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Harvey Philip Spector was born on Dec. 26, 1939, to a lower-middle-class family in the Bronx. His father, Benjamin, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was a union ironworker who committed suicide when Harvey was 8. (Mr. Spector hated his first name and went by Phil, adding an “l” to “Philip” as well.) The epitaph on his father’s tombstone, “To Know Him Was to Love Him,” found its way into Mr. Spector’s first hit.
His mother, Bertha, moved him and his sister, Shirley, to Los Angeles, where Bertha Spector worked as a seamstress and later a bookkeeper. After graduating from Fairfax High, he studied to be a court stenographer at Los Angeles City College.
After the Teddy Bears disbanded in 1959, Mr. Spector turned to producing and found a mentor in Lester Sill, who had helped Mr. Leiber and his partner, Mike Stoller, get started in the music business. Mr. Sill arranged for Mr. Spector to work with the two men at Atlantic Records, where their use of strings and heavy instrumentation became part of his repertoire.
While at Atlantic he played on sessions for the Coasters, LaVern Baker, and the Drifters. (He provided the guitar solo on the Drifters’ hit “On Broadway.”) He also helped write and produce Ben E. King’s hit “Spanish Harlem.”
He also produced two hit records on other labels, “Corinna, Corinna,” by Ray Peterson, and “Pretty Little Angel Eyes,” by Curtis Lee, a bland love song that he souped up by inserting the Halos, a Bronx doo-wop group, as backup.
Returning to Los Angeles, Mr. Spector worked with the Paris Sisters, a local trio, producing “I Love How You Love Me,” a feathery, echo-laden ballad with silky strings that rose to No. 5 on the charts.
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