Neil Sedaka

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Neil Sedaka (born March 13, 1939) is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, composer and record producer. Since his music career began in 1957, he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and others, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody.

Early life: Juilliard and the Brill Building

Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Mac Sedaka, was a taxi driver and a Sephardi Jew of Turkish origin ("Sedaka" and "Sadaka" are variants of "tzedakah", which translates in both Hebrew and Arabic as the word charity). Neil's mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish/Russian origin. Neil's grandparents came to the United States from Constantinople, then the capital of Ottoman Turkey, in 1910. He grew up in Brighton Beach, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Sedaka is a cousin of the late singer Eydie Gormé.

He demonstrated musical aptitude in his second-grade choral class, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright. In 1947, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music's Preparatory Division for Children, which he attended on Saturdays. His mother wanted him to become a renowned classical pianist like the contemporary of the day, Van Cliburn, but Sedaka was discovering pop music. When Sedaka was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield, an aspiring poet and lyricist. They became two of the legendary Brill Building's composers.

Rock with Sedaka

Rock with Neil Sedaka or just Neil Sedaka is the first major solo album of Neil Sedaka released in 1959 after two 1958 albums under the titles Neil Sedaka and The Tokens and Neil Sedaka and The Tokens and Coins. The album was released on RCA and was produced by Al Nevins. The album contains 12 songs, all of them co-written by Sedaka and his friend Howard Greenfield. Two of the songs became successful singles for Sedaka from the album, namely "The Diary", his debut single that was a hit, reaching No. 14 on the US Billboard charts, and "I Go Ape", a single that was relatively successful in the United States reaching No. 42, but did far better in the UK Singles Chart, making it up to No. 9 and his debut single in the United Kingdom.

Track listing

All songs were composed by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.

The Immigrant (Neil Sedaka song)

"The Immigrant" is a 1975 single written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody and performed by Sedaka. The single was the second release from his album, Sedaka's Back. "The Immigrant" was dedicated to John Lennon and the immigration problems that he faced. The single peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent one week at number one on the Easy Listening chart in May 1975.

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Immigrant (disambiguation)

An immigrant is a person who moves to another country.

Immigrant or variant may also refer to:

See also

The Immigrant (1915 film)

The Immigrant was a 1915 American silent drama film directed by George Melford and starring Valeska Suratt, an actress who specialized in playing vamp roles and who was one of Theda Bara's film rivals. The film is now considered lost.

This was Valeska Suratt's only film away from the Fox Film Studios.

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The Immigrant (musical)

The Immigrant is a four-person chamber musical with music by Steven M. Alper and lyrics by Sarah Knapp, with a book by Mark Harelik. The show is based on Harelik's 1985 play of the same name.

A Jewish immigrant and his wife enter into the life of an American couple in Texas. In the end, there is a signal of a new start of friendship between the two families and the hope for future.

Synopsis

Act I

In 1909, Haskell Harelik, a young Russian-Jewish man, steps out of steerage into the port city of Galveston, Texas. Speaking no English, he wrangles together a wheelbarrow and a bunch of bananas and heads north into the great interior. When he reaches the tiny rural community of Hamilton, deep in the heart of Texas, he can go no farther. Exhaustion drops him in the front yard of Milton and Ima Perry. Acting with Christian charity, Ima convinces her husband to give Haskell a room for the night, but when she finds out Haskell is a Jew, she has second thoughts.

Six weeks later, the young immigrant is still in their home. Milton summons Haskell to his office to give him his walking papers, but he gets caught up in Haskell's innocence and excitement about this "new land," and ends up loaning him money for a new horse and wagon. Haskell quickly prospers and Milton keeps giving him assistance against his better judgement. Meanwhile, it revealed that Haskell has indeed been sending money to his wife, Leah, in Russia.