Ellie Greenwich Biodata

Ellie Greenwich-Ellie Greenwichwas an American pop music singer, songwriter, and record producer. She wrote or co-wrote “Be My Baby”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Leader of the Pack”, and “River Deep, Mountain High”, among many others.

Greenwich (pronounced “GREN-itch”) was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother. At age ten, she moved with her parents and younger sister to Levittown, New York. In time she began taking lessons on the accordion. By her teens, she was composing her songs; eventually she taught herself to compose on the piano rather than the accordion. In high school, Greenwich and two friends formed a singing group, The Jivettes, which took on more members and performed at local functions.
At 17, around the time she began attending Queens College, Greenwich recorded her first single for RCA Records, the self-written “Silly Isn’t It” b/w “Cha-Cha Charming.” The single was issued under the name “Ellie Gaye” (which she chose as a reference to Barbie Gaye, singer of the original version of “My Boy Lollipop”). The record was released in 1958 and indirectly led to her decision to transfer from Queens College to Hofstra University after one of her professors at the former institution belittled her for recording pop music.

In 1959, still at college, Greenwich met the man who would become her husband and main songwriting partner. Although it is possible they had been acquainted as children, since they shared a relative, the first time Greenwich and Jeff Barry met formally as adults was at a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by her maternal uncle, who was married to Barry’s cousin. Greenwich had brought her accordion, and she and Barry recognized their mutual attraction — to music. Romance was not yet in the air as Barry was married to his first wife, who was at the dinner. Yet within a couple of years, the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich would be among the most successful and prolific of Brill Building composers.

In 1991, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Leader Of The Pack is still performed all over the world, and until her death Greenwich oversaw the various productions.

On August 26, 2009, Greenwich died of a heart attack at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, New York City, where she had been admitted a few days earlier for treatment of pneumonia.