Music Legends—Leiber and Stoller

My songwriting friend J. Morley told me he was reading a new book, Hound Dog, the autobiography of Leiber and Stoller.

They were among the earliest great rock and roll writers. Jerry Leiber was the lyricist of the duo, Mike Stoller the player (piano). (Stoller was big into blues and boogie woogie).

What Leiber and Stoller brought to pop music, totally ironically, is a "BLACK" sound. That's right, two nice Jewish boys were instrumental (literally and figuratively) in introducing white America to black music.

Even Ray Charles said, "I knew all about Leiber and Stoller. They were those bad white boys who wrote the blackest songs this side of the Mississippi. I loved what they did."

Says Stoller in Hound Dog, "[Sounding] Black was our criteria for quality."

They started young and were very very good...and had the right sound (or could quickly create it) for the burgeoning record business in the 1950s.

Young people today might not remember their songs...even the more recent hits like George Benson's version of "On Broadway" (originally recorded by The Drifters) in 1978.

But they wrote great songs, songs that will always be scattered onto every musician's playlist. And their work is so lasting, and so powerful, because it is informed by the blues.

Says Leiber of his partner Mike Stoller, "the blues broke him down and the blues freed him up...He was as passionate about blues as I was. Blues was the bottom line. The blues was our bond...The blues became the basis of a lifetime of work."

Lieber and Stoller wrote "Is That All There Is" for Peggy Lee. They wrote "STAND BY ME" with Ben E. King!! They PRODUCED Gerry Raferty and Stealers Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You"! They had the midas touch, for decades upon decades.

SONGWRITERS: Do you understand the significance of these copyrights? They are huge! Leiber and Stoller were HUGE songwriters. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Jerry Leiber died Monday, August 22, 2011 of cardiopulmonary failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, near Los Angeles.

But Leiber's words live on and on and on and on....

"When the night has come and the land is dark...no I won't be afriad....I won't be afriad....just as long as you stand by me...."