Neil Diamond

Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 56.5 million records in the US alone, making him one of the best-selling musicians in history.

Diamond has written and recorded ten singles that reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts: "Cracklin' Rosie", "Song Sung Blue", "Longfellow Serenade", "I've Been This Way Before", "If You Know What I Mean", "Desirée", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman, performed with Barbra Streisand), "America", "Yesterday's Songs", and "Heartlight (co-written with Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach). Thirty-eight songs by Diamond have reached the top 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, including "Sweet Caroline". On screen, he starred in the 1980 musical drama The Jazz Singer.

Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He received a Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. In 2011, he was an honoree at the Kennedy Center Honors, and he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

Diamond was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to a Jewish family. All four of his grandparents were immigrants: his father's side came from Poland, while his mother's side were born in Kyiv, modern-day Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. His parents were Rose (née Rapoport; 1918–2019) and Akeeba "Kieve" Diamond (1917–1985), a dry-goods merchant. Diamond grew up in several homes in Brooklyn, and also spent four years in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while his father was stationed there in the army from 1945 until 1949.

In Brooklyn, he attended Erasmus Hall High School for two years, where he was a member of the Freshman Chorus and Choral Club, alongside his classmate Barbra Streisand.: 155 Diamond recalled that they were not close friends at the time, saying, "We were two poor kids in Brooklyn. We hung out in the front of Erasmus High and smoked cigarettes." Their class also included chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. After his family moved to Brighton Beach in 1956, Diamond attended Abraham Lincoln High School where he joined the fencing team. Also on the team was his best friend, future Olympic fencer Herb Cohen.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.