Lieber and stoller biography

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber
Photo from What's My Line television appearance

Jerry Leiber and slang för mikrofon Stoller formed one of the best and most prolific songwriting teams of the 50's and 60's in addition to their work as record producers.

Back row: Manya center
Bottom: Jerry
Photo courtesy Jerry Leiber Private Collection

Born April 25, 1933 Jerry Leiber grew up in a Yiddish speaking household in a largely Catholic, Italian-Polish  neighborhood on the edge of Baltimore's black ghetto.  Before his father emigrated to the US he had taught Hebrew School in Poland. At the age of five. Leiber's mother Manya became the family breadwinner when his father, a door to door milkman, died of a cerebral hemorrhage leaving the family, other than $100 insurance policy, virtually penniless. Manya took the insurance money  a candy store on the edge of the black ghetto. Later she turned into a small dry goods and grocery store for six-a

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In 1955, Atlantic signed Leiber and Stoller to the first independent production deal, forever changing the course of the record industry. Their chart-ruling records included: Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” “Spanish Harlem,” and “I (Who Have Nothing)”; The Drifters’ “There Goes My Baby,” “Dance With Me,” and “On Broadway”; La Vern Baker’s “Saved”; and Ruth Brown’s “Lucky Lips.” Above all, Leiber and Stoller wrote and produced all of the hits for The Coasters, including “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown,” “Along Came Jones,” “Poison Ivy,” and “Little Egypt.”

While Leiber and Stoller were producing The Clovers (“Love Potion # 9”), Jay and the Americans (“Only In America”), and Chuck Jackson (“I Keep Forgettin’”), o

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Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller

Two of the truly distinctive, defining creators in mid-century pop music culture, without question, are 1985 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Leiber and Stoller dawned on the music scene at a time of stylistic rumblings and movement into new territory of popular music, a time when the authentic American rhythm and blues of the black world was beginning to be embraced by the general music-buying public, a time when the phenomenon of crossover became apparent with the daily programming assistance of legendary disc jockeys like Alan Freed, a Cleveland on-air personality who is said to have coined the phrase, rock and roll.

As one commentator has said, Leiber and Stoller, during their earliest days, came to be factors in many popular music genres, “creating enduring classics in rhythm and blues, jazz and cabaret in addition to basic rock and roll.” Another writer has suggested that, “If Elvis Presley w