Barry Manilow (born Barry Alan Pincus; June 17, 1943) is an American singer and songwriter with a career that spans seven decades. His hit recordings include "Could It Be Magic", "Looks Like We Made It", "Mandy", "I Write the Songs", "Can't Smile Without You", "Weekend in New England" and "Copacabana (At the Copa)".
He has recorded and released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, including 13 that hit number one, 28 that appeared within the top ten, and 36 that reached the top twenty. Manilow has released 13 platinum and six multi-platinum albums. Although not a favorite artist of music critics, Manilow has been praised by his peers in the recording industry, including Frank Sinatra, who was quoted in the 1970s as saying, "He's next."
As well as producing and arranging albums for himself and other artists, Manilow has written and performed songs for musicals, films, and commercials for corporations such as McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola, and Band-Aid. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award (winning once) as a producer, arranger and performer a total of fifteen times (and in every decade) from 1973 to 2015. He has also produced Grammy-nominated albums for Bette Midler, Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, and Sarah Vaughan. Manilow has sold more than 85 million records as a solo artist worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists.
Early life
Barry Manilow was born Barry Alan Pincus on June 17, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Edna Manilow and Harold Kelliher, a truck driver of Irish descent. Barry’s mother made his father change his name to Pincus, which was the name of a Jewish uncle of his father from the 1800s. Barry’s parents were divorced when he was a baby, and his mother’s Jewish family allowed no further contact between Barry and his father. Barry's maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his paternal grandfather was Jewish, though his grandmother was a Catholic of Irish descent. His Irish roots trace back to Limerick, Ireland. Barry's grandfather had his surname changed to Manilow a few weeks before Barry's bar mitzvah.
Manilow grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and graduated in 1961 from the now-defunct Eastern District High School. While in high school, he met Susan Deixler, and they later married for a short time. He enrolled in the City College of New York, where he briefly studied before entering the New York College of Music. He also worked at CBS while he was a student in order to pay his expenses. Afterwards, he studied musical theater at Juilliard Performing Arts School.
Career
1960s
In 1964, Manilow met Bro Herrod, a CBS director, who asked him to arrange some songs for a musical adaptation of the melodrama, The Drunkard. Instead, Manilow wrote an entire original score. Herrod used Manilow's composition in the Off Broadway musical, which had an eight-year run at New York's 13th Street Repertory Theatre. Manilow then earned money by working as a pianist, producer and arranger.
During this time, he began work as a commercial jingle writer and singer, which continued through the remainder of the 1960s. He performed many of the TV jingles that he composed, including State Farm Insurance ("Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there") or Band-Aid ("I am stuck on Band-Aid, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me!"), for which he adopted a childlike voice and wrote the music (Donald B Wood wrote the lyrics). His singing-only credits include commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi ("all across the nation, it's the Pepsi generation"), McDonald's ("you deserve a break today"), and Dr Pepper. Manilow was awarded an Honorary Clio at the 50th Anniversary Clio Awards in Las Vegas in 2009 for his 1960s work as a jingle writer and singer. When accepting the award, he stated that he learned the most about making pop music by working for three or four years as a writer in the jingle industry.
By 1967, Manilow was the musical director for the WCBS-TV series Callback, which premiered on January 27, 1968. He next conducted and arranged for Ed Sullivan's production company, arranging a new theme for The Late Show, while writing, producing, and singing his radio and television jingles. At the same time, he and Jeanne Lucas performed as a duo for a two-season run at Julius Monk's Upstairs at the Downstairs club in New York.
By 1969, Manilow was signed by Columbia/CBS Music vice-president and recording artist, Tony Orlando, who went on to co-write with and produce Manilow and a group of studio musicians under the name "Featherbed" on the Columbia Pictures' newly acquired Bell Records label."