Happy Birthday Neil Sedaka!

Neil Sedaka Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen March 13, 2013

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Before the Beatles “loved us do” and the Rolling Stones searched for “Satisfaction,” there was Neil Sedaka.

A Jewish heartthrob from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, he was one of the legendary Brill Building composers, along with collaborators Howard Greenfield and Carol King — also his former girlfriend, and namesake for the hit song “Oh Carol” (1959). Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sedaka topped charts with songs like “Calendar Girl” (1961), and “Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do” (1962).

More than 55 years after he first started, the singer-songwriter is still crooning.

Here’s a little treat in honor of his 74th birthday:

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.