![]() (In 1996, he reissued "What Will I Do" on his box set In My Lifetime.) The discs were not successful, and Neil & Jack broke up when Packer enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in January 1961. This resulted in the release of two singles, "You Are My Love"/"What Will I Do" in 1960 and "I'm Afraid"/"Till You've Tried Love" in 1961, Diamond's first commercially released recordings. He also formed a duo with Jack Packer, a friend of his younger brother's, and as Neil & Jack they signed a publishing contract with Allied Entertainment Corporation of America and a recording contract with its subsidiary, Duel Records. But he seems to have spent much of his time writing songs and trying to place them at music publishing companies. ![]() In June 1958, he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, and that fall he enrolled at New York University, where he had won a fencing scholarship, as a premed student. He showed an early interest in music and took up singing and playing the guitar after seeing Pete Seeger perform at a camp he was attending as a teenager. Except for two years in the mid-'40s that the family spent in Wyoming while Akeeba Diamond served in the military, Diamond grew up in Brooklyn, albeit in changing locations as his father moved from store to store he later claimed to have attended nine different schools and to have suffered socially as a result. Neil Leslie Diamond was born January 24, 1941, in Brooklyn, NY, the first of two sons born to Akeeba Diamond (known as Kieve), who operated and owned a series of dry goods stores in the New York City borough, and Rose (Rapoport) Diamond. Thomas, Tin Huey, Tina Turner, UB40, Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, Urge Overkill, Billy Vaughn, the Ventures, Bobby Vinton, Junior Walker & the All-Stars, Scott Walker, Roger Whittaker, Andy Williams, Bobby Womack, and Robert Wyatt. Meanwhile, having been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and given its lifetime achievement award, he could cite an amazingly broad range of pop, rock, R&B, folk, country, jazz, reggae, punk, heavy metal, alternative, easy listening, and new age performers who had recorded his songs, among them Altered Images, Gene Ammons, Chet Atkins, Michael Ball, Shirley Bassey, Les Baxter, Harry Belafonte, Acker Bilk, the Box Tops, the Brothers Four, Glen Campbell, Vikki Carr, Johnny Cash, Petula Clark, Ray Conniff, Floyd Cramer, Michael Crawford, Bobby Darin, the Spencer Davis Group, Joey Dee & the Starliters, Deep Purple, the Drifters, David Essex, Percy Faith, José Feliciano, Ferrante & Teicher, the Four Tops, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Goldsboro, Marcia Griffiths, the Heptones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Julio Iglesias, Chris Isaak, Millie Jackson, Wanda Jackson, Jay & the Americans, Waylon Jennings, Tom Jones, Bert Kaempfert, André Kostelanetz, Patti LaBelle, David Lanz, James Last, Peggy Lee, Liberace, Enoch Light, Mark Lindsay, Lulu, Arthur Lyman, Mantovani, Johnny Mathis, Ronnie Milsap, the Monkees, the Music Machine, Wayne Newton, Jane Olivor, Roy Orbison, Johnny Paycheck, Elvis Presley, Boots Randolph, Cliff Richard, Billy Joe Royal, Frank Sinatra, Smash Mouth, the Specials, Barbra Streisand, Third World, B.J. Still, as of 2001, he claimed worldwide record sales of 115 million copies, and as of 2002 he was ranked third, behind only Elton John and Barbra Streisand, on the list of the most successful adult contemporary artists in the history of the Billboard chart. After that, while his concert tours continued to post high grosses, his record sales became more modest. But his millions of fans didn't care about that, and they flocked to his shows and bought his albums in big numbers until well into the 1980s. At the same time, however, his music became generally softer, which broadened his appeal while earning him opprobrium, when he was considered at all, by the rock critics who dominated pop music journalism. He also developed into a dynamic concert performer, as demonstrated on his 1972 album Hot August Night. ![]() But he soon branched out into recording and performing, and by the early '70s was topping the charts with the self-written singles "Cracklin' Rosie" and "Song Sung Blue." This enabled him to be one of the more noticeable figures in the singer/songwriter movement of the period, as he made a transition to more of an album artist and those albums began to earn gold and platinum certifications. His earliest recognition, in fact, came as a songwriter associated with the Brill Building era of Tin Pan Alley in the early '60s. In the 1960s, Neil Diamond became a major recording artist, an internationally successful touring act, and a songwriter whose compositions produced hits for himself and others.
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