Remembering pop songwriter Neil Sedaka

This is Fresh Air. I'm David B and Cooley. Neil Sadaka. The singer and songwriter whose recording and performing career stretch from the nineteen fifties to the current decade. Died last week. He was eighty six years old.

Neil Sadaka was born in Brighton Beach in nineteen thirty nine and displayed his musical talent early on. His mother bought him his first piano at age seven, And at age nine, he got a child prodigy scholarship at Juilliard and was hand selected by classical pianist Arthur Rubenstein to perform on live radio. But Sadaka was drawn elsewhere. Another young kid interested in pop music, Neil Diamond, lived across the street from him.

His girlfriend in high school, Carol Klein, turned out to be a pretty good songwriter, too, Once she broke up with Sadaka and renamed herself Carol King. By then, young Neil had teamed with another budding songwriter, Howard Greenfield, who wrote lyrics to Neil's music. Their first break and first hit came in nineteen fifty eight, when Connie Francis was looking for a song to appeal to teenagers. Neil Sadaka was only nineteen at the time, but

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