Roots of R&B: Record producer Jerry Wexler

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we continue our series of R&B, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll interviews from the archives, and we begin with Ben E. King. Ben E. King sang lead with The Drifters before embarking on a solo career. His voice was heard on many classic recordings from the 1950s and '60s. His biggest hit was a song he wrote.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAND BY ME")

BEN E KING: (Singing) When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we'll see, no, I won't be afraid. Oh, I won't be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me. So, darling, darling, stand by me. Oh, stand by me. Oh, stand, stand by me. Stand by me. If the sky...

BIANCULLI: "Stand By Me" made it to No. 4 in the charts in 1961. Twenty-five years later, "Stand By Me" was used as the theme for the film of the same name. The record was rereleased and landed back in the top 10. Other Ben E. King solo hits included "Spanish Harlem," "Don't Play That Song" and "I (Who Have Nothing)." Earlier, with The Drifters, he recorded "There Goes My Baby," "This Magic Moment" and "I Count The Tears." He died in 2015 at age 76.

Terry Gross spoke with Ben E. King in 1988. Before he ever sang on stage or in the recording studio, he sang with his friends on the streets of Harlem.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

KING: I was born in Henderson, North Carolina, so I wasn't familiar with the street-singing thing until I came to New York, which - I was about 11 years old when my parents first moved to New York. And I heard about it. And then gradually, by being in the streets of Harlem, I walked around and surely enough bumped into different little guys singing and doo-wopping on the stoops and stuff like that. So I were more or less introduced to it when I first got to New York.

TERRY GROSS: Now, you also sang - before you started recording, you sang at Amateur Night at the Apollo...

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Theater in Harlem. Did you all have matching suits in your group?

KING: Yeah, we had - what did we have? We had pink jackets.

GROSS: Oh, great.

KING: I know, right? That's what I said - pink jackets and black shirt and black trousers. I mean, it was a sight to behold. Yeah.

GROSS: Did you save up for the suits?

KING: Yeah, we did. What happened was that our parents gave us some money for it, 'cause we were all, like, in school, you know? So our parents gave us money to go and buy these little uniform jackets and stuff, and we just found our own black trousers and stuff.

GROSS: Now, you sang with The Crowns...

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: ...The Five Crowns. And you sang bass before you started singing lead. Can your voice still go that low?

KING: (In bass voice) I think so.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Yeah, it can. I'm naturally a bass-baritone, so I can sing bass still, I think, yeah.

GROSS: Did it have a certain prestige to be the bass man in a vocal group?

KING: Well, girls always thought so. Girls like the bass singer, I guess because they have that more mature depth to his voice. And at that time, you have to realize that most of the bass things were done in the doo-wop groups, and stuff like that was the featured thing in the song. You know, so the bass singer was the one that was doing the (vocalizing) - all that stuff, see? So you couldn't go wrong with that. I had the chance to do all those things, and the girls was just stand around and giggle and stuff. So I think that that was, you know, getting me introduced to the females there.

GROSS: You went from bass singer with The Crowns to lead singer with The Drifters.

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: And before I ask you to tell us a story about how The Crowns became the new Drifters and how you got to sing lead, I want to play the first song that you recorded singing lead as the lead singer of The Drifters. And...

KING: OK.

GROSS: ...This is "There Goes My Baby."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE GOES MY BABY")

THE DRIFTERS: (Vocalizing, singing) There she goes. (Vocalizing, singing) There she goes. (Vocalizing).

(Singing) There goes my baby moving on down the line, wondering where, wondering where, wondering where she is bound. I broke her heart and made her cry. Now I'm alone, so all alone. What can I do? What can I do? There goes my baby. There goes my...

GROSS: That's Ben E. King singing lead with The Drifters on "There Goes My Baby." So tell us how The Crowns, who you sang with, became The Drifters.

KING: Well, that's one of those strange stories, really. I joined The Crowns because the guy that was managing them, by the name of Lover Patterson, lived across the street from my father's restaurant. So he came in one day and asked me to join The Crowns. I brought him into the store, and we rehearsed in the back of my father's restaurant, and I became a member. And The Crowns were a - I would imagine a very good, like, vocal-type group, semi-pro. And - but we opened up at the Apollo with Ray Charles. And I think it was Faye Adams on the bill, and of course, The Drifters were on the bill, as well, and we were the opening act. During that week, we were approached by their manager, George Treadwell. And he had mentioned to us that he had been watching us and he thought we were a very good group, and would we be interested in becoming a new set of Drifters?

GROSS: Now, he had just, what, fired Clyde McPhatter...

KING: He fired...

GROSS: ...Who had been the lead singer?

KING: Yeah, well, what had happened in that, I think - Clyde really wasn't in the group at that time. Clyde had more or less gone solo, but the other members were in the group. And he had, I guess, had problems with the group, or the group had problems with him. And they decided to just split company, and they did so, you know?

GROSS: Right. So Clyde McPhatter had left the group, and then the producer fired the rest of The Drifters.

KING: Fired the rest of the group.

GROSS: That's the way it went.

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: Right.

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: And when the producer decided that your group would be the next Drifters, did they do anything different with you or tell you to do anything different for you to become Drifters?

KING: Not really. I think that was the strange thing about the whole situation, is that when we became the new set of Drifters, there weren't any instructions at all given to us. You know, we used to go on the road as the new set of Drifters before the record was released. And we were booed off the stage, and we had bottles thrown at us and chairs and the whole nine yards. So we weren't given any warning to what to do or how to act.

We got uniforms, and I think we got a new station wagon or something like that. But that's the only thing that we received as far as becoming new set of Drifters, as well as the fact that we had to fulfill The Drifters' recording contracts. And we didn't - we weren't aware of that. You know, we were just four or five kids coming out of Harlem from a very, very amateurish background. Even during the time with The Five Crowns, we were just more or less, as I said before, semi-pro. So we didn't know about all the particulars that professionals would go through to more or less make a living in the business.

GROSS: You got booed because the fans were expecting the other Drifters.

KING: Yeah, exactly.

GROSS: And here you were, with no explanation.

KING: That's right. Exactly. Well, it's like going to see The Four - I always say it's like going to see The Four Tops and all of a sudden, the curtains open and there's four guys about 17 years old. I mean...

GROSS: (Laughter).

KING: ...That's the kind of thing that you would face. Yeah.

GROSS: Now, when you were telling us about The Crowns, you had sung bass with The Crowns, but you ended up singing lead when The Crowns became The Drifters.

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: How did you get to sing lead?

KING: I wrote the song "There Goes My Baby" while we was on the road. And when I got back to New York, I showed it to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who produced "The Date" (ph). And while we were in the studio, I was trying to show the lyrics to Charlie Thomas, who was the lead and did all the tenors to the songs. And for some strange reason, he couldn't get the feel of the song. And Jerry Wexler, who was involved with "The Date," as well, came into the control room and said, look, Charlie's having trouble with this song. You sing it, you know? And I just went to the mic. I had the advantage over him because I had written the song anyway. So I went to the microphone and started singing, and I was stuck with lead since then.

GROSS: Stuck (laughter).

KING: Yeah, stuck. Right.

GROSS: Well, I want to play another song that you recorded with The Drifters, and this is "Save The Last Dance For Me." Of course, you're singing lead on it. This is a song that made it to No. 1 both on the R&B charts and on the pop charts, which was a pretty big deal, really.

KING: Right. No, that was a great deal during that time because in that time, you have to allow for the fact that they weren't actually playing a Black - a lot of Black records. And not only not - weren't they playing a lot of them, they weren't even thinking about crossing them over.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME")

THE DRIFTERS: (Singing) You can dance every dance with the guy who gives you the eye and let him hold you tight. You can smile every smile for the man who held your hand 'neath the pale moonlight. But don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're going to be. So, darling, save the last dance for me. Oh, I know that the music's fine like sparkling wine. Go and have your fun. Laugh and sing, but while we're apart, don't give your heart to anyone. But don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're going to be. So, darling, save the last dance for me. Baby, don't you know I love you so? Can't you feel it when we touch?

GROSS: Well, that still sounds very terrific.

KING: Thank you.

GROSS: I never got to see The Drifters perform in the early '60s, and I was wondering. We were talking a little bit earlier about choreography. Did you have a lot of choreography in your act?

KING: Not a lot. We did - there are steps that I call short steps. And short steps are done, like, by groups like Platters and Drifters and - and then the fast, wide steps are done - like, Gladys Knight & the Pips and Temptations do wide and fast. And there was The Olympics, a group called The Olympics. They do fast movements and fast steps. We do little, short, cute things, you know, things that don't require a lot of sweating and falling down. I'd never learned how...

GROSS: (Laughter).

KING: ...To do the split and stuff like that, you know? I left all that stuff out. I don't know that. I don't know nothing about doing the split. I could never get into that. Yeah.

GROSS: You never took off your jacket and threw it into the audience?

KING: I did that.

GROSS: Did you?

KING: Yeah, I did that. That was - yeah, that was - those things was great. That was easy, you know, and throwing your handkerchief away and stuff. I did those brave things, you know?

GROSS: I used to love that at the rock 'n' roll shows...

KING: Oh, it was - yeah.

GROSS: ...When performers did that.

KING: Lot of fun, that.

GROSS: Yeah.

BIANCULLI: Ben E. King speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1988 interview with Ben E. King, former lead singer of The Drifters and one of the artists revisited in our R&B, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll week.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: You know what I'd like to do? I want to ask you about how you started to perform solo. So why don't I play some of the record that launched your solo career?

KING: OK.

GROSS: And this is "Spanish Harlem."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SPANISH HARLEM")

KING: (Singing) There is a rose in Spanish Harlem, a red rose up in Spanish Harlem. It is a special one. It's never seen the sun. It only comes out when the moon is on the run and all the stars are gleaming. It's growing in the street right up through the concrete, but soft and sweet and dreaming.

GROSS: Ben E. King, would you explain how you left The Drifters and started singing solo?

KING: Well, once we got involved with all the recordings and we had all the hit records that we had once we started with the Drifters situation, we were on salary as the new set of Drifters, and we were making, like, maybe a hundred dollars a week or somewhere in that neighborhood. And we were all more or less trying to make ends meet because that hundred dollars would have to keep us alive on the road and, of course, tried to send some money home.

So in other words, to make a long story short, we had managerial problems. And I, along with Charlie Thomas, Dock Green and Elsbeary Hobbs - we had discussed trying to go to George Treadwell and ask for a raise. And this is a group with a No. 1 record. And once we got to the office - we had set up a meeting. We got to the office to discuss this problem that we were having as far as salary. He told me instead of me standing up to speak for the group to speak for yourself, and I did so. And he fired me.

GROSS: (Laughter).

KING: He was great at firing people, you know? And I walked out of the office assuming that the other guys would follow, and they didn't. The only guy that followed me was the same one that came across the street to my father's restaurant and convinced me to join the Five Crowns, who was Lover Patterson. And it was his determination and his, I guess, feeling that I had something in my voice that - he insisted that I stayed in the business. And he's the one still I find very responsible for me still being here now. I hold him very near and dear. He's long passed away for many years now. But to answer your story, he's the reason why I more or less stayed and started a solo career.

The first - the record that you just played recently, "Spanish Harlem," was originally supposed to have been a Drifter record. And although I was out of the group, Atlantic - which a lot of companies at that time was doing that - they would call the lead singer back in the group to - and pay him scale just to keep the sound in the group. So they were doing that to me as well. That's why the - if you look at my recording world, the things that go on with me as far as a recording artist, you'll find that I left the group in 1960, but yet and still I recorded a record with the group in 1962. And yet and still, I had - my own solo career started in 1961. It's very crazy, all that. That's because Atlantic would ask me to come back and to do some Drifter recordings and just pay me scale.

GROSS: But did you think of "Spanish Harlem" as a solo record or a Drifters record?

KING: No, no, no, no. To get back to that problem, what happened that - it was - it should've been a Drifter record. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who - at that time, we had developed a very strong friendship as writers and producers and friends. And they're the ones that went to Atlantic and spoke to Ahmet Ertegun and asked him, would he consider "Spanish Harlem" being a Ben E. King record opposed to a Drifter record? And that's how I started a solo career with that record there, really.

GROSS: I want to play one of your solo records that I think is one of the most dramatic-sounding pop songs that I know. And this is "I (Who Have Nothing)." And this is really high drama.

KING: Thank you.

GROSS: I love this record (laughter). As everyone will hear, there are great pauses in this record, and when you come on, there's, like, timpani behind you. Were the pauses written in? Did you decide how long to pause? Did you know the timpani was going to come in with you?

KING: Some of the things I would rehearse with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but that was just three guys around a piano. So most of the performing things that was done on the records were just the way I felt at that time. I'm not one of those regimented-type recording persons where I know exactly what to do at each particular time in the song. I just close my eyes and go for it. Yeah.

GROSS: Well, let's hear it. This is Ben E. King singing "I (Who Have Nothing)."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I (WHO HAVE NOTHING)")

KING: (Singing) I, I who have nothing, I, I who am no one adore you and want you so. I'm just a no one with nothing to give you but, oh, I love you. He, he buys you diamonds, bright, sparkling diamonds. But believe me, dear, when I say that he can give you the world, but he'll never love you the way I love you.

GROSS: It breaks me up every time I hear that.

KING: (Laughter).

GROSS: Were you as emotionally involved in that recording as you sound?

KING: Yes. I think - what happened in that is that my manager and I - to make a long story short, my manager and I at the time - his name is Al Weil (ph). We were traveling over to Europe to get myself established over in the European market. And we got up one night while we were in Rome, and he had found this songwriter, and we went by this office. And this guy, he was Italian, of course, and he was speaking in Italian. He was playing Italian songs. But he played this one particular song, and my manager and I picked it up right then and there and said, this is a hit record. The guy who was singing in Italian had the same kind of deliverance and the same kind of feeling about the song. I didn't know what the words were saying, but I know the feeling was great.

When I got home and we showed it to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and they wrote the English lyrics to it, we knew that the song was great. It's - I think that during that time when I was singing songs, I got very, very involved with the whole feeling of the song. It's much - it's amazing. When you grow older, your attitude change, and you tend to not be as involved and not as - you don't throw your whole self into songs. I listened to myself when I was singing years ago, and I prefer my performance much more than I do today. And I did that with a feeling. I - when I was doing "I (Who Have Nothing)," I tried to, at that time, complement a song as a songwriter would've meant it to be.

GROSS: Now, you also recorded "Stand By Me"...

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: ...As a solo record. Now, you wrote that record.

KING: Yeah.

GROSS: You wrote - and someone named Elmo Glick gets...

KING: Elmo Glick.

GROSS: ...Co-writing credits.

KING: I know.

GROSS: Did he co-write it with you or was that someone who just...

KING: Elmo Glick was a silent partner for years. Elmo Glick is the pen name - I found this out maybe four or five years ago - of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

GROSS: Oh, no (laughter).

KING: Those were my ghostwriters, and I didn't know it for many, many years.

GROSS: (Laughter).

KING: So it just goes to show you, right? Yeah. But yeah, as I said earlier, you know, we were just kids out of Harlem with no knowledge at all about legalities and what should happen and what shouldn't happen in this business. And we were - I'm only one out of hundreds and thousands of the artists that got those things happened to, you know. So...

GROSS: Well, a lot of artists were deprived altogether of...

KING: Oh, sure.

GROSS: ...Writing credits, so...

KING: Oh, God, yeah.

GROSS: So I guess, in some respects, it was...

KING: I were lucky.

GROSS: You were lucky in a sense, yeah.

KING: I'm one of the lucky ones, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

KING: I'm one of the lucky ones.

GROSS: Well, I love your singing, and I thank you so very much for talking with us.

KING: Thank you, Terry.

BIANCULLI: Ben E. King speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. After a break, we hear from more music-making legends - songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and record producer Jerry Wexler. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUNG BOY BLUES")

KING: (Singing) Every time I kiss somebody new, I make-believe I'm kissing you. But I can't kid my aching heart 'cause my heart knows we're still apart, and each night is like a thousand years. Oh, I can't lose these young boy blues. I want to cry when I hear your name, but if I cry, I feel ashamed. So...

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. We continue our R&B, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll series with lyricist Jerry Leiber and composer Mike Stoller, who wrote some of the most memorable rock 'n' roll songs of the 1950s and '60s.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KANSAS CITY")

WILBERT HARRISON: (Singing) I'm going to Kansas City. Kansas City here I come. I'm going to Kansas City. Kansas City here I come. They got some crazy little women there, and I'm gonna get me one.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JAILHOUSE ROCK")

ELVIS PRESLEY: (Singing) The warden threw a party in the county jail. The prison band was there, and they began to wail. The band was jumping, and the joint began to swing. You should have heard those knocked-out jailbirds sing. Let's rock. Everybody, let's rock.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ON BROADWAY")

GEORGE BENSON: (Singing) They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. They say there's always magic in the air.

THE SEARCHERS: (Singing) I took my troubles down to Madame Rue, you know, that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth. She's got a path on 34th and Vine selling little bottles of Love Potion No. 9.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RUBY BABY")

DION AND THE BELMONTS: (Singing) Oh, Ruby, Ruby, I want ya. Like a ghost, I'm gonna haunt 'ya. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, will you be mine sometime?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHARLIE BROWN")

THE COASTERS: (Singing) Fe-fe, fi-fi, fo-fo, fum, I smell smoke in the auditorium. Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown. He's a clown, that Charlie Brown. He's gonna get caught, just you wait and see. Why's everybody always pickin' on me?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAND BY ME")

BEN E KING: (Singing) When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we'll see, no I won't be afraid. Oh, I won't be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me. So darling, darling, stand by me, oh, stand by me. Oh stand, stand by me, stand by me. If the sky that we look upon...

BIANCULLI: Leiber and Stoller wrote for Elvis Presley, The Coasters, the Drifters and Ben E. King. They not only wrote songs, they often produced them. In act, Leiber and Stoller were the first rock 'n' roll producers to actually get credit on a record for their work. One of rock's greatest producers, Phil Spector, got his start as one of Leiber and Stoller's assistants.

Leiber and Stoller met in LA when Leiber was still in high school, and they were soon writing songs professionally. Leiber was the lyrics half of the team, and he was known for sassy phrases that captured the vernacular spoken by young people of his day.

Jerry Leiber died in 2011 at the age of 78. Terry spoke to Leiber and Stoller in 1991. They began by listening to the original 1953 version of "Hound Dog" sung by Big Mama Thornton.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOUND DOG")

BIG MAMA THORNTON: (Singing) You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin' round my door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin' round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't gonna feed you no more. You told me you was high class, but I can see through that. Yes, you told me you was high class, but I can see through that. And daddy, I know you ain't no real cool cat. You ain't nothing but a hound dog...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: Well, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, welcome to FRESH AIR. The record we've been listening to, Big Mama Thornton's recording of "Hound Dog," was your first major hit as songwriters and producers. What was it about her that led to this song?

JERRY LEIBER: Well, Mike and I were invited to Johnny Otis' rehearsal studio to listen to and look at some of his artists. Big Mama was one of them, and she was really formidable. She was scary-looking. She was big, and she must have weighed about, oh, anywhere from 275 to 350. And she had this really gutty, guttural growling sound in her voice.

And the both of us fell in love with her, and we just loved what she looked like, and we loved what she sounded like. She sang "Ball And Chain," and we decided to take off that minute and go to Mike's house and try to write something for her.

GROSS: Well, how did you come up with this song, though?

LEIBER: Well, Mike was driving, and I was banging on the roof of the car. And I was trying to come up with something nasty that would be at the same time playable that wouldn't be censored, you know. And the closest I could get to what I was thinking was you ain't nothing but a hound dog.

GROSS: So you were thinking four-letter word, epithet, and what you came up, though, with hound dog.

LEIBER: Right, which sort of, you know, made it - it felt right, and it seemed like it would be passable.

GROSS: Mike, let me ask you how you think Elvis handled this song differently from Big Mama Thornton.

MIKE STOLLER: How he handled it differently? Well, he handled it very differently. He didn't sing it in the same tradition of blues intonation that Big Mama used. And also the lyrics were considerably different because Big Mama's - the way the song was written for Big Mama, it was really about a gigolo. It's a woman complaining about a gigolo.

And Elvis couldn't sing that song. So he sang a version of it which I think, as I'm told, he heard from a lounge act in Las Vegas that he heard singing the song in Vegas.

Now, I had heard that he knew Big Mama's record and loved it, but it was only after he heard this lounge act do it that it seemed appropriate for a male singer.

GROSS: A lot of the songs that you wrote over the years were novelty songs - songs like "Charlie Brown," "Love Potion No. 9," "Yakety Yak," "Poison Ivy." I think I just named all Coasters songs here. But how did you get so involved with novelty songs?

LEIBER: We didn't think of them as novelties. We thought...

STOLLER: Dark dramas.

(LAUGHTER)

STOLLER: We were both trying to imitate Tolstoy and Dickens, and I guess we just fell short of the mark. We wrote novelty songs because we're both essentially gag writers, and we like to tell funny stories and anecdotes.

BIANCULLI: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller speaking to Terry Gross in 1991. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our R&B, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll week and Terry's 1991 interview with lyricist Jerry Leiber and composer Mike Stoller.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: One of the things that you are famous for having pioneered was bringing a string section to rock 'n' roll or to rhythm and blues.

LEIBER: That was Mike's fault.

GROSS: Yeah. Let me ask you. You know, on the The Drifters' recording...

LEIBER: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...Of "There Goes My Baby," that's the classic example of you bringing strings on. What went through your mind to do it?

STOLLER: I can tell you exactly what was on my mind - just the line, the melodic line. And I was playing it. I used to joke about this one because it sounded like Borodin, and it sounded like one of the Caucasian melodies. And...

LEIBER: I don't know if you get the pun, but he's been saying this for many years, and I always thought it was funny...

GROSS: Right.

LEIBER: ...The fact that he would use a Caucasian melody on this recording.

STOLLER: But it was - Jerry heard it, and he said, that sounds like strings, and I said, why not? And so why not? We had five violins and one cello, and they were all basically playing in unison.

LEIBER: 'Cause Jerry Wexler wouldn't spring for six violins and two celli.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Now, another thing that happened on this record was you introduced a Latin rhythm that you used...

STOLLER: The baion rhythm was one that both Jerry and I adored, and we had always looked for a place to use it. We'd used it maybe once before on a early record that was not particularly successful, and we had the opportunity to use it on this record date. And there happened to be a timpani left over from another recording session in the studio, and we used it.

Now, the drummer was not a percussionist. He was a - just a trap drummer, and he didn't know how to use the tuning pedal on the timp. So he played one note throughout the entire thing, which gave it a rather bizarre, muddy bottom with all kinds of weird overtones. And it was kind of fascinating, though. And that's where we first...

LEIBER: Used...

STOLLER: ...Had a successful use of that baion rhythm, which in case anybody's wondering is boom, boom-boom, boom, boom-boom.

LEIBER: Which finally was used, I think, and is responsible for maybe over a thousand hits because this Brazilian rhythm supports a slow ballad without the ballad seeming to be slow or sluggish. It keeps it moving. And everyone from Burt Bacharach to Phil Spector to you name it have leaned heavily on the support of this rhythm pattern.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE GOES MY BABY")

THE DRIFTERS: (Singing) Bo-bo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. There she goes. Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. There she goes. Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Bo-bo. Doo-doo, doo-doo. Bo-bo. Doo-doo, doo-doo. There goes my baby, moving on down the line. Wonder where, wonder where, wonder where she is bound? I broke her heart and made her cry. Now I'm alone, so all alone. What can I do? What can I do? There goes my baby. Whoa.

GROSS: My guests were the songwriting and production team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

LEIBER: Thanks.

STOLLER: It was fun.

LEIBER: Righto. Yeah, it was fun.

BIANCULLI: Songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller speaking with Terry Gross in 1991. Coming up, we conclude this week's R&B, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll series of interviews, which continues through Labor Day, with record producer Jerry Wexler. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. We've got one more in today's lineup of R&B, rockabilly, and rock 'n' roll interviews. Some of the greatest soul and rhythm and blues recordings wouldn't have been made if not for Jerry Wexler. Wexler was a partner in Atlantic Records from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. His specialty was finding great singers and matching them with the right band and backup singers to create a sound that was both artistically true and commercially successful. The short list of people with whom he's worked includes The Drifters, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Solomon Burke. Terry spoke with Jerry Wexler live from the Public Radio Conference in Washington, D.C., in 1993. He died in 2008 at the age of 91. Here are just a few of the records for which we have Jerry Wexler to thank.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN LOVING YOU TOO LONG")

OTIS REDDING: (Singing) I've been loving you too long to stop now.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT I'D SAY")

RAY CHARLES: (Singing) See the girl with the diamond ring? She knows how to shake that thing, all right now, now, now. Hey, hey. Hey, hey.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR")

WILSON PICKETT: (Singing) I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour. That's when my love come tumbling down. I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour, when there's no one else around.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDER THE BOARDWALK")

THE DRIFTERS: (Singing) Under the boardwalk, out of the sun. Under the boardwalk, we'll be having some fun. Under the boardwalk, people walking above. Under the boardwalk, we'll be making love. Under the boardwalk, boardwalk.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT")

ARETHA FRANKLIN: (Singing) Ooh. What you want, baby, I got it. What you need, you know I got it. All I'm askin' is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit). Hey baby (just a little bit) when you get home, (Just a little bit) mister (just a little bit). I ain't gonna do you wrong while you're gone.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: I want to get started with your work with Aretha Franklin. I think that's a good place to start. Now, she had made about - oh, I don't know - 10 or so recordings on Columbia Records before coming...

JERRY WEXLER: Yes.

GROSS: ...To Atlantic. John Hammond produced her, and he was producing her like a jazz singer, kind of in the Dinah Washington tradition.

WEXLER: Yeah.

GROSS: You - when she came to Atlantic, you worked with her. You heard something completely different. What did you hear when you started producing her?

WEXLER: Well, I heard the Aretha Franklin who sang in church, who sang "Precious Lord" when she was 13 years old. And a man in the audience was so overcome he said, listen at her. Listen at her. And I listened, and it wasn't so much that I tried a new approach to her. It's that what she did fit very well in with what we were doing anyhow.

GROSS: Well, you sat her down at the piano.

WEXLER: Right.

GROSS: You had her play herself, which I don't think she'd done on the records before that.

WEXLER: Not very much. Yeah.

GROSS: And then you took her down to Muscle Shoals, to Alabama, to the same place, actually, that Arthur Alexander started before he became...

WEXLER: Exactly, and I want you to know that I'm not one of the people who didn't pay him.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: What was it like at Muscle Shoals? What did you hear there in that Southern sound that you wanted?

WEXLER: Well, it was the way they recorded, which was ad-lib recording, without written arrangements - building the song from the get-go, just from the chords. And the musicians made a fabulous contribution. So these were arrangements which we all did together. And they were just as much arrangements as anything that was ever done by Henry Mancini, in the sense of being an arranged piece of music.

GROSS: So you took Aretha down to Muscle Shoals, recorded, like, a track and a half with her, and there was this really big fight.

WEXLER: (Laughter).

GROSS: What was the fight about?

WEXLER: There was an explosion that went on because of too much Jack Daniels and not enough prudence.

(LAUGHTER)

WEXLER: And it had to do with Ted White, who was Aretha's husband at the time, who got into dangerous, over-friendly drinking from the same jug with a gentleman who can best be described as a card-carrying redneck trumpet player. And it got into what we call the dozens, the Southern dozens, and then it got nasty.

GROSS: (Laughter).

WEXLER: And the session blew up, and we went back to New York with one song complete, which was "I Never Loved A Man." And a three-piece track on the other side, which was "Do Right Woman." And all we had there was rhythm guitar, bass and drums, which is not a whole lot to go on (laughter).

GROSS: Not even vocal.

WEXLER: No vocal. No piano. No background vocal. And then we finished by bringing Aretha and her sisters into the studio. And it was a pretty good piece of extemporization, in that starting with this very minimal track, Aretha laid down an organ part and a piano part. And then she sang the lead, and then she and her sisters got together and did the background. And it was a very full, finished record put together, I'd say, with spit and chewing gum.

GROSS: You produced "Respect." Is there a story behind how the sock it to me's landed on there?

WEXLER: Well, yeah, the story is that when Otis Redding did it, it was entirely a different song. The sock it to me's were Aretha Franklin's idea where she injected into the song, which connoted a certain idea of social respect, probably the notion of ethnic respect, combined with a little judicious lubricity on her part.

(LAUGHTER)

WEXLER: The respect that she was talking about was what you might call - very bluntly call proper sexual attention.

(LAUGHTER)

WEXLER: But it was her transmutation of Otis Redding's little Southern song. As a matter of fact, I was mixing the record in our studio on Broadway, and Otis walked in. He said, that little gal done took my song. But he meant that in a very kindly way 'cause he saw the cash registers ringing.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Now, your first studio was actually the office...

WEXLER: That's right.

GROSS: ...Of Atlantic Records.

WEXLER: Right.

GROSS: Who did you - 'cause when Atlantic was young, you didn't have a studio. So what'd you do? You'd move out the chairs into the hallway...

WEXLER: Well...

GROSS: ...Whenever you want to record?

WEXLER: We did have a studio. It was our office, and it was a studio because we had equipment in it. And...

GROSS: Right.

WEXLER: My partner Ahmet Ertegun and I shared this big room. We had two desks that were catty-corner, canted toward each other. And what we would do is push them against the wall, stack them. And then our engineer Tom Dowd would set out camp chairs, a few microphones and one mic in the hall for echo.

GROSS: We're just going to adjust your mic a little bit there.

WEXLER: Yeah.

GROSS: There's so much that a record producer is up against, often the real unexpected. And I think a great example of that is when you were producing The Drifters' version of "Under The Boardwalk."

WEXLER: All right.

GROSS: Let's start with the beginning of that story. First of all, they didn't want to even record the song.

WEXLER: That's right.

GROSS: You gave them an ultimatum.

WEXLER: Right. I was not the line producer of that song. I was acting as a supervisor, you know, as an executive of the company. And The Drifters were always a concern of mine. And a great producer - deceased - Bert Berns, was producing the record, and neither he nor any of The Drifters could stand the song. They just couldn't buy it. And I didn't want to interfere 'cause Bert was the producer but - this sounds, like, very self-congratulatory (laughter). And I said, this song has to be done. And I said, you can pick all the rest. I said, or else ain't no session. Yeah.

GROSS: Why'd you like the song so much?

WEXLER: Because it sounded like a hit.

GROSS: OK. Good enough reason.

WEXLER: (Laughter).

GROSS: OK. So what happened to the lead singer the night before...

WEXLER: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: ...The session?

WEXLER: The lead singer at the time was a man named Rudy Lewis. You know, we had three fantastic lead singers in The Drifters. The first was Clyde McPhatter. The second was Rudy Lewis. His name is not as well known, but he did some great songs. And the third was Ben E. King, who's having a great resurgence with "Stand By Me." I mean, you can't turn around without hearing it anymore.

But Rudy Lewis, unfortunately, the night before the session was found dead in the hotel room with a hypodermic needle in his arm. And the - I think that was the - yeah, the night before the session. And we tried to call off the session, but it was a big date. And we had hired a lot of union musicians, and the union wasn't cutting us any slack at all. They gave us 24 hours. So we moved the session ahead one more day, but then we couldn't even change the charts. So we had to use Johnny Moore to sing the lead and without even the key change, and he managed to sing it in the key that was put to him. And the interesting thing about the record was we promoted it all along the Eastern Seaboard in Atlantic City and so on. And it just - it evokes summer all the time.

GROSS: And you actually did a lot of that yourself, didn't you? Packed up the car and drove around promoting the record.

WEXLER: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: 'Cause you wanted it to break so bad. Yeah.

WEXLER: That's right. And we did a lot of that in those days.

GROSS: Now, you worked with Otis Redding a lot during...

WEXLER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...His career.

WEXLER: I was not Otis' producer. I want you to realize that. Otis was produced at Stax Records in Memphis by that great team who - Jim Stewart and Booker T. & the M.G.'s with - especially Steve Cropper.

GROSS: Now, you saw him change a lot as he became bigger.

WEXLER: Oh, yes.

GROSS: Now, what was he like in the beginning before he was very famous? What was he like on stage?

WEXLER: Otis was very simple, very unaffected, but he had the magic. And when he came to New York after his first hit record, I picked him up at the airport. No roadies, nobody, no nothing, just sole Otis. And he opened at the Apollo, and he just stood there, just straight on with his arms at his side, didn't move. Another one who started like that was Marvin Gaye. But they learned some stagecraft. But what really kicked Otis into moving was having to follow Sam & Dave...

GROSS: (Laughter).

WEXLER: ...Who used to be described as a stage full of Jackie Wilsons.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's really great. No, you know, we were talking before how you brought Aretha Franklin down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. You brought Wilson Pickett down to Memphis to record.

WEXLER: Right.

GROSS: You really loved that Southern sound that was coming out of...

WEXLER: Right.

GROSS: ...Some of the bands there. Why'd you think of bringing him there?

WEXLER: Well, 'cause everything was winding down in New York. I mean, it was entropy. We just couldn't get out of our own way. We had been very successful year after year. But our style of recording was a regular old-time standard style using arrangers with written arrangements. Now, when you have to change an arrangement, and you almost always do to accommodate the vicissitudes of the song and where you're going, it's total agony for the entrepreneur to see that clock going around...

GROSS: (Laughter).

WEXLER: ...While a man is going around with an eraser, erasing little notes on 13 charts.

(LAUGHTER)

WEXLER: And this Southern style of recording, where it's just - all you have is chord indications. You go out. You sing a lick. Do it like this, fellas. Bang. Here's the new chord, you know. But maybe that's overstating it. But actually, there's a spontaneity and a fantastic new element that comes in because the musicians are organic to the idea.

GROSS: So you heard that it would work...

WEXLER: I heard the sound.

GROSS: ...With Wilson Pickett.

WEXLER: I heard the sound, and I brought Pickett to Memphis, and we cut "Midnight Hour" and a lot of other things there all in a hurry. It was great.

BIANCULLI: Jerry Wexler speaking to Terry Gross in 1993 live from the Public Radio Conference in Washington, D.C.

On Monday's show, we conclude our archive series R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll with Dion, who brought his guitar and sang some songs. Also, songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer Allen Toussaint, who was at the piano for our 1988 interview and sang some of his early songs, including "Lipstick Traces." I hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "ROSETTA")

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "ROSETTA")

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.