Jerry Leiber, Elvis and Mike Stoller

The Masters Behind the Masters Just doing their thing, songwriters Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber helped give birth to rock and roll when they wrote Hound Dog in 1952. Their list of hits sounds like the very history of rock and roll almost from the moment of its birth, with classic songs recorded by everybody from Elvis Presley to the Drifters to John Lennon.

Click the link below to listen to songs writen by Leiber & Stoller.

Riot In Cell Block # 9, Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley), Stand By Me (Ben E. King), Love Potion # 9, Hound Dog ('Big Mama') Willie Mae Thornton, Don't (Elvis Presley), (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care (Elvis Presley), Loving You (Elvis Presley) Only In America (Jay & The Americans), Love Me (Elvis Presley), She’s Not You (Elvis Presley), Spanish Harlem (Ben E. King), That Is Rock N’ Roll (With J.D. Sumner?), Yakety Yak.

Leiber & Stoller Medley

(6:47)

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were like the rap artists of the early '50s, pushing buttons, inviting scorn and testing the limits, as rock roared into being from its roots as blues and rhythm and blues. They were writing music for black artists, when one of their songs, Hound Dog, was heard by a young Elvis Presley. His adaptation turned it into a No. 1 hit and helped aim Leiber and Stoller toward the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

They wrote 20 songs for Elvis until the brash young songwriters had a falling out with Colonel Tom Parker, the Svengali they now remember as a 'bully' and a 'foul, greedy' man who helped destroy Elvis. But the estrangement didn't change their respect for Elvis.

'We feel that Elvis Presley was the high water mark of the 20th Century. He's legend. No, he's myth. He's in that celestial place for mythological figures. At the time, we just thought he was a white kid trying to make it as a singer', says Leiber, the man who supplied the words as lyricist of one of the worlds' best-known songwriting duos.

Leiber and Stoller originally met in 1950, sharing a love of the blues and boogie woogie. They were writing for black artists, their earliest songs recorded by Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, Little Willie Littlefield and, among others, Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton.

It was for Big Mama Thornton that they wrote Hound Dog in 1952. Her version came out in 1953 and was adapted by several groups. Stoller had gone to Europe with royalties from some of those early songs and was on his way home aboard the Andrea Doria when it sank in 1956.

Rescued by a lifeboat, Stoller arrived in New York with Leiber yelling from the dock: 'We've got a smash hit'. 'I said, 'You mean Big Mama Thornton's record?' He said, 'No, some white kid named Elvis Presley'. Elvis had heard Hound Dog in a Vegas Lounge by a group called Freddie Bell and the Bellboys', says Stoller.

Elvis' recording of Hound Dog was released in July of 1956 and bounded up the charts, selling millions of copies. Released the same year as Heartbreak Hotel, it put Elvis on TV and turned him into a phenomenon.

	Hound Dog - By 'Big Mama' Thornton	(02:32)
Above - 'Big Mama' Thornton perfoms Hound Dog.

	Hound Dog - By Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys	(2:29)
Above - Hound Dog by Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys.

	Hound Dog - By Elvis Presley	(2:17)
Above - Hound Dog by Elvis Presley.

After Elvis' great success with his version of Hound Dog, Paramount Studios and music publishers Hill and Range selected additional Leiber and Stoller songs for Elvis' 1957 film Loving You. It was on April 30, 1957 while working on the movie Jailhouse Rock that Elvis first met Leiber and Stoller. They were skeptical of meeting the newcomer, thinking he was a country bumpkin. However, they were very impressed when upon meeting and talking to Elvis that he was very knowledgeable of R&B music and could discuss its nuances in great detail. They went on to work closely with Elvis on the Jailhouse Rock soundtrack with Stoller appearing in the film playing the piano for Elvis' character. After an incident of pitching songs and movie ideas directly to Elvis and not going through the usual chain of command with Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, they had a falling out with Parker and essentially ended their collaboration with Elvis. Fast-forward to 1960, they did write a couple of songs that were in the running for inclusion in Elvis' first post-army movie, G.I. Blues, but, ultimately they were not used. Although the direct collaboration ended, Elvis did choose several additional Leiber and Stoller tunes to record over the years.

'We were completely unconscious of what it might imply. We were just doing numbers', says Leiber. Stoller says those numbers were unfamiliar to white audiences because he and Leiber had written 'almost exclusively for black performers, so we wrote in a black idiom. People started thinking it was entirely new, but the base we started from was the blues and boogie woogie'.

Stoller says they didn't specifically tailor songs to that early Elvis persona but began by supplying songs they had already written, like Love Me, a ballad they had already recorded. 'Then we were asked to write for a movie, Loving You, with Elvis and Lizabeth Scott'. The next project, Jailhouse Rock, included four songs Leiber and Stoller wrote while held captive in a New York hotel.

They had been living in Los Angeles, and Stoller says they rented a New York hotel suite with a piano in the living area. 'We were given a script for the movie and kind of tossed it in the corner. We were having a ball in New York, going to jazz clubs, cabaret, going to the theater and hanging out. Finally, Jean Aberbach who ran Elvis Presley Music knocked on the door and said, 'Well boys, where are my songs?' I think Jerry said, 'Oh, Jean, you're going to get them'. Jean then pushed a big overstuffed chair in front of the door and said, 'I'm not leaving until I get my songs'.

They wrote four songs in five hours, including Jailhouse Rock, the movie's title song and Treat Me Nice, both major hits.

After that, Elvis 'wanted us in the studio with him whenever we recorded', says Stoller. It was part of Elvis' 'perfectionist' tendencies in the early stages of his career, says Jerry Schilling, a member of Elvis' Memphis Mafia. Leiber says Elvis 'was like an Olympic champion. He could do 40 to 50 takes. I never saw him happier than when he was on a microphone, performing'.

Both songwriters say that studio time was their primary contact with Elvis, who was kept at arm's length from them by Colonel Parker. Stoller says Elvis once asked, 'Mike, could you write me a real pretty ballad?' Over the weekend, they wrote the song Don't for him and handed it to him only to be berated by Parker.

'He was upset that I handed a song directly to Elvis. They didn't want anybody to have direct access to Elvis. It was like Elvis was kept kind of in a glass box and away from contact except for the Memphis Mafia. They were like paid companions'.

Like almost everyone else, they also had little contact with Parker himself. 'The longest I ever spent with him was a dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel around 1956, after Hound Dog', says Stoller.

The breaking point for them came when Leiber was recovering from a bout with pneumonia about two years later, and Parker ordered them to California to write songs for a new movie project. Leiber explained that he had just been released from the hospital and was unable to travel. 'Parker said, 'You'd better get your ass out here'. He then sent a packet with a contract for them to sign. Leiber says he pulled the contract from the packet and found only a dark line across the middle of a blank page for his signature.

'I called and said, 'I think you made a mistake. There's no contract in here'. He said, 'Don't worry about that, boy. Just sign your name, and I'll fill it in later'.

Leiber says he then discussed it with Stoller, who told him to tell Parker 'to screw himself'.

They did and never worked for Elvis again, says Leiber. Like many others, he wondered about Parker's hold on Elvis. 'I think he (Elvis) had a very weak father and didn't get a sense of what a father was like. Parker came along, and his attitude was, 'Do this, do that, and I'll take care of everything'. Parker became his surrogate family'.

Leiber and Stoller's break with Parker ended that phase of their career, but not their music. They helped define music for a generation with monster hits from Love Potion #9 to Peggy Lee's pop classic Is That All There Is.

The inspiration for Is That All There Is illustrates the scope of their songwriting flair. A plaintive song about disillusionment, Leiber says it stemmed from his mood after reading a collection of short stories by Thomas Mann, an author heavily influenced by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The 1969 song became a Top 20 hit, shoving aside Grand Funk Railroad and other acid rockers at the top of the charts at the time.

The songwriters had no idea they were part of the birth of a new form of music when rock and roll became the new idiom in America. 'Those are labels. We were busy doing what we were doing. We didn't have a historical sense of who we were or what we were', Stoller says.

Leiber and Stoller have written for many artists over the years and have received many accolades, including induction into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame (1985), the Record Producers' Hall of Fame (1986), and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1987). In February 1988, Elvis Presley's recording of Hound Dog was placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame. And in 1991, Leiber and Stoller received the Founder's Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). The Broadway production 'Smokey Joe's Cafe: The Music of Leiber and Stoller' pays tribute to their work and has toured extensively.

Listing every artist who has recorded a Leiber and Stoller song would be quite an undertaking. Here's just a sampling: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, James Brown, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Bill Haley and The Comets, Barbra Streisand, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Johnny Mathis, John Mellencamp, Lou Rawls, Tom Jones, Bobby Darin, Luther Vandross, B.B. King, Otis Redding, the Righteous Brothers, Jeff Beck and many, many others.

Lieber and Stoller songs that Elvis recorded include:

(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care
Bossa Nova Baby
Dirty, Dirty Feeling
Don't
Fools Fall In Love
Girls! Girls! Girls!
Hot Dog
Hound Dog
I Want To Be Free
If You Don't Come Back
Jailhouse Rock
Just Tell Her Him Said Hello
King Creole
Little Egypt
Love Me
Loving You
Santa Claus Is Back In Town
Saved
She's Not You (co-written by Doc Pomus)
Steadfast Loyal & True
Three Corn Patches
Treat Me Nice
Trouble
You're The Boss

Buy the CD Elvis Chante Jerry Leiber And Mike Stoller

- Interview with Mike Stoller
- Mike Stoller recalls day he survived a wreck and discovered his Elvis hit
- Songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman
- Elvis Presley's Best Song Writers

If you like reading this article, you will love the book; Writing For The King - a 400 page Book with more than 140 interviews with songwriters like Paul McCartney, Leiber & Stoller, Pomus & Shuman, Red West, Mark James and Tony Joe White. Included are two CDs, the first contains previously unreleased RCA recordings of Elvis performing live in Las Vegas (1969 through 1972), the second a selection of the original demos submitted to Elvis.

The demo CD takes us from Heartbreak Hotel through classics like Teddy Bear, Trouble, Burning Love and Way Down.

'Writing for the King' by Ken Sharp is a fascinating behind-the-scenes story of politics, money, inspiration and great trivia about Elvis and the songs he turned into classics.

Jerry Leiber was born April 25, 1933 in Baltimore, Maryland. Mike Stoller was born March 13, 1933 in Long Island, New York. Both of their families moved to the West Coast after World War II. They met as teens in Los Angeles in 1950, where they discovered they had similar interests in R&B music. They began writing songs together in a partnership that continues today. Their first nationally recognized song was called Hard Times, recorded by Charles Brown. In 1953, their song Hound Dog as recorded by Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thorton topped the R&B charts. They formed the Spark recording label and developed a style of telling a story in their songs, as illustrated by tunes such as Smoky Joe's Cafe, Riot in Cell Block 9,and Framed. They wrote for a group called The Robins, which later changed their name to The Coasters (as they were from the West Coast). Leiber and Stoller wrote such Coaster hits such as Searchin', Yakety Yak, Charlie Brown, Poison Ivy, Along Came Jones and Little Egypt. They soon moved their operations to New York. By this time, in addition to writing, they were also producing recording sessions and they began experimenting with adding new sounds using Latin percussion and strings. It was under their tutelage that a young Phil Spector learned techniques that would lead to his being a producer famous his signature 'wall of sound' technique.