Extra: New York Icons: The Brill Building

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a few years in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, the heart of the music industry was an 11-story structure in midtown Manhattan: The Brill Building. There, and at the nearby 1650 Broadway, a group of very young songwriters including Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, and Cynthia Weil crafted their own take on rock and roll that was heavily influenced by their New York City setting. They churned out hit after hit for artists like The Shirelles, The Crystals, and Little Eva. But when the British Invasion hit in the mid-1960s, the Brill Building songwriters’ moment was over almost as soon as it began.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	from PRX.
0:07.5	I'm Kurt Anderson, and this is the Studio 360 podcast.
0:15.9	The pop music industry really got going in the early 1900s in New York City in a few blocks
0:22.4	known as Tin Pan Alley. Irving Berlin and George and Ira Gershwin and dozens of other composers
0:29.7	and lyricists turned out tunes that became the Great American Songbook.
0:34.3	Come on in here, come on and here, Alexander Greg Sand.
0:41.3	Come on here.
0:42.6	Pin Pan Alley was originally on West 28th Street in Manhattan, but as rents increased, it crept
0:49.2	up town.
0:50.6	And by the late 1950s, the New York pop music epicenter was 1619 Broadway,
0:57.7	this 11-story Art Deco Tower, the Brill Building.
1:02.6	It's the latest in our series on New York icons.
1:06.2	Studio 360s Tommy Bizarian has the story.
1:09.7	The famous Brill Building, Broadway and 49th Street, headquarters for songwriters,
1:15.4	pluggers, singers, bandleaders, and music publishers, all hopefully buying and selling
1:20.8	next season's hit tunes.
1:24.1	The Brill Building was built in 1931, the same year as the Empire State Building.
1:29.3	In the midst of the Depression, the building's owners leased cheap offices to whoever they could find,
1:34.3	which happened to be music publishers, agents, and musicians.
1:38.3	78 music publishers are staffers here.
1:40.3	Some owners of vast music catalogues, many many just a desk in someone else's waiting.
1:47.5	By the 50s, the Brill Building was packed with music industry professionals, many of them
	...

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