Julian Savage contacted me the other day about the passing of Jerry Leiber and I suggested, or more, requested, that he write something about it. He's come through with an excellent piece that I'm sure you'll enjoy. Unfortunately, due to moving flats, I haven't had a chance to rip the appropriate tunes to go with it, but you could always have another listen to Julian's brilliant Mixed Nuts selections from earlier this year. Take it away Julian:Vale Jerry Leiber, r&b and rock‘n’roll's poet laureateThe Robins - Smokey Joe's Cafe
As the hip wordsmith of one of the great songwriting teams – Leiber and Stoller - lyricist Jerry Leiber penned many of r&b’s most enduring, catchy, suggestive and outright funny tunes. When combined with Mike Stoller’s uptempo variations on 12 bar blues – a tight rhythm section, a (King Curtis) horn stab, an ear for rolling blues piano – and gifted to many of r&b’s most talented vocalists – from Big Mama Thornton & Alvin Robinson to The Coasters, The Drifters and The King – Leiber’s words left us with some of the greats of primal 50s r&b and proto-rock‘n’roll. It is hard to believe that Hound Dog, Kansas City, Jailhouse Rock, On Broadway, Spanish Harlem, Poison Ivy, et al were written by the same individual. That he was a Jewish American in the 1950s writing exclusively for African American artists is all the more remarkable, but as he told Rolling Stone in 1990 he and Stoller were attracted to black performers because “they were better musicians, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people." Stereotypes aside, it is this sense of freedom that makes r&b such a joy to listen to and Jerry Leiber’s lyrics when channeled through such conduits as Big Mama’s bellows emphasise this vivacity.
While never explicitly politically edgy Leiber’s miniature stories – he called them playlets - conjured up scenes and places (Smokey Joe’s Café, Joe’s bar in Down in Mexico, etc) where people hung out, partied and expressed their desires whether they were carnal or driven by teen angst. Big Mama’s Hound Dog was a seething invective against a Lothario until Elvis tamed the lyrics and made it a hit. Poison Ivy seemed innocuous enough with the need for an
“ocean of calamine lotion”, but revealed its thinly veiled warning about catching the clap in
“You’ll be scratchin’ like a hound, the minute you start messin’ around”.
“Yakety yak. Don’t talk back”, told of a teenager’s frustration at having to constantly do chores and being told that
“you ain’t gonna rock and roll no more”.
The Coasters (and before them the Robins) were the perfect vehicle for the madcap, risqué style of Leiber’s word-plays with the group’s vocalists performing like characters in a cartoon reel – Carl Gardner’s fear and trembling tenor, Bobby Guy’s street smart gravel and Dub Jones’ tremulous bass cutting in to lay on jive catchphrases – sounding more like a vaudeville act than a pop group. However, the influences were inescapably drawn from pop culture – film and tv westerns, tough private eyes, James Dean like delinquents, and, no doubt, Warner Brothers cartoons. Add in a little soul food and some street patois and you have a recipe for success as Leiber and Stoller proved throughout the 50s and 60s. They were young, smart and full of chutzpah.
The tunes may appear innocent in style but in content there were far from it. Little Egypt, bizarrely performed as a novelty hit by schoolchildren to this day sets the scene from line one:
“I went and bought myself a ticket and sat down in the very first row
… And little Egypt came out struttin’ wearing nuttin’ but a button and bow”.
Little Egypt was an infamous burlesque dancer and the ribald hipster rhymes kept coming as in Three Cool Cats where three lads on the prowl is observed as:
“Walking down the street swinging their hips
Splitting up a bag of potato chips
And three cool cats did three big flips
For three cool chicks”(The Coasters, Three Cool Cats)
In Alvin Robinson’s celebration of the sexual earthiness of women from the country he drawls that:
“Lord I swear the perfume you wear was made out of turnip greens
Every time I kiss you girl you taste like pork and beans”Before becoming completely unravelled and repenting his unbridled lust:
“Don’t you know that dress of yours were made out of fibreglass
Every time you move like that I got to go to Sunday mass”(Alvin Robinson, Down Home Girl)
When not on the make or eating beans Leiber’s characters were either on the run, getting into fights or wanting to stick it to “the man”, no more incendiary than in the oft covered Riot in Cell Block Number 9:
The warden said,
"Come out with your hands up in the air.
If you don't stop this riot, you all gonna get the chair." Scarface Jones said,
"It's too late to quit.
Pass the dynamite — cause the fuse is lit."(The Robins, Riot in Cell Block Number 9)
Leiber’s lyrical impetus encapsulates everything that is worth preserving and celebrating about (early) rhythm and blues and rock‘n’roll. It is not the preening, self loathing and impotent focus of so much post seventies rock, but the irreverently witty, erotically charged, sometimes dangerous, always defiantly anti-establishment turn that made this music so compelling when it was first produced and so irresistible when it reached a wider, informed audience over time. For many it was via Elvis, The Beatles and The Stones who all paid homage to Leiber and Stoller tunes and those seminal black artists of the day. The universal link is that the songs were secular, immediate and hilarious -appealing to the emotions with often-absurd phrases and catchy hooks. Sense or nonsense is in the ear of the listener and somehow I think Jerry Leiber won’t be taking it lying down waiting to enter the pearly gates. A more likely scenario is:
“Down in Mexicali there’s a crazy little place that I know
Where the drinks are hotter than the chili sauce and the boss is a cat named Joe”.
Labels: elvis presley, guest post, rhythm and blues, rock'n'roll