Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Leiber and Stoller were an American Grammy award-winning songwriting and record production duo, consisting of lyricist Jerry Leiber (Jerome Leiber, April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011)[1] and composer Mike Stoller[2] (Michael Stoller, born March 13, 1933).[3] As well as many R&B and pop hits, they wrote numerous standards for Broadway.
Leiber and Stoller
Popular music, R&B, rock and roll, Broadway tunes
Songwriter and record producer duo (Leiber – Lyricist
Stoller – composer)
1950–2011
Jerome Leiber[1]
August 22, 2011 (aged 78)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Michael Stoller
March 13, 1933
Queens, New York, U.S.
Leiber and Stoller found success as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog" (1952) and "Kansas City" (1952). Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with the Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits—including "Young Blood" (1957), "Searchin'" (1957), and "Yakety Yak" (1958)—that used the humorous vernacular of teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal.[4]
Leiber and Stoller wrote hits for Elvis Presley, including "Love Me" (1956), "Jailhouse Rock" (1957), "Loving You", "Don't", and "King Creole".[5] They also collaborated with other writers on such songs as "On Broadway", written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; "Stand By Me", written with Ben E. King; "Young Blood", written with Doc Pomus; and "Spanish Harlem", co-written by Leiber and Phil Spector. They were sometimes credited under the pseudonym Elmo Glick. In 1964, they launched Red Bird Records with George Goldner and, focusing on the "girl group" sound, released some of the notable songs of the Brill Building period.[6]
In all, Leiber and Stoller wrote or co-wrote over 70 chart hits. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.[7]
Biography[edit]
1950s[edit]
Both born to Jewish families, Leiber came from Baltimore, Maryland,[3] and Stoller from Queens, New York,[8] but they met in Los Angeles, California in 1950, where Stoller was a freshman at Los Angeles City College while Leiber was a senior at Fairfax High. Stoller had graduated from Belmont High School. After school, Stoller played piano and Leiber worked in Norty's, a record store on Fairfax Avenue,[9][10] and when they met, they found they shared a love of blues and rhythm and blues.[3] In 1950, Jimmy Witherspoon recorded and performed their first commercial song, "Real Ugly Woman".[11] Stoller's name at birth was Michael Stoller, but he later changed it legally to "Mike".
Their first hit composition was "Hard Times", recorded by Charles Brown, which was a rhythm and blues hit in 1952.[3] "Kansas City", first recorded in 1952 (as "K. C. Loving") by rhythm & blues singer Little Willie Littlefield, became a No. 1 pop hit in 1959 for Wilbert Harrison.[3] In 1952, the partners wrote "Hound Dog" for blues singer Big Mama Thornton,
[12] which became a hit for her in 1953.[3] The 1956 Elvis Presley rock and roll version, which was a takeoff of the adaptation that Presley picked up from Freddie Bell's lounge act in Las Vegas,[13] was an even bigger hit.[14] Presley's showstopping mock-burlesque version of "Hound Dog", playfully bumping and grinding on the Milton Berle Show, created such public outcry and controversy that on The Steve Allen Show they slowed down his act, with an amused Presley in a tuxedo and blue suede shoes singing his hit to a basset hound. Allen pronounced Presley "a good sport", and the Leiber-Stoller song would be forever linked to Presley.
Leiber and Stoller's later songs often had lyrics more appropriate for pop music, and their combination of rhythm and blues with pop lyrics revolutionized pop, rock and roll, and punk rock.
They formed Spark Records in 1954 with their mentor, Lester Sill.[3] Their songs from this period include "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and "Riot in Cell Block #9", both recorded by the Robins.[15]
The label was later bought by Atlantic Records, which hired Leiber and Stoller in an innovative deal that allowed them to produce for other labels.[3] This, in effect, made them the first independent record producers.[15] At Atlantic, they revitalized the careers of the Drifters and wrote a number of hits for the Coasters, a spin-off of the Robins.[3] Their songs from this period include "Charlie Brown", "Searchin'", "Yakety Yak",[16] "Stand By Me" (written with Ben E. King), and "On Broadway" (written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). For the Coasters alone, they wrote 24 songs that appeared in the US charts.
In 1955, Leiber and Stoller produced a recording of their song "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots" with a white vocal group, the Cheers.[15] Soon after, the song was recorded by Édith Piaf in a French translation titled, "L'Homme à la Moto". The European royalties from another Cheers record, "Bazoom (I Need Your Lovin')", funded a 1956 trip to Europe for Stoller and his first wife, Meryl, on which they met Piaf. Their return to New York was aboard the ill-fated SS Andrea Doria, which was rammed and sunk by the Swedish liner MS Stockholm. The Stollers had to finish the journey to New York aboard another ship, the Cape Ann. After their rescue, Leiber greeted Stoller at the dock with the news that "Hound Dog" had become a hit for Elvis Presley.[13] Stoller's reply was, "Elvis who?" They would go on to write more hits for Presley, including the title songs for three of his movies—Loving You, Jailhouse Rock,[17] and King Creole—as well as the rock and roll Christmas song, "Santa Claus Is Back in Town", for Presley's first Christmas album.
On March 9, 1958, Leiber and Stoller appeared together on the TV panel quiz show What's My Line? as rock and roll composers of "Hounddog", "Jailhouse Rock" and "Don't". They were not household names and did not appear as celebrity mystery guests (a regular feature of the show) but as ordinary people with an unusual “line” of work. They even signed in under their own names, as the producers apparently were certain that the panel would not know who they were.