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All Music Guide:
The most commercially successful solo singer to be identified with the girl group sound, Lesley Gore hit the number one spot with her very first release, "It's My Party," in 1963. Produced by Quincy Jones, who fattened the teenager's sound with double-tracked vocals and intricate backup vocals and horns, she reeled off a few more big hits in 1963 and 1964, including "Judy's Turn to Cry," "She's a Fool," "You Don't Own Me," "That's the Way Boys Are," and "Maybe I Know." She wasn't the most soulful girl group singer by a long shot, but she projected an archetype of female adolescent yearning. Her best songs survive as classics, particularly the irresistibly melodic "Maybe I Know" and "Look of Love" (both written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry) and "You Don't Own Me," an anthem of independence with a feminist theme that was considerably advanced for early 1964.
So what was Quincy Jones doing producing a white suburban teenager who had never recorded before? A couple of demos she recorded with her vocal coach made their way to Mercury's president, who recommended her to Jones, the label's A&R head. For their first session, Gore and Jones picked "It's My Party" out of a pile of about 200 demos. The "It's My Party" single was rush-released when Jones found out that Phil Spector had plans to record the same song with the Crystals.
"It's My Party" and the weaker sequel, "Judy's Turn to Cry," have given Gore a somewhat unfair bratty image. Those are the hits that are remembered the most, but much of her subsequent material was both more mature (or, perhaps more accurately, less immature) and stronger. The singles were also very well-produced, with orchestral arrangements (by Claus Ogerman) that hewed closer to mainstream pop than Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. Retrospectives of Jones' career usually downplay or omit his work with Gore, although it was among his most commercially successful; he's known now for recordings that are, well, funkier. But his success with Gore did a lot to build his already impressive résumé within the industry.
Gore appeared on the legendary T.A.M.I. Show alongside such heavyweights as the Rolling Stones, James Brown, and Smokey Robinson, but after 1964 her star plummeted rapidly. Mercury was still investing a lot of care in her sessions throughout the rest of the '60s, and her material and arrangements showed her capable of greater stylistic range than many acknowledged. But after the mid-'60s, Jones no longer worked with the singer on a regular basis. "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" (1965) and "California Nights" (1967), both of which were co-written by Marvin Hamlisch, would be her only Top 20 entries after 1964. She played the cabarets after her days as an active recording artist, and eventually had some success as a songwriter for other performers. Shortly after the turn of the century, Gore returned to recording, collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Blake Morgan. In 2005, she released the critically acclaimed Ever Since, which landed songs on CSI: Miami and Showtime's The L Word as well as Jeff Lipsky's film Flannel Pajamas, which debuted at Sundance in 2006.
Wikipedia:
Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein; May 2, 1946) is an American singer. She is perhaps best known for her 1963 pop hit "It's My Party", which she recorded at the age of 16. Following the hit, she became one of the most recognized teen pop singers of the 1960s.
Biography
Gore was born in New York City, New York. She was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, in a Jewish family. Her younger brother Michael, was an Oscar winner for Best Original Song for the theme song of Fame. Her father, Leo Gore, was a wealthy manufacturer of children's clothes and swimwear.
Lesley was a junior at the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood when "It's My Party" became a #1 hit. It was later nominated for a Grammy Award for rock and roll recording. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.
Career: 1960s and 1970s
Gore's first hit was followed by many others, including: "Judy's Turn to Cry" (US #5), the sequel to "It's My Party"; "She's a Fool" (US #5); the protofeminist million-selling "You Don't Own Me", which held at #2 for three weeks behind The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand"; "That's the Way Boys Are" (US #12); "Maybe I Know" (US #14/UK #20); "Look of Love" (US #27); and Grammy-nominated "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" (US #13), from the 1965 movie "Ski Party". Her record producer was Quincy Jones, who would later become one of the most famous producers in American music.
Instead of accepting the television and movie contracts that came her way, Gore chose to attend Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. This limited her public career to weekends and summer vacations and undoubtedly hurt her career. Nevertheless, throughout the mid 1960s Gore continued to be one of the most popular female singers in the United States and Canada.
Gore was given first shot at recording "A Groovy Kind of Love", but Shelby Singleton, a producer for Smash Records, a Mercury subsidiary, recommended that she not record a song with the word "groovy" in it. The Mindbenders went on to record the song, and it went to #2 on the Billboard charts.
Gore performed on both the January 19 and January 25, 1967, episodes of the Batman TV series, in which she guest-starred as Pussycat, one of Catwoman's minions. In the January 19 "That Darn Catwoman" episode, she lip-synched to the Bob Crewe-produced "California Nights" (US #16) (skipping the second verse), and in the January 25 "Scat! Darn Catwoman" episode to "Maybe Now" (the latter was for some reason cut from most later broadcasts of the episodes). Gore also performed the single "We Know We're in Love" ten months earlier on the final episode of "The Donna Reed Show", which aired on March 19, 1966. Afterwards, she maintained a lower profile in the music industry, performing at concerts and in cabarets.
By the late 1960s, her popularity had decreased with the advent of harder-edged psychedelic music. Gore released "Wedding Bell Blues" as a single in 1969, but her version flopped while the 5th Dimension's version spent three weeks at #1. Gore also recorded many of her hit songs in French, German, and Italian. In an interview Gore said that when Mercury Records dropped her in 1969, they owed her $175,000.00 and she did not see a nickel from them until 1989, by which time Mercury has recouped all of their costs from her royalties.
Gore kept busy writing songs, including composing songs for the soundtrack of the 1980 film Fame, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for "Out Here on My Own", written with her brother Michael. The song was a Top 20 hit for Irene Cara.
Return to recording in 2005
Gore played concerts and appeared on television throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 2005, she recorded her first album of new material since 1976 (Love Me By Name) — Ever Since — with producer/songwriter Blake Morgan for Engine Company Records (a small independent label). In addition to extensive national radio coverage and critical acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine, and other national press, three songs from Ever Since have been used in television shows and films: Better Angels, in CSI: Miami's fourth season premiere episode, "Words We Don't Say", in an episode of The L Word, and "It's Gone", in the Jeff Lipsky-directed film Flannel Pajamas. In 2009, "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" was featured in the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" was also used in the Simpsons episode Marge on the Lam, for the Butlins Company TV advertisements in 2008 and for the Target Australia homewares TV advertisement in 2010.
Personal life
Beginning in 2004, Gore hosted the PBS television series In the Life, which focused on LGBT issues. In 2005, she stated in an interview that she was a lesbian. As of the time of the interview, Gore had been living with her partner for more than 23 years.
