From:   "Dik de Heer"  
Date:  Sat Feb 9, 2002  2:15 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Barry Mann
 
BARRY MANN

Born Barry Iberman, 9 February 1939, Brooklyn, New York City

The parallels between Barry Mann and Carole King are manifold : both born
in Brooklyn, both on February 9, both one of the leading pop songwriters of
their generation, both working in the Brill Building, both marrying their
songwriting partner.
Barry Mann's great frustation is his lack of recognition as a performer. He
did enjoy one big hit (# 7) in 1961, "Who Put The Bomp (In The Bomp,
Bomp, Bomp)", an effective satire of the gimmicky doo-wop sounds that
were popular at that time, but after that, his sales as a vocalist fell far
behind those of the songs he wrote. His earliest successes as a writer
were "She Say (Oom Dooby Doom)" by the Diamonds (1959) and
"Footsteps" by Steve Lawrence (1960). In 1961, Mann found a
songwriting partner in Cynthia Weil (born 1941, Manhattan), whom
he soon married. Their first success together was Tony Orlando's
"Bless You", which endeared them to their new employer, Don
Kirshner, who housed a wealth of songwriting talent in the cubicles of his
Brill Building offices. Like all great songwriters, they adapted well to
different styles and themes, and this insured that their compositions were
recorded by a broad range of artists. The list of their hits is endless.
Among them: "Uptown" and "He's Sure The Boy I Love" (The Crystals),
"Blame It On the Bossa Nova" (Eydie Gorme), "On Broadway" (The
Drifters), "I'm Gonna Be Strong" (Gene Pitney), "I Just Can't Help
Believing" (B.J. Thomas) and, most famous of all, "You've Lost That
Lovin' Feeling" (The Righteous Brothers), allegedly the most played song
on US radio. Another # 1 by the Righteous Bros was the Mann/Weil
composition "Soul And Inspiration". By the late 60s, the couple left
Kirshner and moved to Hollywood. Changes in the pop marketplace
subsequently reduced their hit output, but there were some notable
successes in the seventies as well (Dolly Parton's "Here You Come
Again", for instance).
Barry and Cynthia are still together, still writing new songs.

Official homepage: http://www.mann-weil.com
CD: Barry Mann, Who Put The Bomp, released on the Belgian Marginal
label (MAR 007) in 1995. Twenty-five tracks from the sixties.