Mike Stoller Quotes

Mike Stoller — American Musician born on May 13, 1933,

Lyricist Jerome "Jerry" Leiber and composer Mike Stoller were American songwriting and record producing partners. They found initial successes as the writers of such crossover hit songs as "Hound Dog" and "Kansas City". Later in the 1950s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits—including "Young Blood", "Searchin'", and "Yakety Yak"—that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal. They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with The Drifters in "There Goes My Baby", which influenced Phil Spector, who studied their productions while playing guitar on their sessions... (wikipedia)

As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices.

It wasn't until 'Smokey Joe's' came out that I actually got to step out from behind the curtain and meet our 'fans.'

We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books.

Well, I think the first piece of music I ever heard that I really loved was 'Salome's Dances' by Richard Strauss. I played that 12-inch, 78 record, and I stood up on an ottoman to play it on a big Victrola and I'd just keep playing it and playing it.

I heard a young black pianist. He was a teenager, I was eight years old, and he was playing boogie-woogie, and he just knocked me out. He thought he was alone in the old barn on the beat-up upright piano, but I was hiding in the corner so he wouldn't see me.

Mike Stoller Quotes

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