“We had a cubicle with a piano and a bench but no window. You only got a room with a window after you’d had a hit song,” Sedaka said, adding the pair were earning $50 a week. “Every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. we’d write and then we’d play what we’d written to people from record labels. It was hard, but it was wonderful training.”
He was the first at the building who recorded his own songs and also the first to reach the Top 10 with his hit song “Oh! Carol” (1959), which was inspired by his high school girlfriend, Carole King.
Greenfield and Sedaka collaborated until the mid-70s. Greenfield, who was openly gay, died from complications of AIDS in 1986.
As for Sedaka, at 19, he left The Tokens before the band hit its pinnacle of fame in 1961 with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Tonight I Fell in Love.”
Performing solo, his first three releases failed to make the charts, but one song did earn him a spot on American Bandstand with Dick Clark, and soon after, he landed a recording contract.
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