Remembering Neil Sedaka, Pop Hitmaker With Roots in the Catskills’ Borscht Belt

Last week, the Catskills lost not only a rock and roll icon, but a piece of its own history.

Neil Sedaka, the singer-songwriter behind “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,””Oh! Carol”, “Calendar Girl,”and “Bad Blood” as well as many hits performed by other artists including “Stupid Cupid”and “Love Will Keep Us Together,” died on February 27. He was 86.

In a statement from Sedaka’s Instagram account, Sedaka’s family said, “…we are devastated by the sudden passing of our beloved husband, father and grandfather Neil Sedaka, a true rock and roll legend and inspiration to millions. But most importantly, at least to those of us who were lucky enough to know him an incredible human being who will be deeply missed.” No cause of death was given.

Sedaka’s music holds a special place in the hearts of many residents of the Catskills, particularly those who remember the golden years of the Borscht Belt resorts of the mid-twentieth century where he got his start

Arnold Graham of Charles Rapp Enterprises, is a talent agent whose father helped book Sedaka and many other performers during the region’s resort heyday.

“It was either 1957 or 1958, my father, Sam Graham, who was also a booking agent, booked Neil as a band at the Shady Nook Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, New York, for two seasons. Then the following year my dad booked them at the Astor Manor Hotel in Monticello, New York, where he was the bandleader again. And that season he wrote Stupid Cupid for Connie Francis, and it became a big hit. And Neil became a star.”

Graham knew Sedaka well at the time and spoke highly of him.

“He remembered his humble beginnings in the Catskills, that he worked a place like the Shady Nook, which was not a major hotel, but it was a nice hotel in its day and he never complained about the room. He never complained about anything. When you spoke to him, he would always ask, how are you and how is your family, and they were concerned about everybody, and if you needed something, you could ask for that. Do you need a favor, he would do it. Neil would be that way.”

Sedaka wasn’t like the other famous entertainers who roamed the Catskills at this time. There was something about him that was different according to Dr. Peter Alan Chester, co-founder and treasurer of the Borscht Belt Museum in Ellenville.

“He came up with a different kind of preparation. Unlike many of the other band leaders and bands, this was not his side gig, while he was in college studying to be a doctor. This was what his intended career was. So he came up here with different tools. He could also do different things because of his musical training. He also would play his own compositions. Some of the other band leaders, who didn’t achieve that kind of fame, did compose, but it was nowhere near what he composed. That was the uniqueness that was rarely found in the bands that were up here at the time. So he was more than just a dance band. He was more than just playing Yiddish music.”

Dr. Chester says fame and fortune wasn’t the only thing Sedaka discovered in the Catskills.

“It’s kind of like a real Borscht Belt love story. The old Borscht Belt was, if you were a nice Jewish boy who wanted to meet a nice Jewish girl, you’d come up to the Borscht Belt. The story of Sedaka is a little different. He met and fell in love, and later married and remained married for sixty years to Leba Strasberg, the daughter of the owners of the Esther Manor. I believe the ceremony was at the Esther Manor and the reception was at the Concord. So theirs was a Borscht Belt love story that was a little different Meet the piano player and he was just the ‘farshtunkena’ piano player, but all of a sudden, you know, he wasn’t ‘farshtunkena’ anymore because by the time they got married in the early 60s, he had several hits.”

While Sedaka found great success in the early 60s, those four mop-top, suit-wearing, sleeping giants across the pond, along with the rest of the world, had other plans.

“He had a wonderful career until the Beatles came…”, says Graham, “…Then he had a hiatus where he could not work at all and thought it was all over.”

After Beatlemania and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 70s, Sedaka once again rediscovered his commercial and critical success, writing for other bands like ABBA and Captain and Tennille, while also performing his own work, most famously with the number one single “Laughter in The Rain”.

Even when the world shut down in 2020 because of the pandemic, Sedaka still found a way to remain a part of our lives. Sedaka posted numerous videos to his social media, entitled “Today’s Mini-Concert”.

“Unforgettable, what he did during COVID…”, says Dr. Chester, “…with the mini concerts and you know it was just him at ease, in front of the piano with his t-shirt on and talking about the songs in the history and then singing the songs.”

Sedaka was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame eluded him despite a fan petition drive.

Sedaka married wife Leba in 1962. They had two children. Daughter Dara recorded a duet with dad in 1980, “Should’ve Never Let You Go.” It was a hit, but she never joined him in the music business. Son Marc is a film and television writer.

Image: Recording artist Neil Sedaka poses for a portrait Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010 in New York. (AP Photo/Jeff Christensen, File)