Name	Neil Sedaka
Height	5' 5"
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	13 March 1939
Place of Birth	Brooklyn, New York, USA
Famous for

Sedaka was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 13, 1939. His father, Mac Sedaka, a taxi driver, was the son of Turkish-Jewish immigrants; his mother, Eleanor (Appel) Sedaka, was of Polish-Russian descent.

He first demonstrated musical aptitude in his second-grade choral class, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright. He took to the instrument immediately.

In 1947, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music's Preparatory Division for Children, which he began to attend on Saturdays. He also maintained an interest in popular music, and when he was 13, a neighbor heard him playing and introduced him to her 16-year-old son, Howard Greenfield, an aspiring poet and lyricist. The two began writing songs together.

The best-known Billboard Hot 100 hits of his early career are "The Diary" (#14, 1958), "Oh! Carol" (#9, 1959), "You Mean Everything to Me" (#17, 1960), "Calendar Girl" (#4, 1960), "Little Devil" (#11, 1961) "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" (#6, 1961), "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (#1, 1962), and "Next Door To An Angel" (#5, 1962). "Oh! Carol" refers to Sedaka's Brill Building compatriot and former girlfriend Carole King. King soon responded with her own answer song, "Oh, Neil", which used Sedaka's full name. A Scopitone exists for "Calendar Girl". Sedaka wrote his other known hit Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen for his then close friend Annette Funicello.[citation needed]

A similar sharing of creative hits came earlier with Sedaka and singer Connie Francis. As Francis explains at each of her concerts, she began searching for a new hit immediately after her 1958 single Who's Sorry Now? became a success. She was then introduced to Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who played every ballad they had written to date, for her. After a few hours, Francis began writing in her diary while the two songwriters played the last of their songs. After they finished their last song of the session, Francis told them that they wrote very beautiful ballads, but that she considered them too intellectual for the young generation of the time. Greenfield then suggested to Sedaka a song they had written that morning for another girl group. Sedaka protested, believing that Francis would be insulted, but reluctantly agreed to play "Stupid Cupid" with Greenfield for Francis. As soon as they finished playing the song, Francis told them that they had just played her new hit record. Francis' song reached #14 on the Billboard charts.

While Francis was writing in her diary, Sedaka asked her if he could read what she had written. After she refused, Sedaka was inspired to write "The Diary", which was his first hit single. Through the rest of her early career Sedaka and Greenfield wrote many of Connie Francis' hits such as "Fallin" and "Where the Boys Are".

Between 1960 and 1962, Sedaka had eight Top 40 hits. But he was among the early 1960s performers whose careers were waylaid by the British Invasion and other sea changes in the music industry. His singles began to decline on the US charts, before disappearing altogether.