#It makes me angry and breaks my heart | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

septembersghost · 8 months

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"(and take a guess at who destroyed the professional affinity they built with him" is this the colonel? jfc I keep hating that man

who else? leiber and stoller initially didn't know who elvis was and had some preconceived judgment in place (which happened to him a lot), but then once they actually met with him, they were impressed and developed a rapport. elvis wanted them to be in the studio when he recorded. they had suggestions and encouragement for him, about songs, about his career, and parker didn't like that, was threatened by the idea of them getting in the middle, or worse, giving him ideas (this would repeat throughout his life, it's not dissimilar to what happened with steve binder). the colonel eventually destroyed the relationship they built by sending leiber and stoller a blank page and calling it a contract as an intentional slight. they told him exactly what they thought of that, and never worked with elvis again.

longer details from here

"Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were like the rap artists of the early '50s, pushing buttons, inviting scorn and testing the limits, as rock roared into being from its roots as blues and rhythm and blues. They were writing music for black artists, when one of their songs, Hound Dog, was heard by a young Elvis Presley. His adaptation turned it into a No. 1 hit and helped aim Leiber and Stoller toward the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

They wrote 20 songs for Elvis until the brash young songwriters had a falling out with Colonel Tom Parker, the Svengali they now remember as a 'bully' and a 'foul, greedy' man who helped destroy Elvis. But the estrangement didn't change their respect for Elvis.

'We feel that Elvis Presley was the high water mark of the 20th Century. He's legend. No, he's myth. He's in that celestial place for mythological figures. At the time, we just thought he was a white kid trying to make it as a singer', says Leiber, the man who supplied the words as lyricist of one of the worlds' best-known songwriting duos.

Leiber and Stoller originally met in 1950, sharing a love of the blues and boogie woogie. They were writing for black artists, their earliest songs recorded by Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, Little Willie Littlefield and, among others, Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton.

It was for Big Mama Thornton that they wrote Hound Dog in 1952. Her version came out in 1953 and was adapted by several groups. Stoller had gone to Europe with royalties from some of those early songs and was on his way home aboard the Andrea Doria when it sank in 1956.

Rescued by a lifeboat, Stoller arrived in New York with Leiber yelling from the dock: 'We've got a smash hit'. 'I said, 'You mean Big Mama Thornton's record?' He said, 'No, some white kid named Elvis Presley'. Elvis had heard Hound Dog in a Vegas Lounge by a group called Freddie Bell and the Bellboys', says Stoller.

Elvis' recording of Hound Dog was released in July of 1956 and bounded up the charts, selling millions of copies. Released the same year as Heartbreak Hotel, it put Elvis on TV and turned him into a phenomenon.

After Elvis' great success with his version of Hound Dog, Paramount Studios and music publishers Hill and Range selected additional Leiber and Stoller songs for Elvis' 1957 film Loving You. It was on April 30, 1957 while working on the movie Jailhouse Rock that Elvis first met Leiber and Stoller. They were skeptical of meeting the newcomer, thinking he was a country bumpkin. However, they were very impressed when upon meeting and talking to Elvis that he was very knowledgeable of R&B music and could discuss its nuances in great detail. They went on to work closely with Elvis on the Jailhouse Rock soundtrack with Stoller appearing in the film playing the piano for Elvis' character. After an incident of pitching songs and movie ideas directly to Elvis and not going through the usual chain of command with Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, they had a falling out with Parker and essentially ended their collaboration with Elvis. Fast-forward to 1960, they did write a couple of songs that were in the running for inclusion in Elvis' first post-army movie, G.I. Blues, but, ultimately they were not used. Although the direct collaboration ended, Elvis did choose several additional Leiber and Stoller tunes to record over the years.

'We were completely unconscious of what it might imply. We were just doing numbers', says Leiber. Stoller says those numbers were unfamiliar to white audiences because he and Leiber had written 'almost exclusively for black performers, so we wrote in a black idiom. People started thinking it was entirely new, but the base we started from was the blues and boogie woogie'.

Stoller says they didn't specifically tailor songs to that early Elvis persona but began by supplying songs they had already written, like Love Me, a ballad they had already recorded. 'Then we were asked to write for a movie, Loving You, with Elvis and Lizabeth Scott'. The next project, Jailhouse Rock, included four songs Leiber and Stoller wrote while held captive in a New York hotel.

They had been living in Los Angeles, and Stoller says they rented a New York hotel suite with a piano in the living area. 'We were given a script for the movie and kind of tossed it in the corner. We were having a ball in New York, going to jazz clubs, cabaret, going to the theater and hanging out. Finally, Jean Aberbach who ran Elvis Presley Music knocked on the door and said, 'Well boys, where are my songs?' I think Jerry said, 'Oh, Jean, you're going to get them'. Jean then pushed a big overstuffed chair in front of the door and said, 'I'm not leaving until I get my songs'.

They wrote four songs in five hours, including Jailhouse Rock, the movie's title song and Treat Me Nice, both major hits.

After that, Elvis 'wanted us in the studio with him whenever we recorded', says Stoller. It was part of Elvis' 'perfectionist' tendencies in the early stages of his career, says Jerry Schilling, a member of Elvis' Memphis Mafia. Leiber says Elvis 'was like an Olympic champion. He could do 40 to 50 takes. I never saw him happier than when he was on a microphone, performing'.

Both songwriters say that studio time was their primary contact with Elvis, who was kept at arm's length from them by Colonel Parker. Stoller says Elvis once asked, 'Mike, could you write me a real pretty ballad?' Over the weekend, they wrote the song Don't for him and handed it to him only to be berated by Parker.

'He was upset that I handed a song directly to Elvis. They didn't want anybody to have direct access to Elvis. It was like Elvis was kept kind of in a glass box and away from contact except for the Memphis Mafia. They were like paid companions'.

Like almost everyone else, they also had little contact with Parker himself. 'The longest I ever spent with him was a dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel around 1956, after Hound Dog', says Stoller.

The breaking point for them came when Leiber was recovering from a bout with pneumonia about two years later, and Parker ordered them to California to write songs for a new movie project. Leiber explained that he had just been released from the hospital and was unable to travel. 'Parker said, 'You'd better get your ass out here'. He then sent a packet with a contract for them to sign. Leiber says he pulled the contract from the packet and found only a dark line across the middle of a blank page for his signature.

'I called and said, 'I think you made a mistake. There's no contract in here'. He said, 'Don't worry about that, boy. Just sign your name, and I'll fill it in later'."

"Jerry Leiber: I called and asked to speak to (Colonel) Tom. He got on the phone and said (Leiber imitates Parker) 'How you doin' boy?' I said, 'I'm OK. I had a real close call there. I had walking pneumonia and I just got out of the hospital.' He said he wanted me to pack right away and catch a plane. I told him I wasn't in any shape to catch a plane because I'd just gotten out of the hospital. He said, 'If they let you out, that means you're all right'. I told him I needed a day or two to get myself together, but he said the schedule was very tight and he needed me to come out right away.

Then he said, 'Did you see the contract yet?' I said, contract?' He said, 'I'm sure it's there by now. It's a contract covering the forthcoming movie and soundtrack album. You better take a look, sign it and send it back. So I hung up, took the contract out of one of the manila envelopes, and saw nothing but a blank page. Nothing was written on it except two lines at the bottom where Mike and I were supposed to sign our names.

I thought they had made a ridiculous blunder. I called Parker's secretary and said, 'There's been a mistake', she said, 'Let me get Tom.' Colonel Parker got on the phone and I told him, 'There's a piece of paper here with two places for signatures, but the contract is missing'. He said, 'There's no mistake - just sign it'. Then he said, 'Don't worry. We'll fill it in later'.

I got off the phone with Parker and immediately called Mike. I told him, 'Breaking up with the Presley outfit is like throwing away a license to print money. After all this work, I really hate to do it, but I am really offended' (When I was on the phone with Parker, I almost told him that I wasn't one of his 'okie dokies'). I told Mike I didn't want to work with this jerk anymore.

I asked Mike, 'How do you feel about this?' Now Mike is a very measured and modest with very good manners. He paused for a moment, and then he said, Jer ....tell him to f**k himself!'

So I called Colonel Parker back and said, 'Tom, I thought about what you told me'. He said, 'Good! What time are you gonna get here?' I said, 'Tom, I spoke to Mike about the contract, and he told me to tell you to go f**k yourself'.

I hung up, and I never spoke to him again."

"Like many others, [Leiber] wondered about Parker's hold on Elvis. 'I think he (Elvis) had a very weak father and didn't get a sense of what a father was like. Parker came along, and his attitude was, 'Do this, do that, and I'll take care of everything'. Parker became his surrogate family'."

"Leiber: Of course, the Colonel wasn't really a colonel. He was Thomas A. Parker, whose former job as a carnival barker defined his personality. He had a definite shtick ('Pick a number from one to ten'). He told dozens of canned jokes. I can't remember any of them except that they weren't funny. But it didn't matter that we didn't laugh, because the Colonel wasn't really conscious of us. Of course, he knew we were the songwriters of 'Hound Dog' and the new songs for Jailhouse Rock. He knew more hit songs for Elvis meant more money for him. Beyond that, though, he was more interested in putting on his own show than getting to know us.

He had his long cigar and his confected Southern accent. He was a nonstop talker whose ego was always on parade. He told us in great detail all he had done for Elvis - and all he intended to do.

'Elvis' he said, 'is going to be bigger than the president, bigger than the pope'.

Naturally we agreed.

Stoller: The Colonel had the kind of energy that sucked all the air out of the room, even the dining room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I had little interest in the man. Elvis was the guy we were eager to meet.

The session was due to start later that week.

Leiber: My heterosexual credits have long been established, so I can comfortably say that the first thing that hit me when I walked into the recording studio and found myself standing next to Elvis Presley was his physical beauty. Far more than his pictures, his actual presence was riveting.

He had a shy smile and quiet manner that were disarming."

"Stoller: It's important to remember that on the day we met Elvis, he was twenty-two and we were twenty-four. We were contemporaries. Remember, too, that Jerry and I shared the uppity view that he and I were among the few white guys who knew about the blues.

In the first five minutes of conversation with Elvis, we learned we were dead wrong.

Elvis knew the blues. He was a Ray Charles fanatic and even knew that Ray had sung our song 'The Snow Is Falling'. In fact, he knew virtually all of our songs. There wasn't any R&B he didn't know. He could quote from Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, B.B. King, and Big Bill Broonzy.

Leiber: When it came to the blues, Elvis knew his stuff. He may not have been conversant about politics or world history, but his blues knowledge was almost encyclopedic. Mike and I were blown away. In fact, the conversation got so enthusiastic that Mike and Elvis sat down at the piano and started playing four-handed blues. He definitely felt our passion for the real roots material and shared that passion with all his heart.

Just like that, we fell in love with the guy."

"'Whenever I record' he said, 'I want you guys in the studio. You're the guys who make the magic'."

"When Elvis returned (after a studio break), his head was down and his demeanor totally changed.

'I'm really sorry, Mike', he said, 'but you're gonna have to leave. The Colonel came in and he doesn't want anyone here but me and the guys'. 'Okay' I said, not wanting to make any more trouble. And with that, I left. The next day at the shoot I mentioned the incident to one of Elvis' Memphis buddies. 'Don't take it personally, Mike,' he said, 'It's just that the Colonel doesn't want Elvis to develop a friendship with anyone but us'."

#elvis presley #leiber and stoller #i could really yell here because it makes me so upset and angry but #i was reading something with sheree north who liked him so much and wanted to help him and she referred to the mm as “the goons”#they did what they were instructed to do under the auspices of it being somehow better for elvis but it wasn't #he wasn't some thing to be managed he was a human being and an artist with aspirations #it just breaks my heart how that was thwarted or suppressed or exploited over and over again #anyway shout out to elvis australia they do so much and have such informative pages <3 #this was one of the earliest stories i read when i started digging into the foundation of his career #anonymous #letterbox #total aside but the number of guys who go “i'm totally straight but he was breathtaking” is endless and always makes me giggle #sorry the formatting on this is awful i did it on mobile somewhat unsuccessfully #i was a dreamer

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