Jerry Leiber

American rock songwriter and producer

• Born: April 25, 1933
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: August 22, 2011

In collaboration with composer Mike Stoller, Leiber wrote some of the most successful rhythm-and-blues songs of the early 1950’s, which crossed over to become rock and roll.

The Life

Jerome Leiber (LEE-bur) was born in Baltimore to a Polish immigrant; his father died when Leiber was five years old. His mother took the insurance money of one hundred dollars and opened a candy store, which later became a grocery store, in a Baltimore Jewish neighborhood that was near a black neighborhood. While making food deliveries, Leiber became interested in the music he heard being played in the black homes.

In 1945 he moved with his mother to California. At sixteen he started working at a music store, and he began writing rhythm-and-blues lyrics while searching for a composer. A drummer friend at high school told him about a boy his age who was studying composition, and his partnership with Mike Stoller began in the summer of 1950. By the following year they were writing songs for the Robins, who would later become the Coasters. In 1952, while still in their teens, Leiber and Stoller produced Big Mama Thornton’s recording of their song “Hound Dog,” which hit number one on the rhythm-and-blues charts, years before Elvis Presley heard it. Leiber was primarily the lyricist of the team, though he sometimes contributed melodic ideas to composer Stoller. They founded Spark Records in 1953, but they dissolved it three years later to return to the creative side of recording. When Presley discovered the duo’s music, he wanted them to write for his films. In the decades that followed, Leiber and his partner produced enduring hits, many of which were memorialized in a 1995 Broadway revue, Smokey Joe’s Café.

The Music

By his mid-twenties, Leiber and his partner Stoller were among the most successful songwriters in the record industry, their names appearing on more than forty million records. Rhythm-and-blues fans, they started their careers working with African American groups, primarily the Robins (Coasters), Thornton, and Wilbert Harrison. Leiber, who was considered an excellent blues singer himself, could have preceded Presley in bringing the rhythm-and-blues sound to white audiences, but he considered a white blues singer “inauthentic,” and he refused to record.

“Hound Dog.” This song helped Leiber and Stoller cross over into rock and roll (after it became a big rhythm-and-blues hit), and it also made them producers. Invited by Johnny Otis, one of the few white drummers in rhythm and blues, to write material for Thornton, Leiber and Stoller contributed “Hound Dog.” When they attended the recording session, on August 13, 1952, they realized that the studio musicians were not getting the beat. The songwriters told Otis, who was running the control board for the session, that he would have to take over the drumming. This meant that Leiber and Stoller had to man the board, giving them total control over the sound, and thus Leiber became a record producer. Released in April of 1953, Thornton’s recording hit number one in Cash Box, the rhythm and blues’ equivalent of Billboard. Some suggested that Presley’s 1956 version (in which Leiber had no part) toned down the suggestive lyrics, but mainly the alterations are adaptations of point of view, from a female singer to a male, a change that had occurred in lounge acts from which Presley first heard the song. Freddie Bell and the Bellboys recorded the altered version a year before Presley did.

“Yakety Yak.” A great deal of Leiber’s success as a lyricist involves his comedic sense, which reflects not only his wit but the satiric flair of the first rock-and-roll generation that bought his songs. From parodies of B-film Western plots in “Along Came Jones” and of detective films in “Searchin,’” to the high-school class clowning of “Charlie Brown,” Leiber developed the ability to tell a comic story in a three-minute song. One of the best of this type was “Yakety Yak.” Lyrically, it was simple: Each verse begins with a barrage of parental nagging, which ends with the teenager’s dismissive answer, “Yakety yak,” followed by the parental voice admonishing, “Don’t talk back!” This introduction of a dramatic element into popular song, while familiar to rhythm-and-blues listeners as a version of the call-and-response pattern of jazz music, was new to rock and roll.

“On Broadway.” This Leiber-Stoller hit from 1963 demonstrates how easily the duo collaborated with other composers: The version which hit number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 was a Leiber-Stoller rewrite of a Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil song. Lyrically, it shows Leiber’s talent for matching verbal to musical rhythms. The melody, which Stoller had simplifed, contained a musical phrase repeated three times, the third time with three additional notes. The irregular line length presents a hardship for the lyricist, who depends upon rhymes appearing at equal intervals. Leiber solved this problem by placing the third rhyme in its expected position and allowing the extra notes to echo the title, “On Broadway.”

Musical Legacy

Leiber worked behind the scenes with some of the greatest names in popular music for more than half a century. Even production styles outside the Leiber-Stoller formula—such as Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”—owed something to the duo’s pioneer work in the recording studio. Spector, in fact, learned production by assisting Leiber and Stoller, and it was Spector who played guitar on the 1963 Drifters recording of “On Broadway.” In 1985 Leiber was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and in 1987 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Leiber and Stoller’s role in influencing the direction of Peggy Lee’s music in the late 1960’s was commemorated in the 2005 compilation Peggy Lee Sings Leiber and Stoller. In 1995 the Broadway musical Smokey Joe’s Café celebrated their hit songs.

Principal Works

songs (as producer; with Mike Stoller): “She Cried,” 1962 (recorded by Jay and the Americans); “Tell Him,” 1963 (recorded by the Exciters); “Chapel of Love,” 1967 (recorded by the Dixie Cups); “Leader of the Pack,” 1967 (recorded by Shangri-Las); “Stuck in the Middle with You,” 1973 (recorded by Stealers Wheel).

song (as songwriter; with Phil Spector): “Spanish Harlem,” 1961 (recorded by Ben E. King).

songs (as songwriter; with Mike Stoller): “Real Ugly Woman,” 1950 (recorded by Jimmy Witherspoon); “Hard Time,” 1952 (recorded by Charles Brown); “Hound Dog,” 1952 (recorded by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton; rerecorded by Elvis Presley, 1956); “K. C. Lovin’,” 1952 (recorded by Little Willie Littlefield; rerecorded by Wilbert Harrison, 1959); “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” 1955 (recorded by the Cheers); “Riot in Cell Block #9,” 1955 (recorded by the Robins); “Smokey Joe’s Café,” 1955 (recorded by the Robins); “Love Me,” 1956 (recorded by Presley); “Ruby Baby,” 1956 (recorded by the Drifters); “Jailhouse Rock,” 1957 (recorded by Presley); “Loving You,” 1957 (recorded by Presley); “Lucky Lips,” 1957 (recorded by Ruth Brown; rerecorded by Cliff Richards and the Shadows, 1963); “Searchin’,” 1957 (recorded by the Coasters); “Young Blood,” 1957 (recorded by the Coasters); “Don’t,” 1958 (recorded by Presley); “Yakety Yak,” 1958 (recorded by the Coasters); “Charlie Brown,” 1959 (recorded by the Coasters); “Love Potion No. 9,” 1959 (recorded by the Clovers); “Poison Ivy,” 1959 (recorded by the Coasters); “Stand by Me,” 1961 (written with and recorded by Ben E. King); “I’m a Woman,” 1962 (recorded by Christine Kittrell; rerecorded by Peggy Lee, 1963); “On Broadway,” 1963 (written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; recorded by the Drifters); “Is That All There Is?,” 1969 (recorded by Lee).

Bibliography

Brown, Mick. Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. This meticulously documented biography of Spector refers to Leiber throughout, and the fourth chapter is especially useful.

Green, Joey. How They Met: Famous Lovers, Partners, Competitors, and Other Legendary Duos. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2003. This book describes the history-making meeting of Leiber and Stoller.

Leiber, Jerry. Selected Lyrics, 1951-1981. New York: Aperture, 1980. A generous selection of Leiber’s best lyrics, with an introduction by the author.

Leiber, Jerry, and Bob Spitz. A Hound Dog’s Life: Gospel, Half-Truths, Rumors, and Outrageous Lies. London: HarperCollins, 1997. An autobiography of the lyricist, told in a lighthearted style.

Palmer, Robert. Baby, That Was Rock and Roll: The Legendary Leiber and Stoller. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. A biography of the legendary songwriting team. Includes photographs.