Lesley Gore - "California Nights" (1966)

Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein; May 2, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter of the "girl group era". She is perhaps best known for her 1963 pop hit "It's My Party", which she recorded at the age of 16. Following the hit, she became one of the most recognized teen pop singers of the 1960s.

Gore was born in New York City, New York, United States. She was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, in a Jewish family. Her father, Leo Gore, was a wealthy manufacturer of children's clothes and swimwear; she also had a younger brother, Michael. Lesley was a junior at the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood when "It's My Party" became a #1 hit. It was later nominated for a Grammy Award for rock and roll recording. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

Gore's first hit was followed by many others, including "Judy's Turn to Cry" - the sequel to "It's My Party" - (U.S. #5), "She's a Fool" (U.S. #5), the proto-feminist "You Don't Own Me" which held at #2 for four weeks behind The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand", "That's the Way Boys Are" (U.S. #12), "Maybe I Know" (U.S. #14), "The Look of Love" (U.S. #27) and Grammy nominated for Contemporary Rock and Roll female vocal performance "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" (U.S. #13). Her record producer was Quincy Jones, who would later become one of the most famous producers in American music. "You Don't Own Me" also sold a million copies, and was awarded gold disc status.

Instead of accepting the television and movie contracts that came her way, Gore chose to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. This limited her public career to weekends and summer vacations and undoubtedly hurt her career. Nevertheless, throughout the mid 1960s Gore continued to be one of the most popular female singers in the United States and Canada.

Gore was given first shot at recording "A Groovy Kind of Love", but Shelby Singleton, who was a producer for Smash Records, a Mercury subsidiary, recommended that she not record a song with the word "groovy" in it. The Mindbenders went on to record the song, and it went to #2 on the Billboard charts. Gore also released "Wedding Bell Blues" as a single in 1969, but her version flopped while the 5th Dimension's spent three weeks at #1. Gore also recorded many of her hit songs in French, German, and Italian.

By the late 1960s, her popularity had decreased with the advent of harder-edged psychedelic music. Her last major hit was the Bob Crewe-produced "California Nights" (U.S. #16), which she performed on both the January 19 and January 25, 1967, episodes of the Batman TV series, in which she guest-starred as Pussycat, one of Catwoman's minions. In the episodes, she lip-synched to her songs "California Nights" and "Maybe Now" (the latter was for some reason cut from most later broadcasts of the episodes). Afterwards, she maintained a lower profile in the music industry, performing at concerts and in cabarets. She also kept busy writing songs, including composing songs for the soundtrack of the 1980 film Fame, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for "Out Here on My Own", written with her brother Michael. The song was a Top 20 hit for Irene Cara.

In an interview, Lesley said that when Mercury Records dropped her in 1969, they owed her $175,000.00 and she did not see a nickel from them until 1989, by which time Mercury has recouped all of their costs from her royalties.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lesley
• Gore
• California
• Nights
• 1966
• singer
• actress
• TheBacmaster
• Music
• Videos

[stevemichaels2020]

According to A&E's Biography on Lesley, Leo Gore started out as a dentist, but then went into manufacturing women's bras and girdles. According to R.I.A.A., they haven't issued a gold record to Lesley for It's My Party, You Don't Own Me. Perhaps Mercury Records issued the gold records to her.

[TheBacmaster]

@stevemichaels2020 Steve, thank you for that information. I never knew that and found it very interesting. I call that like many other stories simply, destiny...

Regards from Joe...

[FlavioGirl]

one of my mom's favorite songs :)

[Hwillijonl]

Love this. It's my favorite beach girl song of all time.

[aliacapone8129ad]

@cosmo6311 You are soo right about today's music, it's awful.  Everyone's either yelling, screaming, moaning and groaning. Agh! If time-travelling was possible I'd be spending all my free time hanging out either in the late 1950's or the 1960's.

[sirius212ify]

Her swan song - and sometimes the swan songs are the best...

[dramastudent1987]

first time i heard this, she was catwoman's minion in 'batman', hehe! excellent song though

[aimperator]

Nanlisa, I would have to agree with you regarding most of today's music, it is a lot of junk. I love the music of the 1960's too, unfortunately those days are gone forever, but at least we can always relive them through the recordings of the music of that decade. Thank God for records.

[nanlisa]

This song brings tears to my eyes. In fact, I'm crying now as I'm typing this in. Unfortunately, I didn't experience those California nights until 1978; when I spent my 21st birthday in Los Angeles.

Sixties music is still the greatest! I'm so glad that I lived during that period. Today's music is nothing but junk, junk, and more junk.

[prunga308]

I really liked her singing and the songs she sang, it's ironic that the songs about boys, getting her guy, keeping her guy, all the while she was and still is a lesbian.

[BirdsnBlooms1]

When I hear LG sing I get goose bumps. 60's music was THE best. Leslie has a beautiful voice as did many other groups from that era. I was 12 when this song came out..I remember thinking, 'wish I was older,' lol. Toni

[movingon4ever]

Several great recordings, yet her first two "Hits" sounded like cloned, trite hype.

"Judy's Turn to Cry" & " It's My Party" were, IMO, cheesy, boring story songs. Glad she got working with Ellie & Jeff Barry.