Word: broadway
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...KINGMAKERS In the early ?50s, Atlantic occasionally bought the national rights to local R&B hits. One of these was Leiber and Stoller?s "Smokey Joe?s Cafe." A lurking melodrama in the "Hernando?s Hideaway" fashion (but written a year before that Broadway tune), it?s sung by L&S? L.A. discoveries the Robins. It features an almost maniacally comic attack by lead singer Carl Gardner. The vocal could have come right off the Chitlin Circuit of black vaudeville; imagine Mantan Moreland as a great belter. The production is full, clear and incorrigibly boppin?- Leiber and Stoller...
...contract Ertegun had tried to buy, in 1955, for $25,000; RCA, which outbid him by $20,000, got a quick and lasting return on its investment). And somewhere beyond the sea, Edith Piaf would translate "Black Denim Trousers," which L&S wrote for The Cheers (featuring future Broadway "Cabaret" star and game-show host Burt Convy) into "L?Homme ? Moto." When they created some of these numbers, L&S (both born in 1933) were still barely old enough to vote...
...Stoller made gorgeous records. They got three particularly inventive pieces from Pomus and his new writing partner Mort Shuman: "This Magic Moment," "Save the Last Dance for Me" and the can-never-be-played-too-often "Sweets for My Sweet." L&S also encouraged the young songwriters in Broadway?s Brill Building - Gerry Goffin and Carole King ("When My Little Girl Is Smiling"), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil ("On Broadway"), who were all in their late teens or early 20s -to write plangent pop ballads. These were the Broadway songs that Broadway couldn?t bring itself to write...
...dance will be the most intimate of all. The song is even lovelier if you know the story behind its creation. Leiber, in the book: "Doc was confined to a wheelchair for most of his life, so he couldn?t dance. He was married to this gorgeous blond woman [Broadway and TV actress Willi Burke], and ... he?d say, Yeah, we go out, that?s cool - I like to watch her.? That?s the song...
...their catalog was so rich that it kept generating them. Dion covered two Drifters songs, "Ruby Baby" from ?956 and "Drip Drop" from ?958. At least five L&S oldies became later Top "0 hits: "I (Who have Nothing)" (Tom Jones), "I?m a Woman" (Maria Muldaur), "On Broadway" (George Benson), "Spanish Harlem" (Aretha Franklin) and "There Goes My Baby" (Donna Summer). In the curio category are a rendition of "Stand by Me" by one Cassius Clay in 1964 and Bruce Willis? 1987 cover of "Young Blood." In 1986, with a hit movie as impetus, King?s original of "Stand...