Billy Joel was born William Martin Joel, in Long Island, New York on May 9, 1949. And altho he was trained on the accordian at an early age, he didn't decide to go into music at first. He tried his hand at amateur boxing . He had a record of 22 wins out of 28 matches, but after he suffered a broken nose he decided he needed a new profession.
Because the song Piano Man was his first top40 hit, most people also think that album was his first. But that is only a partial truth. Piano Man was the Title cut from his first album for Columbia Records. He had recorded some music with a group called "The Hassles", and had recorded a solo album (Cold Spring Harbor) on a small record label, that couldn't properly promote/distribute it. This album would later be re-released on columbia records after he had several hits.
His song Just the Way You Are was the first of his hits to break the top5 on Billboard's charts. And it has been re-recorded (covered) by 29 other artists. Several of his other songs have been covered by other big named artists. Including his song Shameless, which went to the top10 on the country charts for Garth Brooks shortly after Billy Joel wrote, and recorded it himself on the album Storm Front in 1989. On the subject of re-recordng, Joel did some of that himself in the last 70's when he released his album Songs in the Attic. This album was 100% re-recording, but the difference was the songs were all Billy Joel's songs. They were all songs that didn't make it big on the Top40, but that always went over well during live performances. So Joel taped several of the live shows at various size concert halls, and made a compilation of the ones that sounded best, and this was how Songs in the Attic was put together.
KOH]_[EPT was the title of the album that was recorded during Billy Joel's concert tour in the former U.S.S.R. and I found what this Russian word is, and means, and figure you might be interested to find out : KOH]_[EPT is the Russian word for "Concert," and it is pronounced roughly like the English version of the word (approximately "cone-tsyert").
If you'd like to have some of his songs to listen to on your computer. I found several good versions in midi format on this PAGE. Or I have a few of them on my own Midi page.
There is a lot more trivia out there since Billy Joel has had a long and fruitful career. But I thought these were some of the more interesting facts. If you like what's here, e-mail me and let me know. I'll be leaving this info on this page for a while, or until I find people asking for lots more. Let me know what you wanna see, and I'll try my best to do it.
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