Donald Kirshner (April 17, 1934 – January 17, 2011)
Early life
Don Kirshner was born to a
American Jews family
in
the Bronx,
the son of Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor, and Belle Jaffe. He graduated from George Washington High School in Washington Heights, Manhattan
and studied at
Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.
After graduation he went to work for Vanderbilt Music, a small music publishing company owned by former Tin Pan Alley lyricist Al Lewis. Kirshner introduced Lewis to Sylvester Bradford, an African American songwriter. Lewis and Bradford wrote "Tears on My Pillow", which was a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials in 1958.
Aldon Music
Kirshner achieved his first major success in the late 1950s and early 1960s as co-owner of the influential New York-based publishing company
Aldon Music with partner
Al Nevins, which had under contract at various times several of the most important songwriters of the so-called "
Brill Building" school, including
Carole King,
Gerry Goffin,
Neil Sedaka,
Neil Diamond,
Paul Simon,
Phil Spector, Howard Greenfield,
Barry Mann,
Cynthia Weil,
Tony Orlando, and Jack Keller.
As a producer-promoter, Kirshner was instrumental in launching the careers of singers and songwriters, including Bobby Darin, with whom he collaborated on a number of advertising jingles and pop "ditties" - their first was called "Bubblegum Pop".
Kirshner's record labels
Kirshner had three record labels. The first was Chairman Records, a subsidiary of
London Records. Although he was responsible for scores of hits in the 1960s, he was only to have one on the Chairman label – 1963's "
Martian Hop" by
The Ran-Dells – which reached number 16 nationally. Kirshner later had two other record labels: Calendar Records, which had early hits by
the Archies, and later morphed into the Kirshner label, which had later hits by the Archies and Kansas. Calendar/Kirshner recordings were first distributed by
RCA Records, then
Columbia Records. Kirshner was also involved in Dimension Records.
Music for TV shows
In the early 1960s, Kirshner was a successful music publisher as head of his own company, Aldon Music, which later was sold to Screen Gems-Columbia Music.
With Al Nevins, Kirshner brought performers such as Bobby Darin together with songwriters and musicians. He later became president of COLGEMS, a subsidiary of the COLPIX label, in 1966.
Kirshner was hired by the producers of The Monkees to provide hit-worthy songs to accompany the television program, within a demanding schedule. Kirshner used songwriting talent from his Brill Building stable of writers and musicians to create catchy, engaging tracks which The Monkees could pretend to perform on the show. This was required to keep up with the demanding schedule.
The formula worked phenomenally well – the singles "Last Train to Clarksville", written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and "I'm a Believer", written by Neil Diamond, were, along with the first two Monkees albums, produced and released in time to catch the initial wave of the television program's popularity. After a year, the Monkees wanted a chance to play their own instruments on the records. They also wanted more control over which songs would be released as singles. The matter reached a breaking point over a disagreement regarding the Neil Diamond-penned "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" in early 1967. The song's release by Kirshner as a single, without Columbia Pictures' consent,
Kirshner's later venture was the Archies, an animated series where there were only studio musicians to be managed.
Producer
From 1970 to 1979, Kirshner served as producer or executive producer for a number of made for TV movies, TV specials, and TV series.
One of those series was the musical game show
Musical Chairs, notable for being the first game show hosted by an African-American, Adam Wade.
[ Short-Lived Television Series, 1948–1978: Thirty Years of More Than 1,000 Flops By Wesley Hyatt, page 235-36]
Don Kirshner's Rock Concert
In the fall of 1972, Kirshner was asked by ABC Television to serve as executive producer and "creative consultant" for their new
In Concert series, which aired every other week in the 11:30 p.m. slot normally showing
The Dick Cavett Show. The following September, Kirshner left
In Concert to produce and host his own syndicated weekly rock-concert program called
Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.
With its long-form live performances, it was a new direction for pop music presentation on television as compared to rehearsed, often lip-synced performances that were the staple of earlier television shows like
Shindig!.
The last show aired in 1981, the year that
MTV was launched.
The program presented many of the most successful bands of the era, usually rock and roll but occasionally from other genres, each time introduced by Kirshner's trademark monotone delivery as the program host. In its final season, Rock Concert was mostly hosted by Kirshner's son and daughter, whose delivery was similar as their father's. Kirshner's "wooden" presentation style was later lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Paul Shaffer, most notably in Shaffer's introduction of the Blues Brothers during the duo's television debut. Shaffer and Kirshner worked together on the short-lived situation comedy, A Year at the Top, which Kirshner co-produced with Norman Lear, and in which Shaffer starred.
Later career
Kirshner received the 2007 Songwriters Hall of Fame Abe Olman Publishing Award.
He was a creative consultant for Rockrena, a company founded by
Jack Wishna, and launched in 2011 to promote new music talent online.
He died of
heart failure in a Boca Raton, Florida hospital on January 17, 2011 at age 76, survived by his wife of 50 years, Sheila; his son,
Ricky Kirshner; daughter, Daryn Lewis; and five grandchildren.
[
CNN.com, "Rock producer and Monkees hit-maker Don Kirshner dead at 76", 18 January 2011 (accessed 29 December 2011)]
On April 14, 2012, Kirshner was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Further reading
-
Podolsky, Rich (2012). Don Kirshner: The Man with the Golden Ear: How He Changed the Face of Rock and Roll. Hal Leonard Publishing. .
External links
