Music & Entertainment Industries

1960's teen idol Lesley Gore to speak at WPU

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - The Record

THE SWEETIE PIE FROM TENAFLY

Tenafly native Lesley Gore was just a 17-year-old student at the Dwight School for Girls in Englewood (now Dwight-Englewood) when the 1963 pop hit "It's My Party," produced by Quincy Jones, made her an overnight sensation. Sharing her teen-idol roller coaster ride with a new generation of pop connoisseurs, Gore will speak before an audience of students in the William Paterson University Music Management Program.

TELL ME MORE: Long before Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, Gore was the ultimate pop queen flooding the airwaves, appearing on "American Bandstand" and "The Ed Sullivan Show." While "It's My Party" is her most well-known tune, she'd rather be remembered for her later hit "You Don't Own Me." "I think that gave my career a little more gravitas," Gore told The Record in 2008. "It's a song that has grown over 44 years, whether it's a feminist anthem or a humanist anthem. It's stood the test of time." A 2001 Lesley Gore documentary will be screened as part of the program.

QUOTE: "You have to take into account that this was a long time ago, and we didn't have things like answering machines, OK? So when the disc jockey on WINS or WMCA, which was a big station here in New York, would say, 'That was Lesley Gore, the sweetie pie from Tenafly,' well, people just came to Tenafly. You know, I'd wake up and there were people camped out on the grass." – Lesley Gore speaking of her teen idol fame in a 2005 interview, AfterEllen.com

DETAILS: William Paterson University, Library Auditorium, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne. The event is free and open to the public.
— Sachi Fujimori