Neil Diamond released this 45 in 1967 on Bang Records. New Orleans the A side made it to #51 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. This records managed to get substantial air play despite it placement on the charts.
Diamond was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish family who were decedents of Russian and Polish immigrants. Diamonds father was stationed in Cheyenne, Wyoming for four years but primarily went to school in the Brooklyn area. In Brooklyn he attended Erasmus Hall High School and was a member of the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, along with classmate Barbara Streisand. Diamond has been quoted as saying he remembered they were not close friends at the time: "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. His family moved and he attended Abraham Lincoln High School where he was a member of the fencing team.
Diamond received his first guitar on his 16th birthday.For his 16th birthday, he received his first guitar. At a summer camp in upstate New York he heard Pete Seeger perform a small concert, it was there that he noticed everyone was singing Seeger's songs and singing songs they had written and sang for Seeger. That was when Diamond became aware of the possibility of writing songs on his own so after that camp experience he started taking guitar lessons and writing poetry for girls he knew in school often winning their hearts. He was even asked to write poems for other guys in his class that they could use with the same kind of results.
After high school he attended New York University as a pre med major on a fencing scholarship. He was a member of the 1960 NCAA men's championship fencing team. Then he found himself often getting board in class and found writing song lyrics more to his liking. Diamond began cutting classes and taking the train up to Tin Pan Alley, where he tried to get some of his songs heard by local music publishers. In his senior year, when he was just 10 units short of graduation, Sunbeam Music Publishing offered him a 16-week job writing songs for $50 a week and he dropped out of college to accept it
An amazing singer, songwriter and entertainer. This 45 is in very good condition.