Leiber and Stoller: Second Generation Standards

What was it about his record that made it the best?

Leiber: It’s really what it oughta be.

Stoller: The intention; it was, finally, the intention of a real kind of Kansas City blues-jazz feel.

Leiber: It was stylistically perfect. A lot of people who did it before did it as kind of a country, semi-country version…semi-big city blues.

Stoller: Or dropped most of the tune and just shouted.

And that was what The Beatles did, in your opinion?

Stoller: Well, The Beatles copied Little Richard’s record. The Beatles’ version is good, but it isn’t what I wrote. It doesn’t have the melody that I liked.

Another classic that you wrote for Elvis is “Jailhouse Rock,” which was from the movie of the same name. I understand that to write the songs for the film, you went to New York and were in a fancy hotel?

Leiber: It wasn’t a fancy hotel. We were in a small hotel, The Gorham, and Mike was a real jazznik…he schlepped me all over New York to small clubs to watch jazz players-the greatest jazz players-and Mike was excited about the whole scene and couldn’t care less about writing the songs.

Stoller: We were given a script. We kind of tossed it in the corner with some magazines, and we were having a great time in New York.

Leiber: And then they came looking for us. [The producer] came over to lecture us on fidelity in delivering work, and we hadn’t done anything. Finally he shoved the sofa against the door, and he stretched out on the sofa and said, “Boys, I’m gonna stay here until you give me the score.” We wrote four songs, and one was “Jailhouse Rock.”

Stoller: “Treat Me Nice” and “You’re So Square (I Don’t Care) and “I Want To Be Free.”

Leiber: We wrote those songs in about three hours-all four of them.

Stoller: Four or five, whatever. Anyway, we wanted to get out.

Leiber: He finally took the songs and said, “Great!” He took the songs and left. And we split.

I had assumed “Jailhouse Rock” was the original title of the film, and you wrote your song to the title. But you invented that title?

Stoller: Yes. The original title was Ghost of a Chance. We didn’t read the script that carefully, but we thumbed through, and Jerry saw that there was an amateur show in a prison. So he came up with “Jailhouse Rock.”