[2010-06-01] Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller "Hound Dog: The Leiber And Stoller Autobiography" paperback book

Linda · **Posted:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 11:30 pm

From Publishers Weekly
The golden days of rock 'n' roll flit by in this sprightly memoir by the celebrated songwriting duo. A couple of Jewish kids with a passion for black music, Leiber and Stoller started out as teenagers writing blues ballads, penned such early, genre-defining rock classics as Hound Dog and Stand by Me, then conceived a midlife obsession with aging chanteuse Peggy Lee, for whom they wrote and produced an album of ruminative torch songs. Along the way, they went through iconic music-biz rites of passage: hanging with Elvis; working at the Brill Building; getting into financial disputes with Phil Spector, Atlantic Records and the Mafia. As arranged by collaborator Ritz, the authors harmonize well in their alternating reminiscences; Stoller is the more reflective one, while the best anecdotes belong to the brash Leiber, who was challenged to a drag race by James Dean, choked by Norman Mailer and forced to trade his car for a pair of shoes. There's not a lot of deep insight into the creative process—the authors seem to have written most of their songs on 15 minutes' notice—just vignettes from pop music's giddy youth, short and sweet and catchy. Photos. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The snappy, oral-history-style dual autobiography of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who brought Brill Building patter and production values to R&B chart supremacy in the early 1950s, probably owes much of its zing to longtime celebrity biographer and “with” author David Ritz. Their story appears in alternating blocks headed “Leiber” or “Stoller,” which can’t help suggesting the call-and-response structure of two of their hits for the Coasters, “Charlie Brown” and “Yakety Yak,” songs that lightheartedly sketched urban teen predicaments. Leiber and Stoller scored as big commercially as songwriters could at the time through their association with Elvis (they penned “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog”), but their arguably best songs were hits for black performers, including Ben E. King (“Stand by Me”), the Drifters (“There Goes My Baby”), and Big Mama Thornton (“Hound Dog” before Elvis whitened it up). Celebrated today mostly as R&B and rock hitmakers, in their extended heyday, they also wrote for MOR pop stars, jazz artists (Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”), and anybody who needed a well-crafted song. --Mike Tribby

Product Description
In 1950 a couple of rhythm and blues-loving teenagers named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met for the first time. They discovered their mutual affection for R&B and, as Jerry and Mike put it in this fascinating autobiography, began an argument that has been going on for over fifty years with no resolution in sight.
Leiber and Stoller were still in their teens when they started working with some of the pioneers of rock and roll, writing such hits as "Hound Dog," which eventually became a #1 record for Elvis Presley. Jerry and Mike became the King’s favorite songwriters, giving him "Jailhouse Rock" and other #1 songs. Their string of hits with the Coasters, including "Yakety Yak," "Poison Ivy," and "Charlie Brown," is a part of rock ’n’ roll history. They founded their own music label and introduced novel instrumentation into their hits for the Drifters and Ben E. King, including "On Broadway" and "Stand by Me." They worked with everyone from Phil Spector to Burt Bacharach and Peggy Lee. Their smash musical Smokey Joe’s Café became the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history.

Lively, colorful, and irreverent, Hound Dog describes how two youngsters with an insatiable love of good old American R&B created the soundtrack for a generation.

About The Author
Jerry Leiber was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 25, 1933, and Mike Stoller was born in Queens, New York, on March 13, 1933. They first met in Los Angeles in 1950, moved to New York in 1957 and returned to L.A. in 1989, where they both still reside. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

David Ritz is the only four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award. He has collaborated with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and Don Rickles. He also cowrote, with Gaye, the song “Sexual Healing.”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416559396/?tag=imwan-20

GoogaMooga · 02 Aug 2006

And of course Ace has a nice comp of Leiber & Stoller out as well.

http://www.imwan.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=64364

[2010-06-01] Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller "Hound Dog: The Leiber And Stoller Autobiography" paperback book

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