Built in 1931 and originally a clothing store, the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway NYC became, through economic imperative,
the rented home of a huge number of music publishers, numbering 165 at it's height in 1962.
The most important of these was
Aldon Music, founded in 1958 and run by
Don Kirschner and
Al Nevins, which at various times
during the late 1950's to mid-1960's employed some of the finest songwriters in the history of popular music, almost always writing in pairs.
Another occupant was pioneer record producer
Phil Spector, originator of the "Wall of Sound".
Acting like a vertical ( and vertically integrated )
Tin Pan Alley , the Brill Building production
line churned out high quality teen and "classic" pop until the mid 1960's, when, prompted by the Vietnam War and social
unrest, the market changed in favour of the protest song and the
singer-songwriter.
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