Aldon Music was a New York-based music publishing company, founded by Don Kirshner and Al Nevins in 1958. Aldon is regarded as having played a significant role in shaping the so-called "Brill Building Sound" in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Nevins was a music industry veteran with "money, reputation, experience and connections". He had been a member of a popular instrumental trio The Three Suns for over twenty years and was also the co-writer of their 1944 hit "Twilight Time", which sold over three million copies. At the time Aldon was founded, Nevins had recently been forced to leave the group due to heart trouble.

Kirshner, who was many years younger than Nevins, had recently achieved some success in partnership with singer-songwriter Bobby Darin, although they did not work together for long. Seeking to break into publishing, Kirshner approached two major songwriting teams, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and then Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller before convincing Nevins to become his partner.

Aldon enjoyed enormous success in the late 1950s and early 1960s with scores of hits written by its contract songwriters, such as Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Jack Keller.

Don Kirshner (April 17, 1934 - January 17, 2011), known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.

Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner,^{[citation needed]} a tailor, and Belle Jaffe^{[citation needed]}, in The Bronx, New York. He attended the Bronx High School of Science (classmate of Bobby Darin), and Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.

Kirshner achieved his first major success in the late 1950s and early 1960s as co-owner of the influential New York-based publishing company Aldon Music with partner Al Nevins, which had under contract at various times several of the most important songwriters of the so-called "Brill Building" school, including Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Howard Greenfield, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Jack Keller.

As a producer-promoter, Kirshner was influential in starting off the careers of singers and songwriters, including Bobby Darin, (with whom he collaborated on a number of advertising jingles and pop ditties, their first was called "Bubblegum Pop"),Neil Diamond, Carole King, and Sarah Dash of Labelle, as well as discovering the occasional rock act such as Kansas.

Aldon Smith (born September 25, 1989) is an American football outside linebacker who currently plays for the San Francisco 49ers. He was drafted by the 49ers with the seventh overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft. He played college football at Missouri.

Smith attended Raytown High School in Raytown, Missouri, where he recorded 60 tackles, 21 tackles for loss, and 12 quarterback sacks, while adding 7 forced fumbles, 1 blocked punt and 1 safety as a senior. He also stood out on offense, as he caught 34 passes for 570 yards and 4 TDs as a tight end.

Considered only a three-star recruit by Rivals.com, Smith was considered No. 5 overall prospect (any position) in the state of Missouri, as well as the No. 27 strongside defensive end in the nation. Smith chose Mizzou over Nebraska, Kansas and Kansas State, among many others.

After being redshirted as a freshman in 2008, Smith started 11 of 13 games at defensive end in 2009. He finished the season with 60 tackles and 11 sacks. He was named the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year and a first team freshman All-American. As a sophomore in 2010 he played in nine games, recording 48 tackles and six sacks.

Barry Mann (born Barry Imberman, 9 February 1939, Brooklyn, New York) is an American songwriter, and part of a successful songwriting partnership with his wife, Cynthia Weil.

Mann and lyricist Cynthia Weil operated a publishing company called Dyad Music. Mann's first hit single as a writer was "She Say (Oom Dooby Doom)", a Top 20 song for The Diamonds in 1959. Mann co-wrote the song with Gerry Goffin. In 1961, Mann had his biggest hit to that time with "I Love How You Love Me", written with Larry Kolber and a No. 5 single for The Paris Sisters. (Seven years later, Bobby Vinton would take the song into the Top 10.) Also in 1961, Mann himself hit the Top 40 as a performer with a novelty song co-written with Goffin, "Who Put The Bomp", which parodied the nonsense words of the then-popular doo-wop genre and made the Top 40.

Despite his success as a singer with "Who Put the Bomp", Mann chose to channel the bulk of his creativity into songwriting, forming a prolific partnership with Weil, a lyricist he met while both were staff songwriters at Don Kirshner's and Al Nevin's Aldon Music, whose offices were located near the famed composing-and-publishing factory, the Brill Building. Mann and Weil, who married in 1961, helped pioneer the more socially conscious side of the Brill Building-era songbook with hits such as "Uptown" by The Crystals, "We Gotta Get out of This Place" by the Animals, "Magic Town" by the Vogues and "Kicks" by Paul Revere & the Raiders. (Mann and Weil were upset when "Only in America", a song they'd written with the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and originally conceived for and recorded by The Drifters as a cynical broadside against racial prejudice, was re-worked by Leiber and Stoller into a uncontroversial hit for Jay & the Americans.)

Carole King (born February 9, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, her Tapestry album topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971, and remained on the charts for more than six years.

She was most successful as a performer in the first half of the 1970s, although she was a successful songwriter long before and long after. She had her first number 1 hit as a songwriter in 1961 at age 18, with "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", which she wrote with Goffin. In 1997, she co-wrote "The Reason" for Aerosmith, but instead it was sung by Celine Dion.

In 2000, Joel Whitburn, a Billboard Magazine pop music researcher, named her the most successful female songwriter of 1955–99, because she wrote or co-wrote 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry. Her most recent non-compilation album is Live at the Troubadour, a collaboration with James Taylor, which reached number 4 on the charts in its first week, and has sold over 600,000 copies.