No shortage of hits for Sedaka at Orleans

Joe Delaney

Friday, April 9, 1999 | 11:40 a.m.

Neil Sedaka is enjoying enthusiastic capacity crowds and being rewarded with numerous standing ovations these nights in the warm, intimate Orleans hotel showroom. It's just Sedaka singing Sedaka, except for two fine standard selections by earlier composers. At the midway point, he does great justice to "I'll Be Seeing You" and "My Funny Valentine."

Sedaka enters singing "I Am a Song, Sing Me," nicely uptempo with immediate audience response. He wastes no time getting to his golden oldies, 1958 to 1964, including "Oh, Carol," "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," "Where the Boys Are," a mega-hit written for Connie Francis, the original version of "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," "The Boy Who Is in Your Diary," "Next Door to Heaven" and closing with "Calendar Girl."

It was time for some talk. He tells his story nicely: More than 25 million records sold between 1958 and 1963. Then came the Beatles, and Sedaka actually retired, young, well-to-do, but apparently out of the music business. It was Elton John who convinced him to record again on John's Rocket label. It was the start of the 1970s and he was hot again with "The Hungry Years."

He sings "The Hungry Years" followed by "I Never Should Have Let You Go," sung as a duet with his daughter, Dara, who appears via video, resulting in the first standing ovation. Next, Sedaka sings a "neglected song," one that he liked personally that never did quite as well as he had hoped, "Just One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round." The tempo accelerated for "Love Will Keep Us Together," a monster hit for Captain and Tennille.

"Alone at Last," a pretty ballad with classical overtones, preceded a Brazilian-flavored "Hot and Sultry Nights," then came the two songs written by others, plus a rollicking "Good Times" and "Laughter in the Rain" for bows and the second standing ovation.

Sedaka returned for a poignant "There Was a Time" and sang two songs from his "Classically Sedaka" CD, "Turn Back The Hands Of Time," based upon a Puccini composition, and "Never-Ending Serenade," to the music of Chopin. The audience was standing once more. "My Son and I," written for his son, Mark, on the son's 27th birthday, followed.

He reprised "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" which had a second life and was an even bigger hit two decades later as a ballad. They were standing again, and he made a gracious exit at the 80-minute mark of a most-satisfying evening.