Ellie Greenwich - Early Years

Early Years

Greenwich (pronounced "GREN-itch") was born Eleanor Louise Greenwich in Brooklyn, New York, to a Catholic father, William, an electrical engineer and former painter, and a Jewish mother, Rose Baron, a department store manager, both were of Russian ancestry. She was named for Eleanor Roosevelt and, despite her parent's religious beliefs, she was not raised Catholic or Jewish. Her musical interest was sparked as a child when her parents would play music in their home and she learned how to play the accordion at a young age. At age ten, she moved with her parents and younger sister, Laura, to Levittown, New York. By her teens, she was composing songs; eventually she taught herself to compose on the piano rather than the accordion. In high school, Greenwich and two friends formed a singing group, The Jivettes, which took on more members and performed at local functions. While attending high school, she started using the accordion to write love songs about her school crush. After graduating high school, Greenwich enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music but was rejected because the school did not accept accordion players, and she subsequently enrolled at Queens College.

At 17, around the time she began attending Queens College, Greenwich recorded her first single for RCA Records, the self-written "Silly Isn't It", backed with "Cha-Cha Charming". The single was issued under the name "Ellie Gaye" (which she chose as a reference to Barbie Gaye, singer of the original version of "My Boy Lollipop"). However, a biography about Greenwich claimed that the name was changed by RCA Records to prevent mispronunciations of "Greenwich". "Cha-Cha Charming" was released in 1958 and indirectly led to her decision to transfer from Queens College to Hofstra University after one of her professors at the former institution belittled her for recording pop music.