The first memory I have was my sisters dancing to the radio when they played records by Benny Goodman and Harry James and of the sort. But the record that got me was a record by Derek Sampson, who was a young guy, called ‘Boogie Express,’ and it was boogie-woogie. Really, it was on fire, and that got me. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Hound Dog’ took like twelve minutes. That’s not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. ‘Kansas City’ was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Listen to any cantor, any good hazan, sing and you can hear a little bit of Ray Charles going on. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Elvis Presley, you can’t define him in a couple of sentences, but he was a country boy and he was very respectful. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there’d be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Our songs did not transcend being R&B hits. They were R&B hits that white kids were attracted to. And if people bought it, it became rock & roll. That’s marketing. Why couldn’t it still be R&B? The bass pattern didn’t change. The song didn’t change. It was still ‘Yakety Yak’ and ‘Searchin’.’ Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn’t my music. My music was the blues. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
It’s self-effacing, it’s hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
Elvis was incredibly cooperative. He would try anything. He wasn’t a diva, no prima donna. When it came to work, he was a workhorse. Jerry Leiber Read Quote
