Singer, writer had to fool mom

His songs put others on the charts, but he wanted to hear his voice on the radio.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
One of the most successful singer-songwriters in history admits he was a mama's boy.
"I was very close to my mom," says Neil Sedaka over late morning coffee.
And that indulgent mom didn't like it one bit when Sedaka wanted to forsake Gustav Mahler for old-fashioned love songs.
"My mother was not happy at the beginning. I used to have to wait for her to leave the house to go shopping before I could write pop songs, because she was so intent on my becoming a concert pianist," he recalls.
Prestigious scholarship
"I had a scholarship at the Juilliard. At the beginning she was very annoyed that I would take time from practice to write. But as time went along -- after the first couple of hits I got her a mink stole and that, in a Jewish family, is a big doing. I bought my sister a home in Brooklyn and retired my father who was a taxi driver for 30 years in New York," says, Sedaka, who at 65 is beginning a new tour next month.
How Sedaka made his transition is the stuff of dime novels.
The creator of such hits as "Laughter in the Rain," and "Love Will Keep Us Together," Sedaka was 16 when he and his lyricist-friend, Howard Greenfield, stormed the offices of Atlantic Records. Though the execs liked his music, they deemed his voice too soprano to score with listening fans.
"I used to do the demos and thought I was a pretty good singer," he shrugs. "So as I went along, I felt that I should be recorded. Why should somebody else get the credit? And I wanted to hear my voice on the radio. In 1958 I heard 'The Diary' on New York radio and it was a thrill of a lifetime."
Hits for others
Sedaka put Connie Francis on the charts with "Where the Boys Are" and scribbled tunes for the Monkees, Tom Jones and Elvis Presley.
But in the mid-1960s, after the Rolling Stones and the Beatles rolled onto American shores, Sedaka's music went out of fashion.
"I expected it. Because the progression usually was five years," says Sedaka. "The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Connie Francis, Brenda Lee. It was about a five-year span of success and then the public got tired of you ...
"I was pigeonholed. It was a very happy naive [time], but I over did the tra-la-las and the doobie-doos," he says.
Sedaka decided, he says, "the only way I could do a comeback ... was to write more mature songs -- that old story. I did a group of songs with Phil Cody. One album called 'Solitaire,' 'Laughter in the Rain,' an album called 'Emergence,' where I was reinventing myself."
He must've done something right because Elton John sought him out when John was founding his own record company.
He persuaded Sedaka to cut a new album with John penning the liner notes. It worked. Sedaka cashed in on a string of hits that followed.
Married for 43 years to his wife, Leba (who has served as his manager) Sedaka says the secret to a happy marriage is remaining good friends.
"I met her at her mother's hotel in the Catskills. I had a band. She was 16 and I was 19. It was like 'Dirty Dancing.' Her parents did not like that: a musician? They said, 'You'll have to forget him.' But she checked into a college in Brooklyn to be nearer to me. I thought I was marrying a Catskill mountain heiress. Boy was I surprised," he said, laughing.
The couple has two children: Marc, who is a screenwriter, and Dara "who does her nails and hair and goes to the movies," he says."
As for Sedaka, he just keeps on ticking.