I once had the tremendous pleasure of interviewing Leiber & Stoller at Jerry's Venice Beach house for a documentary on songwriter Diane Warren.

Mike spoke at some length about Diane's strengths as a lyricist, a melody writer, damn fine human being & so on while Jerry sat quietly beside him.

Mike eventually turned to an analysis of the chorus, which he pointed out was the most important part of a song, the hook that pulled the listener in, & how good Diane was at writing those.

"Yes" said Jerry. "She's a hooker"

I was also very jealous of his original Frank Lloyd Wright glass panels, which he claimed to have built the house around!

I liked the line about rock 'n' roll - "It's a fad in the country". It'll never catch on.

The man who wrote this is definitely going to heaven.

...to post this:

The Coasters - Shoppin' For Clothes

The Coasters - Yakety Yak

The lyrics sparkle - "don't you give me no dirty looks, your father's hip he knows what cooks, just tell your hoodlum friends outside you ain't got time to take a ride"

As Dave Marsh noted, this is not a song to play to your teenage children.

And they were right there at the very start of this fad we call rock'n'roll.

Johnny Moore is fantastic on this one. Is there a better 'ohh ohh' anywhere?

This blog's very own Lucas Hare has put together an excellent Spotify playlist here:
http://open.spotify.com/user/lucashare/playlist/3BoZIonhy8p4GsmTPs1sGJ

And written a rather brilliant blog post on Jerry Leiber here:
http://athousandnaturalshocks.blogspot.com/2011/08/baby-that-is-rock-n-r...

Both are well worth checking out.

...over and over in my head, just how far the idea can be taken that all of 'Down In Mexico' (rather than just the suggestive "south of the border, that is") is a complex metaphor for oral sex. I'm still musing on the red bandana, blues piano, purple sash, black moustache and "look up a cat" imagery.

(from 4.07)