R.I.P. Judy "It's My Party" Solash Dead At 67

Lesley Gore, whose pop music career started with "It's My Party" and "It's Judy's Turn To Cry back in 1963, died in Frbuary this year.  Now comes word that the inpiration for those two Top 5 hits has also died.

Judith Solash of Raleigh, NC  has died at age 67 losing her battle with a brain tumor.

Back in 1963, she was Judy Gottlieb and lived in Brooklyn.

She told the NY Daily News in February that in '63 as she  planning her Sweet 16 celebration and unwittingly gave her songwriter dad the line that became singer Lesley Gore's musical catchphrase.

The day after Gore's death at age 68, Judy recalled the origins of Gore's number-one hit "It's My Party" as if it happened yesterday.

"My parents insisted that my grandparents had to be invited (to her 16th birthday celebration). I of course, being a bratty teenager, said I didn't want them there. I burst into tears, and my father said, 'Don't cry.' "

Judy Gottlieb-1963

Judy, of course, answered: "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to."

“My father took that and turned it into this whole little story about Judy and Johnny. He very often used our names when he wrote records. ... Those were the days when you could understand the words in the songs. It was pretty simple,” she said.

She said her dad, Seymour Gottlieb, wrote the lyrics and one of his partners composed the music. (Song credits list four songwriters in all.) They went down to the Brill Building on Broadway, which housed music industry offices where some of the most popular American music tunes were written.

They knocked on doors offering their composition to producers. “Somebody heard it,” she told me, “and said ‘That would be great for Lesley Gore.’ She was an unknown at that time, didn’t have any recordings. They played it for her manager and he loved it and she recorded it. “And that’s it,” Solash said.



“It’s My Party” the first hit single for Lesley Gore, but it was also the first hit song producer Quincy Jones.

Judy Solash is survived by her husband of 47-years.