The Brill Building pioneered assembly line pop music but left a legacy of hits

Carole King was one of dozens of composers who created the Brill Building sound.

American singer Little Eva (front) with producers Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, and singer-songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who wrote the hit The Loco-Motion for Little Eva, their babysitter at the time. Picture: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images

IN the ’60s it was known as the Brill Building sound, although it wasn’t really a specific sound. The songs were usually bright and cheerful catchy melodies, influenced by rhythm and blues, Latin music, jazz or even gospel, the only thing they really had in common was that they dominated the pop charts in the late 1950s through to the late ’60s.

Hits such as Will You Love Me Tomorrow, The Loco-Motion, Leader of the Pack, One Fine Day, He’s A Rebel, Dream Lover, Up on the Roof and Oh! Carol! were all part of the Brill phenomenon.

One of the best-known contributors of hits was Carole King, whose story is told in the musical Beautiful opening this week. But although she is one of the Brill alumni, along with Ellie Greenwich, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Gene Pitney, Bobby Darin, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond and Neil Sedaka, she never actually worked at the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, New York. Instead, King, along with collaborator and husband Gerry Goffin, had offices across the road at 1650 Broadway with many other famous songwriters.

Carole King and husband Gerry Goffin in 1959.

The Brill Building was one of several housing the music industry, albeit one that contributed its name to this amazing era in pop music. It could have been “the Lefcourt Building sound” because the building was meant to be called the Alan E. Lefcourt Building, after the late son of property developer Abraham Lefcourt who commissioned the classic Art Deco building. It opened in 1931, but Lefcourt leased the site from the Brill Brothers, owners of a men’s haberdashery story who opened up a branch of their business on the ground floor. When Lefcourt broke the conditions of his lease, the Brill brothers took over and renamed it the Brill Building.

In the ’30s the building attracted music publishers, composers, musicians and producers. Some had moved from Tin Pan Alley, once New York’s centre of popular music, to the more salubrious premises at Brill, which was closer to the theatre district.

The entrance to the Brill Building in New York.

The ’30s and ’40s was the era of the “big band”, mostly large brass orchestras that played swing jazz. Constantly touring and playing live radio concerts, these bands had a voracious appetite for new music. Brill and surrounding buildings set up a virtual production line for creating and selling their music. Tunes were written by a stable of writers who tailoring their songs to a particular sound or style of an artist. In the same buildings were arrangers, session musicians who would create demo recordings in studios on the premises, and “song pluggers” who would try and sell a song to a band or a singer.

After World War II the big bands shrank in size as swing lost its hold on the pop charts. Smaller jazz, rhythm and blues or vocal “doo-wop” ensembles dominated. But through the 5’50s their appetite for songs only increased, keeping the industry alive. In the ’50s rock’n’roll drove a surge in the sales of popular music and the Brill Building was soon a major part of that boom.

The raw sounds of early amateur, largely self-taught rockers were refined by the composers on Broadway. Two pioneers of this new friendlier version of rock’n’roll were Lieber and Stoller, who had written the hit Hound Dog, originally performed by Big Mama Thornton in 1952 and later made famous by Elvis Presley. These two Jewish men worked with black artists or wrote black-sounding tunes for white artists, creating a unique sound. Lieber and Stoller mentored other composers including Ellie Greenwich (Leader of the Pack, Chapel of Love, Do Ron Ron, River Deep Mountain High) and the team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (On Broadway, You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling).

Singer Ellie Greenwich (at the piano) and husband Jeff Barry wrote the song Chapel Of Love for The Dixie Cups in 1964.

songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with Elvis Presley in 1957.

The Brill Building often brought together some of the great composer-lyricist teams.

In 1957 Burt Bacharach met Hal David at the company famous music, they went on to write big hits such as Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.

Other musicians also became part of the songwriting machine, including Sedaka. He once dated King, about whom he wrote the hit Oh! Carol! Sedaka and King remained friends. But in 1958 King met Goffin, and they began to write songs. He wanted to write show tunes, but King wanted to write rock’n’roll. She got her way.

They married in 1959 and with some help from Sedaka sold some of their songs at the Brill Building. They eventually set up their own offices at 1650 Broadway, where rents were cheaper than Brill. Their first big hit was Will You Love Me Tomorrow, sung by the Shirelles; it hit number one in 1960.

The influence of the Brill Building declined by the late ’60s as their largely insubstantial form of assembly-line pop gave way to more performers and bands writing their own songs. But Brill has left a legacy of great hits from a more innocent age.