大象传媒

by Bob Stanley

Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber

If they had made what they considered a good record and it hadn't been a hit, they forwarded it to Elvis and he frequently cut them

One of the most entertaining autobiographies of the last ten years was Hound Dog by songwriters . Any rock'n'roll fan will be familiar with their names, housed in brackets on record labels like London, Atlantic and RCA, underneath song titles like King Creole, Yakety Yak and (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care. As wise-cracking as their songs, there are anecdotes involving other music business greats like Phil Spector, Shadow Morton and Jerry Wexler, moments where they had to tread lightly when dealing with the Mob, and equally lightly in their handling of Peggy Lee, for who they wrote I'm A Woman and Is That All There Is, her biggest hits of the sixties. Not that she ever thanked them for it.

My first contact with the names Leiber and Stoller would have been on Elvis records. He recorded Hound Dog in 1956, which the pair had first recorded with LA blues shouter Big Mama Thornton a couple of years earlier - impressive going for a pair of white Jewish teenagers from New York. It would be the first of more than twenty collaborations between Leiber, Stoller and Presley, though Mike Stoller almost didn't get to hear any of them. He was on an ocean liner called the Andrea Doria, which was returning from Europe and close to docking when it collided with a Swedish cruise ship off the coast of Massachusetts in July 1956. Dozens were killed in the accident. Stoller and his wife reached shore on a lifeboat where they were met by Jerry Leiber who, not even sure if his friend would be alive, had brought him a new mohair suit to change in to, along with the news that a singer named Elvis Presley was number one with Hound Dog.

Initially, Leiber and Stoller were wary of a white singer covering their R&B songs, but soon developed a mutual appreciation society. After their ballad Love Me gave Elvis a massive American hit in 1957, the pair ended up writing the soundtracks for arguably the two best Elvis films, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole. They were warned away from getting too close to the King, though, and pitching songs directly to him was definitely out of order. Still, they were close enough that Mike Stoller played the role of Elvis's piano player in Jailhouse Rock - Jerry Leiber was supposed to have played the part but he had a dentist's appointment that day. The relationship fell apart in 1960 when the notoriously controlling Colonel Parker asked Jerry and Mike to sign a contract with pages missing, telling them that he would fill in the details later. It was a huge shame, as Elvis enjoyed being in the studio with them, and Jerry Leiber considered Elvis "the greatest ballad singer since Bing Crosby."

At arms length, Elvis continued to record Leiber/Stoller songs, and occasionally they would pitch them. Among his strongest singles of the singles was She's Not You, a number one in the autumn of 1962, which they co-wrote with another Brill Building writer, Doc Pomus. On other occasions, if they had made what they considered a good record and it hadn't been a hit, they forwarded it to Elvis and he frequently cut them: the title song from 1962 film Girls, Girls, Girls was originally a Coasters flop, while Bossa Nova Baby had been made by Tippi and the Clovers for a short-lived label Leiber and Stoller ran called Tiger. Even without prompting, Elvis loved to revisit their catalogue, with the Coasters' Little Egypt (1964) and the Drifters' Fools Fall in Love in 1966 (Elvis's version features a guitar that sounds like something from a Merrie Melodies cartoon); in the seventies he was still recording Leiber and Stoller oldies like If You Don't Come Back and Three Corn Patches. And Avids who are fans of flipping over hits will also be aware of a terrific song called Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello, on the b-side of She's Not You.