If there were an award to bestow for the most accomplished living American pop songwriter who never doubled as a recording artist, the frontrunner would almost definitely be Mike Stoller, 89, half …
Presley were completely wiped away, like the Beatles’ in that “Yesterday” movie, this pairing would still be in the history books and collective consciousness for “Stand by Me,” “On Broadway,” “There Goes My Baby,” “Young Blood,” “Kansas City,” “Love Potion #9,” “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “I’m a Woman,” “Ruby Baby,” “Is That All There Is?” and other numbers deeply embedded in pop culture from the mid-‘50s forward.
I think it was presented to the guys who run Leiber and Stoller stuff, and they had already done it and were gonna put it in the movie. What can I say? I hope it’s a big hit. They call it “The King and I,” which is a good title. It’s over the background sound of Elvis’ recording of “Jailhouse Rock,” which Jerry and I virtually produced as well as wrote — not the movie version, but the single version that Jerry and I were in the studio with Elvis working on back in 1957.
What happened at Atlantic Records was, we said, “You know, we’re making these records. How about a credit?” And Jerry Wexler said, “But you wrote the song! How many times do you want your name on the record?” He was annoyed! And then I said, “Well, we did also a few songs that we didn’t write.” They finally decided that we were producers. Which I thought was weird, at the time. I thought it should have said “directed by,” like a film, because we weren’t funding it, like a film’s producers.
Would you say Elvis was growling when he covered “Hound Dog” three years later, in 1956, becoming the first of the big hits he had with your songs? That was in our minds . But we had recorded it with a Black duo, who were out of a gospel group, that we got to do a secular song — we called ‘em Willy & Ruth on our own little Spark Records label that we had with Lester Sill. I think that’s what we sent to , and he loved it. It became a big hit.
But the thing that really did it for us… Jerry went to a party in New York and met a producer, Charlie Feldman, who was going to do a movie of a novel by Nelson Algren called “A Walk on the Wild Side.” He had Kazan to direct, Budd Schulberg to write the thing and James Wong Howe to do the cinematography. He wanted us to write the score for it, and for us to help get Elvis to play the lead. We were blown away, and we even had some meetings with Schulberg.
Yeah, I think it was “Ghost of a Chance.” That changed I think as soon as they heard the initial recording. Which is not the one in the film, because the one in the film was blown out and had a bigger orchestra. The single record was done with the Jordanaires and with D.J. Fontana on drums and Scotty Moore on guitar, and Bill Black, who passed away after that, on the upright bass. They had a piano player, Duddly Brooks, on the session.
Something else you wrote on the fly, on demand, that has endured well for 65 years: “Santa Claus Is Back in Town.” Let’s talk about a few of the greats you worked with who were not Elvis Presley. With the Coasters, who you were just as prolific with, you had a whole style of songwriting going that was based in storytelling, almost like mini-musicals — you called them “playlets.”. The Coasters were different characters. The bass was either the father or the heavy. Carl Gardner was the rube or the straight man. And Cornell Gunter was either the female role or some other such role.
When other songs from the catalog show up in contemporary usage out of nowhere, it must be beyond surprising you. “Stand by Me” is never going away.
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