Thursday, April 03, 2008

To the Donna High Class of Sixty - six:

A look back at the Pop Music Scene in 1963...

Ripped - off from this source, (heh, heh!): Smithsonian, March 2008, "The Arranger," by author Lyndon Stambler with photographs by William Coupon.

That legendary thing that took place when Mr. Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. met the up and coming all - American teenager, Ms. Lesley Gore.

Page 54: Folks, it's 1963 and The Meeting takes place: Quincy and Lesley, with her typically DHS Spring of '63 bee - hive hairdo!.

"It was at Mercury Records that he [Quincy] first struck gold, when he was presented with a demo tape of a clear - voiced 16 - year - old girl named Lesley Gore.

"He hated her name, but they recorded It's My Party in 1963."

Jones then ran into producer Phil Spector...

"Jones then ran into producer Phil Spector, who said he had just recorded the same song with the Crystals.

"Jones rushed Gore's version out to radio stations before heading to Japan to score and act in a TV drama.

"He got a call from Irving Green, Mercurys president."

And sure enough, Green JUST HAD to ask Jones:

"You still don't like Lesley's name?"

I guess Don Quincy didn't quite get it!

"I think we could find something better," he replies.

You can practically hear Green cracking up over the long - distance line to Japan:

"Well, guess what, it's number one.

"Bring your a*s*s home and do an album," Green tells him!

As the author points out, "It's My Party was the first of Gore's 17 hits."

These days Lesley Gore herself isn't shy in recalling events, as we read:

"The minute I met Quincy I knew the man was destined for absolutely astronomical things.

"He took a 16 - year - old kid and got a performance out of me.

"You don't do that without knowing people well and having a real sense of what you want to hear, says Gore, who lives in Manhattan and still performs."

So! That's how things were going in the pop music scene of the Spring of 1963, when the surviving freshmen who had arrived on campus in the fall of 1962 were still being shaped into the legendary DHS Class of Nineteen Sixty - six!

Yea!

Beat those Jackets! Go Red Skins!!

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