Maxie the Taxi Sedaka and his wife, Eleanor, were barely making ends meet on his salary as a Brooklyn cab driver when their son’s second-grade teacher, Evelyn Glance, suggested they get him piano lessons.
For a 6-year-old, Neil was showing an incredible musical aptitude in choral class, and could very well be a child prodigy. If so, they should buy him a piano.
Maxie the Taxi gulped. How much did pianos cost? He was already working long shifts driving a cab to support his family, maybe he could add a few more hours.
He had earned his endearing nickname from friends and steady customers for being a stand up guy, and now, looking out his Brighton Beach apartment window at his son playing stickball in the street below, Maxie thought yeah, he could put in a few more hours behind the steering wheel. Anything for his kid.
Eleanor said forget it. He was already working hard enough. She’d get a sales clerk job at Abraham & Straus department store while Neil was at school. She checked around and found they could buy a second hand upright for around $500.
The day the piano was delivered officially ended Neil Sedaka’s stickball career. Those gifted fingers of his were too valuable to risk getting injured playing ball with a broom handle and pink Spaldeen.
Everyday, for six hours, Neil sat at that piano and honed his skills. He missed stickball, but he loved music, and he was good. Very good.
Every few weeks, Maxie would tell his son to take a break. The Dodgers were home, let’s go out to Ebbets Field and see Jackie Robinson play. They’d sit in the bleachers for 60 cents a ticket and scream themselves hoarse for the Bums to win.
Neil’s second grade teacher was right. He was a prodigy. The Juilliard School of Music offered him a scholarship, and famed concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein named him the best high school pianist in New York City.
Everybody who heard Neil play agreed. Maxie the Taxi and Eleanor’s kid was destined for Carnegie Hall. Nobody bothered to ask Neil where he saw himself destined for.
Like just about every teenager in America in the 50’s, he’d rush home from school at 3:30 p.m., turn on American Bandstand, and see rock ‘n’ roll, not Rachmaninoff, in his future.
He’d sing along with whomever Dick Clark had as guest performers that day, and found not only his fingers were gifted, but his voice was pretty darn good, too.
“Little did I think that a couple of years later, I would be on with Dick Clark, who gave me my start,” Sedaka said this week on the eve of his 80th birthday and as a rare concert date approaches on Saturday, April 6, at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills.
“I was so scared to sing at the beginning. All my training was as a concert pianist. My mother was a little leery about rock ‘n’ roll, but she said, ‘this is what you chose to do, so go do it,’ and she pushed me out on the stage. Fortunately, I had the goods.”
“Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” “Oh, Carol,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” “Calendar Girl,” and so many other Top 10 hits followed.
“After a couple of royalty checks, my mother was very pleased I chose rock ‘n’ roll,” Sedaka said, laughing. “I bought her a mink coat and a house.”
But, almost as soon as it began, it ended when the Beatles arrived in 1963, and Sedaka’s career began to flag.
“I was out of work,” he candidly said. “I figured if the Beatles came to New York, I’d go to England where the English were still very faithful to original rock and roll. I lived there for three years.
“Elton John was a big fan and was just starting Rocket Records. He said I’m going to make you a star again, and his company produced my album ‘Laughter in the Rain’ in America, which went to number one.”
He still loves doing concerts, but limits them to eight a year. Ironically, now he spends most of his time composing classical music – “a side most people don’t know about me,” he said.
But it’s still “Calendar Girl” paying the bills.
“I love the adrenaline rush I get from an audience,” Sedaka said. “They’ve grown up with my songs, and it’s a wonderful feeling to share them, and know that ‘Calendar Girl’ will outlive me.”
Maxie the Taxi ultimately gave up his cab and became his son’s road manager, and his mom his number one fan.
“She was always in the audience wherever I performed – the ultimate kvell (proud parent),” Sedaka said, laughing.
“My father was a great guy, but my mother ruled the roost.”
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
