{"id":1258,"date":"2009-08-27T22:28:48","date_gmt":"2009-08-27T22:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/27\/for-ellie-greenwich-who-really-was-leader-of-the-pack-with-thanks\/"},"modified":"2014-08-04T05:39:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T05:39:35","slug":"for-ellie-greenwich-who-really-was-leader-of-the-pack-with-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/27\/for-ellie-greenwich-who-really-was-leader-of-the-pack-with-thanks\/","title":{"rendered":"For Ellie Greenwich, Who Really WAS Leader of the Pack, With Thanks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ellie_Greenwich\"<\/a>When our kids were little, we used to sing.\u00a0 All the time.\u00a0 And early on, many of the songs they loved were written by this woman:\u00a0 Ellie Greenwich<\/a>. She was a tough cookie I think.\u00a0 She was also one of the great song writers of her generation.\u00a0 Ever heard Be My Baby<\/a>? (“Bee my, bee my bay bee, my one and only baybee…”)\u00a0 Chapel of Love<\/a>? (“Goin’ to the Cha pull and we’re gonna’ get ma a a reed”) River Deep, Mountain High<\/a> ?(“Do I love you my oh my, river deep, mountain high” that was Tina Turner.)\u00a0 Ever hear of girl groups?\u00a0 Then you’ve heard of Ellie Greenwich.\u00a0 There’s a reason she’s in the Song Writers Hall of Fame.\u00a0 She died August 26, the same day as Senator Kennedy, so I’m a little late, but I have a lot to thank her for.<\/p>\n

Freshman year we lived in a dorm with a big porch facing Seelye Hall, the main classroom building.\u00a0 We’d put our stereo speakers in the windows over the porch and blasted\u00a0 whatever we liked at the time, especially in the spring, as the snow melted and spirits rose.\u00a0 One of our classics was “Leader of the Pack<\/a>.”\u00a0 All of us, the Gang of Four as we were then, could re relied upon, for no reason, to belt out “Hey there, where’d you meet him?”\u00a0 to which another would reply (in song, of course, and I know <\/em>you know this) “I met him at the candy stoh – ore.”\u00a0\u00a0 It sounds so silly, doesn’t it?\u00a0 But it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

The tribal music Greenwich gave us was alive with the spirit that was all of us, before the War tore everything apart, when we just had fun and our minds were full of ideas and ambitions, and songs, and romantic daydreams, and songs, and learning how to be grown ups (slowly) and songs.\u00a0 And her songs were so universal, so full of a love of living and living for love – way before we even heard of our sister alums Gloria Steinem<\/a> and Betty Friedan<\/a>.\u00a0 Somehow, as things became more serious, Doo Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo<\/a> didn’t flow off the tongue so easily.\u00a0 That’s why I was so glad when a Broadway musical, Leader of the Pack, opened in the 80’s and gave us another chance – and a great cast album, full of many of her greatest songs.<\/p>\n

My own favorite is all tangled up in a memory.\u00a0 It was a sunny fall day and my six-year-old and I were walking down a street someplace in the Village.\u00a0 And we were arm-in-arm.\u00a0 And our walk had a rhythm – right feet at the same time, left feet at the same time, just the two of us.\u00a0\u00a0 And the rhythm?\u00a0 It came because, together, crossing the nearly 30 years between us, together, we were singing –Da Doo Ron Ron<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Not quite this great, but not bad, either. So thanks Ellie. And the rest of you – see for yourselves.<\/p>\n

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When our kids were little, we used to sing.\u00a0 All the time.\u00a0 And early on, many of the songs they loved were written by this woman:\u00a0 Ellie Greenwich. She was a tough cookie I think.\u00a0 She was also one of the great song writers of her generation.\u00a0 Ever heard Be My Baby? (“Bee my, bee … Continue reading For Ellie Greenwich, Who Really WAS Leader of the Pack, With Thanks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,4,6,27,42,2764,7,8],"tags":[436,433,437,432,430,435,431,10,429,434],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-i-seem-to-write-a-lot-of-obits","category-life","category-music","tag-betty-friedan","tag-chapel-of-love","tag-college-girls","tag-da-doo-ron-ron","tag-ellie-greenwich","tag-gloria-steinem","tag-leader-of-the-pack","tag-music-2","tag-pop","tag-song-writer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-ki","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}