Word: leiber
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...Crescent City Blues"; in the late '60s, the courts ruled that a better word would be "swiped," and Cash had to pay up. Rufus Thomas's "Bear Cat (The Answer to Hound Dog)," whose composition was credited to one Sam Phillips, was so direct a copy of the Leiber-Stoller hit that Sun had two pay Lion Records two cents a copy. (All this and much more itemized in Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins' book "Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n Roll...
...Leiber and Stoller weren?t responsible for the Drifters? indenture, they also didn?t bother to force its change. And though the writer-producers? early work had an underdog acerbity, their determination to produce hit after Drifters hit made them cautious with other writers? songs. Mann and Weil had written "Only in America" as a scathing denunciation of civil inequity: "Only in America/ Land of opportunity/ Do they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me." Leiber and Stoller rewrote the lyric as a straightforward, Horatio Alger anthem. The meaning was lost; worse, it was twisted...
...takin? you home/ And in whose arms you?re gonna be" (my very favorite relative-pronoun clause in pop music) and the promise that the last dance will be the most intimate of all. The song is even lovelier if you know the story behind its creation. Leiber, in the book: "Doc was confined to a wheelchair for most of his life, so he couldn?t dance. He was married to this gorgeous blond woman [Broadway and TV actress Willi Burke], and ... he?d say, Yeah, we go out, that?s cool - I like to watch her.? That...
...Leiber and Stoller left Atlantic in 1963 to form their own label, Red Bird. As composers, they soon ceased writing hits. But their catalog was so rich that it kept generating them. Dion covered two Drifters songs, "Ruby Baby" from ?956 and "Drip Drop" from ?958. At least five L&S oldies became later Top "0 hits: "I (Who have Nothing)" (Tom Jones), "I?m a Woman" (Maria Muldaur), "On Broadway" (George Benson), "Spanish Harlem" (Aretha Franklin) and "There Goes My Baby" (Donna Summer). In the curio category are a rendition of "Stand by Me" by one Cassius Clay...
...great period of Atlantic concluded in the mid-?60s, after Charles and Darin and Leiber and Stoller left the label. I acknowledge that later ?60s Atlantic music can get to me: I still do choke up at the church-organ screaming solemnity of "When a Man Loves a Woman." I have a sneaking fondness for early BeeGees, and not only sneaking: that first album has a half-dozen Beatles-worthy tunes on it, and "To Love Somebody" has stood the test of time as a magnificent Australo-American R&B wailer. But the late ?60s can?t compete...