Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson

Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin

The Brill Building was rock & roll's Tin Pan Alley, the home of music publishing companies and songwriters in cubicles cranking out hits. At its height in the early '60s it provided songs for everyone from Elvis to girl groups like the Shirelles.

These two books both look at the music which came out of that insular little world, but from very different perspectives.

Always Magic In The Air tells the story through seven songwriting teams (three of them married), including future stars Carole King and Burt Bacharach. Here Comes The Night focuses more narrowly on the legendary cult figure Bert Berns (1929-1967), writer of "Twist & Shout", "Hang On Sloopy", and "Piece Of My Heart".

The great difference between the books is that Here Comes The Night goes into considerable detail about the role of organized crime in the music business, through the career of Berns and his connection to shadowy figures like the notorious Morris Levy of Roulette Records and his associates, Sonny Franzese and the Pagano Brothers of the Genovese mafia family. The book details how Berns got the latter (inadvertently, the author claims) to lean on Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records so Berns could get out of a contract, a la Johnny Fontane.

Both books are must-reads for anyone interested in classic songwriting and/or the music business.

CBS This Morning feature on Bert Berns

Bert Berns with Van Morrison during the recording sessions for "Brown-Eyed Girl", 1967:

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Posted by Kafka

I am the moral conscience of TD

Member since Jul 2007

143140 posts

Posted on 10/23/14 at 6:28 pm to Kafka

Half Empty but Full of History, Brill Building Seeks Tenants

quote:
July 24, 2013

If ghosts paid the rent, Eric Hadar would have an all-star tenancy: Freddy Bienstock, Johnny Burke, Cab Calloway, Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Van Heusen, to name a few. Not to mention J.J. Hunsecker and Danny Rose.

The Brill Building, at 49th Street and Broadway, currently stands more than half empty, after the closing last year of Colony Records and the Sound One postproduction studio.

But ghosts do not pay the rent. Neither do fictional characters. Their onetime home, the Brill Building, 1619 Broadway, at West 49th Street, now stands more than half empty, after the closing last year of Colony Records and the Sound One postproduction studio.

Mr. Hadar, the chairman of Allied Partners, a private real estate investment company, believes he can breathe life back into the Brill Building by evoking its show business past. He paid $185 million for the 11-story landmark in February.

For starters, he is in discussions with the Songwriters Hall of Fame — a 44-year-old organization with plenty of fame but no hall — about establishing a small museum in the Brill Building, where songwriters once swarmed to stake out the 80 or 90 music publishers or catch the attention of entertainers whose offices were there. The songwriters group will also curate a permanent exhibition in the lobby.