Phil Spector Childhood Home (1939-1953)

Harvey Philip Spector — with one L, as he was originally named — was born on 26 December 1939 and grew up at 1027 Manor Avenue in the Bronx. Both his parents came from Ukrainian immigrant families who, by coincidence, each had a surname that transliterated to Spector when they arrived in the United States. The family also lived for a period at 1029 Elder Avenue, one block west.

As a child, Spector was asthmatic, allergic to the sun, and dominated by an overprotective and utterly domineering mother. The household was volatile — friends witnessed constant bickering and a blistering toxicity between mother and son. His mother Bertha would call every fifteen minutes if Phil was at a classmate's house, demanding he come home.

One morning in April 1949, Spector's father Benjamin headed off to his job in Brooklyn, parked his car, and ran a hose from the exhaust pipe to the interior. The inscription on his gravestone — "To Know Him Was to Love Him" — would later inspire Phil's first hit single with the Teddy Bears in 1958.

With the family in tatters, Bertha eventually moved Phil and his sister Sharon to Los Angeles, where she went to work as a seamstress.

In Los Angeles, the short, self-conscious teenager with the pronounced Bronx accent reinvented himself — eventually taking on the name Phillip with two L's, though his mother insisted on calling him Harvey. He played French horn in the school band, learned guitar, and connected with session guitarist Barney Kessel after writing to Downbeat magazine to defend his work. With $40 pooled from high school friends Marshall Leib, Harvey Goldstein, and Annette Kleinbard, he booked time at Gold Star Studios and recorded the songs that launched his career.