Oh! Carol
Oh! Carol is a song that the Turkish-Russian-born American Neil Sedaka wrote together with his long-time songwriting partner Howard Greenfield . It was released in 1959 as the A-side of the sixth solo single under Sedaka's name.
prehistory
Sedaka started earning his living as a songwriter at the age of 18 at Aldon Music Publishing in New York's Brill Building . On the side, two of his demo recordings had already been released on Decca Records before he signed a regular record deal with RCA Victor . After Sedaka's debut RCA single, The Diary , hit # 14 in the charts , but thereafter I Go Ape and Crying My Heart Out for You had missed the top 40 in the US, Sedaka was eager to hit the charts again bring.
Making a hit
“I had to write a hit. I knew I wouldn't get another chance, ”writes Sedaka in his autobiography. He studied the Billboard hit parades, bought the most successful hits and analyzed them. “I discovered that they contained similar elements: harmonic rhythm , the change of chords , the instrumentation , the phrasing of the vocal parts ... even the timbre of the leading solo part. I decided to write a song that had all of these elements in one recording. ”One of the common elements was that there was a female given name in the title; Sedaka chose the name of his high school friend Carol Klein, who was also making a name for herself as a songwriter under her stage name Carole King . Oh! Carol was the result of well thought out composition, a 2 minute for 15 seconds typical for the time piece of pop - rock , whose text Sedaka together with "Howie" Greenfield wrote, with whom he worked since 1,952th The melody was inspired by the Brazilian composer Villa Lobos. Sedaka recorded the song at RCA studios with one of his employers, publisher Al Nevins , as a producer ; As usual, the graduate of the Juilliard School played the piano himself. It was one of the first recordings in which he recorded and mixed his voice several times , which then became a kind of "trademark" of his records.
Success of the song
The artist's success proved him right: the single rose to number 9 on the charts in December 1959 and became the first top ten hit in his homeland for the New Yorker of Turkish and Russian origin . “It was a great feeling. I drove in my Chevrolet Impala convertible, had the radio on, and Oh! Carol ran on three channels at the same time. It was like a dream, ”he recalled almost 50 years later. In Great Britain , where I Go Ape was already number 9 in April 1959, Oh! Carol , published with catalog number RCA 1152 and the B-side One Way Ticket on November 13, 1959, entered the charts and climbed to number 3 in the course of his 17-week chart career. In Italy, Oh! Carol even a number one hit .
Style and text
Like all of Sedaka's early song catalog, Oh! Carol “happy, positive and maybe a little naive, but you understood the lyrics.” The lyrics of Oh! Carol is simple; A satirical quiz site on the Internet interprets it as "absurd, predictable and clichéd": Greenfield and Sedaka almost exclusively use monosyllabic and two-syllable words; the most letter word is sweetheart , the only three syllable word is another . The story the song tells is just as simple and consists of a single verse in which the protagonist complains to Carol that she is treating him badly, but asks her to stay with him as she is still his only love be:
"Oh! Carol, I am but a fool.
Darling, I love you, though you treat me cruel.
You hurt me and you make me cry,
but if you leave me I will surely die.
Darling, there will never be another, 'cause I love you so.
Don't ever leave me - say you'll never go.
I will always want you for my sweetheart, no matter what you do.
Oh! Carol, I'm so in love with you! "
The lyric verse of this moderate rock 'n' roll title occurs twice during the course of the song; First Sedaka sings it once in its entirety, in the repetition he speaks the first part - as the Diamonds had shown him a year earlier in their hit Little Darlin ' - and returns to the vocals in the second part.
Reception and influence
Carole King, to the Oh! Carol was directed, Sedaka responded with a song of her own, in which she kept its melody. Your oh! Neil was a straightforward, very humorous reply, addressing Neil Sedaka directly:
"Oh! Neil, I've loved you for so long;
I'd never dreamed you'd put me in a song.
I'm Carol, and I live in Tennessee.
I'd never hoped that you'd remember me. "
Sedaka's song became a worldwide hit; about four million singles were sold. How common Oh! Carol reveals an anecdote that Sedaka likes to tell. He was in Beijing , China on a trip to the Great Wall of China when the tour guide on the bus announced to American tourists that he would sing a song in English. “He sang Oh! Carol , and I said this is my song, and he said, 'No, this is a Neil Sedaka song,' and I said, 'I'm Neil Sedaka,' and he said, 'If you're Neil Sedaka then I am Elvis Presley . ' Nobody there knew my face, but he knew the song very well. "
Musicologists see an influence from Oh! Carol on the later music of the Beach Boys . Several cover versions exist, among the first one by the Dutch duo Blue Diamonds in 1960 , one by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on their LP Sherry & 11 Others in 1962 and one by the Swedish band The Hep Stars (the former band of Benny Andersson ( ABBA )). In 1994, Clint Eastwood & General Saint had a minor hit with Oh! Carol (# 54) in the UK charts. Sedaka's own version had a second appearance in the British charts in 1972; It was re-released on an EP together with the hits Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and Little Devil , which entered the charts on October 7, 1972 and reached number 19 in the course of 14 weeks of the chart.
The song Come Back Karen by the British band Wizzard is based on Sedaka's piece.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Neil Sedaka, Laughter in the Rain: My Own Story , 1982; quoted from William Ruhlmann, Neil Sedaka biography at All Music Guide
- ↑ Michael Turner, The Neil Sedaka Biography , viewed December 5, 2008
- ↑ "It became a Neil Sedaka trademark ... I think it was Oh Carol when I first used double tracked vocals." Neil Sedaka, Still keeping it together , interview with Terry Gross on WHYY radio on April 16, 2007, heard on December 5, 2008
- ↑ Sedaka Keeps It Together , CBS News, October 25, 2007, viewed December 5, 2008
- ↑ Photo and details of the original single at Discogs
- ↑ a b UK chart data according to David Roberts (ed.): Guinness World Records - British Hit Singles and Albums , 19th ed., 2006, ISBN 1-904994-10-5 , p. 487
- ↑ Neil Sedaka, Still keeping it together , interview with Terry Gross on WHYY radio April 16, 2007, heard on December 5, 2008
- ^ "Neil Sedaka's" Oh Carol "is insipid, predictable, clichéd"; Much More Than a Neil Sedaka Lyrics Quiz , viewed December 6, 2008
- ↑ Translation: Oh! Carol, I'm just a fool / darling, I love you even though you're cruel to me. / You hurt me and make me cry, / but if you leave me I will surely die. / Darling, there will never be another because I love you so much. / Never leave me alone - say you never go. / I will always want you to be my love, whatever you do. / Oh! Carol, I'm so in love with you.
- ↑ Translation: Oh! Neil, I've loved you for so long / I never even dreamed that you wrote a song about me. / I'm Carol and I live in Tennessee / I never hoped you would remember me.
- ↑ a b Web Extra: Sedaka On "Oh Carol," His Family History, and His Difficult Decade , Scott Simon Interview of May 29, 2004, heard on December 5, 2008
- ↑ a b Second Hand Songs
- ↑ Neil Sedaka's biography at midomi.com
- ^ Artist profile at EMI Music Pub ( Memento from October 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )