Sidney Lippman, 89; Co-Wrote Hits for Nat King Cole, Como

Sidney Lippman, 89, a songwriter who helped compose hits for Nat King Cole and other artists in the 1950s, died Tuesday at a nursing home in North Bergen, N.J. The cause of death was not reported.

A native of Minneapolis, Lippman graduated from the University of Minnesota and served as a merchant seaman during World War II.

Lippman, who studied musical composition at the Juilliard School in New York, wrote or co-wrote several well-known songs, including “Too Young,” a song that Cole took to the top of the charts in 1951.

Lippman and his longtime collaborator Sylvia Dee got the idea for the song, he told an interviewer some years ago, when she told him that her younger brother was getting married and she thought he was too young.

That hit came two years after he teamed up with Buddy Kaye and Fred Wise on “ ‘A’ You’re Adorable (The Alphabet Song),” a No. 1 hit performed by Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters.