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| Queens College kids Carole King, Paul Simon and Gerry Goffin in the early 60's. |
Don Kirshner, who passed away last week at 76, will probably be remembered by most of my generation as the easily-parodied stiffy of a host of his television specials. If I remember correctly it was Paul Shaffer of SNL who was chosen to make fun of Kirshner. But we should be eternally grateful to Kirshner (and his partner Al Nevins) for the work they did at their Aldon publishing company in the early 60's. Somehow a very young Kirshner realized that there was a new generation of almost as young Jewish-American songwriters emerging to follow the Gershwins, Jerome Kern and so many other creators of the "American Songbook." So he signed up such outer borough wunderkinds as Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, and Carole King and Gerry Goffin. When people ponder where in history they would like to pop up I always reference two places - I would love to stand in a corner of the Savoy Ballroom in 1937 for a battle of the bands between Chick Webb (with his young singer, Ella Fitzgerald) and Count Basie and just soak it in and watch the jitter buggers go nuts. The second is the office of Aldon at 1650 Broadway, where I would like to hear what was pouring out of those little offices furnished with a couple of chairs, an upright piano and an almost unbelievable amount of talent. Perhaps it would be "Up on the Roof," or "Breaking Up is Hard to Do," or "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."
The wonderful picture above captures a very important moment in American popular music. King and Goffin, part of the last gasp of the period when music publishers would sign up writers and tout their work to the A & R men who told their artists what to record, are shown sharing their newly found world with a young fellow Queens College student, Paul Simon, who will go on to become an important part of the near destruction of that system - a gifted singer/songwriter who would've hung himself before recording anybody else's songs. Carole King later crossed that border as well.
I met Don Kirshner a few times during my music biz days, most memorably when I wrote an article about a new "putting together the band" sitcom that he was touting. It was at Kirshner's office that I interviewed the young Canadian musician Don had discovered and who would star in the (short-lived) show. His name was Paul Shaffer.
