To Know Him Is To Love Him

This is the song that launched Phil Spector's career. He was a 17-year-old senior in high school when he recorded this, and he quickly became a top producer after working with prominent songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. By the time he was 23, he had produced hits like "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and was already a millionaire. He became famous for obsessive attention to detail and a heavily layered sound, but was also mentally unstable. After producing the Beatles album Let It Be and working on solo albums for George Harrison and John Lennon, he went into seclusion and worked only sporadically.

Phil Spector was inspired to write this in early 1958 by a photograph of his father Ben's tombstone that said "To have known him was to have loved him." Phil changed the tense of the epitaph on the tombstone and matched it to the music of "When the Red, Red Robin Goes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along." Benjamin Spector was a steelworker who killed himself 9 years earlier, when Phil was 9 years old. After he died, Phil's mother moved the family from New York to Los Angeles.

Along with some high school friends, Phil put together The Teddy Bears (named after the Elvis Presley song), and wrote this so their new vocalist, Annette Kleinbard, would have something new to sing at a recording session. They had an audition with Era Records head Lew Bidell, who thought they were "okay" but needed better material. Kleinbard didn't like the song, but agreed to sing it anyway. The group consisted of high school seniors Spector and Marshall Lieb, sophomore Kleinbard, and alumnus Sandy Nelson (who later had #4 hit "Teen Beat" and #7 "Let There Be Drums") on the drum kit. Although Lieb played piano at the recording session, Spector had asked another friend to do it: future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston. Johnston turned Spector down because he had a date.