1 with the ode to teen outlawry “He’s a Rebel” - recorded with a then-background singer, Darlene Love of the Blossoms, on lead vocals, but released under the Crystals’ name. Spector cracked the top 20 in 1962 with the Crystals’ “There’s No Other (Like My Baby)” and “Uptown” but vaulted to No. Spector and Sill subsequently set up the label Philles as an outlet for Spector’s production output. 5 single “I Love How You Love Me” by the Paris Sisters for Sill’s Gregmark imprint. In 1961, Spector returned to L.A., where he produced the No. He also produced Gene Pitney’s “Every Breath I Take” for Musicor and Curtis Lee’s “Pretty Little Angel Eyes,” a No. King’s 1960 hit “Spanish Harlem,” worked as a session guitarist, produced Ruth Brown and La Vern Baker for Atlantic and briefly served as Atlantic’s head of A&R. Sill recommended Spector to Leiber and Stoller, installed in New York’s Brill Building as hitmaking writer-producers, and the 19-year-old headed east.ĭuring his two-year apprenticeship in the Big Apple, Spector co-wrote Ben E. producer-publisher Lester Sill and Lee Hazlewood as the Spectors Three. Other Teddy Bears hits failed to materialize on Imperial, and the act splintered. 1 that fall, selling an estimated 1.4 million copies. A breathy ballad, with lyrics inspired by the inscription on the tombstone of Spector’s father, was recorded issued by Dore Records, “To Know Him Is to Love Him” reached No. In 1958, Spector scraped together $40 for a Gold Star session with his vocal trio the Teddy Bears, which included friends Marshall Leib and Annette Kleinbard. City College, he began hanging out at Gold Star Studios, the Hollywood facility famed for its echo chamber, which would be the site of his epoch-making sessions. Spector’s musical vision developed early: He took guitar lessons from Barney Kessel and Howard Roberts, both of whom would become members of the Wrecking Crew, the powerhouse studio band on his most famous recordings. The school’s alumni included songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who would play an important role in his early career. When he was 8, his father killed himself, and his mother later moved the family to Los Angeles, where he began attending Fairfax High in 1954. He was born Harvey Phillip Spector in the Bronx. After a 2007 mistrial, Spector was retried in 2009 and convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 19 years in prison. 3, 2003, he was arrested after actress Lana Clarkson was found shot to death in his home. Spector, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, did little work from the early ’80s on, as tales of his increasingly erratic and violent behavior spread in the industry. The resounding flop of his 1966 magnum opus, Ike & Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” threw his career off track, but he rebounded with a controversial remix of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” and productions for John Lennon and George Harrison. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love, the Righteous Brothers and the Ronettes led Tom Wolfe to dub him “the First Tycoon of Teen” in a celebrated 1964 profile. Spector’s lucrative run of ’60s hits on his Philles label with the Crystals, Bob B. His medium was a series of bombastic, cavernous-sounding singles that turned angst-ridden Brill Building love songs into highly orchestrated three-minute operas – or, in Spector’s own memorable description, “little symphonies for the kids.” His extravagant style - dubbed the “Wall of Sound” - influenced contemporaries like the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and later acolytes like Bruce Springsteen.
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