Weil and Mann were said to be unhappy with the decision, although the song was a hit. However, the song’s lyrics were deemed too controversial and the song - with altered, borderline jingoist patriotic lyrics - was given to the group Jay and the Americans. Will they start to march when my kids go to school? Only in America, where they preach the Golden Rule with “Only in America.” The latter song, originally recorded by the Black act the Drifters but not released, had featured ironic lyrics that actually presaged Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”:Ĭan they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me Other Mann-Weil songs addressed the Vietnam war (“We Gotta Get Out of This Place”) and, initially anyway, societal strife in the U.S. Then he’s tall, he don’t crawl, he’s a king. Uptown where folks don’t have to pay much rentĪnd when he’s there with me, he can see that he’s everything Yet the following year the pair recorded a song with the Crystals that helped set the tone for many future Brill Building songs that addressed inner-city, social issues, rare for the time: “Uptown,” about a young man who goes to work downtown “where everyone’s his boss and he’s in an angry land.”īut then, he comes uptown each evening to my tenement Indeed, the duo’s first hit hit, “Bless You,” with singer Tony Orlando - later of Tony Orlando & Dawn fame - came in 1961 (also the year they got married). I felt they had a sophistication and a soulfulness that was a great combination, and I felt that there was a place for this kind of lyric in the pop culture that was happening, and so we started writing.

“At a certain point, I got very curious about her lyrics,” Mann recalled. The two actually did not begin collaborating until they had been dating for a few weeks. One day, she recalled to the Times, “I was writing with a young Italian boy singer, the Frankie Avalon of his day, named Teddy Randazzo, when Barry came in to play him a song.I asked the receptionist, ‘Who is this guy? Does he have a girlfriend?’ She said, ‘He’s signed to a friend of mine, Don Kirshner, and if I call Donny, maybe you can go up there to show him your lyrics and meet Barry again.’ So that’s what she did. America” and “Hacks.”Ī post shared by Carole King in 1940 to a conservative Jewish family, Weil trained as an actress, singer and dancer, but her songwriting talent shone through and she became a protégé of Tin Pan Alley songwriter Frank Loesser.

The durability and timelessness of Weil’s work is exemplified by the fact that “Make Your Own Kind of Music,” her and Mann’s song of self-empowerment that was a hit for Cass Elliott in 1969, is prominent in the trailer for the forthcoming Margot Robbie-starring “Barbie” film, and was also recently used in “Mrs. Her hits written with writers to whom she was not married include Lionel Richie’s “Running With The Night” and “Love Will Conquer All,” Peabo Bryson’s “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again” and the Pointer Sisters’ 1980 smash “He’s So Shy.” Despite the title, most of the work was done a couple of blocks uptown at 1650 Broadway, where the songwriters worked in cubicles and cranked out hit after hit after hit, creating a canon of timeless, classic songs that were matched only by the anonymity of their writers, although a few, such as Diamond, King and Sedaka, would later find success as artists - Mann and Weil are actually characters in the King-inspired Broadway musical, “Beautiful.” Along with Mann - to whom she was married for some 62 years - the coterie included two other married couples, Carole King and Gerry Goffin along with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, as well as Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Shadow Morton, Mort Shuman, Otis Blackwell and many more. I had two for one: my wife and one of the greatest songwriters in the world, my soul and inspiration.”Ī New York City native, Weil was one of the top “Brill Building” songwriters that came out of the Midtown Manhattan building of the same name and spawned literally hundreds of hits throughout the 1960s for the Righteous Brothers, the Ronettes, the Drifters, the Monkees, the Animals, multiple Phil Spector productions and many others. Mann, pictured above with Weil in 2013, added, “I’m a lucky man.

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