SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING, 2018
VOLUME FIVE NUMBER THREE
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
DOROTHY ASHBY
(April 21-27)
MILFORD GRAVES
(April 28-May 4)
LOUIS JORDAN
(May 5-11)
JOSEPH JARMAN
(May 12-18)
OTIS BLACKWELL
{May 19-25)
MARION BROWN
(May 26-June 1)
THE ROOTS
(June 2-8)
CHARLIE PATTON
(JUNE 9-15)
STEFON HARRIS
(JUNE 16–22)
MEMPHIS MINNIE
(June 23-29)
HAROLD LAND
(June 30-July 6)
WILLIE DIXON
(July 7--13)https://www.songhall.org/profile/Otis_Blackwell
Songwriters Hall Of Fame
Inductee: Otis Blackwell
Born/Died: 1931-2002
Inducted: 1991
Songs helped redefine America's popular music in the early and mid-1950's.
Brooklyn-born Otis Blackwell is without question one of the
select songwriters whose songs literally helped redefine America's
popular music in the early and mid-1950's. Probably best known for the
smash hits Elvis Presley made out of a number of his songs, Blackwell's
works have been recorded into immortality by a host of other major
figures in the record field, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, James Brown, The Who, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, The Judds, Carl Perkins, and Peggy Lee, among numerous others.
Blackwell, whose more than 1,000 songs have sold nearly 200 million records, began his career in the late 40's, tinkering around with writing songs while making a living as a pants presser in a tailor shop. He was a singer as well and, in the early 50's, he actually performed in various clubs and theaters in Brooklyn, eventually deciding to soft-pedal the performing and to focus on writing. He actually recorded a song for producer and label executive Joe Davis, called "Daddy Rolling Stone." This became a minor rhythm and blues hit for Blackwell and years later it was recorded by The Who.
Though he gave up public performances, Blackwell possessed a basic singing style and manner that was highly effective. He performed on his own demo recordings, some of which caught the ear of colorful music publishing personality, Aaron "Goldie" Goldmark, who was associated with Shalimar Music Publishing. Goldmark, who was already well-known in the Elvis Presley inner circle, managed to get Presley's people to hear some of Blackwell's demos, which became the great door opener every songwriter dreamt about.
Ultimately, Presley recorded such Blackwell songs as "Don't Be Cruel," "Return to Sender," "All Shook Up and "Paralyzed," among others. These songs, it's safe to say, helped launch the Presley legend to the heights of the stratosphere (and then some), and it's certainly equally accurate to say that these initial successes with Presley quickly secured Blackwell's place in the Who's Who of American pop songwriters.
But Blackwell never rested on these early laurels. Much more productivity was still to come. For example, an early Sun Record label mate of Presley's, the hard-rocking Jerry Lee Lewis, enjoyed one of his biggest hits with the Blackwell song, "Great Balls of Fire." A key star for VeeJay Records, Dee Clark, found major chart success with Blackwell's "Hey Little Girl" and “Just Keep It Up." Alternately, another Blackwell composition "Handy Man," was recorded by the falsetto star, Jimmy Jones in the 1960’s, and covered by James Taylor in the 1970’s. In a similar sequence, Little Willie John, a leading R&B star of the late 50's, enjoyed a top chart hit with "Fever," and years later, Peggy Lee enjoyed a revival hit with the song on the pop charts.
At other times in his career, Blackwell has also been successful as a record producer, having helped turn out hits with artists as diverse as Connie Francis, Mahalia Jackson, and Sal Mineo.
Already an inductee of the Nashville Songwriters Association, Blackwell's crowning moment came in the late 1980’s when The Black Rock Coalition, a prominent organization of black rock musicians, led by Vernon Reid, the lead guitarist of the band, Living Color, held a tribute for him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in his native Brooklyn. Many prominent musicians and singers took part including Blackwell himself, who performed an assortment of his best songs, including "One Broken Heart for Sale," "Black Trail," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Daddy Rolling Stone."
https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/otis-blackwell
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
Otis Blackwell
Blackwell, whose more than 1,000 songs have sold nearly 200 million records, began his career in the late 40's, tinkering around with writing songs while making a living as a pants presser in a tailor shop. He was a singer as well and, in the early 50's, he actually performed in various clubs and theaters in Brooklyn, eventually deciding to soft-pedal the performing and to focus on writing. He actually recorded a song for producer and label executive Joe Davis, called "Daddy Rolling Stone." This became a minor rhythm and blues hit for Blackwell and years later it was recorded by The Who.
Though he gave up public performances, Blackwell possessed a basic singing style and manner that was highly effective. He performed on his own demo recordings, some of which caught the ear of colorful music publishing personality, Aaron "Goldie" Goldmark, who was associated with Shalimar Music Publishing. Goldmark, who was already well-known in the Elvis Presley inner circle, managed to get Presley's people to hear some of Blackwell's demos, which became the great door opener every songwriter dreamt about.
Ultimately, Presley recorded such Blackwell songs as "Don't Be Cruel," "Return to Sender," "All Shook Up and "Paralyzed," among others. These songs, it's safe to say, helped launch the Presley legend to the heights of the stratosphere (and then some), and it's certainly equally accurate to say that these initial successes with Presley quickly secured Blackwell's place in the Who's Who of American pop songwriters.
But Blackwell never rested on these early laurels. Much more productivity was still to come. For example, an early Sun Record label mate of Presley's, the hard-rocking Jerry Lee Lewis, enjoyed one of his biggest hits with the Blackwell song, "Great Balls of Fire." A key star for VeeJay Records, Dee Clark, found major chart success with Blackwell's "Hey Little Girl" and “Just Keep It Up." Alternately, another Blackwell composition "Handy Man," was recorded by the falsetto star, Jimmy Jones in the 1960’s, and covered by James Taylor in the 1970’s. In a similar sequence, Little Willie John, a leading R&B star of the late 50's, enjoyed a top chart hit with "Fever," and years later, Peggy Lee enjoyed a revival hit with the song on the pop charts.
At other times in his career, Blackwell has also been successful as a record producer, having helped turn out hits with artists as diverse as Connie Francis, Mahalia Jackson, and Sal Mineo.
Already an inductee of the Nashville Songwriters Association, Blackwell's crowning moment came in the late 1980’s when The Black Rock Coalition, a prominent organization of black rock musicians, led by Vernon Reid, the lead guitarist of the band, Living Color, held a tribute for him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in his native Brooklyn. Many prominent musicians and singers took part including Blackwell himself, who performed an assortment of his best songs, including "One Broken Heart for Sale," "Black Trail," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Daddy Rolling Stone."
https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/otis-blackwell
ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
Otis Blackwell
Inductee:
Otis Blackwell (songwriting)
Born: February 16, 1932, Died: May 6, 2002)
Induction: 2010
Otis Blackwell (songwriting)
Born: February 16, 1932, Died: May 6, 2002)
Induction: 2010
Otis Blackwell was there when rock and roll took its first steps.
Otis Blackwell’s enduring hits took the embryonic genre of rock to a full-blown movement. He is the genius behind “Fever,” “All Shook Up,” “Great Balls of Fire” and other classics.
Otis Blackwell’s enduring hits took the embryonic genre of rock to a full-blown movement. He is the genius behind “Fever,” “All Shook Up,” “Great Balls of Fire” and other classics.
Biography
Otis Blackwell’s songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peggy Lee and many others.
The prolific Blackwell copyrighted over a thousand songs, and it’s been estimated that material written and co-written by him has accounted for the sales of 185 million records.
Blackwell was an African-American songwriter and performer whose material resonated with the R&B-smitten rockers from Memphis. Presley had great success with a string of songs from Blackwell, including “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Return to Sender.” The first two of these had the longest runs at Number One among all of his one hundred sixty-seven charting singles. The success of “Don’t Be Cruel” was a major step for the rising rock and roller. Paired with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Hound Dog,” this double-sided smash made him a superstar in 1956 and remained the biggest single of his career. It was a massive crossover hit that topped the pop, country and R&B charts.
Soon after came “All Shook Up,” another American chart-topper that also became the first of seventeen Number One singles for Presley in the U.K. On the strength of these blockbusters, Blackwell wound up working for Elvis Presley Music, whose offices were at 1650 Broadway—a legendary music-business building filled with publishers and songwriters. Presley recorded numerous Blackwell songs beyond the hits for which he is celebrated.
Blackwell also composed two of Jerry Lee Lewis’s biggest hits, “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless.” He also co-wrote (with Eddie Cooley) one of the best-known songs of the modern age: the torchy classic “Fever,” which charted high in versions by Little Willie John and Peggy Lee. Again, credits tell a misleading tale, as Blackwell used a pseudonym (John Davenport, his stepfather) to conceal his identity, as it was written for another publishing company. He also wrote “Hey Little Girl” (a hit for Dee Clark) and “Handy Man” (recorded by Jimmy Jones and, later, James Taylor).
Born in Brooklyn, Blackwell learned piano and began writing songs in his early teens. He attracted early notice by winning an amateur night contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. He liked both rhythm & blues and country music, claiming that his favorite singer was C&W mainstay Tex Ritter. Before becoming a full-time songwriter, he cut a dozen or so sides in the early Fifties for the RCA Victor and Jay-Dee labels. He had a near-hit with “Daddy Rolling Stone,” which was later covered by the Who. His early works were collected on an album entitled Otis Blackwell: Singing the Blues and have been re-issued on various compact discs in the modern era.
By the mid-Fifties, he decided to give up performing. “I quit entertaining,” he told writer Tom Russell. “I didn’t dig it. Got more into writing.” Still, his voice exerted an influence, even if it was behind the scenes. It has been noted that Blackwell’s vocal stylings on demos of songs Presley recorded were followed rather faithfully, leading to his receiving credit as an obvious influence on Presley’s delivery. “At certain tempos, the way Elvis sang was the result of copying Otis’ demos,” observed fellow songwriter and close friend Doc Pomus. Oddly enough, Blackwell and Presley never met.
In 1976 Blackwell recorded a dozen of his best-known numbers with producer Herb Abramson (co-founder of Atlantic Records) for an album entitled These Are My Songs. A compilation, The Very Best of Otis Blackwell, appeared in 2009. A 1994 tribute album, entitled Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell, included versions of his songs by artists as far-flung as Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Kris Kristofferson, the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, Ronnie Spector (of the Ronettes), Dave Edmunds and Graham Parker.
Blackwell suffered a stroke in 1991, which left him paralyzed. He died in 2002 of a heart attack.
Inductee: Otis Blackwell (songwriting; born February 16, 1932, died May 6, 2002)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/otis-blackwell-mn0000893964/biography
Though he often collaborated with various partners on the thriving '50s New York R&B scene (Winfield Scott, Eddie Cooley, and Jack Hammer, to name three), Blackwell's songwriting style is as identifiable as that of Willie Dixon or Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. He helped formulate the musical vocabulary of rock & roll when the genre was barely breathing on its own.
Befitting a true innovator, Blackwell's early influences were a tad out of the ordinary. As a lad growing up in Brooklyn, he dug the Westerns that his favorite nearby cinema screened. At that point, Tex Ritter was Otis Blackwell's main man. Smooth blues singers Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell also made an impression. By 1952, Blackwell parlayed a victory at an Apollo Theater talent show into a recording deal with veteran producer Joe Davis for RCA, switching to Davis' own Jay-Dee logo the next year. He was fairly prolific at Jay-Dee, enjoying success with the throbbing "Daddy Rollin' Stone" (later covered by the Who). From 1955 on, though, Blackwell concentrated primarily on songwriting (Atlantic, Date, Cub, and MGM later issued scattered Blackwell singles).
"Fever," co-written by Cooley, was Blackwell's first winner (he used the pen name of John Davenport, since he was still contractually obligated to Jay-Dee). Blackwell never met Elvis in person, but his material traveled a direct pipeline to the rock icon; "Return to Sender," "One Broken Heart for Sale," and "Easy Question" also came from his pen. Dee Clark ("Just Keep It Up" and "Hey Little Girl"), Thurston Harris, Wade Flemons, Clyde McPhatter, Brook Benton, Ben E. King, the Drifters, Bobby Darin, Ral Donner, Gene Vincent, and plenty more of rock's primordial royalty benefited from Blackwell's compositional largesse before the British Invasion forever altered the Brill Building scene.
The prolific Blackwell copyrighted over a thousand songs, and it’s been estimated that material written and co-written by him has accounted for the sales of 185 million records.
Blackwell was an African-American songwriter and performer whose material resonated with the R&B-smitten rockers from Memphis. Presley had great success with a string of songs from Blackwell, including “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Return to Sender.” The first two of these had the longest runs at Number One among all of his one hundred sixty-seven charting singles. The success of “Don’t Be Cruel” was a major step for the rising rock and roller. Paired with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Hound Dog,” this double-sided smash made him a superstar in 1956 and remained the biggest single of his career. It was a massive crossover hit that topped the pop, country and R&B charts.
Soon after came “All Shook Up,” another American chart-topper that also became the first of seventeen Number One singles for Presley in the U.K. On the strength of these blockbusters, Blackwell wound up working for Elvis Presley Music, whose offices were at 1650 Broadway—a legendary music-business building filled with publishers and songwriters. Presley recorded numerous Blackwell songs beyond the hits for which he is celebrated.
Blackwell also composed two of Jerry Lee Lewis’s biggest hits, “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless.” He also co-wrote (with Eddie Cooley) one of the best-known songs of the modern age: the torchy classic “Fever,” which charted high in versions by Little Willie John and Peggy Lee. Again, credits tell a misleading tale, as Blackwell used a pseudonym (John Davenport, his stepfather) to conceal his identity, as it was written for another publishing company. He also wrote “Hey Little Girl” (a hit for Dee Clark) and “Handy Man” (recorded by Jimmy Jones and, later, James Taylor).
Born in Brooklyn, Blackwell learned piano and began writing songs in his early teens. He attracted early notice by winning an amateur night contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. He liked both rhythm & blues and country music, claiming that his favorite singer was C&W mainstay Tex Ritter. Before becoming a full-time songwriter, he cut a dozen or so sides in the early Fifties for the RCA Victor and Jay-Dee labels. He had a near-hit with “Daddy Rolling Stone,” which was later covered by the Who. His early works were collected on an album entitled Otis Blackwell: Singing the Blues and have been re-issued on various compact discs in the modern era.
By the mid-Fifties, he decided to give up performing. “I quit entertaining,” he told writer Tom Russell. “I didn’t dig it. Got more into writing.” Still, his voice exerted an influence, even if it was behind the scenes. It has been noted that Blackwell’s vocal stylings on demos of songs Presley recorded were followed rather faithfully, leading to his receiving credit as an obvious influence on Presley’s delivery. “At certain tempos, the way Elvis sang was the result of copying Otis’ demos,” observed fellow songwriter and close friend Doc Pomus. Oddly enough, Blackwell and Presley never met.
In 1976 Blackwell recorded a dozen of his best-known numbers with producer Herb Abramson (co-founder of Atlantic Records) for an album entitled These Are My Songs. A compilation, The Very Best of Otis Blackwell, appeared in 2009. A 1994 tribute album, entitled Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell, included versions of his songs by artists as far-flung as Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Kris Kristofferson, the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, Ronnie Spector (of the Ronettes), Dave Edmunds and Graham Parker.
Blackwell suffered a stroke in 1991, which left him paralyzed. He died in 2002 of a heart attack.
Inductee: Otis Blackwell (songwriting; born February 16, 1932, died May 6, 2002)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/otis-blackwell-mn0000893964/biography
OTIS BLACKWELL (1931-2002)
Artist Biography by Bill Dahl
Few 1950s rock & roll tunesmiths were as prolifically talented as Otis Blackwell. His immortal compositions include Little Willie John's "Fever," Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "All Shook Up," Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless," and Jimmy Jones' "Handy Man" (just for starters).
Though he often collaborated with various partners on the thriving '50s New York R&B scene (Winfield Scott, Eddie Cooley, and Jack Hammer, to name three), Blackwell's songwriting style is as identifiable as that of Willie Dixon or Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller. He helped formulate the musical vocabulary of rock & roll when the genre was barely breathing on its own.
Befitting a true innovator, Blackwell's early influences were a tad out of the ordinary. As a lad growing up in Brooklyn, he dug the Westerns that his favorite nearby cinema screened. At that point, Tex Ritter was Otis Blackwell's main man. Smooth blues singers Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell also made an impression. By 1952, Blackwell parlayed a victory at an Apollo Theater talent show into a recording deal with veteran producer Joe Davis for RCA, switching to Davis' own Jay-Dee logo the next year. He was fairly prolific at Jay-Dee, enjoying success with the throbbing "Daddy Rollin' Stone" (later covered by the Who). From 1955 on, though, Blackwell concentrated primarily on songwriting (Atlantic, Date, Cub, and MGM later issued scattered Blackwell singles).
"Fever," co-written by Cooley, was Blackwell's first winner (he used the pen name of John Davenport, since he was still contractually obligated to Jay-Dee). Blackwell never met Elvis in person, but his material traveled a direct pipeline to the rock icon; "Return to Sender," "One Broken Heart for Sale," and "Easy Question" also came from his pen. Dee Clark ("Just Keep It Up" and "Hey Little Girl"), Thurston Harris, Wade Flemons, Clyde McPhatter, Brook Benton, Ben E. King, the Drifters, Bobby Darin, Ral Donner, Gene Vincent, and plenty more of rock's primordial royalty benefited from Blackwell's compositional largesse before the British Invasion forever altered the Brill Building scene.
In 1976, Blackwell returned to recording with a Herb Abramson-produced
set for Inner City comprised of his own renditions of the songs that
made him famous. A 1991 stroke paralyzed the legendary song scribe, but
his influence remained so enduring that it inspired Brace Yourself!, an all-star 1994 tribute album that included contributions by Dave Edmunds, Joe Ely, Deborah Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Kris Kristofferson, Graham Parker, and bluesman Joe Louis Walker. He died on May 6, 2002 in his Nashville home.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/otisblackwell
AllAboutJazz
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/otisblackwell
Otis Blackwell
BiographyAllAboutJazz
Pianist, vocalist, composer (1931-2002)
Otis Blackwell was a pianist and a singer whose vocal style had a strong influence on the young Elvis Presley. Yet he will be remembered best not as a performer but as a one-man song-writing factory who helped to shape 1950’s rock 'n' roll and whose most memorable compositions included “Don't Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” “Fever” and “Great Balls of Fire,” all prominent in annals of American popular music.
Born in Brooklyn in 1931, and brought up in New York City, he learned the piano as a child and listened on the radio to rhythm and blues (then known as “race” music) and to country music in films starring such singing cowboys as Gene Autry and Tex Ritter. They were the two elements that were eventually to combine in the early 1950s to create the hybrid that was rock' n' roll.
On leaving school in the late 1940s, he worked first as a lowly floor-sweeper at a New York theatre and then as a clothes-presser in a laundry. In 1952 he won a local talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and secured a recording contract with Joe Davis's Jay-Dee label. It was at Davis's suggestion that he began writing his own songs. “I was thrown into it,” he later said. His first release was the self-composed Daddy Rolling Stone. It failed to reach the charts but later became a big hit in Jamaica where it was recorded by Derek Martin, and was also covered by The Who in their early “mod” period. Blackwell made further recordings for RCA Records and the Groove label which were among the earliest examples of the emerging rock'n'roll style. But all the time he was developing his songwriting and on Christmas Eve 1955, he sold the demos of six songs he had written for $25 each. They included “Don't Be Cruel”, which featured him singing over an accompaniment of piano and a cardboard box for a drum. Yet his first big hit as a writer came not with “Don't Be Cruel” but with the sultry and atmospheric “Fever”. Originally an R&B hit in 1956 for Little Willie John, it became an even bigger pop hit for Peggy Lee and has since been covered several hundred times by other artists.
His association with Presley began around the same time, when the singer covered “Don't Be Cruel”. Originally released as the B-side of Hound Dog, the song had topped the American charts in its own right by September 1956. It simultaneously headed both the R&B and Country charts. Next, Presley recorded Blackwell's “Paralysed”, which fared less well, although it later reached No 8 in the British charts. But by April 1957 a version of “All Shook Up”, originally recorded by the little-known David Hill, had not only restored Presley to the top of the charts but also become the biggest selling single of the year. The song was written after Blackwell's publisher, “Goldie” Goldhawk, had shaken up a bottle of Pepsi and said to him: “You can write about anything. Now write about this!” Blackwell provided Presley with further hit songs, including “Return to Sender” and “One Broken Heart for Sale”. But “All Shook Up” and “Don't Be Cruel” have remained in the record books as the two songs which stayed at No.1 for longer than any of Presley's other hits.
There has been considerable speculation over the relationship between Blackwell and Presley, who never met. “We had a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone,” Blackwell said in an interview in 1989. Their two names often appeared together on records as co-writers, but in truth Presley's role as a writer was negligible. It was common practice at the time to sell part or all of the rights of a song and Presley's astute manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was well aware of the value of the publishing royalties. It has also been said that Presley borrowed many of his vocal mannerisms from Blackwell. Certainly it was the singer's method at the time to copy wholesale the writer's demo of a song, arrangement and all. As Presley used Blackwell's demos to learn the songs, the debt was probably considerable.
A prolific writer, who sometimes used the white-sounding pseudonym John Davenport, Blackwell copyrighted more than a thousand compositions in his career. Among them was Jerry Lee Lewis's signature tune “Great Balls of Fire”, as well as further hits for Lewis in “Breathless” and “Let's Talk About Us”. There were more 1950s rock'n'roll hits with “Hey Little Girl” and “Just Keep It Up” by the now almost-forgotten Dee Clark, and Cliff Richard recorded his “Nine Times out of Ten”. Jimmy Jones had a hit in 1960 with Blackwell's “Handy Man”, which was revived by James Taylor in the 1970s, and Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Tanya Tucker also recorded his songs. So, too, did Ray Charles and Otis Redding, although Blackwell was disappointed that few black artists ever had hits with his compositions.
He continued writing and performing and enjoyed some success in 1976 with the comeback album “These Are My Songs!” on the Inner City label. He also recorded the tribute The No.1 King of Rock'n'Roll on his own Fever label when Presley died in 1977. In 1991 he was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. Three years later, Chrissie Hynde, Graham Parker and Deborah Harry were among those contributing cover versions of his songs to the album “Brace Yourself: A Tribute to the Songs of Otis Blackwell”. Although there were many other generous acknowledgements to his role and influence down the years, his style essentially belonged to an earlier era and he was never to repeat the scale of success he had enjoyed in rock' n' roll's first decade.
Otis Blackwell, died in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 6, 2002.
Source: spectropop
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/arts/otis-blackwell-70-wrote-hits-for-presley-and-others.html
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/croisdale64.html
by Frank Thomas Croisdale
His story is not unlike many other innovative black men of his
generation. He worked hard, exuding creativity and inspiration, only to
have white men take his work to the masses and reap millions of dollars
in the process.
What separates him from the few who can rightfully claim to be his peers is that he never begrudged the white men their good fortune. He knew that ultimately his genius would be recognized and that the respect of subsequent generations of young men and women would serve as his ultimate reward.
His name was Otis Blackwell and he died of a heart attack May 6 at the age of 71. Chances are the name doesn't ring a bell, but rest assured, you know the work of Otis Blackwell and you'll carry it in your mind until the day you die.
Otis Blackwell very well may have been the greatest songwriter alive during the early decades of rock'n'roll. Try this litany of songs on for size. Blackwell wrote "Don't Be Cruel," "All Shook Up," "One Broken Heart For Sale," and "Return to Sender" for Elvis Presley. He wrote "Fever" for Peggy Lee and "Hey Little Girl" for Dee Clark. One of Blackwell's first records was "Daddy Rollin' Stone," released by Jay-Dee in 1953 and later covered by the Who. Otis also wrote "Handyman," a hit three times for Jimmy Jones, Del Shannon and James Taylor, respectively. If that wasn't enough, Otis Blackwell also penned two of Jerry Lee Lewis' most raucous chart-toppers, "Breathless" and "Great Balls of Fire."
Now that's a resume.
What was most amazing about Otis Blackwell was the humble nature that resided at the core of his being.
He was born in 1931 in Brooklyn. While the young Blackwell was weaned on R&B singers like Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell, it was the singing cowboys of Hollywood -- Tex Ritter in particular -- that he claimed had the most influence over his eventual writing style.
Blackwell was a true romantic and the theme of women's sexuality and its power over mere mortal men was a common theme that ran through his music.
On Christmas Eve of 1955, while working as a clothes-presser after a failed stint as a touring singer, Blackwell made a fateful decision that would forever free him from the mundane duties of a general laborer. On that day Blackwell sold six of his songs to Shalamar Publishing for $150. Among them was a little ditty called "Don't be Cruel." Elvis recorded the song with the same arrangement that Otis had laid down on the demo record and it went to No. 1 on the charts in 1956.
One of the most intriguing tales about the genius of Otis Blackwell concerns the genesis of the song "All Shook Up" -- a No. 1 hit for Elvis in 1957. Goldy Goldmark, who plugged records for Shalamar, was chiding Blackwell about his God-given ability to write hit songs that appealed to the masses, across age, sex, and racial lines. To accentuate his point, Goldmark emphatically shook the bottle of Pepsi he was drinking and slammed it down on the table. "I bet you can even make a hit out of that," he said to Blackwell and strode out of the room. The rest, of course, is pop music history.
She touched my hand what a chill I got
Her lips are like a volcano that's hot
I'm proud to say she's my buttercup
I'm in love
I'm all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!
The later years of Otis Blackwell's life found him prolific professionally and snake-bitten personally. He went through a string of bad marriages and fell into discourse with the IRS. His sweet-natured, even-tempered personality endeared him to friends and family, but his one vice -- alcohol -- complicated his life. By his own admission, Blackwell frittered away his savings "on all the gin I could drink." Only the interceding benevolence of BMI Publishing convinced him not to sign away the rights and royalties to all of his songs.
In total, Otis Blackwell wrote over 1,000 songs. His best work made stars out of Presley, Lewis and Lee and left their indelible print on the history of rock'n'roll.
This humble man, who never wanted the spotlight and never envied those who became icons singing his work over the AM bandwidth, is now tinkling the keys of his piano for a standing-room-only crowd behind the pearly gates.
Those of us who remain have his body of work to comfort us in our grief, yet we cannot help but be "All Shook Up" over his passing.
Frank Thomas Croisdale has been a freelance writer for 17 years and is actively involved in the Niagara Falls tourism industry. He lives in Niagara Falls. He can be reached at NFReporter@aol.com.
http://www.tsimon.com/blackwell.htm
He first became famous by winning a local talent contest ("Amateur Night") at the Apollo Theater, in Harlem, in 1952.[2] This led to a recording contract with RCA and then with Jay-Dee. His first release was his own composition "Daddy Rolling Stone",[3] which became a favorite in Jamaica, where it was recorded by Derek Martin. The song later became part of the Who's mod repertoire. Enjoying some early recording and performing success, he found his first love was songwriting and by 1955 had settled into the groove that he would ride for decades.[4] His first successes as a songwriter came in 1956, when Little Willie John's R&B hit with the sultry "Fever" was an even bigger pop success for Peggy Lee, and "Don't Be Cruel" began a highly profitable association with Elvis Presley.
Blackwell was one of the leading African-American figures of early rock and roll, although he was not well known by the public. His own records never cracked the Top 40, yet he wrote million-selling songs for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dee Clark and others. He also recruited other songwriters to write for Presley, such as Winfield Scott.[5]
In the liner notes of Elvis' Golden Records (1958), Anne Fulchino, of RCA, wrote,
In 1956 Blackwell gave "Don't Be Cruel" to friend Frankie Valli's group, the Four Lovers, but as they were recording it he asked to take it back and in turn gave it to the up-and-coming Presley. In exchange for this song he gave them "You're the Apple of My Eye", which became a chart hit for the Four Lovers (Billboard number 64). The song was performed on Ed Sullivan's television show that same year and was probably instrumental in at least shaping events for the group to eventually becoming the Four Seasons. A shortened version of "You're the Apple of My Eye" is also featured in the Broadway show "Jersey Boys".
As the tide of rock and roll receded, Blackwell recorded R&B songs for numerous labels, including Atlantic, MGM and Epic. In later years he was in semiretirement, making only occasional live appearances.
Blackwell was the grandfather of Torian Brown.
In the 1980s, Blackwell toured and recorded with the Smithereens as his backing band for both live shows and studio recordings. The partnership produced two self-funded albums, "Let's Talk About Us" and "From the Beginning," which were released independently on Blackwell's ROC-CO imprint.[citation needed]
In 1991, Blackwell was paralyzed by a stroke. Three years later, Shanachie released the album Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell, containing 15 songs written by Blackwell and recorded by the likes of Kris Kristofferson ("All Shook Up"), Blondie's Debbie Harry ("Don't Be Cruel"), the Smithereens ("Let's Talk About Us"), Graham Parker ("Paralyzed"), and Ronnie Spector ("Brace Yourself").[8]
Blackwell died of a heart attack in 2002, in Nashville, Tennessee, and was interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in that city.[9]
Blackwell was named one of the 2010 recipients of Ahmet Ertegun Award in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[10] This category encompasses those who primarily work behind the scenes in the music industry.
"Otis Blackwell – Biography". allmusic. Retrieved 2006-11-20.
"Otis Blackwell (1931–2002)". Spectropop. Retrieved 2006-11-20.
"Otis Blackwell, 70; Wrote Hits for Presley and Others". The New York Times. 2002-05-09. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-10-10.
Trager, Oliver (2004). Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Billboard Books. p. 700. ISBN 0-8230-7974-0.
"Winfield Scott". Elvis.com.au. Retrieved 2006-11-20.
"Otis Blackwell - Biography". Songwriters Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 2006-10-01. Retrieved 2006-11-20.
Giddins, Gary (2000). Riding on a Blue Note: Jazz and American. Da Capo Press. p. 37.
Billboard: Songwriter Otis Blackwell Dies
Find a Grave: Otis Blackwell
"Congratulations to the 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees!". Archived from the original on 2009-12-23. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
Holly George-Warren &, Anthony Decurtis (Eds.) (1976). The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (3rd ed.). New York: Random House. p. 27. ISBN 0-679-73728-6.
Otis Blackwell was a pianist and a singer whose vocal style had a strong influence on the young Elvis Presley. Yet he will be remembered best not as a performer but as a one-man song-writing factory who helped to shape 1950’s rock 'n' roll and whose most memorable compositions included “Don't Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” “Fever” and “Great Balls of Fire,” all prominent in annals of American popular music.
Born in Brooklyn in 1931, and brought up in New York City, he learned the piano as a child and listened on the radio to rhythm and blues (then known as “race” music) and to country music in films starring such singing cowboys as Gene Autry and Tex Ritter. They were the two elements that were eventually to combine in the early 1950s to create the hybrid that was rock' n' roll.
On leaving school in the late 1940s, he worked first as a lowly floor-sweeper at a New York theatre and then as a clothes-presser in a laundry. In 1952 he won a local talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and secured a recording contract with Joe Davis's Jay-Dee label. It was at Davis's suggestion that he began writing his own songs. “I was thrown into it,” he later said. His first release was the self-composed Daddy Rolling Stone. It failed to reach the charts but later became a big hit in Jamaica where it was recorded by Derek Martin, and was also covered by The Who in their early “mod” period. Blackwell made further recordings for RCA Records and the Groove label which were among the earliest examples of the emerging rock'n'roll style. But all the time he was developing his songwriting and on Christmas Eve 1955, he sold the demos of six songs he had written for $25 each. They included “Don't Be Cruel”, which featured him singing over an accompaniment of piano and a cardboard box for a drum. Yet his first big hit as a writer came not with “Don't Be Cruel” but with the sultry and atmospheric “Fever”. Originally an R&B hit in 1956 for Little Willie John, it became an even bigger pop hit for Peggy Lee and has since been covered several hundred times by other artists.
His association with Presley began around the same time, when the singer covered “Don't Be Cruel”. Originally released as the B-side of Hound Dog, the song had topped the American charts in its own right by September 1956. It simultaneously headed both the R&B and Country charts. Next, Presley recorded Blackwell's “Paralysed”, which fared less well, although it later reached No 8 in the British charts. But by April 1957 a version of “All Shook Up”, originally recorded by the little-known David Hill, had not only restored Presley to the top of the charts but also become the biggest selling single of the year. The song was written after Blackwell's publisher, “Goldie” Goldhawk, had shaken up a bottle of Pepsi and said to him: “You can write about anything. Now write about this!” Blackwell provided Presley with further hit songs, including “Return to Sender” and “One Broken Heart for Sale”. But “All Shook Up” and “Don't Be Cruel” have remained in the record books as the two songs which stayed at No.1 for longer than any of Presley's other hits.
There has been considerable speculation over the relationship between Blackwell and Presley, who never met. “We had a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone,” Blackwell said in an interview in 1989. Their two names often appeared together on records as co-writers, but in truth Presley's role as a writer was negligible. It was common practice at the time to sell part or all of the rights of a song and Presley's astute manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was well aware of the value of the publishing royalties. It has also been said that Presley borrowed many of his vocal mannerisms from Blackwell. Certainly it was the singer's method at the time to copy wholesale the writer's demo of a song, arrangement and all. As Presley used Blackwell's demos to learn the songs, the debt was probably considerable.
A prolific writer, who sometimes used the white-sounding pseudonym John Davenport, Blackwell copyrighted more than a thousand compositions in his career. Among them was Jerry Lee Lewis's signature tune “Great Balls of Fire”, as well as further hits for Lewis in “Breathless” and “Let's Talk About Us”. There were more 1950s rock'n'roll hits with “Hey Little Girl” and “Just Keep It Up” by the now almost-forgotten Dee Clark, and Cliff Richard recorded his “Nine Times out of Ten”. Jimmy Jones had a hit in 1960 with Blackwell's “Handy Man”, which was revived by James Taylor in the 1970s, and Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Tanya Tucker also recorded his songs. So, too, did Ray Charles and Otis Redding, although Blackwell was disappointed that few black artists ever had hits with his compositions.
He continued writing and performing and enjoyed some success in 1976 with the comeback album “These Are My Songs!” on the Inner City label. He also recorded the tribute The No.1 King of Rock'n'Roll on his own Fever label when Presley died in 1977. In 1991 he was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. Three years later, Chrissie Hynde, Graham Parker and Deborah Harry were among those contributing cover versions of his songs to the album “Brace Yourself: A Tribute to the Songs of Otis Blackwell”. Although there were many other generous acknowledgements to his role and influence down the years, his style essentially belonged to an earlier era and he was never to repeat the scale of success he had enjoyed in rock' n' roll's first decade.
Otis Blackwell, died in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 6, 2002.
Source: spectropop
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/arts/otis-blackwell-70-wrote-hits-for-presley-and-others.html
Arts
Otis Blackwell, 70; Wrote Hits for Presley and Others
Otis
Blackwell, who wrote ''All Shook Up,'' ''Don't Be Cruel,'' ''Great
Balls of Fire,'' ''Fever'' and more than 1,000 other songs, and had a
major part in shaping the sound of rock 'n' roll, died on Monday in a
hospital in Nashville, where he lived. He was 70.
The
cause was a heart attack, said Sawnie R. Aldredge, an attorney in
Nashville who has been handling Mr. Blackwell's affairs since he had a
debilitating stroke in 1991.
His
songs joined the sentimentality of pop, the twang of country music and
the propulsive rhythm of the blues, and his lyrics, even at their
hottest, could be playful. As he wrote in ''Great Balls of Fire'':
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, but what a thrill
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!
Mr.
Blackwell was born in Brooklyn in 1931 and from an early age crossed a
cultural color line. At home, his family gathered around the piano to
sing gospel songs, but while working at a nearby movie theater he became
obsessed with the singing cowboy movies of Tex Ritter.
''Like
the blues, it told a story,'' he once said of country music. ''But it
didn't have the same restrictive construction. A cowboy song could do
anything.''
He
began his career singing in blues clubs, and in 1952 signed to RCA
Victor with the help of the music publisher Joe Davis; the next year he
switched to Davis's Jay-Dee label and released a hit, ''Daddy Rollin'
Stone.''
Davis
paid him $25 a week, and to augment this allowance Mr. Blackwell began
writing songs for other singers. Soon his songwriting career eclipsed
his performing.
One
of the first songs he sold, ''Don't Be Cruel,'' turned out to be a
major hit and a pop milestone. It was recorded on July 2, 1956, by a
young Elvis Presley, and released less than two weeks later on a
double-sided single with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's ''Hound Dog.''
The single was No. 1 on the pop charts for 11 weeks -- and
simultaneously stood atop the country and R&B charts for a time --
and went on to sell more than 3 million copies.
It
was a breakthrough for both Mr. Blackwell and Presley. ''Otis wrote in a
style that came to define a new synthesis that Elvis was groping for,''
said Peter Guralnick, the author of a two-volume biography of Presley.
''From the first moment Elvis heard 'Don't Be Cruel,' he just snapped on
it. It was a perfect song for him.'' Mr. Blackwell went on to write
many more hits for Presley, like ''Return to Sender,'' though the two
never met.
Mr.
Blackwell's songwriting legacy is complex because he sometimes used
pseudonyms and split authorship credit with others. Many of the songs he
wrote for Presley gave both men songwriting credit, because of an
arrangement with Presley's management. ''I was told that I would have to
make a deal,'' Mr. Blackwell later said. But with million-selling
songs, he prospered.
He
also collaborated with other songwriters. ''Fever'' was written with
Eddie Cooley and was co-credited to one John Davenport (a pen name used
by Mr. Blackwell because at the time he was still under contract with
Jay-Dee). ''Return to Sender'' was written with Winfield Scott and
''Great Balls of Fire'' with Jack Hammer.
''Great
Balls of Fire'' was another blockbuster for Mr. Blackwell. He wrote the
song for a 1957 teen film, ''Jamboree,'' and in Jerry Lee Lewis's
piano-pounding performance the song, which was co-credited to Jack
Hammer, became a No. 2 hit and sold five million copies. Mr. Lewis also
sang Mr. Blackwell's ''Breathless,'' ''Livin' Lovin' Wreck'' and ''Let's
Talk About Us.''
Mr.
Blackwell continued to write hits into the 1960's, among them ''Hey
Little Girl,'' a hit for Dee Clark in 1959 that was written with Bobby
Stevenson; and ''Handy Man,'' which was recorded by Jimmy Jones in 1960,
Del Shannon in 1964 and James Taylor in 1977. (''Handy Man'' was also
credited to Mr. Jones and Charles Merenstein.) But as the rock 'n' roll
era became focused on groups that wrote their own material, his
influence faded.
In
the late 1970's Blackwell recorded an album of his own hits and began
to tour. He recorded in Nashville frequently and in 1990 moved there. A
stroke the following year left him nearly unable to move; he
communicated via computer.
He
is survived by his wife, Mamie Wiggins Blackwell of Nashville, and
seven children: Otis Jr. and Leslie, of Nashville; Odette, of Manhattan;
and Kimberly Scott, Michael Scott, Timothy and Ellen, all of Las Vegas.
Though
Mr. Blackwell had to split his songwriting royalties with Presley, he
still collected his share, which was a great deal of money. And Mr.
Blackwell, known as a bon vivant, spent it gladly.
He once said, ''I wrote my songs, I got my money and I boogied.''
[Editor's note: This is an incredibly racist and utterly patronizing obituary of Mr. Blackwell with respect to not only his often brazenly exploited and racially segregated work on behalf of Elvis Presley but in its general overall assessment of the value of Blackwell's extraordinary career. The blatant fact that there is strangely no byline for this obituary is telling and is an indictment of the NYT editorial staff. ] --Kofi Natambu
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/croisdale64.html
LEGENDARY SONGWRITER OTIS BLACKWELL LEAVES BEHIND A RICH MUSICAL LEGACY
What separates him from the few who can rightfully claim to be his peers is that he never begrudged the white men their good fortune. He knew that ultimately his genius would be recognized and that the respect of subsequent generations of young men and women would serve as his ultimate reward.
His name was Otis Blackwell and he died of a heart attack May 6 at the age of 71. Chances are the name doesn't ring a bell, but rest assured, you know the work of Otis Blackwell and you'll carry it in your mind until the day you die.
Otis Blackwell very well may have been the greatest songwriter alive during the early decades of rock'n'roll. Try this litany of songs on for size. Blackwell wrote "Don't Be Cruel," "All Shook Up," "One Broken Heart For Sale," and "Return to Sender" for Elvis Presley. He wrote "Fever" for Peggy Lee and "Hey Little Girl" for Dee Clark. One of Blackwell's first records was "Daddy Rollin' Stone," released by Jay-Dee in 1953 and later covered by the Who. Otis also wrote "Handyman," a hit three times for Jimmy Jones, Del Shannon and James Taylor, respectively. If that wasn't enough, Otis Blackwell also penned two of Jerry Lee Lewis' most raucous chart-toppers, "Breathless" and "Great Balls of Fire."
Now that's a resume.
What was most amazing about Otis Blackwell was the humble nature that resided at the core of his being.
He was born in 1931 in Brooklyn. While the young Blackwell was weaned on R&B singers like Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell, it was the singing cowboys of Hollywood -- Tex Ritter in particular -- that he claimed had the most influence over his eventual writing style.
Blackwell was a true romantic and the theme of women's sexuality and its power over mere mortal men was a common theme that ran through his music.
On Christmas Eve of 1955, while working as a clothes-presser after a failed stint as a touring singer, Blackwell made a fateful decision that would forever free him from the mundane duties of a general laborer. On that day Blackwell sold six of his songs to Shalamar Publishing for $150. Among them was a little ditty called "Don't be Cruel." Elvis recorded the song with the same arrangement that Otis had laid down on the demo record and it went to No. 1 on the charts in 1956.
One of the most intriguing tales about the genius of Otis Blackwell concerns the genesis of the song "All Shook Up" -- a No. 1 hit for Elvis in 1957. Goldy Goldmark, who plugged records for Shalamar, was chiding Blackwell about his God-given ability to write hit songs that appealed to the masses, across age, sex, and racial lines. To accentuate his point, Goldmark emphatically shook the bottle of Pepsi he was drinking and slammed it down on the table. "I bet you can even make a hit out of that," he said to Blackwell and strode out of the room. The rest, of course, is pop music history.
She touched my hand what a chill I got
Her lips are like a volcano that's hot
I'm proud to say she's my buttercup
I'm in love
I'm all shook up
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!
The later years of Otis Blackwell's life found him prolific professionally and snake-bitten personally. He went through a string of bad marriages and fell into discourse with the IRS. His sweet-natured, even-tempered personality endeared him to friends and family, but his one vice -- alcohol -- complicated his life. By his own admission, Blackwell frittered away his savings "on all the gin I could drink." Only the interceding benevolence of BMI Publishing convinced him not to sign away the rights and royalties to all of his songs.
In total, Otis Blackwell wrote over 1,000 songs. His best work made stars out of Presley, Lewis and Lee and left their indelible print on the history of rock'n'roll.
This humble man, who never wanted the spotlight and never envied those who became icons singing his work over the AM bandwidth, is now tinkling the keys of his piano for a standing-room-only crowd behind the pearly gates.
Those of us who remain have his body of work to comfort us in our grief, yet we cannot help but be "All Shook Up" over his passing.
Frank Thomas Croisdale has been a freelance writer for 17 years and is actively involved in the Niagara Falls tourism industry. He lives in Niagara Falls. He can be reached at NFReporter@aol.com.
http://www.tsimon.com/blackwell.htm
Otis Blackwell
Otis Blackwell worked as a singer/songwriter/pianist in the 50's, 60's
and 70's. Although his recordings never met with much success, many of
the songs that he wrote went on to become very well-known,
million-selling songs.
Otis was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1931. He grew up listening to
cowboy songs, particularly those by Tex Ritter, and R&B songs by
artists such as Chuck Willis. As a teenager he entered and won a contest
at the Apollo Theatre in New York City. He was introduced to songwriter
Doc Pomus, who encouraged him and helped him early in his career. One
of Otis' early records titled Daddy Rollin' Stone was released by Jay-Dee in 1953. It was revived later in a version recorded by The Who.
Things changed for Otis Blackwell on Christmas Eve, 1955. That night he
sold six songs that he had written for a total of $150. One of the demos
included in these six had been recorded with Otis playing piano and the
drummer using a cardboard box. It was picked up by Elvis Presley, who
did not write his own songs and whose style at the time was to pick
songs that he liked from demos that he heard and then use the same
arrangement that he had heard on the demo. The song was Don't Be Cruel, which went to number one in 1956, as did another Presley song the following year that had been written by Otis, All Shook Up. It had been inspired a shaken bottle of Pepsi Cola.
The success of Don't Be Cruel gave a jolt to the songwriting career of the talented Otis Blackwell. He wrote more songs for Presley, among them One Broken Heart For Sale and Return To Sender.
Blackwell admired Presley, and Presley looked to Blackwell for
inspiration on the arrangements of some of his early pop songs. Most of
what Presley had done to that point had come from the R&B or country
fields of music. Otis Blackwell's compositions were more rock-and-roll,
or pop-oriented.
Otis Blackwell continued to record many records, although none of them
ever managed to crack the top forty. But it was a different story for
many of the songs that he wrote. One of these was Fever, for
which Little Willie John took the writing credit, and which became a hit
for both Little Willie John and Peggy Lee. There were many other hits
written by Otis, such as Hey Little Girl for Dee Clark, and Breathless and Great Balls Of Fire for Jerry Lee Lewis.
Otis Blackwell sometimes wrote songs under the pseudonym John Davenport.
He met with a great deal of success as a songwriter and has received a
lot of respect within the music industry, even though his name is not
well known to the general public. When Stevie Wonder received an award
for Best Male Vocalist in 1976, he acknowledged Otis Blackwell as a
magnificent songwriter.
In 1977 Blackwell was working on a score for a film about the life of
Elvis Presley. During this time, Presley died, and Blackwell was
inspired to record The No. 1 King Of Rock'n'Roll as a tribute on his own Fever label. He also recorded some albums in the late 70's, These Are My Songs and Singin' The Blues.
Following a lengthy illness, Otis passed away on May 6, 2002 in
Nashville. Otis Blackwell had a very successful run as a prolific writer
of nearly 1,000 songs. His legacy includes a number of top-selling
rock-and-roll records.
http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/otis-blackwell.html
“Otis
wrote in a style that came to define a new synthesis that Elvis was
groping for,” noted Presley biographer Peter Guralnick. The Songwriters
Hall of Fame profile of Blackwell notes that his songs, “helped to
launch the Presley legend to the heights of the stratosphere (and then
some), and it’s certainly equally accurate to say that these initial
successes with Presley quickly secured Blackwell’s place in the Who’s
Who of American pop songwriters.” Their timely connection in 1956 was a
breakthrough for both of them.
Otis Blackwell was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 16, 1931, four years before Presley’s birth. Like Elvis, Otis’s first musical experience involved singing gospel songs with his family. But also like Elvis, Otis’s taste in music crossed cultural color lines early in life. “Tex Ritter was my idol,” he declared in a 1979 interview. “In my neighborhood there was a movie theater. I used to sit from morning to night watching cowboy pictures … I would have preferred to sing country.” Of country music, Blackwell once said, “Like the blues, it told a story. But it didn’t have the same restrictive construction. A cowboy song could do anything.”
Blackwell’s introduction to the music business began with his uncle taking him to New York City blues clubs. “I’d get up and sing a song or two,” he recalled. “That’s how we used to make a little change. People would throw quarters.” By age 16, Otis had a manager, of sorts, who booked him into various clubs. “I started writing when I began singing,” he explained. “I’d sit down and doodle and fool around but I must have been 18 when I got out and hustled the songs.”
• “Fever” put Otis Blackwell on the musical map
Soon after
the success with “Fever,” Blackwell wrote what would become his
signature song—“Don’t Be Cruel.” Although he no longer made commercial
recordings, Otis sang on demonstration records of his compositions.
According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, his singing style and catchy
tunes caught the ear of Aaron “Goldie” Goldmark at Shalimar Music
Publishing. “Goldmark who was already well-known in the Elvis Presley
inner circle, managed to get Presley’s people to hear some of
Blackwell’s demos, which became the great door opener every songwriter
dreamt about.”
And so it happened that Blackwell’s “Don’t Be Cruel” was among a stack of demos RCA executive Steve Sholes presented to Elvis at a New York recording session of July 2, 1956. “From the first moment Elvis heard ‘Don’t Be Cruel,” he just snapped on it,” said Guralnick. “It was a perfect song for him.” Backed with “Hound Dog,” it became the biggest two-sided single hit record of Elvis’s career. On its own, “Don’t Be Cruel” spent 7 weeks at #1 on Billboard’s “Top 100” pop chart in 1956.
• Presley writing credit still controversial
Half a century later, though, controversy still lives concerning the song’s authorship. It was the first of three songs for which Blackwell shared writing credit with Presley. “I was told that I would have to make a deal,” Otis explained. Many have argued that Presley’s management virtually stole half of the writer royalties on “Don’t Be Cruel,” all of which should have gone to Blackwell. However, in a 1957 article in Jet magazine, Otis declared, “I got a good deal. I made money, I’m happy.”
After the success of “Don’t Be Cruel,” Blackwell was asked to write more songs for Elvis. RCA set up a Hollywood session in September 1956 to record material for Presley’s second RCA album and a new single. Otis’s contribution, “Paralyzed,” seemed like a good candidate for the rhythm side of the single, but it became a cut on the LP, when “Too Much” was selected for single release instead. Blackwell explained, “The story I got was that because of the word ‘paralyzed’ a lot of organizations got down on the thing, so they wouldn’t release it as a single.” Still, as a cut on an extended 45 album, “Paralyzed” charted on the “Top 100” for 7 weeks in early 1957.
Otis had better luck with his next song for Elvis, which would be the last for which Presley would get co-writer credit. In the 1979 interview, Blackwell explained how he got the idea for the title. “Al Stanton walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it … and said, ‘Otis, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you write a song called ‘All Shook Up.’' Two days later I brought the song in and said, ‘Look, man. I did something with it.’ After that song, the agreement about sharing song writing credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.”
Elvis recorded “All Shook Up” in RCA’s Hollywood studios on January 12, 1957. Later that year it became Presley biggest chart record ever, spending 30 weeks in the “Top 100,” including 8 weeks at #1.
Although
Presley’s induction into the army in 1958 suspended their collaboration
for two years, Blackwell continued to have success writing hit records
for other artists. Most notably, he wrote “Great Balls of Fire” and
“Breathless” for Jerry Lee Lewis. He also wrote “Just Keep It Up” and
“Hey Little Girl” for Dee Clark and “Handy Man” for Jimmy Jones.
• Elvis recorded two Otis Blackwell songs for “Elvis Is Back” LP
After Elvis returned to civilian life in 1960, Blackwell was included among a group of songwriters who were invited to submit songs for possible use on Presley records and movie soundtracks. The first song Elvis recorded during his first post-army recording session was Blackwell’s “Make Me Know It,” which, along with “Fever,” appeared on Presley’s “Elvis Is Back” LP.
It was two years later, though, before Presley recorded another Blackwell song. By then Otis had teamed up with the most well known of his many writing partners. “I’ve done a lot of stuff by myself, but I enjoy writing with other people too,” he explained in the 1971 Presley radio documentary. “So I teamed up with this other guy—Robey is his name—his name is Winfield Scott, but we call him Robey.” Together they submitted “(Such An) Easy Question,” which Elvis recorded for his 1962 studio album, “Pot Luck.” In 1965, when the song was reissued as a single, it reached #11 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” chart.
The Blackwell-Scott team got their biggest hit later in 1962 when they submitted some material for Elvis’s Paramount musical, Girls! Girls! Girls! In a 1984 interview published in Elvis: The Man and His Music in 1991, Blackwell explained how “Return to Sender” got into the soundtrack.
“In that movie they gave us all these titles to write. And there was only one title that we wrote that came into the movie—‘We’re Comin’ In Loaded.’ We also wrote ‘Return to Sender,’ but [it] was not one of the titles. Colonel Parker had come to New York, and I went and met him. He said that Elvis was going to do this movie, and he had some songs that he had to take back, and he asked me did we have any. So I told him that the only two songs were ‘Comin’ in Loaded,’ which we wrote for the movie, but the other song was not a title they’d given us. He said, ‘Well, you gotta play it for me anyway, ‘cause Elvis loves to hear your stuff.’ So … I played ‘Return to Sender’ for him, and he said, ‘Don’t worry. That will go into the movie, I can tell you that, ‘cause it’s a great song.’”
• Blackwell wrote back-to-back Presley singles in 1962-63
Of course, released as a single in 1962, “Return to Sender” became one of Elvis’s most recognizable songs. It spent 16 weeks in the “Hot 100,” including 10 weeks in the top 10 and 5 weeks at #2. Blackwell and Scott also penned Presley’s next single. “One Broken Heart For Sale” was used in the soundtrack of “It Happened At the World’s Fair” and was Elvis’s first single release in 1963.
The last Blackwell-Scott song that Elvis recorded was “Please Don’t Drag That String Around,” which was the B side of Presley’s 1963 hit single, “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” “We figured we would put a little comedy thing into that one,” Blackwell recalled in 1984. “We tried to lean a little bit toward the country side.”
As the late sixties ushered in an era of groups and singer-songwriters, Otis Blackwell’s influence on the pop music scene began to fade. And even though Elvis hadn’t recorded one of his songs in 15 years, he took it hard when Presley died in 1977. “He was like a piece of the whole business,” he explained. “I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside man, they’ll always live. When they’re gone, a certain piece goes and you just can’t believe it.”
In the late seventies, Blackwell recorded an album of his own hit music and went out on tour. In 1987 he sang “Don’t Be Cruel” during an appearance on The David Letterman Show. In 1990 he moved to Nashville to be near the recording industry. He suffered a debilitating stroke the next year, and died of a heart attack in 2002 at the age of 70. He is interred in Nashville’s Memorial Park Cemetery.
Otis Blackwell wrote over 1,000 songs. He has been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1986), the National Academy of Popular Music’s Songwriters Hall of Fame (1991), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2010).
• Long lost Blackwell-Scott recording by Elvis found
In 2003 Elvis Presley and Otis Blackwell fans were surprised to learn that one more collaboration between these two rock ’n’ roll pioneers had been discovered. Among his stored possessions, Winfield Scott found an acetate of an unreleased Elvis recording of a song Blackwell and Scott had submitted for use in Presley’s 1964 film, Roustabout. Blackwell had discussed the recording in a 1984 telephone interview with Jan-Erik Kjeseth:
“The only song that Elvis recorded which hasn’t been released was a song we did for a movie called ‘Roustabout’ … Elvis would give us titles to write, and then it would be like maybe 5 or 10 of us writing the same title. They would pick what they considered to be the best title. In some cases they even went so far as to make records to see which one came out the best … We heard the tape of it over at the office, but they said that this was not going to be the one that was to be released … The way it came out, it was pretty good. You know, being a writer you sometimes tend to think, ‘It’s not that I find the other record so bad, but my song is better,’ you know … It was a pretty good cut.”
I have to agree with Otis on this one. Elvis’s recording of Blackwell and Scott’s “I’m a Roustabout,” first released on the Presley compilation “Second to None” in 2003, is considerably better than the song selected for the Roustabout title track in 1964.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/09/guardianobituaries.arts
For a generation of rock 'n' roll fans, Otis Blackwell, who has died of a
heart attack, aged 70, was no more than a name on record labels, in
small type beneath the titles of Elvis Presley's Don't Be Cruel and All
Shook Up. Those inquisitive enough to follow the clue further found
Blackwell credited on several other potent songs, including Jerry Lee
Lewis's Great Balls Of Fire and Breathless, Jimmy Jones's Handy Man and
Dee Clark's Hey Little Girl. He wrote the Peggy Lee hit Fever, though
the composer credit went to the artist who first recorded it, Little
Willie John.
Otis Blackwell … His Music Fueled the Elvis Machine in the Fifties
Otis
Blackwell and Elvis Presley never met, but their respective talents
intersected at a crucial time in the history of popular music. After an
unsuccessful recording career in the early 1950s, Blackwell found his
calling as a songwriter. At the same time, Presley’s unique set of
singing and performing skills were catching fire with the country’s
teenagers.
However, Elvis depended on young rhythm and blues composers
to provide the particular kind of music needed to continue fueling his
exploding career. In 1956 it was Otis Blackwell who provided much of
that fuel.
Otis Blackwell was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 16, 1931, four years before Presley’s birth. Like Elvis, Otis’s first musical experience involved singing gospel songs with his family. But also like Elvis, Otis’s taste in music crossed cultural color lines early in life. “Tex Ritter was my idol,” he declared in a 1979 interview. “In my neighborhood there was a movie theater. I used to sit from morning to night watching cowboy pictures … I would have preferred to sing country.” Of country music, Blackwell once said, “Like the blues, it told a story. But it didn’t have the same restrictive construction. A cowboy song could do anything.”
Blackwell’s introduction to the music business began with his uncle taking him to New York City blues clubs. “I’d get up and sing a song or two,” he recalled. “That’s how we used to make a little change. People would throw quarters.” By age 16, Otis had a manager, of sorts, who booked him into various clubs. “I started writing when I began singing,” he explained. “I’d sit down and doodle and fool around but I must have been 18 when I got out and hustled the songs.”
• “Fever” put Otis Blackwell on the musical map
His breakout tune was “Fever,” co-written with Eddie Cooley in 1955. In a 1971 Presley radio documentary, Blackwell recalled how the song first got recorded.
“We took that song over to King Records, because Henry Glover, a friend, was running the company then. He said he had a fellow named Little Willie John, and he believed this song would be good for him. And it’s a funny part about that because it took us an awful long time to get Willie John to record it … he’d say, ‘Who the heck wants to sing a song has to do with fever and finger-popin’?’”
Little Willie John’s recording of “Fever” was an R&B hit in 1956. It was Peggy Lee’s sultry pop version, however, that Presley mimicked when he recorded “Fever” for his “Elvis Is Back” LP in 1960.
And so it happened that Blackwell’s “Don’t Be Cruel” was among a stack of demos RCA executive Steve Sholes presented to Elvis at a New York recording session of July 2, 1956. “From the first moment Elvis heard ‘Don’t Be Cruel,” he just snapped on it,” said Guralnick. “It was a perfect song for him.” Backed with “Hound Dog,” it became the biggest two-sided single hit record of Elvis’s career. On its own, “Don’t Be Cruel” spent 7 weeks at #1 on Billboard’s “Top 100” pop chart in 1956.
• Presley writing credit still controversial
Half a century later, though, controversy still lives concerning the song’s authorship. It was the first of three songs for which Blackwell shared writing credit with Presley. “I was told that I would have to make a deal,” Otis explained. Many have argued that Presley’s management virtually stole half of the writer royalties on “Don’t Be Cruel,” all of which should have gone to Blackwell. However, in a 1957 article in Jet magazine, Otis declared, “I got a good deal. I made money, I’m happy.”
After the success of “Don’t Be Cruel,” Blackwell was asked to write more songs for Elvis. RCA set up a Hollywood session in September 1956 to record material for Presley’s second RCA album and a new single. Otis’s contribution, “Paralyzed,” seemed like a good candidate for the rhythm side of the single, but it became a cut on the LP, when “Too Much” was selected for single release instead. Blackwell explained, “The story I got was that because of the word ‘paralyzed’ a lot of organizations got down on the thing, so they wouldn’t release it as a single.” Still, as a cut on an extended 45 album, “Paralyzed” charted on the “Top 100” for 7 weeks in early 1957.
Otis had better luck with his next song for Elvis, which would be the last for which Presley would get co-writer credit. In the 1979 interview, Blackwell explained how he got the idea for the title. “Al Stanton walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it … and said, ‘Otis, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you write a song called ‘All Shook Up.’' Two days later I brought the song in and said, ‘Look, man. I did something with it.’ After that song, the agreement about sharing song writing credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.”
Elvis recorded “All Shook Up” in RCA’s Hollywood studios on January 12, 1957. Later that year it became Presley biggest chart record ever, spending 30 weeks in the “Top 100,” including 8 weeks at #1.
• Elvis recorded two Otis Blackwell songs for “Elvis Is Back” LP
After Elvis returned to civilian life in 1960, Blackwell was included among a group of songwriters who were invited to submit songs for possible use on Presley records and movie soundtracks. The first song Elvis recorded during his first post-army recording session was Blackwell’s “Make Me Know It,” which, along with “Fever,” appeared on Presley’s “Elvis Is Back” LP.
It was two years later, though, before Presley recorded another Blackwell song. By then Otis had teamed up with the most well known of his many writing partners. “I’ve done a lot of stuff by myself, but I enjoy writing with other people too,” he explained in the 1971 Presley radio documentary. “So I teamed up with this other guy—Robey is his name—his name is Winfield Scott, but we call him Robey.” Together they submitted “(Such An) Easy Question,” which Elvis recorded for his 1962 studio album, “Pot Luck.” In 1965, when the song was reissued as a single, it reached #11 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” chart.
The Blackwell-Scott team got their biggest hit later in 1962 when they submitted some material for Elvis’s Paramount musical, Girls! Girls! Girls! In a 1984 interview published in Elvis: The Man and His Music in 1991, Blackwell explained how “Return to Sender” got into the soundtrack.
“In that movie they gave us all these titles to write. And there was only one title that we wrote that came into the movie—‘We’re Comin’ In Loaded.’ We also wrote ‘Return to Sender,’ but [it] was not one of the titles. Colonel Parker had come to New York, and I went and met him. He said that Elvis was going to do this movie, and he had some songs that he had to take back, and he asked me did we have any. So I told him that the only two songs were ‘Comin’ in Loaded,’ which we wrote for the movie, but the other song was not a title they’d given us. He said, ‘Well, you gotta play it for me anyway, ‘cause Elvis loves to hear your stuff.’ So … I played ‘Return to Sender’ for him, and he said, ‘Don’t worry. That will go into the movie, I can tell you that, ‘cause it’s a great song.’”
• Blackwell wrote back-to-back Presley singles in 1962-63
Of course, released as a single in 1962, “Return to Sender” became one of Elvis’s most recognizable songs. It spent 16 weeks in the “Hot 100,” including 10 weeks in the top 10 and 5 weeks at #2. Blackwell and Scott also penned Presley’s next single. “One Broken Heart For Sale” was used in the soundtrack of “It Happened At the World’s Fair” and was Elvis’s first single release in 1963.
The last Blackwell-Scott song that Elvis recorded was “Please Don’t Drag That String Around,” which was the B side of Presley’s 1963 hit single, “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise.” “We figured we would put a little comedy thing into that one,” Blackwell recalled in 1984. “We tried to lean a little bit toward the country side.”
As the late sixties ushered in an era of groups and singer-songwriters, Otis Blackwell’s influence on the pop music scene began to fade. And even though Elvis hadn’t recorded one of his songs in 15 years, he took it hard when Presley died in 1977. “He was like a piece of the whole business,” he explained. “I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside man, they’ll always live. When they’re gone, a certain piece goes and you just can’t believe it.”
In the late seventies, Blackwell recorded an album of his own hit music and went out on tour. In 1987 he sang “Don’t Be Cruel” during an appearance on The David Letterman Show. In 1990 he moved to Nashville to be near the recording industry. He suffered a debilitating stroke the next year, and died of a heart attack in 2002 at the age of 70. He is interred in Nashville’s Memorial Park Cemetery.
Otis Blackwell wrote over 1,000 songs. He has been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1986), the National Academy of Popular Music’s Songwriters Hall of Fame (1991), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2010).
• Long lost Blackwell-Scott recording by Elvis found
In 2003 Elvis Presley and Otis Blackwell fans were surprised to learn that one more collaboration between these two rock ’n’ roll pioneers had been discovered. Among his stored possessions, Winfield Scott found an acetate of an unreleased Elvis recording of a song Blackwell and Scott had submitted for use in Presley’s 1964 film, Roustabout. Blackwell had discussed the recording in a 1984 telephone interview with Jan-Erik Kjeseth:
“The only song that Elvis recorded which hasn’t been released was a song we did for a movie called ‘Roustabout’ … Elvis would give us titles to write, and then it would be like maybe 5 or 10 of us writing the same title. They would pick what they considered to be the best title. In some cases they even went so far as to make records to see which one came out the best … We heard the tape of it over at the office, but they said that this was not going to be the one that was to be released … The way it came out, it was pretty good. You know, being a writer you sometimes tend to think, ‘It’s not that I find the other record so bad, but my song is better,’ you know … It was a pretty good cut.”
I have to agree with Otis on this one. Elvis’s recording of Blackwell and Scott’s “I’m a Roustabout,” first released on the Presley compilation “Second to None” in 2003, is considerably better than the song selected for the Roustabout title track in 1964.
I’m not sure if there is an epitaph on Otis Blackwell’s gravestone in Nashville. If not, a good one would the Blackwell quote used at the end of his 2002 obituary in The New York Times: “I wrote my songs, I got my money and I boogied.” — Alan Hanson | © April 2013--Note: This crack is still more condescening racism--Kofi Natambu
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/09/guardianobituaries.arts
Otis Blackwell
Prolific writer behind some of Elvis's greatest hits
Don't Be Cruel was one of half a dozen songs that Blackwell sold on
Christmas Eve, 1955, for $25 each, to the New York publisher Moe Gale.
Soon afterwards he cut a demo recording of it, playing his own piano
accompaniment, with a drum part tapped out on a cardboard box. Presley
liked the song very much and, when he came to record it, followed
Blackwell's interpretation closely.
RCA Records, not divining its potential, issued it as the B-side of Hound Dog, but record-buyers overturned the decision by turning the record over: Hound Dog topped the chart for four weeks, but Don't Be Cruel for nine. It remained on the chart for half a year, a milestone not passed until Presley did so a year later with All Shook Up, also based on Blackwell's demo.
According to music business legend "Goldy" Goldmark, Moe Gale's partner in Shalimar Publishing, said to Blackwell, "You can write about anything. Write about this!" Whereupon he shook a bottle of soda.
Blackwell went home and wrote All Shook Up. "After he (Presley) came out with Don't Be Cruel," Blackwell remembered, "and I heard how close it was to the demo record I had done, I made sure I did all the demos for my songs. I didn't mind that he copied the demos so closely: I figured making good demos was a surer way of getting him to record my stuff."
Although Presley went on to buy more Blackwell compositions, such as Return To Sender and One Broken Heart For Sale, the songwriter was carefully prevented from meeting his best customer. The deal for writers in those days was that if Presley condescended to record their songs, they had to split the composer royalties with him. So it was important, reasoned Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to keep composers ignorant of the fact that Presley was often enthusiastic about their work and would have recorded it anyway.
Blackwell grew up in Brooklyn. In 1952 he won a talent contest at the Apollo Theatre and began working in clubs, encouraged by the singer and songwriter Doc Pomus. Falling in with the veteran recording man Joe Davis, he recorded several singles for his Jay-Dee label, among them Daddy Rollin' Stone (1953), which was revived in the 1960s by the Jamaican blue beat singer Derek Martin and then by the Who.
His plaintive singing style was derived in part from the popular R&B singers Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell, and in part from cowboy music. "I was a big cowboy fan and liked western music," he told interviewer Bill King in 1989. "You couldn't get that stuff where I lived, so I hung out at a little theatre that played Gene Autry and Tex Ritter movies. Tex Ritter is still my favourite singer."
Blackwell was always modest about his songwriting. "I played a little boogie-woogie and the shuffle, so I wrote over that," he once said. "Then the Beatles came over and knocked that out." He spent much of the 1960s and 70s in the shadows of pop music history, but after being acknowledged by Stevie Wonder at a 1976 awards ceremony he re-entered the business as a performer, recording albums of his work such as These Are My Songs (1978).
In 1989 he reported cheerfully: "You know, my thing was always about I Love You, Your Feet's Too Big and that kind of stuff, so I figured I'd sit down and write something different. One of the new songs deals with the situation with guns, and another one deals with the homeless. I've got two or three rock 'n' roll tunes. It's the best stuff I've done in a long time."
He was then dividing his time between his home in Brooklyn and Nashville, where he had been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1994 he received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation and saw the release of a tribute album, Brace Yourself, with versions of his songs by Chrissie Hynde, Deborah Harry, Graham Parker and Joe Ely. Blackwell suffered a stroke in 1991 and had been in poor health for some time.
Otis Blackwell, songwriter, born February 16 1932; died May 6 2002
Topics
https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/otis-blackwell.shtml
Home › Elvis Presley.News › Articles › Reviews › Interviews › FTD › Sitemap ›
Otis Blackwell was reportedly a very quiet man. Yet in truth he didn't need to speak much, as his wonderful songs spoke in volumes. 'Don't Be Cruel', 'All Shook Up', 'Paralyzed' and 'Great Balls Of Fire' are among the rock and roll treasures he created'.
RCA Records, not divining its potential, issued it as the B-side of Hound Dog, but record-buyers overturned the decision by turning the record over: Hound Dog topped the chart for four weeks, but Don't Be Cruel for nine. It remained on the chart for half a year, a milestone not passed until Presley did so a year later with All Shook Up, also based on Blackwell's demo.
According to music business legend "Goldy" Goldmark, Moe Gale's partner in Shalimar Publishing, said to Blackwell, "You can write about anything. Write about this!" Whereupon he shook a bottle of soda.
Blackwell went home and wrote All Shook Up. "After he (Presley) came out with Don't Be Cruel," Blackwell remembered, "and I heard how close it was to the demo record I had done, I made sure I did all the demos for my songs. I didn't mind that he copied the demos so closely: I figured making good demos was a surer way of getting him to record my stuff."
Although Presley went on to buy more Blackwell compositions, such as Return To Sender and One Broken Heart For Sale, the songwriter was carefully prevented from meeting his best customer. The deal for writers in those days was that if Presley condescended to record their songs, they had to split the composer royalties with him. So it was important, reasoned Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to keep composers ignorant of the fact that Presley was often enthusiastic about their work and would have recorded it anyway.
Blackwell grew up in Brooklyn. In 1952 he won a talent contest at the Apollo Theatre and began working in clubs, encouraged by the singer and songwriter Doc Pomus. Falling in with the veteran recording man Joe Davis, he recorded several singles for his Jay-Dee label, among them Daddy Rollin' Stone (1953), which was revived in the 1960s by the Jamaican blue beat singer Derek Martin and then by the Who.
His plaintive singing style was derived in part from the popular R&B singers Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell, and in part from cowboy music. "I was a big cowboy fan and liked western music," he told interviewer Bill King in 1989. "You couldn't get that stuff where I lived, so I hung out at a little theatre that played Gene Autry and Tex Ritter movies. Tex Ritter is still my favourite singer."
Blackwell was always modest about his songwriting. "I played a little boogie-woogie and the shuffle, so I wrote over that," he once said. "Then the Beatles came over and knocked that out." He spent much of the 1960s and 70s in the shadows of pop music history, but after being acknowledged by Stevie Wonder at a 1976 awards ceremony he re-entered the business as a performer, recording albums of his work such as These Are My Songs (1978).
In 1989 he reported cheerfully: "You know, my thing was always about I Love You, Your Feet's Too Big and that kind of stuff, so I figured I'd sit down and write something different. One of the new songs deals with the situation with guns, and another one deals with the homeless. I've got two or three rock 'n' roll tunes. It's the best stuff I've done in a long time."
He was then dividing his time between his home in Brooklyn and Nashville, where he had been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1994 he received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation and saw the release of a tribute album, Brace Yourself, with versions of his songs by Chrissie Hynde, Deborah Harry, Graham Parker and Joe Ely. Blackwell suffered a stroke in 1991 and had been in poor health for some time.
Otis Blackwell, songwriter, born February 16 1932; died May 6 2002
Topics
https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/otis-blackwell.shtml
Home › Elvis Presley.News › Articles › Reviews › Interviews › FTD › Sitemap › Otis Blackwell & Elvis Presley
by: Elvis Australia
Source: www.elvis.com.au
March 5, 2008
Source: www.elvis.com.au
March 5, 2008
Otis Blackwell was reportedly a very quiet man. Yet in truth he didn't need to speak much, as his wonderful songs spoke in volumes. 'Don't Be Cruel', 'All Shook Up', 'Paralyzed' and 'Great Balls Of Fire' are among the rock and roll treasures he created'.
Otis Blackwell : On Christmas Eve in '55,
I was standing outside the Brill Building with no hat and holes in my
shoes. It was snowin'. Leroy Kirkland, the arranger who worked with
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, asked if I had any songs. I said, 'Yeah, I'm
trying to get some Christmas money'. He took me to Shalimar Music where I
met Goldie Goldmark, Al Stanton and Moe Gayle. So I said OK. Al Stanton
was a friend of another fellow named Paul Cates, who was with the Elvis
Presley people. He got my songs through'.I was working for Shalimar,
and Elvis was with Hill & Range. So they got together to co-publish.
I played seven songs for them-one of the songs was 'Don't Be Cruel'.
They bought it and showed it to the Elvis company. They asked me could I
write some more stuff. So I made a couple of demos. I made the demos to
'Don't Be Cruel', 'Paralyzed' and 'All Shook Up'. When Elvis recorded
these songs, he was copying the vocal style on the demos. And when they
heard that, they asked me would I make other demos for writers as well.
'After 'Don't Be Cruel', Shalimar said I had a chance to get Presley again, so I wrote 'All Shook Up'. Al Stanton walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it, as they did at the time, and said, 'Otis, I've got an idea. Why don't you write a song called 'All Shook Up?' Two days later I brought the song in and said, 'Look, man, I did something with it'. After that song, the agreement about sharing songwriting credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.
'I was surprised when I heard 'Don't Be Cruel' because it was just like I had done the demo. I used to sing all my own demos, and it just so happened that a lot of what Presley and Jerry Lee did sounded alike. I thought they did justice to the songs. They put the kind of feeling into it that I felt'. (Otis Blackwell interview excerpts o Jan-Erik Kjeseth)
Otis Blackwell was born in Brooklyn in 1932, and brought up in New York City, he learnt the piano as a child and listened on the radio to rhythm and blues (then known as 'race' music) and to country music in films starring such singing cowboys as Gene Autry and Tex Ritter. They were the two elements that were eventually to combine in the early 1950s to create the hybrid that was rock'n'roll.
On leaving school in the late 1940s, he worked first as a lowly floor-sweeper at a New York theatre and then as a clothes-presser in a laundry. In 1952 he won a local talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and secured a recording contract with Joe Davis's Jay-Dee label. It was at Davis's suggestion that he began writing his own songs. 'I was thrown into it', he later said.
His first release was the self-composed 'Daddy Rolling Stone'. It failed to reach the charts but later became a big hit in Jamaica where it was recorded by Derek Martin, and was also covered by The Who in their early 'mod' period. Blackwell made further recordings for RCA Records and the Groove label which were among the earliest examples of the emerging rock'n'roll style. But all the time he was developing his songwriting and on Christmas Eve 1955, he sold the demos of six songs he had written for $25 each. They included 'Don't Be Cruel', which featured him singing over an accompaniment of piano and a cardboard box for a drum. Yet his first big hit as a writer came not with 'Don't Be Cruel' but with the sultry and atmospheric 'Fever'. Originally an R&B hit in 1956 for Little Willie John, it became an even bigger pop hit for Peggy Lee and has since been covered several hundred times by other artists.
His association with Elvis Presley began around the same time, when the singer covered 'Don't Be Cruel'. Originally released as the B-side of 'Hound Dog', the song had topped the American charts in its own right by September 1956. It simultaneously headed both the R&B and Country charts. Next, Presley recorded Blackwell's 'Paralysed', which fared less well, although it later reached No 8 in the British charts. But by April 1957 a version of 'All Shook Up', originally recorded by the little-known David Hill, had not only restored Presley to the top of the charts but also become the biggest selling single of the year. The song was written after Blackwell's publisher, 'Goldie' Goldhawk, had shaken up a bottle of Pepsi and said to him: 'You can write about anything. Now write about this!' Blackwell provided Presley with further hit songs, including 'Return to Sender' and 'One Broken Heart for Sale'. But 'All Shook Up' and 'Don't Be Cruel' have remained in the record books as the two songs which stayed at No.1 for longer than any of Presley's other hits.
There has been considerable speculation over the relationship between Blackwell and Presley, who never met. 'We had a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone,' Blackwell said in an interview in 1989. Their two names often appeared together on records as co-writers, but in truth Presley's role as a writer was negligible. It was common practice at the time to sell part or all of the rights of a song and Presley's astute manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was well aware of the value of the publishing royalties. It has also been said that Presley borrowed many of his vocal mannerisms from Blackwell. Certainly it was the singer's method at the time to copy wholesale the writer's demo of a song, arrangement and all. As Presley used Blackwell's demos to learn the songs, the debt was probably considerable.
A prolific writer, who sometimes used the white-sounding pseudonym John Davenport, Blackwell copyrighted more than a thousand compositions in his career. Among them was Jerry Lee Lewis's signature tune 'Great Balls of Fire', as well as further hits for Lewis in 'Breathless' and 'Let's Talk About Us'. There were more 1950s rock'n'roll hits with 'Hey Little Girl' and 'Just Keep It Up' by the now almost-forgotten Dee Clark, and Cliff Richard recorded his 'Nine Times out of Ten'. Jimmy Jones had a hit in 1960 with Blackwell's 'Handy Man', which was revived by James Taylor in the 1970s, and Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Tanya Tucker also recorded his songs. So, too, did Ray Charles and Otis Redding, although Blackwell was disappointed that few black artists ever had hits with his compositions.
He continued writing and performing and enjoyed some success in 1976 with the comeback album 'These Are My Songs!' on the Inner City label. He also recorded the tribute The No.1 King of Rock'n'Roll on his own Fever label when Presley died in 1977. In 1991 he was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. Three years later, Chrissie Hynde, Graham Parker and Deborah Harry were among those contributing cover versions of his songs to the album 'Brace Yourself: A Tribute to the Songs of Otis Blackwell'. Although there were many other generous acknowledgements to his role and influence down the years, his style essentially belonged to an earlier era and he was never to repeat the scale of success he had enjoyed in rock'n'roll's first decade.
Otis Blackwell died in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 6, 2002
The Otis Blackwell Interview - Time Barrier Express Magazine - July 1979
TBE - We'd really like to take you back to the beginning. Where are you from originally, and when were you born?
OB - I'm from Brooklyn, New York, born on February 16, 1932.
TBE - When did you first get interested In music? How old were you?
OH - Well, I had an uncle who was into music. He went to a lot of shows. You know, those things at the Apollo Theatre and all the dances at the Savoy Club. He used to take me to what they called round robins, different bars. That's how we used to make a little change. I'd get up and sing a song or two, people would throw quarters. You know, the old tap-dance thing on the corners, except it was in the bars. One day he took me to a friend of his who was working for New York's Amsterdam News, a gentleman by the name of Willie Saunders. He more or less took me over; he had deals with different clubs. That's how I began singing. I was 16.
TBE - Who were some of your early influences?
OB - Tex Ritter was my idol. In my neighborhood there was a movie theatre called the Tompkins. I used to sit from morning to night watching cowboy pictures. I grew up with cowboys - Tex was my man. I would have preferred to sing country but when I went out I used to sing 'Ill Get Along Somehow,' by Larry Darnell, that was one of the songs I enjoyed doing. Larry Darnell and Chuck Willis were two other idols.
TBE - That must have been very early Chuck Willis on Okeh Records, before he became really popular on Atlantic. When did you start writing songs of your own?
OB - I started writing when I began singing. I'd sit down and doodle and fool around but I must have been 18 when I got out and hustled the songs. That was the first stuff I did when I recorded for Joe Davis. I know I was very young; I had to bring my mother to sign the contract.
TBE - I believe you made the first Joe Davis record in 1948 on RCA, not on his own label. The train record.
OB - That was a song written by Benny Benjamin, 'Nobody Met The Train'. 'Daddy Rolling Stone' was the second record.
TBE - How did you first meet Joe Davis?
OB - A friend of mine, Cliff Martinez, had a booking agency. He used to get me little spots where I'd sing with the cocktail drummer and piano player. I didn't particularly like the idea of show business, at the time, because to tell the truth I wasn't making any money at it! I had to go to work pressing clothes. Anyway, he introduced me to Joe Davis.
TBE - How long did you stay with Joe Davis? About 3 years?
OB - Well, it was something like that. We had a little problem. He had me under contract as an artist and a writer. I was supposed to collect $50 a week as a writer and I don't remember how much for the other contract. I think I got two checks and from then on all I got was stories. You know, a lifetime contract and I got $100. Later on I had to pay a pretty good dollar to get out of it.
TBE So you left Davis around '50 and went back to work. Your next music involvement was with Eddie Cooley and 'Fever?'
OB - There was a group I became friendly with. One of its members Eddie Cooley, wasn't a singer then, we just write songs for the group. When the group broke up, he went back to the diamond business. It paid 180 dollars a week, so we had an agreement to write songs together and I would come to New York to hustle them and he would split his weekly pay with me. That enabled me to get around and meet people, the publishers, record companies, to hustle whatever songs we could a $25 advance for. A friend took me to Henry Clover at King Records to play a few songs - 'Fever' was one. We got a few dollars advance and when it became a hit it made us professional writers. I guess.
TBE Why does the song credit John Davenport instead of Otis Blackwell?
OB - Since it seemed Mr. Davis wasn't going to live up to his agreement for $50 a week, he definitely didn't want to give me a release from the contract, and I knew nothing about going to lawyers or BMI or ASCAP or any of the agencies that would have be able to help me. I began to write under my stepfather's name, John Davenport. I felt that if the publishing went through Joe Davis I wouldn't see any of the royalties.
TBE - Is it true that Little Willie John didn't want to do 'Fever?'
OB - That's what Henry Glover tells me. It wasn't the type of thing Willie was doing it the time, he didn't like the finger snapping. Finally Henry convinced him to record the song and they went in that night and did it.
TBE - Let's talk about Moe Gayle. Isn't that where you went next?
OB - On Christmas Eve '55, I was standing outside the Brill Building with no hat & holes in my shoes. It was snowin'. Leroy Kirkland, the arranger who worked with Screamin' Jay asked if I had any songs. I said. 'Yeah, I'm trying to get some Christmas money'. He took me to Shalimar Music where I met Goldie Goldmark, Al Stanton and Moe and if he didn't become big ,I really wasn't losing anything. So I said OK.
TBE - Did he give you an advance at that time against the song?
OB - Yeah, it took a little time, I guess to show how much he believed in it, he advanced me a good piece of money for it. I figured if he believed in it that much, I'd go along with it.
TBE - At that point, Elvis cut 'Don't Be Cruel'. Is it true that he asked you to write 'All Shook Up' for him?
OB - Well no, I was working for Shalimar and he was with Hill & Range. So they got together to co-publish. After 'Don't be Cruel', Shalimar said I had a chance to get Presley again, so I wrote 'All Shook Up'. THE - Didn't the idea for 'All Shook Up' come from Al Stanton?
OB - He walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it, as they did at the time, and said. 'Otis, I've got an idea. Why don't you write a song called 'All Shook up'. Two days later I brought the song in and said,' Look, man. I did something with it'. After that song the agreement about sharing song writing credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.
TBE - You never met Elvis Presley. Correct?
OB - I had the chance a couple of times, I was invited down by the Presley people. But, things were going so well, I Was - considered one of the top writers and was doing a lot of records. I figured that if I split, I might've lost' it, so I didn't go anywhere.
TBE - Tell us why 'Paralysed' never got off the ground as a single, even though it was on that best selling 'EP'
OB - 'The story I got was that, because of the word 'paralyzed' a lot of organizations got down on the thing, so they wouldn't release it as a single. At least that was the case here in the US - in Europe. It didn't hurt anybody.
TBE - How did you get involved with the film Jamboree?
OB - After a few years, I had a misunderstanding with Shalimar and left: I went to Paul Case at Hill and Range who asked me if I wanted to get involved with making a movie. I said yeah and they gave me the job of Musical Director, I don't remember who was all in the movie.
TBE - Buddy Knox, Charlie Gracie, Jimmy Bowen. Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis...
OB - But Jerry Lee wasn't originally in the movie, it was a 'low budget' and they needed to fill up some space, so they asked me to find an artist to put into the thing. I went to a friend's record store in Brooklyn and just listened to records in his back room. I must have listened to 100 records until I came across this record ... in fact he only had one copy of it ... way in the back. I took this record back to Paul Case and said. I'm gonna tell you man. I hear this dude as being one of the top artists. Maybe even bigger than Presley!' It was Jerry Lee Lewis doing 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Coin' On'. They approached him and got him, but then they wanted an original song for him to do. I said I didn't have anything at the time, but I would look around.
A few days later a writer by the name of Jack Hammer brought me a group song called 'Great Balls of Fire'. I liked the title so I said, 'Give me the title, I'll write the song'. So I wrote the song around Jack Hammer's title and they got Jerry Lee to record it. They signed Jerry Lee and were promoting 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' and it was a big record, which I was happy about since I was going to have his next release.
TBE - After that he recorded 'Breathless', which is a song you wrote totally by yourself. You got a Charlie Gracie tune out of the movie too - 'Cool Baby'. And you also had Eddie Cooley The Dimples with 'Priscilla'. That was quite a successful period for you.
OB - We wrote 'Priscilla' at the same time as 'Fever'. A lot of my titles used to come from the comics. Priscilla was a little girl in the Daily News. I convinced Jack Hook, of Royal Roost, to record Eddie Cooley, He and his partner Teddy Reed were doing a jazz session and he had Eddie Cooley and the two girls and me come up at the end to record this. The musicians had never done anything like this before and Teddy didn't know what the hell was going on. But Jack dug the song and I guess he thought he could do something because he was real tight with Alan Freed. It was real funny man, 'cause when they started doing the song, Teddy said, 'God! What is this?' and got up and left!
TBE - Your next major success, during the summer of '59, came with two hits by Dee Clark. How did that come about?
OB - By this time I was back at Shalimar. They had very tight connections with VeeJay. I wrote 'Just Keep It Up' on a plane from California. I was doing a lot of heavy travelling in those days. Staying away from home a great deal. I got to thinking that it wouldn't he long before I'd be told by my wife: 'just keep this up and see what happens!' That's how it hit me -I wrote the song right there and took it to Shalimar. They sent it to Vee Jay and the next thing you know, I got a call informing me that it was recorded by Dee Clark. Shalimar also got me the follow up, 'Hey Little Girl (In The High School Sweater' which I did not originally write with that 'Bo Diddley' beat. That was added later at the session.
TBE - At what point did you start writing with, Winfield Scott? Whose big hit had been 'Tweedlee Dee' by Lavern Baker
OB - I first met Winfield Scott at Roosevelt Music - the first time I left Shalimar. When I went back, we wrote a couple of songs. Then he wanted to go back to Roosevelt and I did. We didn't have a contract it was just on a song-by-song basis and office space. Then Elvis came back on the scene and Hill & Range called. We had been doing songs for different artists but then we concentrated on Elvis. The first song was 'Return To Sender'. The movie people gave us some titles to write. The only song we wrote for the movie was 'Comin' In Loaded but we played 'Return To Sender' for Col. Parker. They recorded it and it came out in the movie. We also had 'One broken heart for sale', Such an easy question, Don't drag that string around, it was the B side of 'Devil In Disguise' and some others that were never released.
TBE - Wasn't it also during this period that you began producing Jimmy Jones?
OB - yeah. Jimmy came to me with an idea for a song called' Handy Man', which Just needed a little work on it, a few words here, a few words there. We went into the studio and made a demo of it, which Goldie played for Arnold Maxim at MGM. They put it out, and it was the demo that they released, with a few little things added to it
TBE - What that Jimmy Jones' very first solo record? You know that earlier he had been in a group called The Pretenders. We almost got into a 'court thing' over that! I didn't know that Jimmy had been in a group and that they had already recorded a song called 'Whistlin' Man'. What made it so ironic is that 'Handy Man' had whistling in it, which I did.The only reason I did that was because the flute player didn't show so I whistled the flute part. When I finally did hear 'Whistlin' Man' some years later, I had to admit that the two songs were pretty close.
TBE - You went on to produce Jimmy Jones' 'Good Timing' and Roy Hamilton's 'Don't Let Go', neither of which you wrote, correct?
OB Don't let go was a Jesse Stone song, which Jesse had arranged a little lower. When I came to the session, Jesse was kind of despondent 'cause Roy couldn't seem to get it the way he wanted it. So I said, 'lets pick it up' and told Roy to holler 'uh uh' every time I tapped him on the shoulder. That was the 'thing' at the time, everyone moaning and groaning.
TBE - Who were some of the other artists you produced? With whom did you moat enjoy working?
OB - What got me off the most was producing Mahalia Jackson, Before Arnold Maxim came to MGM, he was at Columbia- I was introduced to Mahalia and john Hammond, who was recording her. He asked me if I wanted to work with Mahalia and went over to the hotel where she was staying, played her a tape of a couple of tunes and she picked 'For My Good Fortune', which was also done by Pat Boone. I wrote that song with Bobby Stevenson with whom I'd written 'Hey little girl'. He was also playing drums with me during the $3 per 'gig' days way back when I worked with Johnny Ray who I produced for Shalimar. It was the beginning of them using outside people to come in and produce.
TBE - You didn't seem to get production credit in those days. That wasn't 'in' at the time, right?
OB - No, there were no production deals at the time. We were doing it because the publisher had an 'in' with the A&R man. I also produced Frankie Valli & The Four Lovers, In fact, I wrote 'Apple Of My Eye' in the bathroom because they needed a song, Frankie Valli and I got to he really good friends. I was supposed to be the best man at his wedding.
TBE - One thing everyone is always interested in is the similarities between the demos you did for Elvis and Jerry Lee and the final recordings they did of your songs.
OB - I used to sing all my own demos, and it just so happened that a lot of what Presley and Jerry Lee did sound alike. I thought that they did justice to the songs. They put the kind of feeling into it that I felt.
TBE - The death of Elvis must have affected you. How did you first hear of Elvis' death and what were your thoughts?
OB - I was in a friend's studio when a buddy of his called and told him. He said 'I got some news for you. It's bad news in one respect and good news in another. Do you want me to tell you now or later?' I said later because I was in the studio when President Kennedy was killed and also when Martin Luther King was killed. I know the effect bad news can have on a session. When the session was over he told me and I thought he was joking. It didn't hit me until I lay down to sleep. The one other time that I experienced that was when my mother died and my son. It wasn't because he wouldn't he doing any more of my songs. It was l�ke a piece of the whole business. I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside man, they'll always live. When they're gone, a certain piece goes and you just can't believe it.
TBE - There were lots of younger people who only became aware of Otis Blackwell when Elvis died, after they read how much of his early material you had written. What are your feelings about that? What prompted you late in '77 to go out on tour with Elvis' songs?
OB I thought it was time to step out of the shadows. Before he died! I had already started an album of all my stuff. I had planned on meeting him when he opened up in Vegas. So we had started rehearsals, gotten a band together. I felt well there are all those singer-songwriters now - 'what the hell, let me try it. So I got a few fellows together and did a few spots and I found that I really liked it.
- Elvis Presley's Best Song Writers
If you like reading this article, you will love the book; Writing For The King - a 400 page Book with more than 140 interviews with songwriters like Paul McCartney, Leiber & Stoller, Pomus & Shuman, Red West, Mark James and Tony Joe White.
Included are two CDs, the first contains previously unreleased RCA
recordings of Elvis performing live in Las Vegas (1969 through 1972),
the second a selection of the original demos submitted to Elvis.
Published Link | https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/otis-blackwell.shtml
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http://americansongwriter.com/2007/07/dont-be-cruel-otis-blackwells-triumph/
On July 2, 1956, a young Elvis Presley came to New York City’s RCA studios to record his next hit single. Presley had his young band in tow and it already had been decided by his handlers that he was going to record a song called “Hound Dog.”
On July 2, 1956, a young Elvis Presley came to New York City’s RCA studios to record his next hit single. Presley had his young band in tow and it already had been decided by his handlers that he was going to record a song called “Hound Dog.” The tune, written by the famous white rock and roll songwriting team of Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber, had already become a hit-made famous for its hard edge by blues diva Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. After 31 takes to get “Hound Dog” right, Presley and company moved to the ever-important task of recording a B-side.
After lunch and back in the RCA recording studio, Presley began
rummaging through the piles of demo tapes that had been provided by his
publishing company, Hill and Range. By that afternoon, he had stumbled
across a demo containing songs recorded by an obscure African-American
singer/songwriter from Brooklyn named Otis Blackwell.
Blackwell was a veteran of the hardcore East coast blues scene but also, strangely enough, was a lifelong fan of country & western music. Blackwell confessed many times over the years that as a child he would sit in the Tompkins Theatre in Brooklyn and watch the singing cowboys, Gene Autry or Tex Ritter, in movies all day. The mix of blues and country was unique for an urban, black songwriter.
Presley hadn’t ever heard of Otis Blackwell at the time, even though Blackwell had signed to Presley’s future label (RCA) in 1953 after his own success with a song called “Daddy Rolling Stone.” And Blackwell, who worked as a clothes presser during the day to pay his rent, probably hadn’t heard of Presley. Despite Presley’s sudden success in 1954 with “That’s Alright, Mama,” he was still just a regional star.
But once Presley played Blackwell’s tape that day 51 years ago, rock and roll would be forever changed. The song that caught Presley’s ear was called “Don’t Be Cruel.” The tune had come down from Blackwell’s connection in New York-Shalimar Music-and had made its way to Presley.
What was it about “Don’t Be Cruel” that appealed to a young Elvis Presley and eventually the world?
Some say it was the pop nature of the tune, but others insist it is the country feel that made it so appealing. Actually, it was much simpler; Otis Blackwell had written a rock and roll song that was tailored for the voice of a white singer. “Don’t Be Cruel” isn’t a hardcore rhythm and blues tune for a white singer to interpret; it is a song with blues elements but a country feel-fashioned perfectly for a softer approach. It is an important distinction.
So on July 2, 1956, Blackwell’s infectious rock and roll tune with its simplistic lyrics, country twang and catchy hit phrase (“Don’t be cruel, to a heart that’s true…”) became the B-side to Elvis’s rendition of “Hound Dog.”
Presley took 28 takes to get the song right, but it was worth the effort. When “Don’t Be Cruel” was finally released, it became the highest selling pop record of all time. And for the year 1956, according to Billboard, it was the highest selling rock and roll single-even though it was a B-side. It stayed at No. 1 twice as long as the A-side, “Hound Dog.” Blackwell and Presley shared songwriting credit, despite the fact the two had never even met.
Many years later, on January 10, 1984, the singer/songwriter from Brooklyn rode down from the great borough of his birth (1931) to Manhattan to tape a television appearance on Late Night With David Letterman. Presley had been dead almost seven years and was now bigger than life. Blackwell, who had never met Presley but had given him songs and lent important components of his singing style and voice, sang one song for the world that day. The following is an account of Blackwell’s little known interview with Letterman and his performance of the tune that changed rock and roll forever.
Otis Blackwell, who wrote over 1000 songs, died in May 2002 in Nashville.
As always, he was dressed rather ordinary, but yet, he looked like a star. He wore wide legged tan slacks, a wide collared bright tan silk shirt and a dark, rather noticeable, vest full of colorful golden designs. His silk shirt, on close inspection, was pressed so carefully you could see the creases in the sleeves. His shoes were casual, leather zip-up boots that reached just beyond his ankles. His shoes matched his slacks and shirt almost exactly. And his hair, as it could have been seen in numerous publicity shots when he was a younger man, was short and well kept-the left side parted neatly and nondescript. Yes, he looked like a star.
Otis Blackwell was an elusive mythical figure in the annals of rock and roll. The customary four million Late Night With Letterman viewers on January 10, 1984, who had luckily tuned in for a piece of rock and roll’s past were about to be enlightened and perhaps overwhelmed by a short, unassuming African-American man who was a legend in pop music circles. Blackwell was not just any rock and roll singer/songwriter anyway; from 1955 to1960, it was universally agreed that he had provided rock and roll with a sacred, untouchable canon of songs.
He looked cool too. Everyone who knew him over the years always said he looked cool. He had on his ever-present dark glasses with lenses so thick one might conjure images of Ray Charles. They were appropriate too. Though Otis was not completely blind like Charles, he wore the thick glasses precisely because his sight was poor. In fact, rhythm & blues legend Jimmy McGowan says that in 1979, Otis told him that he was legally blind.
But on that night, poor eyesight didn’t mean anything to Blackwell. He was back where it all began. He had ventured over the bridge from his home borough of Brooklyn into Manhattan as he had done countless times during his life to play, record or promote his music. And this, he knew, was an important night. Late Night With David Letterman was a television show on the rise in American popular culture, and it had a particular strong, cult-like following amongst young people (18-35). These were the people who were apt to love and worship rock and roll music, its culture, stars icons and most importantly, its mythological figures and their lost stories.
Letterman, the veteran comic from Indiana, was an amiable host as always as Blackwell’s segment began. He had already dazzled the audience with two popular, regular features on his program: “Stupid Pet Tricks” and “Small Town News.” By the time Blackwell’s moment arrived, there was a certain energy looming, despite Letterman’s seemingly innate ridiculousness. Behind his wooden desk at NBC’s Rockefeller Center, Letterman was beaming.
He was adorned in a conservative blue-gray sports coat with a striped tie. His now famous flop of hair looked thick and more pronounced; it was probably the only part of him more distracting than his legendary gap-toothed smile that will always invoke the cover of Mad magazine.
“He has been referred to as the most influential songwriter in the history of rock and roll…I mentioned some of these songs earlier…it is unbelievable,” Letterman announced forcefully in his strange squeaky voice when he called Otis to the stage. “…‘Great Balls of Fire,’ ‘Handy Man,’ ‘Breathless,’ ‘Return to Sender,’ ‘Fever’…and we are delighted to have him on the show tonight. Please folks, give a nice welcome to Mr. Otis Blackwell.” The crowd clapped feverishly.
Blackwell, who was 51 years old at the time, eased around the corner from backstage towards Letterman’s desk and looked confident although he seemed to be lumbering along slowly. He was much heavier than he had been as a young man laboring on the tough New York rhythm & blues scene in the 1940s, but he was ready. He had never been afraid of the stage once he made the decision to take the stage; it was making the decision that had always seemed to haunt him over the years.
Blackwell met Letterman at the edge of the stage and graciously gripped his hand. He walked in front, waved his hand lightly up to the crowd to acknowledge their applause. He was always gracious, and he was in his element.
He had stopped performing his brand of rhythm & blues back in the ‘50s. This was before rock and roll took off and became the music that would unite and define a generation. In the years after that choice, he devoted most of his energy to songs for others. But in the ‘70s, as a different kind of rock and roll surged to the forefront, he had returned to familiar haunts in New York and along the east coast club corridor to become a singer again. He wasn’t seeking the limelight in returning to doing live performances either; you would think he would, after so much time behind the scenes.
From the distant recesses of America’s music publishing industry and record making machinery that sold millions of records each year, Blackwell had hitched rock and roll music to his back from 1955 to1960 and set the country ablaze with his words, lyrics and bouncy, bass-driven tunes. It was not at all different from Chuck Berry’s run in the 1950s, but even more impressive because he had done it as a songwriter exclusively and had spread his oeuvre across the spectrum of the genre.
For the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, the gifts had been lucrative and legendary: “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” “Return to Sender,” “Paralyzed” and “One Broken Heart for Sale,” just to name a few. For Jimmy Jones, who hadn’t had many hits in the industry, he co-wrote “Handy Man” (made famous again later by James Taylor). For Jerry Lee Lewis, another white singer who had changed the face of rock and roll, Blackwell delivered the Pentecostal rock and roll fusion tune “Great Balls of Fire.” And for Little Willie John, Peggy Lee and countless other rock and rollers over the years, his immortal hit “Fever” had delivered the goods. Few non-performing rock and roll figures had ever amassed so many important popular songs. And that’s where Letterman began the interview-back in the day.
“Was ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ the first song of yours that Elvis recorded?” Letterman asked instantly. He asked the question so quickly you could tell he didn’t want the interview to digress anywhere else. He knew this audience would respond to that because it had long been suspected that Elvis Presley had been drinking from some secret creative well.
“Yes it was,” Blackwell said. He leaned in towards Letterman and shifted in his seat. His face looked serious, yet it exuded an uneasiness about the topic.
“How did that come about?”
“Well, it’s a hard story,” he said. It was almost as if the answer had escaped him suddenly. He had been asked that question dozens of time over the years from all kinds of writers and interviewers. The story was the stuff of legend now. And in a way, as he began to speak to Letterman and to the nation for that matter, he seemed to stumble with nervousness-like that magical tale of Duke Ellington penning “Mood Indigo” while his mother made supper, or the one about Robert Johnson disappearing from Mississippi only to return with the key to the Delta blues in his heart and soul.
According to the story that became official by the late 1970s, Blackwell had written “Don’t Be Cruel” around Christmas in 1955 when it was snowing and wet in New York. He was, as he told Letterman, grinning, “writing songs…freelancing” and working “any old job that came along where I could make me a dollar or two…as long as it was honest.” His smile was as broad as his explanation.
But through connections on the New York music scene he had developed from his years of toiling as a blues singer, Blackwell told Letterman and his audience that he had sold “Don’t Be Cruel” and several other songs for $150 that day to a music publishing company called Shalimar Music.
“I received $25 for each song,” he said. He held up his hands to indicate money. “One of those songs was ‘Don’t Be Cruel.'” Eventually, Blackwell’s now famous demo tape that included “Don’t Be Cruel” made its way to a young Elvis Presley. He too had come to New York in 1956 to record his follow-up to his smash hit “That’s Alright, Mama.” Presley recorded Blackwell’s “Don’t Be Cruel” as a B-side to “Hound Dog”.
Letterman adored controversy, and at times he enjoyed asking his guests uncomfortable questions. In this interview, however, Blackwell was not his target. Letterman was going after the giant named Elvis Presley.
“Now, Otis, on the sheet music here, it says, ‘words and music by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley,'” Letterman pried as he held up the sheet music to ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ “Now, did he work you on the song with you at any time?” You can tell Letterman is asking a question that Blackwell has been asked so many times over the years. He almost lets a smile escape and pretends to act as if it is all new to him, as if he is not so sure.
But though it is no longer important to him, others still want to point it out. Blackwell didn’t have anything against Presley. In fact, as he would tell Letterman later in the interview, he thought that he and Presley had “a good thing going.” And though they never met, he felt that because he made tapes for Presley to listen to, “in a sense, we had met.” Letterman however, in his sly way, had boxed in Blackwell to answer the question.
“No, he didn’t,” Blackwell said, as if rehearsed. “Then how does his name get there?” Letterman continued. “That seemed to have been the practice,” Blackwell replied. And it was, at the time, the practice. Presley was such a huge star that his publisher-Hill & Range-could command a songwriting credit for their writer. The songwriters knew they would stand to make a lot of money from a Presley recording, so if Presley wanted half of the songwriting credit, he could get it. Blackwell had told other interviewers that he was reluctant to provide Presley with credit for writing the songs at first, but like most of the other writers who encountered the Presley phenomenon, he acquiesced.
After Letterman led Blackwell through more questions about Presley, it came time for the performance. That was why he was there anyway. He harbored no ill will about the past. That was business; as for the singing part, the performance-now that was different. That was the beauty of it all.
Music director and keys player, Paul Shaffer’s nimble fingers dropped down powerfully onto his keyboard and the familiar boogie-woogie piano intro that served as the linchpin for the song erupted into the audience. It was just as the song had been written in 1955 with the piano introduction. It is a simple song too. And in American popular music, simplicity is good. In fact, it is usually the key to commercial success. It helps that millions of record buyers remember the hook-the phrase that clinches the tale. If the hook can be remembered, an epidemic of listening, dancing and purchasing can be commenced in every neighborhood in the land.
By now NBC studio at Rockefeller Center was bopping. Blackwell had turned the place into a sock hop. It was a preachy brand of rock and roll too; it wasn’t Bill Haley and the Comets. It had a singular distinction-a strong sense of story, however simple it was. The camera zoomed in on Blackwell. He seemed to be a different person now on stage. Just moments ago he was sitting on stage and had stumbled through answers to questions he had been answering for years. Many have described this quality about Otis over the years. Jimmy McGowan, who sang with the rhythm & blues standouts, The Four Fellows, met Blackwell in the 1940s in Brooklyn at Pope’s recording studio on Fulton Avenue. He remembers the clear dichotomy between the Otis who loved to sing music and the Otis who was quiet and reserved.
“He seemed to be two different people,” McGowan said. “On the one hand you wouldn’t recognize him in a crowd, but when he began to sing and perform, Otis Blackwell was a commanding presence. There was no one else in the room or on stage but that man.” Otis clearly rocked with the best of ‘em, just as McGowan described, on this particular night. His voice got emotional and his hands began to move and stress his feeling for the music.
And then it was over-Otis Blackwell “live” in New York City. Back to the place where it began for him three decades ago. Millions had seen him that night. The moment had a Warhol-ian quality to it too. But it wasn’t 15 minutes as Warhol would have insisted upon; it was almost eight minutes. Some small talk, history and then a song that barely lasts more than two minutes, but a song that changed lives. Otis didn’t need a Warhol moment though; he had been living in the moment since before the day he sold the demo tape Christmas of 1955.
Blackwell was before the world completely now. He knew who he was and what he had done. There was the business, there was society and there was Elvis Presley. He knew Elvis would always be there, but it would not bother him. There was no need to cry the blues about it; Elvis had done what he had done and Blackwell had done what he had done. No one could ever take that away. At last, Otis Blackwell was a star.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Blackwell
Otis Blackwell (February 16, 1931 – May 6, 2002) was an African-American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work significantly influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever", recorded by Little Willie John; "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless", recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis; "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Return to Sender" (with Winfield Scott), recorded by Elvis Presley; and "Handy Man", recorded by Jimmy Jones.[1] He is not to be confused with the songwriter and record producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell.
'After 'Don't Be Cruel', Shalimar said I had a chance to get Presley again, so I wrote 'All Shook Up'. Al Stanton walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it, as they did at the time, and said, 'Otis, I've got an idea. Why don't you write a song called 'All Shook Up?' Two days later I brought the song in and said, 'Look, man, I did something with it'. After that song, the agreement about sharing songwriting credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.
'I was surprised when I heard 'Don't Be Cruel' because it was just like I had done the demo. I used to sing all my own demos, and it just so happened that a lot of what Presley and Jerry Lee did sounded alike. I thought they did justice to the songs. They put the kind of feeling into it that I felt'. (Otis Blackwell interview excerpts o Jan-Erik Kjeseth)
Otis Blackwell
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Otis Blackwell was born in Brooklyn in 1932, and brought up in New York City, he learnt the piano as a child and listened on the radio to rhythm and blues (then known as 'race' music) and to country music in films starring such singing cowboys as Gene Autry and Tex Ritter. They were the two elements that were eventually to combine in the early 1950s to create the hybrid that was rock'n'roll.
On leaving school in the late 1940s, he worked first as a lowly floor-sweeper at a New York theatre and then as a clothes-presser in a laundry. In 1952 he won a local talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and secured a recording contract with Joe Davis's Jay-Dee label. It was at Davis's suggestion that he began writing his own songs. 'I was thrown into it', he later said.
His first release was the self-composed 'Daddy Rolling Stone'. It failed to reach the charts but later became a big hit in Jamaica where it was recorded by Derek Martin, and was also covered by The Who in their early 'mod' period. Blackwell made further recordings for RCA Records and the Groove label which were among the earliest examples of the emerging rock'n'roll style. But all the time he was developing his songwriting and on Christmas Eve 1955, he sold the demos of six songs he had written for $25 each. They included 'Don't Be Cruel', which featured him singing over an accompaniment of piano and a cardboard box for a drum. Yet his first big hit as a writer came not with 'Don't Be Cruel' but with the sultry and atmospheric 'Fever'. Originally an R&B hit in 1956 for Little Willie John, it became an even bigger pop hit for Peggy Lee and has since been covered several hundred times by other artists.
His association with Elvis Presley began around the same time, when the singer covered 'Don't Be Cruel'. Originally released as the B-side of 'Hound Dog', the song had topped the American charts in its own right by September 1956. It simultaneously headed both the R&B and Country charts. Next, Presley recorded Blackwell's 'Paralysed', which fared less well, although it later reached No 8 in the British charts. But by April 1957 a version of 'All Shook Up', originally recorded by the little-known David Hill, had not only restored Presley to the top of the charts but also become the biggest selling single of the year. The song was written after Blackwell's publisher, 'Goldie' Goldhawk, had shaken up a bottle of Pepsi and said to him: 'You can write about anything. Now write about this!' Blackwell provided Presley with further hit songs, including 'Return to Sender' and 'One Broken Heart for Sale'. But 'All Shook Up' and 'Don't Be Cruel' have remained in the record books as the two songs which stayed at No.1 for longer than any of Presley's other hits.
There has been considerable speculation over the relationship between Blackwell and Presley, who never met. 'We had a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone,' Blackwell said in an interview in 1989. Their two names often appeared together on records as co-writers, but in truth Presley's role as a writer was negligible. It was common practice at the time to sell part or all of the rights of a song and Presley's astute manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was well aware of the value of the publishing royalties. It has also been said that Presley borrowed many of his vocal mannerisms from Blackwell. Certainly it was the singer's method at the time to copy wholesale the writer's demo of a song, arrangement and all. As Presley used Blackwell's demos to learn the songs, the debt was probably considerable.
A prolific writer, who sometimes used the white-sounding pseudonym John Davenport, Blackwell copyrighted more than a thousand compositions in his career. Among them was Jerry Lee Lewis's signature tune 'Great Balls of Fire', as well as further hits for Lewis in 'Breathless' and 'Let's Talk About Us'. There were more 1950s rock'n'roll hits with 'Hey Little Girl' and 'Just Keep It Up' by the now almost-forgotten Dee Clark, and Cliff Richard recorded his 'Nine Times out of Ten'. Jimmy Jones had a hit in 1960 with Blackwell's 'Handy Man', which was revived by James Taylor in the 1970s, and Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Tanya Tucker also recorded his songs. So, too, did Ray Charles and Otis Redding, although Blackwell was disappointed that few black artists ever had hits with his compositions.
He continued writing and performing and enjoyed some success in 1976 with the comeback album 'These Are My Songs!' on the Inner City label. He also recorded the tribute The No.1 King of Rock'n'Roll on his own Fever label when Presley died in 1977. In 1991 he was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. Three years later, Chrissie Hynde, Graham Parker and Deborah Harry were among those contributing cover versions of his songs to the album 'Brace Yourself: A Tribute to the Songs of Otis Blackwell'. Although there were many other generous acknowledgements to his role and influence down the years, his style essentially belonged to an earlier era and he was never to repeat the scale of success he had enjoyed in rock'n'roll's first decade.
Otis Blackwell died in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 6, 2002
The Otis Blackwell Interview - Time Barrier Express Magazine - July 1979
TBE - We'd really like to take you back to the beginning. Where are you from originally, and when were you born?
OB - I'm from Brooklyn, New York, born on February 16, 1932.
TBE - When did you first get interested In music? How old were you?
OH - Well, I had an uncle who was into music. He went to a lot of shows. You know, those things at the Apollo Theatre and all the dances at the Savoy Club. He used to take me to what they called round robins, different bars. That's how we used to make a little change. I'd get up and sing a song or two, people would throw quarters. You know, the old tap-dance thing on the corners, except it was in the bars. One day he took me to a friend of his who was working for New York's Amsterdam News, a gentleman by the name of Willie Saunders. He more or less took me over; he had deals with different clubs. That's how I began singing. I was 16.
TBE - Who were some of your early influences?
OB - Tex Ritter was my idol. In my neighborhood there was a movie theatre called the Tompkins. I used to sit from morning to night watching cowboy pictures. I grew up with cowboys - Tex was my man. I would have preferred to sing country but when I went out I used to sing 'Ill Get Along Somehow,' by Larry Darnell, that was one of the songs I enjoyed doing. Larry Darnell and Chuck Willis were two other idols.
TBE - That must have been very early Chuck Willis on Okeh Records, before he became really popular on Atlantic. When did you start writing songs of your own?
OB - I started writing when I began singing. I'd sit down and doodle and fool around but I must have been 18 when I got out and hustled the songs. That was the first stuff I did when I recorded for Joe Davis. I know I was very young; I had to bring my mother to sign the contract.
TBE - I believe you made the first Joe Davis record in 1948 on RCA, not on his own label. The train record.
OB - That was a song written by Benny Benjamin, 'Nobody Met The Train'. 'Daddy Rolling Stone' was the second record.
TBE - How did you first meet Joe Davis?
OB - A friend of mine, Cliff Martinez, had a booking agency. He used to get me little spots where I'd sing with the cocktail drummer and piano player. I didn't particularly like the idea of show business, at the time, because to tell the truth I wasn't making any money at it! I had to go to work pressing clothes. Anyway, he introduced me to Joe Davis.
TBE - How long did you stay with Joe Davis? About 3 years?
OB - Well, it was something like that. We had a little problem. He had me under contract as an artist and a writer. I was supposed to collect $50 a week as a writer and I don't remember how much for the other contract. I think I got two checks and from then on all I got was stories. You know, a lifetime contract and I got $100. Later on I had to pay a pretty good dollar to get out of it.
TBE So you left Davis around '50 and went back to work. Your next music involvement was with Eddie Cooley and 'Fever?'
OB - There was a group I became friendly with. One of its members Eddie Cooley, wasn't a singer then, we just write songs for the group. When the group broke up, he went back to the diamond business. It paid 180 dollars a week, so we had an agreement to write songs together and I would come to New York to hustle them and he would split his weekly pay with me. That enabled me to get around and meet people, the publishers, record companies, to hustle whatever songs we could a $25 advance for. A friend took me to Henry Clover at King Records to play a few songs - 'Fever' was one. We got a few dollars advance and when it became a hit it made us professional writers. I guess.
TBE Why does the song credit John Davenport instead of Otis Blackwell?
OB - Since it seemed Mr. Davis wasn't going to live up to his agreement for $50 a week, he definitely didn't want to give me a release from the contract, and I knew nothing about going to lawyers or BMI or ASCAP or any of the agencies that would have be able to help me. I began to write under my stepfather's name, John Davenport. I felt that if the publishing went through Joe Davis I wouldn't see any of the royalties.
TBE - Is it true that Little Willie John didn't want to do 'Fever?'
OB - That's what Henry Glover tells me. It wasn't the type of thing Willie was doing it the time, he didn't like the finger snapping. Finally Henry convinced him to record the song and they went in that night and did it.
TBE - Let's talk about Moe Gayle. Isn't that where you went next?
OB - On Christmas Eve '55, I was standing outside the Brill Building with no hat & holes in my shoes. It was snowin'. Leroy Kirkland, the arranger who worked with Screamin' Jay asked if I had any songs. I said. 'Yeah, I'm trying to get some Christmas money'. He took me to Shalimar Music where I met Goldie Goldmark, Al Stanton and Moe and if he didn't become big ,I really wasn't losing anything. So I said OK.
TBE - Did he give you an advance at that time against the song?
OB - Yeah, it took a little time, I guess to show how much he believed in it, he advanced me a good piece of money for it. I figured if he believed in it that much, I'd go along with it.
TBE - At that point, Elvis cut 'Don't Be Cruel'. Is it true that he asked you to write 'All Shook Up' for him?
OB - Well no, I was working for Shalimar and he was with Hill & Range. So they got together to co-publish. After 'Don't be Cruel', Shalimar said I had a chance to get Presley again, so I wrote 'All Shook Up'. THE - Didn't the idea for 'All Shook Up' come from Al Stanton?
OB - He walked in one day with a bottle of Pepsi, shaking it, as they did at the time, and said. 'Otis, I've got an idea. Why don't you write a song called 'All Shook up'. Two days later I brought the song in and said,' Look, man. I did something with it'. After that song the agreement about sharing song writing credit was washed. We had both proved how good we were and had a good thing between the two of us.
TBE - You never met Elvis Presley. Correct?
OB - I had the chance a couple of times, I was invited down by the Presley people. But, things were going so well, I Was - considered one of the top writers and was doing a lot of records. I figured that if I split, I might've lost' it, so I didn't go anywhere.
TBE - Tell us why 'Paralysed' never got off the ground as a single, even though it was on that best selling 'EP'
OB - 'The story I got was that, because of the word 'paralyzed' a lot of organizations got down on the thing, so they wouldn't release it as a single. At least that was the case here in the US - in Europe. It didn't hurt anybody.
TBE - How did you get involved with the film Jamboree?
OB - After a few years, I had a misunderstanding with Shalimar and left: I went to Paul Case at Hill and Range who asked me if I wanted to get involved with making a movie. I said yeah and they gave me the job of Musical Director, I don't remember who was all in the movie.
TBE - Buddy Knox, Charlie Gracie, Jimmy Bowen. Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis...
OB - But Jerry Lee wasn't originally in the movie, it was a 'low budget' and they needed to fill up some space, so they asked me to find an artist to put into the thing. I went to a friend's record store in Brooklyn and just listened to records in his back room. I must have listened to 100 records until I came across this record ... in fact he only had one copy of it ... way in the back. I took this record back to Paul Case and said. I'm gonna tell you man. I hear this dude as being one of the top artists. Maybe even bigger than Presley!' It was Jerry Lee Lewis doing 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Coin' On'. They approached him and got him, but then they wanted an original song for him to do. I said I didn't have anything at the time, but I would look around.
A few days later a writer by the name of Jack Hammer brought me a group song called 'Great Balls of Fire'. I liked the title so I said, 'Give me the title, I'll write the song'. So I wrote the song around Jack Hammer's title and they got Jerry Lee to record it. They signed Jerry Lee and were promoting 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' and it was a big record, which I was happy about since I was going to have his next release.
TBE - After that he recorded 'Breathless', which is a song you wrote totally by yourself. You got a Charlie Gracie tune out of the movie too - 'Cool Baby'. And you also had Eddie Cooley The Dimples with 'Priscilla'. That was quite a successful period for you.
OB - We wrote 'Priscilla' at the same time as 'Fever'. A lot of my titles used to come from the comics. Priscilla was a little girl in the Daily News. I convinced Jack Hook, of Royal Roost, to record Eddie Cooley, He and his partner Teddy Reed were doing a jazz session and he had Eddie Cooley and the two girls and me come up at the end to record this. The musicians had never done anything like this before and Teddy didn't know what the hell was going on. But Jack dug the song and I guess he thought he could do something because he was real tight with Alan Freed. It was real funny man, 'cause when they started doing the song, Teddy said, 'God! What is this?' and got up and left!
TBE - Your next major success, during the summer of '59, came with two hits by Dee Clark. How did that come about?
OB - By this time I was back at Shalimar. They had very tight connections with VeeJay. I wrote 'Just Keep It Up' on a plane from California. I was doing a lot of heavy travelling in those days. Staying away from home a great deal. I got to thinking that it wouldn't he long before I'd be told by my wife: 'just keep this up and see what happens!' That's how it hit me -I wrote the song right there and took it to Shalimar. They sent it to Vee Jay and the next thing you know, I got a call informing me that it was recorded by Dee Clark. Shalimar also got me the follow up, 'Hey Little Girl (In The High School Sweater' which I did not originally write with that 'Bo Diddley' beat. That was added later at the session.
TBE - At what point did you start writing with, Winfield Scott? Whose big hit had been 'Tweedlee Dee' by Lavern Baker
OB - I first met Winfield Scott at Roosevelt Music - the first time I left Shalimar. When I went back, we wrote a couple of songs. Then he wanted to go back to Roosevelt and I did. We didn't have a contract it was just on a song-by-song basis and office space. Then Elvis came back on the scene and Hill & Range called. We had been doing songs for different artists but then we concentrated on Elvis. The first song was 'Return To Sender'. The movie people gave us some titles to write. The only song we wrote for the movie was 'Comin' In Loaded but we played 'Return To Sender' for Col. Parker. They recorded it and it came out in the movie. We also had 'One broken heart for sale', Such an easy question, Don't drag that string around, it was the B side of 'Devil In Disguise' and some others that were never released.
TBE - Wasn't it also during this period that you began producing Jimmy Jones?
OB - yeah. Jimmy came to me with an idea for a song called' Handy Man', which Just needed a little work on it, a few words here, a few words there. We went into the studio and made a demo of it, which Goldie played for Arnold Maxim at MGM. They put it out, and it was the demo that they released, with a few little things added to it
TBE - What that Jimmy Jones' very first solo record? You know that earlier he had been in a group called The Pretenders. We almost got into a 'court thing' over that! I didn't know that Jimmy had been in a group and that they had already recorded a song called 'Whistlin' Man'. What made it so ironic is that 'Handy Man' had whistling in it, which I did.The only reason I did that was because the flute player didn't show so I whistled the flute part. When I finally did hear 'Whistlin' Man' some years later, I had to admit that the two songs were pretty close.
TBE - You went on to produce Jimmy Jones' 'Good Timing' and Roy Hamilton's 'Don't Let Go', neither of which you wrote, correct?
OB Don't let go was a Jesse Stone song, which Jesse had arranged a little lower. When I came to the session, Jesse was kind of despondent 'cause Roy couldn't seem to get it the way he wanted it. So I said, 'lets pick it up' and told Roy to holler 'uh uh' every time I tapped him on the shoulder. That was the 'thing' at the time, everyone moaning and groaning.
TBE - Who were some of the other artists you produced? With whom did you moat enjoy working?
OB - What got me off the most was producing Mahalia Jackson, Before Arnold Maxim came to MGM, he was at Columbia- I was introduced to Mahalia and john Hammond, who was recording her. He asked me if I wanted to work with Mahalia and went over to the hotel where she was staying, played her a tape of a couple of tunes and she picked 'For My Good Fortune', which was also done by Pat Boone. I wrote that song with Bobby Stevenson with whom I'd written 'Hey little girl'. He was also playing drums with me during the $3 per 'gig' days way back when I worked with Johnny Ray who I produced for Shalimar. It was the beginning of them using outside people to come in and produce.
TBE - You didn't seem to get production credit in those days. That wasn't 'in' at the time, right?
OB - No, there were no production deals at the time. We were doing it because the publisher had an 'in' with the A&R man. I also produced Frankie Valli & The Four Lovers, In fact, I wrote 'Apple Of My Eye' in the bathroom because they needed a song, Frankie Valli and I got to he really good friends. I was supposed to be the best man at his wedding.
TBE - One thing everyone is always interested in is the similarities between the demos you did for Elvis and Jerry Lee and the final recordings they did of your songs.
OB - I used to sing all my own demos, and it just so happened that a lot of what Presley and Jerry Lee did sound alike. I thought that they did justice to the songs. They put the kind of feeling into it that I felt.
TBE - The death of Elvis must have affected you. How did you first hear of Elvis' death and what were your thoughts?
OB - I was in a friend's studio when a buddy of his called and told him. He said 'I got some news for you. It's bad news in one respect and good news in another. Do you want me to tell you now or later?' I said later because I was in the studio when President Kennedy was killed and also when Martin Luther King was killed. I know the effect bad news can have on a session. When the session was over he told me and I thought he was joking. It didn't hit me until I lay down to sleep. The one other time that I experienced that was when my mother died and my son. It wasn't because he wouldn't he doing any more of my songs. It was l�ke a piece of the whole business. I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside man, they'll always live. When they're gone, a certain piece goes and you just can't believe it.
TBE - There were lots of younger people who only became aware of Otis Blackwell when Elvis died, after they read how much of his early material you had written. What are your feelings about that? What prompted you late in '77 to go out on tour with Elvis' songs?
OB I thought it was time to step out of the shadows. Before he died! I had already started an album of all my stuff. I had planned on meeting him when he opened up in Vegas. So we had started rehearsals, gotten a band together. I felt well there are all those singer-songwriters now - 'what the hell, let me try it. So I got a few fellows together and did a few spots and I found that I really liked it.
- Elvis Presley's Best Song Writers
If you like reading this article, you will love the book; Writing For The King - a 400 page Book with more than 140 interviews with songwriters like Paul McCartney, Leiber & Stoller, Pomus & Shuman, Red West, Mark James and Tony Joe White.
Included are two CDs, the first contains previously unreleased RCA
recordings of Elvis performing live in Las Vegas (1969 through 1972),
the second a selection of the original demos submitted to Elvis.
The demo CD takes us from Heartbreak Hotel through classics like Teddy Bear, Trouble, Burning Love and Way Down.
'Writing for the King' by Ken Sharp
is a fascinating behind-the-scenes story of politics, money,
inspiration and great trivia about Elvis and the songs he turned into
classics.
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Saturday, February 5, 2011
Interview with Otis Blackwell (1987) Great Balls of Fire! (Interview)
When you piece together the history of contemporary North American music, you discover composer/pianist Otis Blackwell is the rightful owner of the title, King of Rock 'n 'Roll. Throughout the past 30 years, Blackwell's hit songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley - 'All Shook Up, Don't Be Cruel, Paralyzed, Return To Sender, Please Don't Drag That String (Around), One Broken Heart For Sale', Jerry Lee Lewis 'Great Balls Of Fire, Breathless, Let's Talk About Us', Little Willie John and Peggy Lee 'Fever', Dee Clark 'Just Keep It Up' and Jimmy Jones, Del Shannon and James Taylor 'Handyman'.
Bill King: You've been in the studio working on some new projects. What type of sounds are you recording?
Otis Blackwell: Actually, I've been finishing up three albums. I'd been in Nashville recording and a fellow in Baltimore is helping me start a little record label. How is it up there?
B.K: Warm and rainy.
O.B: It's been raining like crazy here.
B.K: It can be a problem year after year in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee. After the drought of '88, this must come as a surprise.
O.B: It's definitely a wet one.
B.K: I first met you at a club in the early '80s, when I was playing with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. I managed to get one of your promotion leaflets and was astonished at the number of hit rock 'n' roll songs you have written. Where did all this music come from?
O.B: I really don't know. When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.
B.K: Was there music you heard when you were young that helped you develop a style of writing?
O.B: I didn't play much early on. What I really liked was cowboy movies. I was a big cowboy fan and liked western music. You couldn't get that stuff where I lived, so I hung out at a little theater that played Gene Autrey and Tex Ritter movies. Tex Ritter is still my favourite singer.
B.K: Did you listen to a lot of radio?
O.B: Yeah, but I didn't get to listen to country music. When the radio was turned on in my house, you had either spirituals, the news or Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell.
B.K: Was it difficult to get people interested in your songs?
O.B: When I started writing it was kind of hard getting people to do my stuff. They say they couldn't do my style. At one point I decided to open an office at 1650 The Brill Building, which is supposedly where all the great music writers have theirs. I opened it and down the hall was a business school. Students would pass by my door, and, eventually, some came in. They looked around and asked, " Are you a songwriter?" I said, "Yeah." " You wrote such and such.Yeah, I did." On my wall I had people like Elvis Presley, Peggy Lee, James Taylor and six or seven other white artists and the kids said, " How come you don't have any black artists on your all?' I told them. "That's my gold wall, and they're the ones who sold millions. I've never had a black artist do that with my songs.
B.K: Were black artists recording your songs?
O.B: No, I was getting a lot of covers, but either they weren't getting out or just weren't clicking. I think the one that really happened was Fever with Little Willie John. But, it only went so far because Peggy Lee jumped on it.
B.K: Was there more interest from black producers and artists after your first successes?
O.B: There were two gentlemen. One was Henry Glover, he dug what I did. I got a bunch of records through him. The other fellow, Calvin Carter, was from Vee Jay Records and he recorded a lot of my material. Other than those two, I didn't get much interest.
B.K: How were you able to get you songs to Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and Peggy?
O.B: A writer by the name of Leroy Kirkland took me to a publishing house called Shalamar Music. A fellow there by the name of Al Stanton was a friend of another fellow named Paul Cates, who was with the Elvis Presley people. He got my songs through. When Moe Gail, who owned Shalamar Music, passed away, I moved over to another publishing company.
B.K: Did they treat you right?
O.B: Oh, you better believe it. It was slow at first. You had a lot of late hours, but that's all part of it. Now, you don't have to wait to record. You can spend five to eight dollars on a cassette and they don't even listen to it. I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today. So many independent publishers and they're all important. They've done a lot of wrong things, but some good as well.
B.K: When the movie 'Breathless' came out, did things begin to turn around again?
O.B: Oh yeah, I've noticed it usually turns around every nine or ten years.
B.K: Years ago, I met Don Covey, Tommy Tucker and Johnny Nash in a New York studio called A-1 Sounds. They were all selling songs to the owner, Herb Abramson, who held the publishing on 'High Heel Sneakers'. It seemed every few years his fortune would increase when Elvis or Jose Feliciano would record the tune.
O.B: I talk to Herb every time I go to California. We hung out a lot and had many a good time. He's still driving, but he can't see right; he drives that car like he's crazy.
B.K: He's the first producer I met in new York when I was there in 1967. I was down and out, had a couple of songs and he bought them.
O.B: He was the original partner and founder of Atlantic along with Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun. They all started it together.
B.K: I always wondered why Herb and the others parted ways.
O.B: I think he went into the service and, by the time he got out, things had changed. I really like doing that old stuff and he's got a good ear for that. That's the way he wants to record. His thing is rhythm 'n' blues.
B.K: His door was always open to black artists.
O.B: He understood the music. We're all in it to make money, but hew really loved it. He talks it all the time.
B.K: How did Peggy Lee get hold of 'Fever'?
O.B: I used to be with a publishing house called Roosevelt Music. A gentleman there told me he had seen Peggy Lee perform Fever in Las Vegas and I found out later she wanted to record it.
B.K: Did you ever meet her?
O.B: No, I didn't meet her, but came close about three years ago - it was too crowded. I was to meet her after the show, bit I didn't want to hang around and deal with the crowd.
B.K: Did you ever attempt to talk to any of the artists that had considerable success with your songs?
O.B: I never really wanted to meet them because there's the problem of getting between the artist and the manager. It can get kind of funny at times. I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that.
B.K: Did you ever do anything with Sun Records?
O.B: I met what's his name.
B.K: Sam Phillips?
O.B: Yeah, I met him a couple of times when I went down to Memphis. That's as far as it goes. I used to go down every year for the remembrance of Elvis' birthday. Memphis State College invited me to sit in the auditorium and speak to the people for one of those Elvis days.
B.K: When are they going to have an Otis Blackwell Day?
O.B: I don't know - it might be nice. I'm very low-keyed. There have been many times when I've been asked to appear and I'd say to myself, "What am I going to talk about?' Early on, when I did interviews, I'd tell everyone, "Don't ask me about dates. I don't even remember what I did yesterday."
B.K: How did you come up with those wonderful bass lines that were at the core of the music?
O.B: I started as one of those two-fingered players, then graduated to three and four fingers and, eventually five. I played a little boogie-woogie and the shuffle, so I wrote over that. Then the Beatles came over and knocked that out.
B.K: Where did you grow up?
O.B: I was born in Brooklyn and still live right around the corner from where I was born. Everybody used to tell me to go to Nashville, and I'd say, "OK, where is it?" I started coming here years ago to hang out, and now I love it.
B.K: Any plans for the future?
O.B: I've decided to run back in forth between Brooklyn and Nashville. I like this town, it's really great. They've put me in The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. This town is about music. It's about the kind of music I like. I've also started a small record label, so I've done an album. People always talk about what I've done, but this is what I'm doing now. I got behind that pencil and nothing happened for many years, but since they put me in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, I've turned around. I took a good look at myself and said, " I think it's time to get back at work."
B.K: How has your writing changed?
O.B: You know my thing was always about I Love You. Your Feets Too Big and that kind of stuff, so I figured I'd sit down and write something different. One of the new songs deals with the situation with guns, and another one deals with the homeless. I've got two or three rock 'n' roll tunes. It's the best stuff I've done in a long time. I've taken my time and worked on them for a couple of years.
DON’T BE CRUEL: Otis Blackwell’s Triumph
On July 2, 1956, a young Elvis Presley came to New York City’s RCA studios to record his next hit single. Presley had his young band in tow and it already had been decided by his handlers that he was going to record a song called “Hound Dog.”
On July 2, 1956, a young Elvis Presley came to New York City’s RCA studios to record his next hit single. Presley had his young band in tow and it already had been decided by his handlers that he was going to record a song called “Hound Dog.” The tune, written by the famous white rock and roll songwriting team of Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber, had already become a hit-made famous for its hard edge by blues diva Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. After 31 takes to get “Hound Dog” right, Presley and company moved to the ever-important task of recording a B-side.
Blackwell was a veteran of the hardcore East coast blues scene but also, strangely enough, was a lifelong fan of country & western music. Blackwell confessed many times over the years that as a child he would sit in the Tompkins Theatre in Brooklyn and watch the singing cowboys, Gene Autry or Tex Ritter, in movies all day. The mix of blues and country was unique for an urban, black songwriter.
Presley hadn’t ever heard of Otis Blackwell at the time, even though Blackwell had signed to Presley’s future label (RCA) in 1953 after his own success with a song called “Daddy Rolling Stone.” And Blackwell, who worked as a clothes presser during the day to pay his rent, probably hadn’t heard of Presley. Despite Presley’s sudden success in 1954 with “That’s Alright, Mama,” he was still just a regional star.
But once Presley played Blackwell’s tape that day 51 years ago, rock and roll would be forever changed. The song that caught Presley’s ear was called “Don’t Be Cruel.” The tune had come down from Blackwell’s connection in New York-Shalimar Music-and had made its way to Presley.
What was it about “Don’t Be Cruel” that appealed to a young Elvis Presley and eventually the world?
Some say it was the pop nature of the tune, but others insist it is the country feel that made it so appealing. Actually, it was much simpler; Otis Blackwell had written a rock and roll song that was tailored for the voice of a white singer. “Don’t Be Cruel” isn’t a hardcore rhythm and blues tune for a white singer to interpret; it is a song with blues elements but a country feel-fashioned perfectly for a softer approach. It is an important distinction.
So on July 2, 1956, Blackwell’s infectious rock and roll tune with its simplistic lyrics, country twang and catchy hit phrase (“Don’t be cruel, to a heart that’s true…”) became the B-side to Elvis’s rendition of “Hound Dog.”
Presley took 28 takes to get the song right, but it was worth the effort. When “Don’t Be Cruel” was finally released, it became the highest selling pop record of all time. And for the year 1956, according to Billboard, it was the highest selling rock and roll single-even though it was a B-side. It stayed at No. 1 twice as long as the A-side, “Hound Dog.” Blackwell and Presley shared songwriting credit, despite the fact the two had never even met.
Many years later, on January 10, 1984, the singer/songwriter from Brooklyn rode down from the great borough of his birth (1931) to Manhattan to tape a television appearance on Late Night With David Letterman. Presley had been dead almost seven years and was now bigger than life. Blackwell, who had never met Presley but had given him songs and lent important components of his singing style and voice, sang one song for the world that day. The following is an account of Blackwell’s little known interview with Letterman and his performance of the tune that changed rock and roll forever.
Otis Blackwell, who wrote over 1000 songs, died in May 2002 in Nashville.
As always, he was dressed rather ordinary, but yet, he looked like a star. He wore wide legged tan slacks, a wide collared bright tan silk shirt and a dark, rather noticeable, vest full of colorful golden designs. His silk shirt, on close inspection, was pressed so carefully you could see the creases in the sleeves. His shoes were casual, leather zip-up boots that reached just beyond his ankles. His shoes matched his slacks and shirt almost exactly. And his hair, as it could have been seen in numerous publicity shots when he was a younger man, was short and well kept-the left side parted neatly and nondescript. Yes, he looked like a star.
Otis Blackwell was an elusive mythical figure in the annals of rock and roll. The customary four million Late Night With Letterman viewers on January 10, 1984, who had luckily tuned in for a piece of rock and roll’s past were about to be enlightened and perhaps overwhelmed by a short, unassuming African-American man who was a legend in pop music circles. Blackwell was not just any rock and roll singer/songwriter anyway; from 1955 to1960, it was universally agreed that he had provided rock and roll with a sacred, untouchable canon of songs.
He looked cool too. Everyone who knew him over the years always said he looked cool. He had on his ever-present dark glasses with lenses so thick one might conjure images of Ray Charles. They were appropriate too. Though Otis was not completely blind like Charles, he wore the thick glasses precisely because his sight was poor. In fact, rhythm & blues legend Jimmy McGowan says that in 1979, Otis told him that he was legally blind.
But on that night, poor eyesight didn’t mean anything to Blackwell. He was back where it all began. He had ventured over the bridge from his home borough of Brooklyn into Manhattan as he had done countless times during his life to play, record or promote his music. And this, he knew, was an important night. Late Night With David Letterman was a television show on the rise in American popular culture, and it had a particular strong, cult-like following amongst young people (18-35). These were the people who were apt to love and worship rock and roll music, its culture, stars icons and most importantly, its mythological figures and their lost stories.
Letterman, the veteran comic from Indiana, was an amiable host as always as Blackwell’s segment began. He had already dazzled the audience with two popular, regular features on his program: “Stupid Pet Tricks” and “Small Town News.” By the time Blackwell’s moment arrived, there was a certain energy looming, despite Letterman’s seemingly innate ridiculousness. Behind his wooden desk at NBC’s Rockefeller Center, Letterman was beaming.
He was adorned in a conservative blue-gray sports coat with a striped tie. His now famous flop of hair looked thick and more pronounced; it was probably the only part of him more distracting than his legendary gap-toothed smile that will always invoke the cover of Mad magazine.
“He has been referred to as the most influential songwriter in the history of rock and roll…I mentioned some of these songs earlier…it is unbelievable,” Letterman announced forcefully in his strange squeaky voice when he called Otis to the stage. “…‘Great Balls of Fire,’ ‘Handy Man,’ ‘Breathless,’ ‘Return to Sender,’ ‘Fever’…and we are delighted to have him on the show tonight. Please folks, give a nice welcome to Mr. Otis Blackwell.” The crowd clapped feverishly.
Blackwell, who was 51 years old at the time, eased around the corner from backstage towards Letterman’s desk and looked confident although he seemed to be lumbering along slowly. He was much heavier than he had been as a young man laboring on the tough New York rhythm & blues scene in the 1940s, but he was ready. He had never been afraid of the stage once he made the decision to take the stage; it was making the decision that had always seemed to haunt him over the years.
Blackwell met Letterman at the edge of the stage and graciously gripped his hand. He walked in front, waved his hand lightly up to the crowd to acknowledge their applause. He was always gracious, and he was in his element.
He had stopped performing his brand of rhythm & blues back in the ‘50s. This was before rock and roll took off and became the music that would unite and define a generation. In the years after that choice, he devoted most of his energy to songs for others. But in the ‘70s, as a different kind of rock and roll surged to the forefront, he had returned to familiar haunts in New York and along the east coast club corridor to become a singer again. He wasn’t seeking the limelight in returning to doing live performances either; you would think he would, after so much time behind the scenes.
From the distant recesses of America’s music publishing industry and record making machinery that sold millions of records each year, Blackwell had hitched rock and roll music to his back from 1955 to1960 and set the country ablaze with his words, lyrics and bouncy, bass-driven tunes. It was not at all different from Chuck Berry’s run in the 1950s, but even more impressive because he had done it as a songwriter exclusively and had spread his oeuvre across the spectrum of the genre.
For the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, the gifts had been lucrative and legendary: “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” “Return to Sender,” “Paralyzed” and “One Broken Heart for Sale,” just to name a few. For Jimmy Jones, who hadn’t had many hits in the industry, he co-wrote “Handy Man” (made famous again later by James Taylor). For Jerry Lee Lewis, another white singer who had changed the face of rock and roll, Blackwell delivered the Pentecostal rock and roll fusion tune “Great Balls of Fire.” And for Little Willie John, Peggy Lee and countless other rock and rollers over the years, his immortal hit “Fever” had delivered the goods. Few non-performing rock and roll figures had ever amassed so many important popular songs. And that’s where Letterman began the interview-back in the day.
“Was ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ the first song of yours that Elvis recorded?” Letterman asked instantly. He asked the question so quickly you could tell he didn’t want the interview to digress anywhere else. He knew this audience would respond to that because it had long been suspected that Elvis Presley had been drinking from some secret creative well.
“Yes it was,” Blackwell said. He leaned in towards Letterman and shifted in his seat. His face looked serious, yet it exuded an uneasiness about the topic.
“How did that come about?”
“Well, it’s a hard story,” he said. It was almost as if the answer had escaped him suddenly. He had been asked that question dozens of time over the years from all kinds of writers and interviewers. The story was the stuff of legend now. And in a way, as he began to speak to Letterman and to the nation for that matter, he seemed to stumble with nervousness-like that magical tale of Duke Ellington penning “Mood Indigo” while his mother made supper, or the one about Robert Johnson disappearing from Mississippi only to return with the key to the Delta blues in his heart and soul.
According to the story that became official by the late 1970s, Blackwell had written “Don’t Be Cruel” around Christmas in 1955 when it was snowing and wet in New York. He was, as he told Letterman, grinning, “writing songs…freelancing” and working “any old job that came along where I could make me a dollar or two…as long as it was honest.” His smile was as broad as his explanation.
But through connections on the New York music scene he had developed from his years of toiling as a blues singer, Blackwell told Letterman and his audience that he had sold “Don’t Be Cruel” and several other songs for $150 that day to a music publishing company called Shalimar Music.
“I received $25 for each song,” he said. He held up his hands to indicate money. “One of those songs was ‘Don’t Be Cruel.'” Eventually, Blackwell’s now famous demo tape that included “Don’t Be Cruel” made its way to a young Elvis Presley. He too had come to New York in 1956 to record his follow-up to his smash hit “That’s Alright, Mama.” Presley recorded Blackwell’s “Don’t Be Cruel” as a B-side to “Hound Dog”.
Letterman adored controversy, and at times he enjoyed asking his guests uncomfortable questions. In this interview, however, Blackwell was not his target. Letterman was going after the giant named Elvis Presley.
“Now, Otis, on the sheet music here, it says, ‘words and music by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley,'” Letterman pried as he held up the sheet music to ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’ “Now, did he work you on the song with you at any time?” You can tell Letterman is asking a question that Blackwell has been asked so many times over the years. He almost lets a smile escape and pretends to act as if it is all new to him, as if he is not so sure.
But though it is no longer important to him, others still want to point it out. Blackwell didn’t have anything against Presley. In fact, as he would tell Letterman later in the interview, he thought that he and Presley had “a good thing going.” And though they never met, he felt that because he made tapes for Presley to listen to, “in a sense, we had met.” Letterman however, in his sly way, had boxed in Blackwell to answer the question.
“No, he didn’t,” Blackwell said, as if rehearsed. “Then how does his name get there?” Letterman continued. “That seemed to have been the practice,” Blackwell replied. And it was, at the time, the practice. Presley was such a huge star that his publisher-Hill & Range-could command a songwriting credit for their writer. The songwriters knew they would stand to make a lot of money from a Presley recording, so if Presley wanted half of the songwriting credit, he could get it. Blackwell had told other interviewers that he was reluctant to provide Presley with credit for writing the songs at first, but like most of the other writers who encountered the Presley phenomenon, he acquiesced.
After Letterman led Blackwell through more questions about Presley, it came time for the performance. That was why he was there anyway. He harbored no ill will about the past. That was business; as for the singing part, the performance-now that was different. That was the beauty of it all.
Music director and keys player, Paul Shaffer’s nimble fingers dropped down powerfully onto his keyboard and the familiar boogie-woogie piano intro that served as the linchpin for the song erupted into the audience. It was just as the song had been written in 1955 with the piano introduction. It is a simple song too. And in American popular music, simplicity is good. In fact, it is usually the key to commercial success. It helps that millions of record buyers remember the hook-the phrase that clinches the tale. If the hook can be remembered, an epidemic of listening, dancing and purchasing can be commenced in every neighborhood in the land.
By now NBC studio at Rockefeller Center was bopping. Blackwell had turned the place into a sock hop. It was a preachy brand of rock and roll too; it wasn’t Bill Haley and the Comets. It had a singular distinction-a strong sense of story, however simple it was. The camera zoomed in on Blackwell. He seemed to be a different person now on stage. Just moments ago he was sitting on stage and had stumbled through answers to questions he had been answering for years. Many have described this quality about Otis over the years. Jimmy McGowan, who sang with the rhythm & blues standouts, The Four Fellows, met Blackwell in the 1940s in Brooklyn at Pope’s recording studio on Fulton Avenue. He remembers the clear dichotomy between the Otis who loved to sing music and the Otis who was quiet and reserved.
“He seemed to be two different people,” McGowan said. “On the one hand you wouldn’t recognize him in a crowd, but when he began to sing and perform, Otis Blackwell was a commanding presence. There was no one else in the room or on stage but that man.” Otis clearly rocked with the best of ‘em, just as McGowan described, on this particular night. His voice got emotional and his hands began to move and stress his feeling for the music.
And then it was over-Otis Blackwell “live” in New York City. Back to the place where it began for him three decades ago. Millions had seen him that night. The moment had a Warhol-ian quality to it too. But it wasn’t 15 minutes as Warhol would have insisted upon; it was almost eight minutes. Some small talk, history and then a song that barely lasts more than two minutes, but a song that changed lives. Otis didn’t need a Warhol moment though; he had been living in the moment since before the day he sold the demo tape Christmas of 1955.
Blackwell was before the world completely now. He knew who he was and what he had done. There was the business, there was society and there was Elvis Presley. He knew Elvis would always be there, but it would not bother him. There was no need to cry the blues about it; Elvis had done what he had done and Blackwell had done what he had done. No one could ever take that away. At last, Otis Blackwell was a star.
THE
MUSIC OF OTIS BLACKWELL: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH OTIS BLACKWELL:
Otis Blackwell-Don't Be Cruel-1976
born February 16, 1931 Otis Blackwell (Don't Be Cruel)
Otis Blackwell on Late Night, January 10, 1984
Otis Blackwell-All Shook Up-1976
Otis Blackwell-Handy Man-1976
Otis Blackwell- All Shook Up (Original Demo Version
Otis Blackwell - Make Ready For Love
Otis Blackwell - Let The Daddy Hold You
Otis.Blackwell - Great Balls Of Fire
Otis Blackwell-Breathless-1976
Fever (Otis Blackwell)
Otis.Blackwell - Return To Sender
Otis Blackwell - Daddy Rollin Stone
Otis Blackwell by James Cannings
OTIS BLACKWELL - IT'S ALL OVER ME
Otis Blackwell - (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear [Original Demo]
Otis Blackwell | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Blackwell
Otis Blackwell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Otis Blackwell (February 16, 1931 – May 6, 2002) was an African-American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work significantly influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever", recorded by Little Willie John; "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless", recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis; "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Return to Sender" (with Winfield Scott), recorded by Elvis Presley; and "Handy Man", recorded by Jimmy Jones.[1] He is not to be confused with the songwriter and record producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell.
Biography
Blackwell was born in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to play the piano as a child and grew up listening to both R&B and country music.
He first became famous by winning a local talent contest ("Amateur Night") at the Apollo Theater, in Harlem, in 1952.[2] This led to a recording contract with RCA and then with Jay-Dee. His first release was his own composition "Daddy Rolling Stone",[3] which became a favorite in Jamaica, where it was recorded by Derek Martin. The song later became part of the Who's mod repertoire. Enjoying some early recording and performing success, he found his first love was songwriting and by 1955 had settled into the groove that he would ride for decades.[4] His first successes as a songwriter came in 1956, when Little Willie John's R&B hit with the sultry "Fever" was an even bigger pop success for Peggy Lee, and "Don't Be Cruel" began a highly profitable association with Elvis Presley.
Blackwell was one of the leading African-American figures of early rock and roll, although he was not well known by the public. His own records never cracked the Top 40, yet he wrote million-selling songs for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dee Clark and others. He also recruited other songwriters to write for Presley, such as Winfield Scott.[5]
In the liner notes of Elvis' Golden Records (1958), Anne Fulchino, of RCA, wrote,
While sipping coffee, Steve Sholes pulled out a demonstration record of 'Don't Be Cruel' and told Elvis it was a new song written by Otis Blackwell, whom Elvis had long admired as a rhythm and blues artist. It took just a few bars to convince Presley that it was a perfect song for him, and he decided to cut it right away. Presley learned the song within minutes—he had an inherent musical sense—and in short order a great master was put on tape. It isn't often that the title of a song will create a whole new expression in Americana. 'All Shook Up' did exactly that. Youngsters and adults alike have made the phrase a common part of everyday usage. The background to the song itself is a rather interesting one. Since the huge success of 'Don't Be Cruel', Elvis had been anxious to record another song from the pen of Otis Blackwell. Eventually, Blackwell came around with 'All Shook Up' (first recorded by David Hill on Aladdin). Presley wasn't completely satisfied with the song, and with Blackwell's consent re-wrote part of the lyrics. Thus, as co-writer as well as artist, Presley produced his ninth consecutive gold record, his first in the year 1957.During an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Blackwell said he never met Presley in person. When he was having a contract dispute with his publishing company, he also wrote under the white-sounding pen name John Davenport.[2] Blackwell composed more than a thousand songs, garnering worldwide sales of close to 200 million records.[6] Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, asked Blackwell to appear in the Presley movie Girls! Girls! Girls!, for which he had written "Return to Sender", but a superstition about meeting Presley kept him from accepting.[7]
In 1956 Blackwell gave "Don't Be Cruel" to friend Frankie Valli's group, the Four Lovers, but as they were recording it he asked to take it back and in turn gave it to the up-and-coming Presley. In exchange for this song he gave them "You're the Apple of My Eye", which became a chart hit for the Four Lovers (Billboard number 64). The song was performed on Ed Sullivan's television show that same year and was probably instrumental in at least shaping events for the group to eventually becoming the Four Seasons. A shortened version of "You're the Apple of My Eye" is also featured in the Broadway show "Jersey Boys".
As the tide of rock and roll receded, Blackwell recorded R&B songs for numerous labels, including Atlantic, MGM and Epic. In later years he was in semiretirement, making only occasional live appearances.
Blackwell was the grandfather of Torian Brown.
In the 1980s, Blackwell toured and recorded with the Smithereens as his backing band for both live shows and studio recordings. The partnership produced two self-funded albums, "Let's Talk About Us" and "From the Beginning," which were released independently on Blackwell's ROC-CO imprint.[citation needed]
In 1991, Blackwell was paralyzed by a stroke. Three years later, Shanachie released the album Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell, containing 15 songs written by Blackwell and recorded by the likes of Kris Kristofferson ("All Shook Up"), Blondie's Debbie Harry ("Don't Be Cruel"), the Smithereens ("Let's Talk About Us"), Graham Parker ("Paralyzed"), and Ronnie Spector ("Brace Yourself").[8]
Blackwell died of a heart attack in 2002, in Nashville, Tennessee, and was interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in that city.[9]
Awards and recognitions
Otis Blackwell was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and in 1991 into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame.[2] Blackwell's crowning moment came in the late 1980s when the Black Rock Coalition, a prominent organization of black rock musicians, led by Vernon Reid, the lead guitarist of the band, Living Colour, held a tribute for him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in his native Brooklyn. Many prominent musicians and singers took part including Blackwell himself, who performed an assortment of his best songs, including "One Broken Heart for Sale," "Black Trail," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Daddy Rolling Stone."
Blackwell was named one of the 2010 recipients of Ahmet Ertegun Award in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[10] This category encompasses those who primarily work behind the scenes in the music industry.
Legacy
Blackwell was one of the greatest R&B songwriters of all time.[11] His songwriting style is as uniquely identifiable as that of Leiber and Stoller, Chuck Berry, or Willie Dixon and helped redefine popular music in America in the 1950s.[6] This is true even though he often collaborated with such partners as Winfield Scott, Eddie Cooley, and Jack Hammer. Blackwell was one of the most important innovators who helped invent the musical vocabulary of rock and roll at its very beginning.[1] His works have been recorded by a host of major artists, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, James Brown, the Who, Johnny Thunders, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, the Judds, Carl Perkins and Peggy Lee, among numerous others. At other times in his career, Blackwell was also successful as a record producer, having helped turn out hits for artists as diverse as Connie Francis, Mahalia Jackson and Sal Mineo.[12]
Songs
Songs composed by Blackwell, with the performers who made them famous, include the following:
- "All Shook Up" (Elvis Presley)
- "Don't Be Cruel" (Elvis Presley); inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002
- "Fever" as "John Davenport" with Eddie Cooley (Peggy Lee, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998; Little Willie John, Madonna, the McCoys, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Over the Rhine, and numerous other performers).
- "Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis); inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998
- "Breathless" (Jerry Lee Lewis, X)
- "Let's Talk About Us" (Jerry Lee Lewis)
- "Hey Little Girl" (Dee Clark)
- "Handy Man" (Jimmy Jones, Del Shannon, James Taylor)
- "Return to Sender" (Elvis Presley)
- "One Broken Heart for Sale"(Elvis Presley)
References:
Sources and further reading
- Wilmer, Val. "Rock and Roll Genius" [interview with Otis Blackwell]. Melody Maker. 5 February 1977, Vol. 52: pp. 8, 44.
- Wilmer, Val. "'I'm Happy as All Hell that the Man Took My Songs'" [interview with Otis Blackwell]. Time Out. 6–12 March 1981, pp. 12–13
External links
IN THE FUNK WORLD
(by Amiri Baraka, 1996)
If Elvis Presley/is
King
Who is James Brown,
God?
“If I Steal It, Is It Mine?”: Racism, Cultural Expropriation, and the African American Artist in the U.S.
by Kofi Natambu
The Poetry Project Newsletter
New York
December, 1990
appropriation: 3. To take to or for oneself; take possession of. To make one’s own. The act of appropriating.
expropriation: 1. To take (property, ideas etc.) from another, especially without his permission. 2. To deprive (a person, business etc.) of property. To be separated from one’s own.
—The Random House Dictionary of the English Language
by Kofi Natambu
The Poetry Project Newsletter
New York
December, 1990
appropriation: 3. To take to or for oneself; take possession of. To make one’s own. The act of appropriating.
expropriation: 1. To take (property, ideas etc.) from another, especially without his permission. 2. To deprive (a person, business etc.) of property. To be separated from one’s own.
—The Random House Dictionary of the English Language
A critical analysis of the structural relationship between the African American artist and the political economy of culture in the United States must begin with a theoretical investigation of the social and cultural history of aesthetics and “race” in this country. However, the major problem with the teaching of this history is that the writing of it is monopolized by “white Americans” who don’t know anything about the subject.
For example, it is painfully clear that 98% of all the books written about ‘culture’ in the United States don’t have the slightest idea who the following people are or what they’ve “contributed” to American culture: ‘Native Americans (“Indians”), African Americans (“Negroes”), Asian Americans (“Orientals”), Latino Americans (“Hispanics”). As a result these same writers can’t really talk coherently or accurately about the actual historical experience of the Euro Americans (“white people” of English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, French, German and Eastern European descent). Obviously this creates tremendous confusion when it comes to any clear understanding of the complex meaning of these various histories. This is largely because of a profound ignorance of even the empirical details of what the cross-cultural contacts and conflicts of the many heterogeneous groups that make up the North American continent actually represent. Thus it is not surprising that the ideology of racism (the most powerful instrument of oppression in the world today outside of capitalism itself) dominates contemporary discourse about culture, aesthetics and ‘identity’ in the United States.
THE RELENTLESS HEGEMONY that this ideology wields continues to distort, obscure, and confuse the issue when it comes to a critical assessment of the major role that appropriation plays in cultural theory and praxis today. This is no less true within so-called “avant-garde” circles than it is in the academic/institutional oligopoly known as the “cultural mainstream.” In fact, what both of these aesthetic communities have in common is an equal disdain for, yet voracious exploitation of, other cultural ideas, practices, traditions and values stemming from different social/cultural groups (e.g. African Americans). These reactionary attitudes and philosophical limitations constitute the basis of the historical expropriation of black cultural forms in all the arts (i.e. music, dance, literature, visual arts, ‘performance art’, theater, etc.) by white artists and critics who seek to not only use (or appropriate) the techniques, methods and conceptual ideas of African Americans but to co-opt, absorb and consume them as their property through the systematic ‘legal’ and criminal theft of their cultural productions.
This is carried out by the massive structural domination of the art market by huge corporations owned and administered by predominately upper-class white males who, through bureaucratic managerial control, inherited wealth, and monopolistic manipulation of the vast economic network of marketing, distribution and exchange outlets (the various sites of Capital in the political economy of culture in this country as well as globally), determine what the schools and mass media teach about “who did what, when, where and how” when it comes to American cultural history.
There is nothing necessarily conspiratorial or sinisterly “planned” with respect to this on-going condition. It is simply the way things are when it comes to political, economic and social reality in the United States. The fact that the cultural/artistic communities (‘mainstream’ and ‘avant-garde’) largely support and accept the rather heinous status quo only exposes the vested interests of the “art world” when it comes to their own privileged position within the system. So the point is not merely that individual white artists “stole” their own “personal” aesthetic styles (and much of their content) from blacks but that as a necessarily privileged group of artists (by dint of their “race”, class, and sometimes gender) they were able to do much more than merely “appropriate” information (i.e. creatively use thematic and stylistic material as aesthetic source, cultural reference or energy conduit). The truth is that white artists have always sought to own the economic rights to, and residual benefits of, African American cultural artifacts and conceptions. What made this possible for them is the surplus value of what black artists and cultural workers have produced (in the form of usurious “contracts”, absurdly exploitive royalty arrangements and rigidly segregated markets at the points of both material production and exchange).
THE MOST BLATANT and notorious example of all this is the recording industry whose monumental profiteering off the creative genius of such legendary and seminal musicians, composers and singers as Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Theolonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Otis Blackwell, Louis Jordan, Charles Mingus (and just about every blues artist in history) is scandalous. These are just a very few of the huge number of black artists who have revolutionized music as an art form in the 20th century and who have been mercilessly exploited. Who is the great Jimi Hendrix but a man whose extraordinary talent and vision has been plundered by a whole cottage industry of artistic and financial parasites who continue to bilk millions of dollars from his estate, while doing third-rate imitations of his artistry? In this context, who is Eric Clapton? Who are Mick Jagger & Keith Richard? Who is every ho-hum heavy metal guitarist since 1971? What does the multi-billion dollar music industry represent under these conditions? It’s important to note that this is not simply a matter of “trashing” your favorite white musician/songwriter either. After all, I’m not interested in examining the motives or intent of personalities involved in this process. What’s significant is the political, economic and cultural context that they are a part of, and what they decide to do about these conditions as far as their own cultural work is concerned.
In this light it’s easy to see the implications of the infamous “cover song’ tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s by white artists (a situation in which a popular white artist records the song and/or music of a black artist that often results in black artists not being paid royalties for their work and simultaneously being stymied from getting airplay and openly selling their music to a wider audience). Everyone from Pat Boone to Elvis Presley have cashed in on this little strategy. And while the economics and academic recognition of this situation have improved to a certain degree (more people are aware of what is happening and why) it still remains a major concern within the African American cultural community. Just ask the attorneys representing Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and the estates of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and yes, James Marshall Hendrix, all of whom are currently involved in massive lawsuits against their respective recording companies. I’m sure there are many more examples.
Another cultural area where this syndrome of white appropriation turns into its ugly linguistic cousin is literature, where three generations of black writers in this century have been ignored, neglected and ripped-off with hardly anyone in academia or the avant-garde batting an eyelash. How else does one explain the colossal ignorance surrounding the important literary contributions of such major ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ writers as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, Melvin B. Tolson, Adrienne Kennedy, John A. Williams, Ishmael Reed, Bob Kaufman, Clarence Major, William Melvin Kelley, Charles Wright, Samuel Delany, Gayl Jones, Jayne Cortez, Calvin Hernton, David Henderson, June Jordan, Al Young and even Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (whose towering achievements are far too often dismissed as the infantile rantings of a ‘bitter nigger’). There are many other people I could mention but I think you get the point. How many of you reading this essay have heard of/read Sterling A. Brown, W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James or Ida B. Wells? On the other hand how many of you know the work of W.C. Williams, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Ezra Pound, Emma Goldman, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Jack Kerouac? Many more, I’ll bet.
The fault for all this lies of course with the public educational system whose curriculums and policy decisions throughout the country mirror the already established ideology of the bourgeois class that does indeed “run” the nation. The mere fact that the American literary canon is made up almost exclusively of European and white American males makes this clearly self-evident. The expropriation of the oral tradition in ‘American literature’ begins with the poetic and narrative strategies of Thomas Woolfe and William Faulkner in the 1920s and reaches its apex in the Beat Generation poets of the 1950s (check out Kerouac, Ginsberg and Corso for starters). Again the issue is not the individuals who choose to use/appropriate material from other traditions and folk forms, but the supporting political economy that promotes and markets their cultural productions as “representative” or “central” to a certain aesthetic expression. At the same time the culture industry ignores or renders invisible the work of the seminal forces in the field.
THIS HISTORICAL DYNAMIC continues today with the myriad innovations in popular dance, painting (graffiti, mural art, etc.), ‘performance art,’ multimedia and film by black artists all being mined by white American artists with scarcely any real critical attention being paid to the nature of their technical and expressive achievements. One very significant example of this is the lack of serious critical analysis and commentary surrounding the powerful new hybrid/synthetic form known as RAP. Most white critics and journalists seem more interested in determining whether young black people inventing the form are “underclass criminals” or simply “obscene illiterates.” This is cultural racism of a particularly insidious and manipulative kind, especially in light of the tremendous popularity (as both form and artifact) that RAP enjoys among middle class white suburban youth (records don’t consistently go double platinum without this demographic audience). The corresponding fact that many white and black scholars are beginning to write in literary and cultural journals about the aesthetics and cultural politics of the form also exposes the dangerously reductive and racist attitudes of such middlebrow publications as Newsweek, The New York Times, New Republic, and The New Criterion. Between the “gliberals” (thanks, Ishmael!) and the neoconservatives, African American art is getting slapped around (and expropriated) from all sides.
But this historical assault on the intellectual and spiritual vitality, creative innovation, and liberating vision of African American art in all its forms cannot and will not stop the contemporary black artist any more than the imitators of Armstrong, Hughes, Hurston, Ellington, Parker, Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, Young and Holiday were able to stop their legendary contributions to the 20th century cannon (sic) of world culture. WORD!
For example, it is painfully clear that 98% of all the books written about ‘culture’ in the United States don’t have the slightest idea who the following people are or what they’ve “contributed” to American culture: ‘Native Americans (“Indians”), African Americans (“Negroes”), Asian Americans (“Orientals”), Latino Americans (“Hispanics”). As a result these same writers can’t really talk coherently or accurately about the actual historical experience of the Euro Americans (“white people” of English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, French, German and Eastern European descent). Obviously this creates tremendous confusion when it comes to any clear understanding of the complex meaning of these various histories. This is largely because of a profound ignorance of even the empirical details of what the cross-cultural contacts and conflicts of the many heterogeneous groups that make up the North American continent actually represent. Thus it is not surprising that the ideology of racism (the most powerful instrument of oppression in the world today outside of capitalism itself) dominates contemporary discourse about culture, aesthetics and ‘identity’ in the United States.
THE RELENTLESS HEGEMONY that this ideology wields continues to distort, obscure, and confuse the issue when it comes to a critical assessment of the major role that appropriation plays in cultural theory and praxis today. This is no less true within so-called “avant-garde” circles than it is in the academic/institutional oligopoly known as the “cultural mainstream.” In fact, what both of these aesthetic communities have in common is an equal disdain for, yet voracious exploitation of, other cultural ideas, practices, traditions and values stemming from different social/cultural groups (e.g. African Americans). These reactionary attitudes and philosophical limitations constitute the basis of the historical expropriation of black cultural forms in all the arts (i.e. music, dance, literature, visual arts, ‘performance art’, theater, etc.) by white artists and critics who seek to not only use (or appropriate) the techniques, methods and conceptual ideas of African Americans but to co-opt, absorb and consume them as their property through the systematic ‘legal’ and criminal theft of their cultural productions.
This is carried out by the massive structural domination of the art market by huge corporations owned and administered by predominately upper-class white males who, through bureaucratic managerial control, inherited wealth, and monopolistic manipulation of the vast economic network of marketing, distribution and exchange outlets (the various sites of Capital in the political economy of culture in this country as well as globally), determine what the schools and mass media teach about “who did what, when, where and how” when it comes to American cultural history.
There is nothing necessarily conspiratorial or sinisterly “planned” with respect to this on-going condition. It is simply the way things are when it comes to political, economic and social reality in the United States. The fact that the cultural/artistic communities (‘mainstream’ and ‘avant-garde’) largely support and accept the rather heinous status quo only exposes the vested interests of the “art world” when it comes to their own privileged position within the system. So the point is not merely that individual white artists “stole” their own “personal” aesthetic styles (and much of their content) from blacks but that as a necessarily privileged group of artists (by dint of their “race”, class, and sometimes gender) they were able to do much more than merely “appropriate” information (i.e. creatively use thematic and stylistic material as aesthetic source, cultural reference or energy conduit). The truth is that white artists have always sought to own the economic rights to, and residual benefits of, African American cultural artifacts and conceptions. What made this possible for them is the surplus value of what black artists and cultural workers have produced (in the form of usurious “contracts”, absurdly exploitive royalty arrangements and rigidly segregated markets at the points of both material production and exchange).
THE MOST BLATANT and notorious example of all this is the recording industry whose monumental profiteering off the creative genius of such legendary and seminal musicians, composers and singers as Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Theolonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Otis Blackwell, Louis Jordan, Charles Mingus (and just about every blues artist in history) is scandalous. These are just a very few of the huge number of black artists who have revolutionized music as an art form in the 20th century and who have been mercilessly exploited. Who is the great Jimi Hendrix but a man whose extraordinary talent and vision has been plundered by a whole cottage industry of artistic and financial parasites who continue to bilk millions of dollars from his estate, while doing third-rate imitations of his artistry? In this context, who is Eric Clapton? Who are Mick Jagger & Keith Richard? Who is every ho-hum heavy metal guitarist since 1971? What does the multi-billion dollar music industry represent under these conditions? It’s important to note that this is not simply a matter of “trashing” your favorite white musician/songwriter either. After all, I’m not interested in examining the motives or intent of personalities involved in this process. What’s significant is the political, economic and cultural context that they are a part of, and what they decide to do about these conditions as far as their own cultural work is concerned.
In this light it’s easy to see the implications of the infamous “cover song’ tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s by white artists (a situation in which a popular white artist records the song and/or music of a black artist that often results in black artists not being paid royalties for their work and simultaneously being stymied from getting airplay and openly selling their music to a wider audience). Everyone from Pat Boone to Elvis Presley have cashed in on this little strategy. And while the economics and academic recognition of this situation have improved to a certain degree (more people are aware of what is happening and why) it still remains a major concern within the African American cultural community. Just ask the attorneys representing Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and the estates of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and yes, James Marshall Hendrix, all of whom are currently involved in massive lawsuits against their respective recording companies. I’m sure there are many more examples.
Another cultural area where this syndrome of white appropriation turns into its ugly linguistic cousin is literature, where three generations of black writers in this century have been ignored, neglected and ripped-off with hardly anyone in academia or the avant-garde batting an eyelash. How else does one explain the colossal ignorance surrounding the important literary contributions of such major ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ writers as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, Melvin B. Tolson, Adrienne Kennedy, John A. Williams, Ishmael Reed, Bob Kaufman, Clarence Major, William Melvin Kelley, Charles Wright, Samuel Delany, Gayl Jones, Jayne Cortez, Calvin Hernton, David Henderson, June Jordan, Al Young and even Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (whose towering achievements are far too often dismissed as the infantile rantings of a ‘bitter nigger’). There are many other people I could mention but I think you get the point. How many of you reading this essay have heard of/read Sterling A. Brown, W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James or Ida B. Wells? On the other hand how many of you know the work of W.C. Williams, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Ezra Pound, Emma Goldman, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Jack Kerouac? Many more, I’ll bet.
The fault for all this lies of course with the public educational system whose curriculums and policy decisions throughout the country mirror the already established ideology of the bourgeois class that does indeed “run” the nation. The mere fact that the American literary canon is made up almost exclusively of European and white American males makes this clearly self-evident. The expropriation of the oral tradition in ‘American literature’ begins with the poetic and narrative strategies of Thomas Woolfe and William Faulkner in the 1920s and reaches its apex in the Beat Generation poets of the 1950s (check out Kerouac, Ginsberg and Corso for starters). Again the issue is not the individuals who choose to use/appropriate material from other traditions and folk forms, but the supporting political economy that promotes and markets their cultural productions as “representative” or “central” to a certain aesthetic expression. At the same time the culture industry ignores or renders invisible the work of the seminal forces in the field.
THIS HISTORICAL DYNAMIC continues today with the myriad innovations in popular dance, painting (graffiti, mural art, etc.), ‘performance art,’ multimedia and film by black artists all being mined by white American artists with scarcely any real critical attention being paid to the nature of their technical and expressive achievements. One very significant example of this is the lack of serious critical analysis and commentary surrounding the powerful new hybrid/synthetic form known as RAP. Most white critics and journalists seem more interested in determining whether young black people inventing the form are “underclass criminals” or simply “obscene illiterates.” This is cultural racism of a particularly insidious and manipulative kind, especially in light of the tremendous popularity (as both form and artifact) that RAP enjoys among middle class white suburban youth (records don’t consistently go double platinum without this demographic audience). The corresponding fact that many white and black scholars are beginning to write in literary and cultural journals about the aesthetics and cultural politics of the form also exposes the dangerously reductive and racist attitudes of such middlebrow publications as Newsweek, The New York Times, New Republic, and The New Criterion. Between the “gliberals” (thanks, Ishmael!) and the neoconservatives, African American art is getting slapped around (and expropriated) from all sides.
But this historical assault on the intellectual and spiritual vitality, creative innovation, and liberating vision of African American art in all its forms cannot and will not stop the contemporary black artist any more than the imitators of Armstrong, Hughes, Hurston, Ellington, Parker, Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, Young and Holiday were able to stop their legendary contributions to the 20th century cannon (sic) of world culture. WORD!
