Ellie Greenwich, whose songs fueled '60s girl groups and the girls who identified with them, died last Wednesday of a heart attack in Manhattan, her passing largely unnoticed in the shadow of the death of a far more public figure.

Ellie wrote street songs, not sweet songs, for a more innocent age: "My baby does the hanky panky" (whatever that was) with the leader of the pack, not with Johnny Angel. The ineffable stayed that way: "Doo wah diddy (diddy dum diddy do)" or "Da doo ron ron."

 

Songwriter, 'Pack' Leader Ellie Greenwich: Fresh Air at NPR begins with three minutes of her song clips and includes a 1986 Terry Gross interview with Ellie that ends with the songwriter singing one of her own songs. Here's a transcript.

It's a tribute to Ellie Greenwich's body of work that her obits' headline writers define her by memories of their own favorite Greenwich song:

'Leader of the Pack' for '60s Pop Tunes. Wall Street Journal.

"Be My Baby" Songwriter Ellie Greenwich Dead at 68. Rolling Stone has 11 Ellie Greenwich songs at this link:The Shangri-Las: Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-Las: Out in the Streets, The Dixie Cups: Chapel of Love, Ike and Tina Turner: River Deep, Mountain High, The Crystals: Then He Kissed Me, The Crystals: Da Doo Ron Ron, Tommy James and the Shondells: Hanky Panky, Manfred Mann: Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Darlene Love: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Cyndi Lauper: Right Train Wrong Track, Eddie Money: Take Me Home Tonight

Ellie Greenwich dies at 68; co-wrote 'Da Doo Ron Ron,' 'Chapel of Love' and other '60s hits

R.I.P. Ellie Greenwich, the Woman Who Wrote "Be My Baby". Village Voice.

Ellie Greenwich, 'Mountain High' among tunesmiths, dies at 68. USA Today.

Composer of 'Chapel of Love' dies. Newsday.

Ken Levine, a TV sitcom writer and radio baseball announcer, knew Ellie. He blogs her death

Ellie was part of the Brill Building, which basically was a stable of songwriters who churned out most of the smash hits of the day. Working in little offices side by side were Leiber & Stoller, Bacharach & David, Goffin & King (as in Carole), Mann & Weil, Sedaka & Greenfield, and a few other heavyweights. (Some of them like Neil Sedaka were still teens in high school at the time. I always loved the fact that Jewish kids who couldn't get a date would take the subway into Manhattan after school and write the love songs that every teenager in America was singing.)

We would outgrow the simple sentiments that accompanied the first waves of hormones. Motown and the Beatles pumped up the music. Rock would get harder, sexier, psychedelic and electric. Dylan and the Stones would clear a long strange path that didn't lead to the Chapel of Love and a house with a white picket fence.

But, for so many of us, it all started here, with Ellie.