About Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow is an American singer and songwriter with a career that spans six decades. His hit recordings include "Could It Be Magic", "Looks Like We Made It", "Mandy", "I Write the Songs", "Can't Smile Without You", "Weekend in New England", and "Copacabana ".
Manilow has recorded and released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, including 13 that hit number one, 28 that appeared within the top ten, and 36 that reached the top twenty. Manilow has released 13 platinum and six multi-platinum albums. Although not a favorite artist of music critics, Manilow has been praised by his peers in the recording industry. In the 1970s, Frank Sinatra predicted: "He's next."
As well as producing and arranging albums for himself and other artists, Manilow has written and performed songs for musicals, films, and commercials for corporations such as McDonald's, Pepsi Cola, and Band-Aid. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award as a producer, arranger and performer a total of fifteen times from 1973 to 2015. He has also produced Grammy-nominated albums for Bette Midler, Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, and Sarah Vaughan. Manilow has sold more than 85 million records as a solo artist worldwide, making him one of the world's bestselling artists.
Barry Manilow was born Barry Alan Pincus on June 17, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Edna Manilow and Harold Kelliher, a truck driver of Irish descent. Barry's mother made his father change his name to Pincus, which was the name of a Jewish uncle of his father from the 1800s. Barry's parents were divorced when he was a baby, and his mother's Jewish family allowed no further contact between Barry and his father. Barry's maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his paternal grandfather was Jewish, though his grandmother was a Catholic of Irish descent. His Irish roots trace back to Limerick, Ireland. Barry's grandfather had his surname changed to Manilow a few weeks before Barry's bar mitzvah.
Manilow grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn and graduated in 1961 from the now-defunct Eastern District High School. While in high school, he met Susan Deixler, and they later married for a short time. He enrolled in the City College of New York, where he briefly studied before entering the New York College of Music. He also worked at CBS while he was a student to pay his expenses. Afterwards, he studied musical theater at Juilliard Performing Arts School.
In 1964, Manilow met Bro Herrod, a CBS director, who asked him to arrange some songs for a musical adaptation of the melodrama, The Drunkard. Instead, Manilow wrote an entire original score. Herrod used Manilow's composition in the Off Broadway musical, which had an eight-year run at New York's 13th Street Repertory Theatre. Manilow then earned money by working as a pianist, producer and arranger.
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