Teddy Bears

Before Phil Spector developed his renowned Wall of Sound through densely layered single-track mono productions, he himself sought entry into the music industry as a vocalist and instrumentalist. His initial opportunity arrived in 1958, when he contributed songs, guitar parts, and backing vocals to the fleeting Los Angeles trio the Teddy Bears. The ensemble scored an unexpected national chart-topper with his debut composition, the somber ballad “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” written in memory of his father, who died by suicide in 1949 during Spector’s youth.

During adolescence Spector kept largely to himself. While attending Fairfax High School he found little academic stimulation, so he turned to music study and rapidly mastered guitar, piano, drums, bass, and French horn. He also began composing and taping original rhythm-and-blues material. Though still seventeen, he already exerted a strong influence on the Los Angeles scene, drawing followers that included future Warner Bros. executive Russ Titelman and future Mothers of Invention and Magic Band guitarist Elliot Ingber.

Spector soon joined other aspiring musicians and producers who loitered in studios to absorb techniques. Alongside Kim Fowley, Gary Paxton, Herb Alpert, and Lou Adler, he learned record-making at Gold Star Studios on Vine Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, which had opened in 1950. Engineers and owners Stan Ross and Dave Gold instructed him in drum placement, arrangement, mixing, and every other aspect of the craft they practiced. There he encountered Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were already achieving success producing singles for the Robins; Stoller had also attended Fairfax High, and Leiber worked as a stock clerk at Norty’s Record Shop on Fairfax Avenue in the city’s Jewish district, a short distance from the school.

After receiving his diploma in spring 1958, Spector reserved his first session at Gold Star. Studio time ran fifteen dollars per hour plus six dollars for a reel of tape; he estimated forty dollars would suffice. He borrowed the sum from his mother, Bertha, who enthusiastically backed his ambitions. He next recruited Marshall Leib, a nineteen-year-old Los Angeles City College student majoring in business and law who had previously formed the Moondogs with classmates. Another LACC student, Harvey Goldstein, contributed ten dollars on the promise that he could sing bass. Annette Kleinbard, then a sixteen-year-old Fairfax High pupil originally from New Brunswick, New Jersey, supplied the final ten dollars; possessing a powerful, expressive soprano honed in the glee club, she agreed to help finance the date only if she could join the ensemble. Spector consented, completing the needed funds.

The opening two-hour booking at Gold Star was spent capturing Spector’s “Don’t You Worry My Little Pet,” on which he performed every instrument and served as producer. With the finished demo in hand he approached neighbor Lew Bedell, co-owner with Herb Newsome of Era Records. Bedell and Newsome had just launched Dore Records to document rock and roll; they approved the recording and offered Spector a four-single contract paying one-and-a-half cents per copy sold. During discussions they adopted the name the Teddy Bears, borrowed from an Elvis Presley hit.

At the third session, held without Goldstein, drummer Sandy Nelson—who would later enjoy his own hit-making career—was added. Toward the end of the date Spector persuaded Kleinbard and Leib to attempt another of his compositions, the spare, insistent ballad “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” whose title derived from the epitaph on his father’s Bronx gravestone; Spector had revisited the site during a trip east.

Dore shipped five hundred copies of the single to radio stations in early August 1958. Receiving no immediate response, Goldstein and Leib returned to college. In September a Fargo, North Dakota, disc jockey turned the record over and aired “To Know Him Is to Love Him”; an order for eighteen thousand copies soon arrived from a Minneapolis distributor. Within a week the track appeared on national charts. The Teddy Bears performed on American Bandstand on October 29. Harvey Goldstein, however, received no invitation; Spector had removed him from the group for inability to execute the bass line. Goldstein later sued Dore and the Teddy Bears, ultimately settling out of court for a share of royalties earned over the ensuing decade.

“To Know Him Is to Love Him” reached number one on the pop chart, selling more than a million copies before Christmas 1958. The trio appeared on The Perry Como Show on January 3, 1959. By mid-January they had left Dore after a royalty disagreement and signed with Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records, which issued their next single that month. Spector soon learned that Chudd would no longer permit him to produce or to record at Gold Star, nor allow stacked vocals. The Teddy Bears completed only two additional singles and the remaining tracks for the album The Teddy Bears Sing before departing Imperial. They next moved to Trey Records, owned by Lee Hazlewood and Lester Sill; because of prior contractual restrictions they recorded as the Spectors Three. Neither release succeeded commercially, prompting Spector to dismiss his partners and disband the act.

Kleinbard suffered an automobile accident in September 1959 yet recovered and pursued a solo career. Although she secured several recording contracts, her principal success came as a songwriter. She co-wrote “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” which earned a gold record for Vicki Lawrence in 1973 and a country hit for Reba McEntire in 1992; she also co-wrote “Hey Little Cobra” for the Rip Chords and “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from the first Rocky film. Additional credits include themes for Sophie's Choice and Mr. Mom. Over the years she received two Academy Award nominations and four Emmy nominations.

Leib toured as a Hollywood Argyles member and played guitar on several Duane Eddy sessions. He later served as musical supervisor for a handful of low-budget 1970s films. He and Kleinbard collaborated on the score for the motion picture Tulips.

Following the Teddy Bears’ dissolution, Phil Spector returned to New York and worked with Leiber and Stoller in 1960. With Leiber he co-wrote “Spanish Harlem,” a major hit for former Drifter Ben E. King; he also played guitar on the Drifters’ “On Broadway.” He joined Dune Records as staff producer, overseeing Ray Peterson’s Top Ten single “Corinna, Corinna.” Operating thereafter as a freelance producer and A&R man for Atlantic, he produced hits for Gene Pitney. In late 1961 he co-founded the Philles label with Lester Sill and promptly scored successes with the Crystals, the Ronettes, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, John Lennon, George Harrison, and numerous others. Spector was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer in 1989 and remains among the central figures of modern popular music.