Jews and the Brill Building

"For the time being, until it will be safe to give responsible government positions to our brother Jews, we shall entrust them to people whose past and whose characters are such that there is an abyss between them and the people."

  This is the practice known as using "Gentile fronts" (which also applies to our culture) which is extensively practiced in the financial world today in order to cover up the evidences of Jewish control. How much progress has been made since these words were written is indicated by the party convention at San Francisco when the name of Judge Brandeis was proposed for President. It is reasonably to be expected that the public mind will be made more and more familiar with the idea of Jewish occupancy-which will be really a short step from the present degree of influence which the Jews exercise- of the highest office in the government. There is no function of the American Presidency in which the Jews have not already secretly assisted in a very important degree. Actual occupancy of the office is not necessary to enhance their power, but to promote certain things which parallel very closely the plans outlined in the Protocols.
("While preaching liberalism to the Gentiles, we shall hold our own people and our own agents in unquestioning obedience." "The scheme of administration must emanate from a single brain .... Therefore, we may know the plan of action, but we must not discuss it, lest we destroy its unique character .... The inspired work of our leader therefore must not be thrown before a crowd to be torn to pieces, or even before a limited group.")


Jews were heavily involved in rock'n'roll from the beginning as label owners, songwriters, producers, and promoters. Jews played a part in constructing quite a few early rock classics that many listeners might not realize were written by members of the Jewish faith, from "Jailhouse Rock" and "A Teenager in Love" to "On Broadway," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and "Chapel of Love."

The Brill Building 
at 1619 Broadway in Manhattan

Perhaps no early school of rock benefited from Jewish songwriters as much as the Brill Building. Named after an actual building on Broadway in midtown Manhattan that housed a great deal of music industry activity, the term eventually became applied to all the young New York songwriters, producers, and publishers who took rock compositions to a new level of melodic sophistication in the early-to-mid-'60s. Many of them were performed by girl groups such as the Shirelles, the Ronettes, the Shangri-Las, and the Crystals; some were hits for African-American vocal groups like the Drifters and the Coasters. An astonishingly high percentage of them were written by Jewish songwriters, including the husband-wife songwriting teams of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Other Jewish Brill Building songwriting teams of note were Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller; Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman; Burt Bacharach and Hal David; and Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield. Phil Spector also rose through the Brill Building ranks, though he became more noted as a producer than a songwriter.





In putting together the February 5 film program Blue Suede Jews (in the Koret Auditorium from 2-4pm), however, it struck me that it took quite some time for Jews to make a mark as performers, rather than behind-the-scenes role players. Though most of the names in the above paragraph also made records as singers, surprisingly few of them seemed to feel comfortable stepping into the limelight. [of course, the plan was to work from behind] Neil Sedaka – probably the first true Jewish rock star – was the only one who focused heavily his own solo career, rattling off a string of lightweight pop-rock hits (such as "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" and "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen") in the early '60s. Carole King had a fairly big 1962 hit with "It Might As Well Rain Until September"; Barry Mann had a classic novelty smash the previous year with "Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Bomp Bomp)"; Doc Pomus, in the years just prior to the initial rock'n'roll explosion, might have been the first white rhythm and blues singer; Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich sang on girl group-styled hits by the Raindrops; and Phil Spector had a #1 single as a teenager in 1958 as part of the Teddy Bears on "To Know Him Is To Love Him." Yet all of them seemed happier writing (and often producing as well) than performing, perhaps because, then as now, the biggest money in the music business came through publishing.

Phil Spector

Not all Jews who passed through the Brill Building found fame working within that scene. Paul Simon issued numerous flops in a teen idol style in the early '60s, but really didn't find his songwriting genius until getting immersed in poetic folk music and reconnecting with high school friend Art Garfunkel. Al Kooper co-wrote "This Diamond Ring," eventually a hit for the Jew-led Gary Lewis & the Playboys, but achieved greater recognition as a member of the Blues Project, a founder of Blood, Sweat & Tears, and session keyboardist to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and many other greats. Some Brill Building hits were actually sung by Jewish performers, such as Lesley Gore (Barry-Greenwich's "Maybe I Know") and Jay & the Americans (the Mann-Weil-Leiber-Stoller collaboration "Only in America"). At the time, however, the architects behind the songs were known primarily within the industry, and maybe to the relatively small cults of collectors and musicians (such as the Beatles, big Goffin-King fans) who studied the small-print songwriting credits on record labels. Even some Jews who failed to intersect with the Brill Building were perceived more as songwriters than performers when they began their careers in the early-to-mid-1960s. Bob Dylan recorded dozens of publishing demos, made in at least partial hopes that they'd attract cover versions by big acts (such as Peter, Paul & Mary, who had a massive hit with his "Blowin' in the Wind"), as you can hear on the recent double CD The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964. Elektra Records chief Jac Holzman wanted to sign a young Janis Ian as a songwriter, not a singer. Strangest of all, shortly before founding the Velvet Underground with John Cale, Lou Reed ground out British Invasion imitations and surf tunes as a staff songwriter for suburban New York budget label Pickwick Records. What changed this? The onslaught of the Beatles in early 1964, perhaps, made it seem immensely more attractive and credible to play and sing your own material, as well as write it. The success of Bob Dylan as a solo artist in the mid-1960s proved you could make it without a conventionally pretty voice or conventional teen idol looks. The likes of Paul Simon, Lou Reed, and Janis Ian were quick to follow in establishing themselves as major singer-songwriters. So too, eventually, did Carole King, although she would be the only top Brill Building composer to enjoy a long career as a star in her own right. The rest of her Brill Building peers struggled to adapt to the changing times to varying degrees, but left us with an enormous legacy of great tunes, as well as marrying the best of rock'n'roll, rhythm & blues, and commercial songwriting craft. - Richie Unterberger Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry Carole King and Gerry Goffin