One half of one of the greatest pop music songwriting teams ever (with Mike Stoller), Jerry Leiber died today at the age of 78. They wrote and/or produced hits for Elvis, The Coasters, Big Mama Thornton (“Hound Dog”), Peggy Lee, Charles Brown, Ray Charles, Ben E King (“Stand by me”). They don’t come any better.
Here’s a 45 minute documentary about the team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M29TEIvgjDQ
Jerry & Mike on the old TV panel show, “What’s My Line”. Guest: Vincent Price. Horror also supplied by rock & roll hater Dorothy Kilgallen
One of the true Leiber & Stoller classics was Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock”. Last year, following up the release of the film Black Swan, TIME magazine did a feature on the 10 greatest film dance sequences ever… including, from 1957:
And a 1995 interview on CBS when Smoky Joe’s Café opened on Broadway: a musical based on their hits.