I Eat Music

Songwriter Ellie Greenwich has died aged 68 from a heart attack, following a bout of pneumonia, her niece told reporters yesterday.

Born in Brooklyn in 1940, Greenwich, with her husband Jeff Barry, became known as one of the most successful pop songwriters of the 60s, working out of the Brill Building in Manhattan, which also provided working space for other songwriters, including Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Phil Spector.

Amongst a string of hits, she and Barry penned songs such as ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘Then He Kissed Me’ for The Crystals, ‘Chapel Of Love’ for The Ronettes (written with Phil Spector), ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ for Manfred Mann, and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ for Ike & Tina Turner. One of the couple’s most famous songs was ‘Leader Of The Pack, a collaboration with producer Gordon ‘Shadow’ Morton, which was a hit for The Shangri-Las in 1965. The couple were inducted into the US Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1991.

Greenwich had begun writing songs as a teenager, and her first commercially released work was ‘Silly Isn’t It’ in 1958, which she performed herself under the name Ellie Gaye for RCA. She released her first solo album, ‘Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces And Sings’ ten years later, as an early project for Pineywood Music, the writing and production company she set up with Mike Kashkow in 1967, following her divorce from Barry. She also provided backing vocals for artists such as Dusty Springfield, Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra in the 60s and 70s and continued to produce other artists, including Neil Diamond.

In 1984, many of her 60s songs were given a new lease of life by the musical ‘Leader Of The Pack’, written by Anne Beatts, with a story based on Greenwich’s life. It transferred to Broadway’s Ambassador Theater in 1985 and ran for 120 performances.

Greenwich is survived by a sister.

Everyone gets all excited about the Christmas number one, but we never hear anything about the Easter number one, do we? It would make more sense for the latter to be the big one. After all, Easter always falls on a Sunday, unlike Christmas with its stubborn insistence of sticking to the same date, rather than a day of the week.

So, with much drum-rolling and trumpet-tooting, here is the 2009 Easter Number One… It’s Calvin Harris with ‘I’m Not Alone’. Two gold stars and a big chocolate egg to Calvin, who goes straight in at the top and knocks that woman we don’t talk about down to number two.

Also new this week are Ciara and Justin Timberlake at six with ‘Love Sex Magic’, Liverpool Collective and The KOP Choir, whose release of ‘Fields Of Anfield Road’ to mark the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster goes in at 16, Britney Spears, who rises up from last week’s 45 to this week’s 35 with the thinly-veiled swearing of ‘If U Seek Amy’, and Bat For Lashes, who reaches 36 with ‘Daniel’, which isn’t nearly high enough. Sort it for next week, everyone.

Over in the album chart, number one is, you know, her. Number two is a new entry from Doves, and at number five Bat For Lashes’ new album gets a much more respectable chart position than her single. Although given the album’s brilliance, it should really be given its own chart so it doesn’t have to go anywhere near the likes of Ronan Keating and Akon, who might get it dirty. It could maybe be joined by Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new album, which is also a new entry at nine.

Carole King’s newly reissued collection of classic songs not performed quite as well as all the people who covered them, ‘Tapestry’, is another new entry at 12, as is X Factor loser Eoghan Quigg at 14 (who has written no classic songs, nor performed anyone else’s better than the original). Moving further down, Neil Young is straight in at 22 with ‘Fork In The Road’, and Ultravox’s best of is in at 35. On the re-entry front, The Specials’ best of is in at 26, and Jason Mraz’s ‘We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things’ pokes up its head at 40.

The chart dies on Friday and is reborn on Sunday with the help of The Official Charts Company.

This article originally appeared in CMU Daily on 14 Apr 2009