Posted on 08/22/2011 2:08:22 PM PDT by Borges
Jerry Leiber, one of the most important songwriters in the history of rock & roll – whose 60-year partnership with Mike Stoller produced "Stand By Me," "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," "Young Blood," "On Broadway," "Yakety-Yak" and countless other classics – has died of cardiopulmonary failure. He was 78.
"When Jerry and I started to write, we were writing to amuse ourselves," Stoller told Rolling Stone in 1990. "It was done out of a love of doing it. We got very lucky in the sense that at some point what we wrote also amused a lot of other people."
Leiber met Stoller in Los Angeles in 1950 when he was still a senior in high school. They had a mutual love of R&B, blues and pop, and began writing music together almost instantly, with Stoller mostly handling the music and Leiber mostly handling the lyrics. "Jerry was an idea machine," Stoller says in their 2009 memoir Hound Dog. "For every situation, Jerry had 20 ideas. As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices. When Jerry sang, he sounded black, so that gave us an advantage . . . His verbal vocabulary was all over the place – black, Jewish, theatrical, comical. He would paint pictures with words."
In the early days, they pulled 12-hour days writing on an upright piano in Stoller's house. "We're a unit," Leiber told Rolling Stone in 1990. "The instincts are very closely aligned. I could write, 'Take out the papers and the trash,' and he'll come up with 'Or you don't get no spending cash.'"
Within three years of meeting each other, Leiber and Stoller were the hottest songwriters in the business –writing hits for the Drifters, Coasters and the Robins and many other R&B groups of the era. In 1956, their career went to a higher level when Elvis Presley took "Hound Dog" – which they wrote for Big Mama Thornton four years earlier – and turned it into a gigantic hit.
Leiber was extremely irritated by the changes that Presley made to the original lyrics. "To this day I have no idea what that rabbit business is about," he said in 2009. "The song is not about a dog; it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo. Elvis' version makes no sense to me, and, even more irritatingly, it is not the song that Mike and I wrote. Of course, the fact that it sold more than seven million copies took the sting out of what seemed to be a capricious change of lyrics."
Despite their success with Presley, most of the acts that Leiber and Stoller worked with were black. "I felt black," Leiber told Rolling Stone in 1990. "I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people."
Not all of their songs were as innocent as they seemed. "Pure and simple, 'Poison Ivy' [a 1959 hit they wrote for The Coasters] is a metaphor for a sexually transmitted disease – or the clap – hardly a topic for a song that hit the Top Ten in the Spring of 1959," Leiber said in 2009. "But the more we wrote, the less we understood why the public bought what it bought."
The hits continued into the early 1960s with such classics as "Stand By Me" and "Spanish Harlem," but when the Beatles broke in America in early 1964, the music industry changed very quickly. The duo never stopped working together, and in 1972 they produced "Stuck In The Middle With You," which was recorded by Stealers Wheel. In 1995, their catalog of hits was turned into the Broadway musical Smokey Joe's Cafe, and this past May, American Idol devoted an entire evening to their music.
Wow!
isn't this racist?
So it's not about skin color after all.
Only "being white" is, I guess.
It does kind of sound like something Jimmy the Greek would have said.
He will live on in the music forever.
Who knew?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHE-5s7v6GM&feature=related
Giuliano Palma & The BlueBeaters - Poison Ivy
Rest in peace Mr. Leiber
Poison Ivy was a song about the clap...I never would
have guessed/Sarc
Some great songs that team wrote
Time Marches On
RIP
Bossa Nova Baby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-yZifpgCR0
Lucky Lips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zagl7eD6MYE
Take out the papers and the trash
Or you don’t get no spendin’ cash
If you don’t scrub that kitchen floor
You ain’t gonna rock and roll no more
Yakety yak (don’t talk back)
Just finish cleanin’ up your room
Let’s see that dust fly with that broom
Get all that garbage out of sight
Or you don’t go out Friday night
Yakety yak (don’t talk back)
You just put on your coat and hat
And walk yourself to the laundromat
And when you finish doin’ that
Bring in the dog and put out the cat
Yakety yak (don’t talk back)
Don’t you give me no dirty looks
Your father’s hip; he knows what cooks
Just tell your hoodlum friend outside
You ain’t got time to take a ride
Yakety yak (don’t talk back)
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Yakety yak, yakety yak
Rest in peace, Mr. Leiber.
And launched the career of Quentin Tarantino.
Why didn’t he didn’t say anything about rythmn?
I knew there had to be a dark side.
Stand By Me
Lyrics Songwriters: Jerry Leiber;Mike Stoller;Ben King
When the night has come and the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No, I won't be afraid, oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
So darling, darling, stand by me,
oh, stand by me
Oh, stand, stand by me, stand by me
If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry, no, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
And darling, darling, stand by me
Darling, darling, stand by me
Whenever you're in trouble
Won't you stand by me, oh, stand by me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbg7YoXiKn0
Who would have guessed?
The late, great demented-alkie-but-forever-brilliant Gerry Rafferty (and Joe Egan) wrote this song. It wasn't a Brill Building product, per se.
In my puppyhood seeing “Leiber-Stoller” credits on a piece of round vinyl was like magic. Who are these geniuses, I thought.
Everyone should take a few minutes and look around here:
http://www.leiberstoller.com/Discography.html
That’s what success looks like.
RIP Jerry Lieber, and thank you.
“Ruby Ruby” as performed by Donald Fagan is way up there on my favorites list.
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