Jerry Leiber
Jerry Leiber
Lyricist Jerome "Jerry" Leiber and composer Mike Stollerwere American songwriting and record producing partners. They found initial successes as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog"and "Kansas City". Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits—including "Young Blood", "Searchin'", and "Yakety Yak"—that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth25 April 1933
CountryUnited States of America
The first memory I have was my sisters dancing to the radio when they played records by Benny Goodman and Harry James and of the sort. But the record that got me was a record by Derek Sampson, who was a young guy, called 'Boogie Express,' and it was boogie-woogie. Really, it was on fire, and that got me.
Red-hot songs were born on the black streets of Baltimore, where I delivered five-gallon cans of kerosene and ten-pound bags of coal.
Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.
The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.
The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there'd be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.
It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.
And there's always one special element. In 'There Goes My Baby,' it's the out-of-tune timpani. 'Stand by Me,' it's the bass pattern. Of course, all the elements come together to make a great record. But there's always one standout.