKA: ...was a friend and asked if I had any follow-up to "Since I
Fell for You," and I was fooling around at the piano one day and discovered
that "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" worked as a slow song, and I presented it to
him. He loved it and recorded it as a ballad, and it was an R&B hit, and then
I would do it as an encore in my concerts. And the audience reaction was so
good that I decided to rerecord it as a ballad.

GROSS: And you made some changes on it. It's not just that the tempo's
slower. The chords are really different.

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, of course. It's a more sophisticated--and when you have a
ballad hit, it's a career move. It's a much better career vehicle, and when
you're doing it as a jazz piece, you automatically change some of the chords
to make them sound like a standard, like you're listening to a Dinah
Washington record.

GROSS: OK, so let's hear Neil Sedaka's two versions of his song "Breaking Up
Is Hard to Do." The first from 1962; the second from 1975. Both versions are
featured on his new CD, "The Definitive Collection of Neil Sedaka."

(Soundbite from "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," first version)

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "Doo-doo-doo-down-doobie-doo-down-down, comma, comma.
Down-doobie-doo-down-down, comma, comma. Down-doobie-doo-down-down. Breaking
up is hard to do. Don't take your love away from me. Don't you leave my
heart in misery. If you go, then I'll be blue 'cause breaking up is hard to
do. Remember...."

(End of soundbite)

(Soundbite from "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," second version)

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "Remember when you held me tight and you kissed me all
through the night. Think of all that we've been through, and breaking up is
hard to do. They say that breaking up is hard to do..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Neil Sedaka's new CD is called "The Definitive Collection." He'll be
back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR.

I'm Terry Gross back with Neil Sedaka. He has a new CD of recordings that
span his career called "The Definitive Collection." It includes "Oh, Carol,"
"Calendar Girl," "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," "Laughter in the Rain" and
his 1962 and '75 hit recordings of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."

Now, of course, you know, on "American Idol," a few years ago, Ruben did a
slow version of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do"...

Mr. SEDAKA: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And Clay, of course, recorded "Solitaire," and you were a judge, a
guest judge.

Mr. SEDAKA: Mmm.

GROSS: What kind of advice did they ask you--did they give you before--did
they tell you to be nice or to take the gloves off and be tough?

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, you know, I wanted to be tough, but my son said, `Dad, you
know, there are 30 million people watching. Be careful of what you say,' and
you know, I think that it's a very difficult--these kids are on in front of
millions and millions of people. It's a very difficult thing. But I must
tell you how I got on. Everyone was saying, `Oh, Neil, you must be a
celebrity judge,' I said, `Oh, there are so many people trying to get on,' and
my publicist called and said, `Perhaps if you called personally to the show,
you'd have a better chance,' and I picked up the telephone, spoke to a Susan
Slamer on the staff. I said, `Hi, this is Neil Sedaka. I watch the show.
I'd love to be on as a celebrity judge,' and she said, `Are you kidding? Who
is this?' I said, `No, it's Neil Sedaka.' She said, `Sit there. We're having
a meeting.' She called me back in an hour and said, `You'll be on in two
weeks,' and the five finalists will be singing all Neil Sedaka songs.' I was
over the moon.

GROSS: What impact did it have on your career?

Mr. SEDAKA: The catalogue went through the roof. All of the old records
started to sell. Amazon.com was ringing off the walls, and "Solitaire" by
Clay was one of the biggest--I think the second biggest seller of that year.

GROSS: Wow! Mm-hmm. Now we were talking about how you grew up playing
classical music and how your mother early on would have preferred that you
play classical music. In those early days, were you torn in two directions,
pop vs. classical?

Mr. SEDAKA: No, I was a very serious piano student. I started playing at
age eight. At nine I entered the prep school of the Juilliard, when it was on
125th Street and Claremont Avenue. I studied with the great Edgar Roberts and
when I was 13, I discovered that I could write songs. I wasn't very popular
in school. I wasn't a jock and wasn't one of the popular kids, playing Chopin
and Bach, so I was fascinated by the reaction I got. I was invited to all of
the teenage parties, and that was a very big deal in those days if you could
play your own songs or hits of the day. So it was actually a two-fold study
of songwriting and going to Juilliard every Saturday, and then I went to the
college, Juilliard College, studied with Adele Marcus, and when I was 19, I
had to make a decision which direction to go, and you know, the money--being
from a very poor family--my father was a taxi driver in Brooklyn for 30 years
and worked very hard--and I think every teenager wanted to be a rock and roll
star. You know, that would be very exciting to any kid of that age. So I did
pursue it, but I never dropped the classical music because I still basically
love it and those are my roots.

GROSS: In an autobiogrpahy that you wrote a few years ago, you write about a
song, "Mr. Moon," that you wrote when you were in high school and that you
performed in high school, but the principal didn't like the song. You
describe it as having been a little risque for school. I was dying to hear
how it went.

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, I was a freshman at Lincoln High School, and as I said,
not one of the popular kids, and I'd started writing rock and roll. It was
the beginning of rock and roll, and I wrote a song called "Mr. Moon," and
sang it at one of the Ballyhoo shows in the auditorium, and there was to be
two performances. The first performance, the kids started to jump and dance
and bump and grind, and it was a sensation, except when Abraham Lass, the
principal called me into his office and said, `You know, Neil, we can't have
that kind of behavior. We'd like you to do something else, another kind of
song for the second performance. And there was a petition signed by the
students that they wanted Neil to do "Mr. Moon" again, and we won and I did
it again. It was not a dirty song in anyway, but it was kind of a bump and
grind "chik chik chik chik chik chik," you know, that old rock and roll tempo
which was very new at the time.

GROSS: Could you do a few bars of it?

Mr. SEDAKA: Oh, my goodness. I was 16. (Singing) "Mr. Moon, guide your
love back to me, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." Sound very fragile now. Very timid.

GROSS: So, what was it like for you having been an unpopular kid to then have
a song that the kids really responded to? Did it change your standing in the
school?

Mr. SEDAKA: Oh, I was able to go into the Sweet Shop across the street from
Lincoln High School, the Sweet Shop was divided into two parts. The first
part were the kids that wore the button-down shirts, and the second half of
the Sweet Shop had the black leather kids with the DA haircuts, and I was
allowed to go into the backroom with the jukebox and the leathers and the DA
haircuts. They said, `Oh, let Mr. Moon go in.' So you could imagine.

GROSS: Are these kids who would beat you up in earlier times?

Mr. SEDAKA: They weren't too kind to me at the beginning.

GROSS: You know, you write in that memoir, you write, "By first grade, I was
known as the school sissy. I practiced walking and gesturing in a masculine
fashion in front of the mirror." So it made me think you were probably picked
on a lot.

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to be
recognized. I wanted to please people. I think in many instances, artists
who begin as--you know, are neglected and are made fun of, I think that they
pursue these careers to be noticed, to be accepted and to be revered. So I
showed those football players.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, did it make you self-conscious when you started
performing about whether you should look more macho as a performer?

Mr. SEDAKA: I studied in front of a mirror. I had a sister, Ronnie, who I
adored and she was my hero. She was 18 months older, beautiful, popular and
you know, I had to stand in front of a mirror--I'll be totally honest with you
and learn how to move in a more macho way. How to carry my books. How to--it
was a metamorphosis.

GROSS: You know, I think in that era, every teenager was standing in front of
a mirror and some people were learning to dance in front of a mirror. Some
people were pretending they were singing into a microphone in front of a
mirror, and other people were just trying to figure out how to fix their hair
or look better, but don't you think like every boy and girl was standing in
front of a mirror then?

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes, but I must correct you. I didn't use the word "sissy." I
used the word "effeminine" because I was raised by six women. We were,
believe it or not, 11 people in a two-bedroom apartment...

GROSS: Mmm.

Mr. SEDAKA: ...in Brighton Beach. My mother, my sister, my five aunts and
my grandmother. So these are the people who I emulated, so it was a marvelous
upbringing because I was spoiled by all these women.

GROSS: My guest is Neil Sedaka. His new CD, "The Definitive Collection,"
includes this 1960 hit "Calendar Girl."

(Soundbite from "Calendar Girl")

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "I love, I love, I love my calendar girl. Yeah, sweet
calendar girl. I love, I love, I love my calendar girl each and every day of
the year. January, you start the year off fine. February, you're my little
Valentine. March, I'm going to March you down the aisle. April, you're the
Easter Bunny when you smile. Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl. I love, I
love, I love my little calendar girl every day, every day of the year. Maybe
if I ask your dad and mom, they'll let me..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Neil Sedaka will be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is songwriter and singer Neil Sedaka. His new CD is a career
retrospective of hit songs that he wrote.

Now a few years ago you recorded an album of Yiddish songs called "Brighton
Beach Memories." You grew up in Brighton beach.

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes.

GROSS: Were these songs that you grew up hearing?

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes. My mother played the Barry Sisters' records. These were
the great old standards...(foreign language spoken)..."My Yiddishe Mame." I
heard them at bar mitzvah's and weddings and family picnics, and I decided at
this stage of my career that I wanted to do things not--from my own heart,
from my own spirit, not particularly looking for commerciality, and I got some
wonderful reaction. I did an all-Yiddish concert at Carnegie Hall a couple of
years ago for the Folksbiene Jewish Theatre in New York, and it wound up to be
a very exciting album. I performed with a few Klezma groups in California and
Chicago, the Klezmatics. And it was my roots, and I'm very proud of where I
came from. I think, you know, remember where you came from and this was very
special.

GROSS: I want to play a track from the album. Let me ask you to choose one
of your favorites.

Mr. SEDAKA: I'd love to hear "Yiddishe Mame." I do it half in English and
half in Yiddish, and it reminds me of my mother who passed away last year,
Eleanor Sedaka, who lived to 89. She lived a great life. But it's--I think
it was originally done by Sophie Tucker years ago, and it's a very moving,
very emotional song.

GROSS: Well, let's hear Neil Sedaka's recording of "My Yiddishe Mame" from
his album, "Brigton Beach Memories."

(Soundbite from "My Yiddishe Mame")

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing in foreign language)

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Neil Sedaka from his album, "Brighton Beach Memories." It came
out a few years ago. Now he has a new collection that's called "The
Definitive Collection of Neil Sedaka."

Now earlier we heard two different versions of your song "Breaking Up Is Hard
to Do," one from the early '60s, one from the mid-70s. When did your string
of hits in the '60s end? People always say that for the American pop song
writers and singers, their careers were really interrupted or ended by the
British invasion. Is that too simplistic or do you think that's an accurate
description?

Mr. SEDAKA: That's an accurate description, Terry. There was also a natural
progression of five years of hits. The Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, Fats
Domino, Brenda Lee--we all didn't have more than five years but, as you said,
the British invasion, the great Beatles and Rolling Stones came. I wanted to
write that style, and I did write that style, but my public wouldn't accept it
and the record company wouldn't accept it. So for 11 years, I took a
backseat, took stock of myself, raised a family, had my two children and wrote
for a publishing firm and had some great artists record my songs--Andy
Williams, Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, Shirley Bassey--but, you know, once you
get a taste of being in front of the public, you never get over that, and it
was 11 years later, around 1974, '75, actually that I lived in England. I
moved my wife and children to England because in England they respected the
original rock and rollers in America, and it was there that I met Elton John,
who was starting a record company, Rocket Records, in America, and he was a
big fan of my early records, and he knew that I was recording with a group
called the 10CCs in Stockport, England. Marvelous group at the time, and I
made two albums with them, and both of them were successes in the UK, and
Elton said, `You know, I think I could launch you again in America,' and I
said, `Well, that would be remarkable,' you know, because I was known as the
ghost from the past.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. SEDAKA: People would come up to me in New York and ask, `Did you use to
be Neil Sedaka?' But actually Elton had me record in Los Angeles and
incorporated some of the songs from the UK sessions and some of the songs from
the LA sessions, and I had an album called "Sedaka's Back," which was a
remarkable comeback for me and I always thank Elton for that.

GROSS: Was "Laughter in the Rain" on that?

Mr. SEDAKA: Yes...(unintelligible)...

GROSS: Yeah, that was a really big hit for you.

Mr. SEDAKA: Well, after 11 years to have a number one record was a
remarkable comeback, and "Love Will Keep Us Together" was on, and "The
Immigrant" and "That's When the Music Takes Me." I was very proud of the
collection.

GROSS: So how much are you still writing songs now?

Mr. SEDAKA: I write once or twice a year. I wrote some new songs that I'm
working on for a children's album. I actually rewrote--since I have three new
grandchildren, my son and his wife got after me and said, `You know, you're
Papa Neil now. You have to write some children's songs.' So I came up with
the idea of changing the lyrics to some of my original hits, so I did "Waking
Up Is Hard to Do." I did "Where the Toys Are." "Don't Trip Over Your Toys, Put
Them Away Neatly." And so perhaps I'll be Papa Neil on television. Who knows?

GROSS: I'm trying to think of a really torchy version of "Where the Toys
Are."

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Well, it's really been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so
much.

Mr. SEDAKA: Same here, Terry, and it's a wonderful program.
Congratulations. Continued success.

GROSS: Neil Sedaka's new CD is called "The Definitive Collection."

(Soundbite of "Laughter in the Rain")

Mr. SEDAKA: (Singing) "Strolling along country roads with my baby, it starts
to rain, it begins to pour. Without an umbrella, we're soaked to the skin. I
feel a shiver run up my spine. I feel the warmth of her hand in mine. Ooh, I
hear laughter in the rain, walking hand in hand with the one I love. Ooh, how
I love the rainy days and the happy way I feel inside. After a while, we run
under a tree. I turn to her and she kisses me. There with the beat of the
rain on the leaves, softly she breathes and I close my eyes, sharing our love
under stormy skies. Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain, walking hand in hand
with the one I love..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of Edith Wharton,
the author of such classics as "The House of Mirth" and "The Age of
Innocence."

This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Hermione Lee's
new biography of Edith Wharton
TERRY GROSS, host:

Distinguished biographer Hermione Lee is known for her "Lives of Virginia
Woolf" and "Willa Cather," among other subjects. Now Lee's long-awaited
biography of Edith Wharton has just been published, and book critic Maureen
Corrigan has just resurfaced after a long, long read.

Ms. MAUREEN CORRIGAN: Edith Wharton's signature subject as a writer was
paralysis. Over and over again Wharton imagines characters so hemmed in by
social expectation and their own personal constraints that at the crucial
moment, they can't act. Lily Bart, Lawrence Selden, the main characters in
Wharton's 1905 breakthrough masterpiece, "The House of Mirth," are so frozen
into their social roles they can only declare their love for each other
posthumously. Newland Archer in "The Age of Innocence" stares mutely at the
home of the woman he loves, missing his final chance to connect with her. And
Ethan Frome in the gothic short story that bears his name, summons up just
enough strength to try to break out of his grim marriage only to find that his
escape catapults him into a live burial. The commonsensical take on Wharton
is that she wrote so vividly about paralysis because she experienced it
firsthand. After all, Wharton debuted into the society of Gilded Age New York
at a time when well-born women were expected to be passive virgin sacrifices
on the altar of marriage. Even in her midlife transformation into a
celebrated author, Wharton has been diminished, usually playing second banana
to her great friend and mentor, Henry James.

Hermione Lee, Wharton's latest biographer, will have none of this nonsense.
Throughout her impressive, exhaustive, and, yes, sometimes exhausting new
biography called briskly "Edith Wharton," Lee gives us a Wharton who always
rose splendidly to the occasion, whether that meant dealing shrewdly with
publishers or arranging a quiet divorce from her raving husband Teddy Wharton
or touring battlefields and founding charities in France during World War I.
Lee's Edith Wharton is the kind of vigorous heroine that Wharton herself never
created. What's especially impressive about Lee's biography, and I don't mean
this snidely, is that she fashions this revisionary and convincing reading of
Wharton as dynamo, despite the fact that a lot of firsthand evidence is
missing. Wharton destroyed much of her correspondence, as did Henry James,
and so Lee's biography is dotted with rueful sentences like this one: "Much
of what Wharton felt is hidden from us." Fortunately, one person who
squirreled away Wharton's letters was the great cad--er, love, of her live,
Morton Fullerton. Fullerton was the 42-year-old journalist whom Wharton fell
passionately in love with in Paris when she was 45 and still shackled to
Teddy. Fullerton was a spendthrift, divorced bisexual who, when he began
carrying on with Wharton, was involved with several lovers, one of whom was
his own adoptive sister. Yet Wharton recalled their first meeting this way:
"The moment my eye fell on him, I was content."

Fullerton must have been magnetic, but one of the limitations of biography as
opposed to fiction is that Lee can't dramatize Fullerton's charms, and he just
comes off as a snake, slithering out of Wharton's life with the hackneyed
line, "You'll write better for this experience of loving."

There are other failings in Lee's comprehensive life of Wharton, most of them
imperfections arising from overabundance. Wharton lived from 1862 to 1937,
and much of her life was very social, so that Lee's account sometimes reads
for pages like an appointment diary. Wharton wrote a lot of sensationalist
magazine fiction, and Lee wades through too much of it. She also devotes too
much space to Wharton's writing on house decoration and gardening. Even HGTV
enthusiasts will find themselves benumbed by all these details about doorknobs
and geraniums. A larger, unavoidable problem is that Wharton herself
frequently comes off as unlikable, especially by the standards of our
post-Imus age. She was a society snoot, a sexist, a racist, an anti-Semite
and a stodgy foe of the younger generation of modernist writers like
Fitzgerald, Wolfe and Joyce. And, yet, there is, against the odds, the
achievement of that writing life and those books, the greatest of which, Lee
argues, is the underrated 1913 novel, "The Custom of the Country," in which
Undine Sprague figures as the carnivorous anti-heroic inverse of the paralyzed
characters Wharton creates elsewhere. Lee is such a superb and thrilling
reader of the Wharton canon that she's got me vowing to reread Wharton again,
to savor, as Lee astutely puts it, `her style of hard, penetrating analytic
realism about a society that Wharton said was wholly absorbed in barricading
itself against the unpleasant.' Wharton may have been unlucky in love, but she
has been lucky in securing the informed and infectious reverence of her latest
biographer.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed a new biography of Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)
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