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Lyricist Jerome "Jerry" Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and composer Mike Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found initial successes as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog" (1952) and "Kansas City" (1952). Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits—including "Young Blood" (1957), "Searchin'" (1957), and "Yakety Yak" (1958)—that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal. They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with The Drifters in "There Goes My Baby" (1958), which influenced Phil Spector, who studied their productions while playing guitar on their sessions.

Leiber and Stoller wrote hits for Elvis Presley including "Love Me" (1956), "Jailhouse Rock" (1957), "Loving You", "Don't", and "King Creole". They also collaborated with other writers on such songs as "On Broadway", written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; "Stand By Me", written with Ben E. King; "Young Blood", written with Doc Pomus; and "Spanish Harlem", co-written by Leiber and Phil Spector. They were sometimes credited under the pseudonym Elmo Glick. In 1964, they launched Red Bird Records with George Goldner and, focusing on the "girl group" sound, released some of the greatest classics of the Brill Building period.

In all, Leiber and Stoller wrote or co-wrote over 70 chart hits. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

1950s
Both born to Jewish families, Leiber came from Baltimore and Stoller from Long Island, but they met in Los Angeles in 1950, where Stoller was a freshman at Los Angeles City College while Leiber was a senior at Fairfax High. (Stoller had graduated from Belmont High School.) After school, Stoller played piano, and Leiber worked in Norty's, a record store on Fairfax Avenue, and when they met, they found they shared a love of blues and rhythm and blues. In 1950, Jimmy Witherspoon recorded and performed their first commercial song, "Real Ugly Woman". Stoller's name at birth was Michael Stoller, but he later changed it legally to "Mike".

Their first hit composition was "Hard Times", recorded by Charles Brown, which was a rhythm and blues hit in 1952. "Kansas City", first recorded in 1952 (as "K. C. Loving") by rhythm & blues singer Little Willie Littlefield, became a No. 1 pop hit in 1959 for Wilbert Harrison. In 1952, the partners wrote "Hound Dog" for blues singer Big Mama Thornton, which became a hit for her in 1953. The 1956 Elvis Presley rock version, which was a takeoff of the adaptation that Presley picked up from Freddie Bell's lounge act in Las Vegas, was a much bigger hit. Presley's showstopping mock-burlesque version of "Hound Dog", playfully bumping and grinding on the Milton Berle Show, created such public excitement that on The Steve Allen Show they slowed down his act, with an amused Presley in a tuxedo and blue suede shoes singing his hit to a basset hound. Allen pronounced Presley "a good sport", and the Leiber-Stoller song would be forever linked to Presley.

Leiber and Stoller's later songs often had lyrics more appropriate for pop music, and their combination of rhythm and blues with pop lyrics revolutionized pop, rock and roll, and punk rock.

They formed Spark Records in 1953 with their mentor, Lester Sill. Their songs from this period include "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and "Riot in Cell Block #9", both recorded by The Robins.

The label was later bought by Atlantic Records, which hired Leiber and Stoller in an innovative deal that allowed them to produce for other labels. This, in effect, made them the first independent record producers. At Atlantic, they revitalized the careers of The Drifters and wrote a number of hits for The Coasters, a spin-off of the Robins. Their songs from this period include "Charlie Brown", "Searchin'", "Yakety Yak", "Stand By Me" (written with Ben E. King), and "On Broadway" (written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). For the Coasters alone, they wrote twenty-four songs that appeared in the US charts.

In 1955, Leiber and Stoller produced a recording of their song "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots" with a white vocal group, the Cheers. Soon after, the song was recorded by Édith Piaf in a French translation titled, "L'Homme à la Moto". The European royalties from another Cheers record, "Bazoom (I Need Your Lovin')", funded a 1956 trip to Europe for Stoller and his first wife, Meryl, on which they met Piaf. Their return to New York was aboard the ill-fated SS Andrea Doria, which was rammed and sunk by the Swedish liner MS Stockholm. The Stollers had to finish the journey to New York aboard another ship, the Cape Ann. After their rescue, Leiber greeted Stoller at the dock with the news that "Hound Dog" had become a hit for Elvis Presley. Stoller's reply was, "Elvis who?" They would go on to write more hits for Presley, including the title songs for three of his movies—Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole—as well as the rock and roll Christmas song, "Santa Claus Is Back in Town", for Presley's first Christmas album.

Post-1950s
In the beginning of the 1960s, they started Daisy Records and recorded Bob Moore and The Temps (w/Roy Buchanan) on their label.

In the early 1960s, Phil Spector served an apprenticeship of sorts with Leiber and Stoller in New York City, developing his record producer's craft while observing and playing guitar on their sessions, including the guitar solo on The Drifters' "On Broadway".

After leaving the employ of Atlantic Records—where they produced, and often wrote, many classic recordings by The Drifters with Ben E. King—Leiber and Stoller produced a series of records for United Artists Records, including hits by Jay and the Americans ("She Cried"), The Exciters ("Tell Him"), and The Clovers ("Love Potion #9", also written by Leiber and Stoller).

In the 1960s, Leiber and Stoller founded and briefly owned Red Bird Records, which issued The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack" and The Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love".

After selling Red Bird, they continued working as independent producers and songwriters. Their best known song from this period is "Is That All There Is?" recorded by Peggy Lee in 1969; it earned her a Best Female Pop Vocal Performance Grammy. Earlier in the decade, they had had a hit with Lee with "I'm a Woman" (1962).

Their last major hit production was "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel, taken from the band's 1972 eponymous debut album, which the duo produced. In 1975, they recorded Mirrors, an album of art songs with Peggy Lee. A remixed and expanded version of the album was released in 2005 as Peggy Lee Sings Leiber and Stoller.

In the late 1970s, A&M Records recruited Leiber and Stoller to write and produce an album for Elkie Brooks; Two Days Away (1977) proved a success in the UK and most of Europe. Their composition "Pearl's a Singer" (written with Ralph Dino & John Sembello) became a hit for Brooks, and remains her signature tune. In 1978, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris and her pianist-composer husband William Bolcom recorded an album, Other Songs by Leiber and Stoller, featuring a number of the songwriters' more unusual (and satiric) works, including "Let's Bring Back World War I", written specifically for (and dedicated to) Bolcom and Morris; and "Humphrey Bogart", a tongue-in-cheek song about obsession with the actor. In 1979, Leiber and Stoller produced another album for Brooks: Live and Learn.

In 1982, Steely Dan member Donald Fagen recorded their song, "Ruby Baby", on his album, The Nightfly. That same year, former Doobie Brothers member Michael McDonald released "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)", adapted from Leiber and Stoller's "I Keep Forgettin'".

2000s
In 2009, Simon & Schuster published Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography,written by Leiber and Stoller with David Ritz. As of 2007, their songs are managed by Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

With collaborator Artie Butler, Stoller wrote the music to the musical The People in the Picture, with book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart. Stoller and Butler's music received a 2011 Drama Desk Award nomination.

On August 22, 2011, Leiber died in Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, aged 78, from cardio-pulmonary failure. He was survived by his sons Jed, Oliver, and Jake.

Stoller wrote both music and lyrics to the song "Charlotte", recorded by Steve Tyrell and released in advance of the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC.

Awards and honors
Leiber and Stoller won Grammy awards for "Is That All There Is?" in 1969, and for the cast album of Smokey Joe's Cafe, a 1995 Broadway musical revue based on their work. Smokey Joe's Cafe was also nominated for seven Tony awards, and became the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history.

Other awards include:
 * 1985 – Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
 * 1987 – Induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
 * 1988 – Elvis Presley's recording of "Hound Dog" placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame
 * 1991 – ASCAP Founders' Award
 * 1994 – A star placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of 7083 Hollywood Blvd., and their handprints embedded into the Hollywood Rockwalk
 * 1996 – National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award
 * 1997 – Distinguished Artist Award/Los Angeles Music Center
 * 1999 – NARAS (Grammy) Trustees Award
 * 2000 – Johnny Mercer Award/National Academy of Popular Music
 * 2000 – Ivor Novello International Songwriters Award
 * 2005 – ASMAC President’s Award
 * 2005 – "Kansas City" named official song of Kansas City, Missouri
 * 2005 – World Soundtrack Award/Flanders International Film Festival

Legacy
In the 1950s the rhythm and blues of the black entertainment world, up to then restricted to black clubs, was increasing its audience-share in areas previously reserved for traditional pop music, and the phenomenon now known as "crossover" became apparent.

Leiber and Stoller affected the course of modern popular music in 1957, when they wrote and produced the crossover double-sided hit by The Coasters, "Young Blood"/"Searchin'". They released "Yakety Yak", which was a mainstream hit, as was the follow-up, "Charlie Brown". This was followed by "Along Came Jones", "Poison Ivy", "Shoppin' for Clothes", and "Little Egypt (Ying-Yang)".

They produced and co-wrote "There Goes My Baby", a hit for The Drifters in 1959, which introduced the use of strings for saxophone-like riffs, a tympani for the Brazilian baion rhythm they incorporated, and lavish production values into the established black R&B sound, laying the groundwork for the soul music that would follow.

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http://www.leiberstoller.com/About.html Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote songs together for over sixty years, creating enduring classics in a variety of genres including Rhythm & Blues, Pop, Jazz, Cabaret, and—most notably—Rock & Roll.

They began their partnership in 1950 at the age of 17 when they discovered that they shared a passion for the Blues. By the age of 20, Leiber and Stoller had seen their songs recorded by such artists as Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Charles Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, and Ray Charles. But the hits began with Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s recording of “Hound Dog” in 1953. This record, and others written and produced by them, caught the attention of Atlantic Records. In 1955, Atlantic signed Leiber and Stoller to the first independent production deal, forever changing the course of the record industry. Their chart-ruling records included: Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” “Spanish Harlem,” and “I (Who Have Nothing)”; The Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby,” “Dance With Me,” and “On Broadway”; La Vern Baker’s “Saved”; and Ruth Brown’s “Lucky Lips.” Above all, Leiber and Stoller wrote and produced all of the hits for The Coasters, including “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “Along Came Jones,” “Poison Ivy,” and “Little Egypt.”

While Leiber and Stoller were producing The Clovers (“Love Potion # 9”), Jay and the Americans (“Only In America”), and Chuck Jackson (“I Keep Forgettin’”), other artists were having hits with Leiber and Stoller compositions, including Wilbert Harrison (“Kansas City”), Dion (“Ruby Baby,” “Drip Drop”), Peggy Lee (“I’m A Woman”)…and, of course, Elvis Presley. spacer spacer	With his recording of Hound Dog, Elvis became a household word. Presley went on to record more than twenty Leiber and Stoller songs, including “Jailhouse Rock,” “Loving You,” “Love Me,” “Treat Me Nice,” “Don’t,” “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “Santa Claus Is Back In Town,” “She’s Not You,” and “Trouble.”

In 1969, the team produced the Peggy Lee recording of their composition, “Is That All There Is?” According to music critic Robert Palmer, “Is That All There Is?” was the song that “…clearly pointed to the direction their new work would take,” signaling that, “…the Golden Age of Rock & Roll had come to an end.” Leiber and Stoller have been the recipients of countless awards and honors, including inductions into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But the greatest compliment to any songwriter is to have his songs recorded by the best in the business. Artists who have recorded songs by Leiber and Stoller include The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, B.B. King, James Brown, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beach Boys, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Joe Williams, Tom Jones, Count Basie, Edith Piaf, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Luther Vandross, John Lennon, Aretha Franklin, and over a thousand others. spacer spacer	In 1995, Smokey Joe’s Cafe: The Songs of Leiber & Stoller opened on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre. Comprised of forty songs by L&S, the show was nominated for seven Tony Awards and won the Grammy Award for best Original Cast Album. Smokey Joe’s Cafe would run for over five years, becoming the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history. Leiber & Stoller continued to work on songs for musical theater projects until Jerry Leiber’s passing in August, 2011.

If they had written no other song but “Hound Dog,” the names of Leiber and Stoller would still have been indelibly written in the history of popular music. However, they didn’t start or stop there. Their contributions as songwriters and record producers have been so monumental that it is impossible to envision what American popular music would be like today without them.

—Randy Poe

https://rockhall.com/inductees/jerry-leiber-and-mike-stoller/bio/ Jerry Leiber (songwriter; born April 25, 1933, died August 22, 2011), Mike Stoller (songwriter; born March 13, 1933)

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller have written some of the most spirited and enduring rock and roll songs: “Hound Dog” (originally cut by Big Mama Thornton in 1953 and covered by Elvis Presley three years later), “Love Potion No. 9” (the Clovers), “Kansas City” (Wilbert Harrison), “On Broadway” (the Drifters), “Ruby Baby” (Dion) and “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King). Their vast catalog includes virtually every major hit by the Coasters (e.g., “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Charlie Brown,” “Yakety Yak” and “Poison Ivy"). They also worked their magic on Elvis Presley, writing “Jailhouse Rock,” “Treat Me Nice” and “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care)” specifically for him. All totaled, Presley recorded more than 20 Leiber and Stoller songs.

As pop auteurs who wrote, arranged and produced countless recordings by the above-mentioned artists and others, Leiber and Stoller advanced rock and roll to new heights of wit and musical sophistication. They were particularly influential during rock and roll’s first decade, beginning with the original recording of “Hound Dog” in 1953 and continuing through to the Drifters’ “On Broadway” in 1963. They brought a range of stylistic flavor to their story songs, which ranged from wisecracking, finger-popping hipster tunes to quieter love ballads. They even made a foray into country & western at Elvis Presley’s request, penning “Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello.” About all that their songs had in common was a fundamental grounding in rhythm & blues.

Leiber, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, was born in 1933 and grew up on the edge of Baltimore’s black ghetto. Stoller, also born in 1933, was raised in Queens, learning the basics of blues and boogie-woogie from black kids at summer camp. The pair met in Los Angeles in 1950 and began writing right away. Leiber served as the sharp-witted lyricist, while the classically trained but jazz- and R&B-loving Stoller wrote the music. In 1951 one of the duo’s early songs, “That’s What the Good Book Says,” was recorded by the Robins (two members of the Robins later became original members of the Coasters) for Modern Records. In 1954, Leiber and Stoller formed their own label, Spark, which released classics like the Robins’ “Riot in Cell Block #9.” After a string of similarly gutsy, groundbreaking records, Atlantic Records signed Leiber and Stoller to one of the industry’s first independent production deals.

After enjoying a wildly successful run at Atlantic in the late Fifties and early Sixties, Leiber and Stoller made their final and most successful attempt at running their own record label in 1964. Red Bird Records spotlighted the girl-group sound. Their unerring eye for talent brought great young producers and songwriters into the Red Bird fold. The company’s second release - “Chapel of Love,” by the Dixie Cups - shot to #1. Of Red Bird’s first 30 singles, 10 made the Top Forty - an outstanding percentage in the music industry. Red Bird’s commercial success was equaled by the quality of the music, including such girl-group classics as the Shangri-La’s “Leader of the Pack.” Though the era of such timeless singles faded long ago, Leiber and Stoller have remained active in the music business to which they’ve contributed so substantially, up until Jerry Leiber's death on August 22, 2011 in Los Angeles.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/leiber-stoller-mn0001591077/biography Artist Biography by John Dougan A complete biography of the lives of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and their contribution to rock & roll could easily take up an entire book. Very simply, Leiber & Stoller were two of the most important songwriters of the early days of rock & roll. Although they had penned songs for R&B artists such as Jimmy Witherspoon, Floyd Dixon, and Charles Brown in the early '50s, Leiber & Stoller more or less exploded onto the rock scene in 1953 by writing "Hound Dog" for Big Mama Thornton (later to be covered by Elvis). From that point on, the duo composed and produced a string of hits that include some of the most instantly recognizable songs in rock history. They were also pushing the art of rock songwriting (and record production) into, at the time, uncharted territory. As is noted by critic Greg Shaw in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll: "They were the true architects of pop/rock...Their signal achievement was the marriage of rhythm & blues in its most primal form to the pop tradition."

Few songwriters of this era had the Midas touch as did Leiber & Stoller. A partial list of their credits include "Riot in Cell Block No. 9" (1953), "Love Me" (1956), "Charlie Brown" (1959), "Stand by Me" (1961), "On Broadway" (1963), and numerous songs for Elvis, including songs for the films Jailhouse Rock and King Creole. Along with wedding R&B with the pop tradition, Leiber & Stoller also introduced string arrangements to R&B records (the Drifters featuring Ben E. King's "There Goes My Baby"), and by doing so created the foundation for a new era of soul music production that would come on the heels of the fading doo wop style. Among the many artists and writers they influenced, few were more important than Phil Spector, who cut his teeth learning production techniques from them while they painstakingly assembled the great early Drifters tracks.

In 1964, Leiber & Stoller started their own record label, Red Bird, devoted to girl groups. Wisely, they also hired the talented songwriting duo of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, who were at their peak powers, composing some of the most lasting songs of the albeit brief heyday of girl group music, including the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack" and the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love." Leiber & Stoller, however, became disinterested in the business side of Red Bird and sold the label two years later, just as the girl group sound was on the wane. So, too, were the hitmaking days of Leiber & Stoller on the wane. They continued to write songs, mostly for the Coasters, but they no longer dominated the pop and R&B charts the way they once did. Still, they survived, taking on the august role of rock & roll elder statesmen, eventually landing a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Later, their songs were the basis of a successful Broadway musical entitled Smokey Joe's Cafe, which revived interest in their great body of work, and also brought the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to a whole new audience. Not bad for a couple of guys who, in the words of Mike Stoller, never wanted to write rock & roll songs, just good R&B. The pair may have been decades past their heyday on the charts when Jerry Leiber died from heart failure at age 78 in August 2011, but the ubiquitous presence of Leiber & Stoller songs in popular culture -- from Smokey Joe's Cafe to movie soundtracks to R&B and pop anthologies -- has demonstrated that their music's appeal will undoubtedly continue for generations to come.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Leiber-and-Stoller Leiber and Stoller American songwriters and record producers Written by: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica READ VIEW HISTORY EDIT FEEDBACK Leiber and Stoller American songwriters and record producers Leiber and Stoller, American songwriters and record producers. Jerry Leiber (in full Jerome Leiber; b. April 25, 1933, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—d. August 22, 2011, Los Angeles, California) and Mike Stoller (in full Michael Stoller; b. March 13, 1933, Belle Harbor, New York, U.S.), working primarily for Atlantic Records, were perhaps the most successful writers and producers of the 1950s.

They became partners as teenagers in Los Angeles; when their “Hound Dog” was recorded by Willie Mae (“Big Mama”) Thornton in 1952, they also became producers. Major success followed with their series of novelty story-songs—including “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” (performed by the Cheers), “Young Blood” and “Yakety Yak” (by the Coasters), and “Love Potion No. 9” (by the Clovers)—and with their songs for Elvis Presley movies, including Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. Their early 1960s productions of Ben E. King and the Drifters, including “Stand by Me” and “On Broadway,” were especially influential. In 1964 they established their own label, Red Bird, on which the Shangri-Las recorded. They went on to write for films and theatre; among their last hits, in 1969, was the world-weary “Is That All There Is?” (by Peggy Lee). In 1987 the pair was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Definitive songs

 * "There Goes My Baby" (with Ben E. King [alias Benjamin Nelson], Lover Patterson, and George Treadwell)
 * "Hound Dog"
 * "Kansas City"
 * "Smokey Joe's Cafe"
 * "Yakety Yak"
 * "Poison Ivy"
 * "Charlie Brown"
 * "Ruby Baby"
 * "Stand By Me" (with Ben E. King)
 * "Jailhouse Rock"


 * "Love Potion No. 9"
 * "Searchin'"
 * "Young Blood" (with Doc Pomus)
 * "Is That All There Is?"
 * "I'm a Woman"
 * "Lucky Lips"
 * "On Broadway" (with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil)
 * "Spanish Harlem" (Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector)
 * "Jackson" (Jerry Leiber and Billy Edd Wheeler)
 * "Drip Drop"