The Revenge of Rob Gordon

R.I.P. Nick Ashford & Jerry Leiber (American Songwriting Legends)

Yesterday saw the passing of Nick Ashford and Jerry Leiber.  They were two of the greatest songwriters that the world of pop music has ever known.

Nick Ashford and his wife Valerie Simpson, known professionally as Ashford & Simpson, were songwriting/production team and recording artists. They met at Harlem’s White Rock Baptist Church in 1963. After having recorded unsuccessfully as a duo, they joined aspiring solo artist and former member of the Ikettes, Joshie Jo Armstead, at the Scepter/Wand label where their compositions were recorded by Ronnie Milsap (“Never Had It So Good”), Maxine Brown (“One Step At A Time”), as well as the Shirelles and Chuck Jackson. Another of the trio’s songs, “Let’s Go Get Stoned”, gave Ray Charles a number one U.S. R&B hit in 1966. That same year Ashford & Simpson joined Motown, where their best-known songs included “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, “You’re All I Need To Get By”, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”, and “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)”. As performers, Ashford and Simpson’s best-known song is “Solid” (1984 US and 1985 UK).

The duo was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002.

The duo essentially had two careers: one as a successful writing and producing team and the other as singers and performers themselves. They started their career in the mid-1960s, writing for artists such as The 5th Dimension (“California Soul”), Aretha Franklin (“Cry Like A Baby”), and Ray Charles (“Let’s Go Get Stoned” and “I Don’t Need No Doctor”). Their work with Charles brought them to the attention of Motown chief Berry Gordy.

Upon joining the Motown staff in 1966, Ashford & Simpson were paired with the vocal duo Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and they wrote and/or produced all but one of the late-1960s Gaye/Terrell singles, including hits such as the original version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, “Your Precious Love”, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”, and “You’re All I Need to Get By”. According to Gaye in the book Divided Soul, Simpson did most of the vocals on the last album he did with Terrell, Easy, as a way for Terrell’s family to have additional income as she was battling an ultimately fatal brain tumor.

Ashford & Simpson wrote and produced almost all the songs on three 1970s albums for former Supreme Diana Ross, including her first solo album Diana Ross (“Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, Surrender (“Remember Me”), and The Boss.

Other Motown artists whom Ashford & Simpson worked with include Gladys Knight & The Pips (“Didn’t You Know You’d Have to Cry Sometime”, “The Landlord”, “Bourgie, Bourgie”, and “Taste of Bitter Love”), Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (“Who’s Gonna Take the Blame”), The Marvelettes (“Destination:Anywhere”), The Supremes (“Some Things You Never Get Used To”), and The Dynamic Superiors (“Shoe, Shoe Shine”).

Other artists with whom Ashford & Simpson had hits were Teddy Pendergrass (“Is It Still Good to You”), The Brothers Johnson (“Ride-O-Rocket”), Chaka Khan, both on her own (“I’m Every Woman” and “Clouds”), and Rufus (“Keep It Comin’” and “Ain’t Nothin’ But a Maybe”).

Chaka Khan - I’m Every Woman by coolfunk

Ashford & Simpson’s career as recording artists began in the early 1960s as part of the gospel group The Followers, with whom they recorded the album Gospel Meeting (on Forum Circle), later issued as Meetin’ The Followers (on Roulette Records). The LP contains their vocals and also four Ashford compositions. In 1964, they recorded “I’ll Find You”, as “Valerie & Nick” This was followed by several obscure singles recorded by Ashford on the Glover, Verve and ABC labels, such as “It Ain’t Like That” (later recorded by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas), “California Soul”, and “Dead End Kids”, backed by his own version of “Let’s Go Get Stoned”. After concentrating on working with other artists, Simpson was the featured soloist on the songs “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “What’s Going On” on the Quincy Jones albums Gula Matari in 1970, and its follow-up, Smackwater Jack’.’ Simpson subsequently recorded two solo LPs for Motown: Valerie Simpson Exposed in 1971, and, the following year, Valerie Simpson, which included the single “Silly Wasn’t I”, which was later sampled on 50 Cent’s “Best Friend” from the movie Get Rich or Die Tryin’. The song was also sampled by 9th Wonder on Murs’s “Silly Girl” in the album Murray’s Revenge. Ashford & Simpson were featured singing selections from Simpson’s solo albums on the PBS TV show Soul!, hosted by Ellis Haizlip in 1971. In 1973, they left Motown after the albums Simpson recorded for the label received poor promotion and the company refused to release an album of the duo recording a collection of their most famous songs for other artists. Throughout his career, Ashford played tambourine and percussion on hundreds of sessions and can be heard on dozens of Motown classics, including “What’s Goin’ On by Marvin Gaye.

In 1974, Ashford & Simpson married and resumed their career as a duo with the Warner Bros. album, Gimme Something Real. This was followed by the hit singles, “Don’t Cost You Nothin’” (1977), “It Seems To Hang On” (1978), “Is It Still Good to Ya” (1978), “Found a Cure” (1979), “Street Corner” (1982), and their biggest hit, “Solid”, released in 1984.

In 1978, they were featured as vocalists, along with Chaka Khan, on the hit single “Stuff Like That” from Quincy Jones’ Sounds… And Stuff Like That album and contributed to the writing of the soundtrack to The Wiz.

Simpson appeared (with Melba Moorman) as part of the “Blood, Sweat & Tears Soul Chorus” on the band’s Al Kooper lead debut, Child Is Father to the Man.

On his own, Ashford (along with Frank Wilson), produced the mammoth hit “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”, which Diana Ross & the Supremes recorded in collaboration with the Temptations in 1968. He also appeared in the movie New Jack City (1991), as Reverend Oates, an ordained minister who was part of Nino Brown’s entourage.

Jerry Leiber and his partner Mike Stoller were American songwriting and record producing giants. Stoller was the composer of the duo and Leiber the lyricist. Their most famous songs include “Hound Dog”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “Kansas City”, “Stand By Me” (with Ben E. King), and “On Broadway” (with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil).

Their first successes were 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 that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of the teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal, songs that include “Young Blood”, “Searchin’”, and “Yakety Yak.” They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with The Drifters in “There Goes My Baby” and influencing Phil Spector who worked with them on recordings of The Drifters and Ben E. King. Leiber and Stoller went into the record business and, focusing on the “girl group” sound, released some of the greatest classics of the Brill Building period.

They wrote hits including “Love Me”, “Loving You”, “Don’t”, “Jailhouse Rock” and “King Creole”, among others, for Elvis Presley.

The pair was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Leiber came from Baltimore, Stoller from Long Island, but met in Los Angeles in 1950, where Stoller was a freshman at Los Angeles City College while Leiber was a senior at Fairfax High. Stoller had graduated from Belmont High School. After school, Stoller played piano and Leiber worked in a record store and, when they met, they found they shared a love of blues and rhythm and blues. In 1950, Jimmy Witherspoon recorded and performed their first commercial song, “Real Ugly Woman”.

Their first hit composition was “Hard Times,” recorded by Charles Brown, which was a rhythm and blues hit in 1952. “Kansas City,” which was first recorded in 1952 (as “K. C. Loving”) by rhythm & blues singer Little Willie Littlefield, became a No. 1 pop hit in 1959 for Wilbert Harrison. In 1952 they wrote “Hound Dog” for blues singer Big Mama Thornton, which became a hit for her in 1953. The 1956 Elvis Presley rock version, which was a takeoff of the adaptation that Presley picked up from Freddie Bell’s lounge act in Las Vegas, was a much bigger hit. His showstopping mock-burlesque version of “Hound Dog,” playfully bumping and grinding on the Milton Berle Show, created such public excitement that on the Steve Allen Show they slowed down his act, with an amused Presley in a tuxedo and blue suede shoes singing his hit to a basset hound. Allen pronounced Presley “a good sport”; and the Leiber-Stoller song would be forever linked to Presley. Their later songs often had lyrics more appropriate for pop music, and their combination of rhythm and blues with pop lyrics revolutionized pop, rock and roll and punk rock.

They formed Spark Records in 1953 with their mentor, Lester Sill. Their songs from this period include “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” and “Riot in Cell Block #9,” both recorded by The Robins.

The label was later bought by Atlantic Records, which hired Leiber and Stoller in an innovative deal that allowed them to produce for other labels. This, in effect, made them the first independent record producers. At Atlantic, they revitalized the careers of the Drifters and wrote a number of hits for The Coasters, a spin-off of The Robins. Their songs from this period include “Charlie Brown,” “Searchin’,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me” (written with Ben E. King), and “On Broadway” (written with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil). For the Coasters alone, they wrote twenty-four songs that appeared in the US charts.

In 1955 Leiber and Stoller produced a recording of their song “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” with the white vocal group, The Cheers. Soon after, the song was recorded by Édith Piaf in a French translation titled, “L’Homme à la Moto.” The European royalties from another Cheers record, “Bazoom (I Need Your Lovin’),” funded a 1956 trip to Europe for Stoller and his first wife, Meryl, on which they met Piaf. Their return to New York was aboard the ill-fated SS Andrea Doria, which was rammed and sunk by the Swedish liner MS Stockholm. The Stollers had to finish the journey to New York aboard another ship. After their rescue, Leiber greeted Stoller at the dock with the news that “Hound Dog” had become a hit for Elvis Presley.Stoller’s reply was, “Elvis who?” They would go on to write more hits for Presley, including the title songs for three of his movies— Loving You, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole — as well as the rock and roll Christmas song, “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”, for Presley’s first Christmas album.

In the early 1960s, Phil Spector served an apprenticeship of sorts with Leiber and Stoller in New York, developing his record producer’s craft while assisting and playing guitar on their sessions, including “On Broadway.”

After leaving the employ of Atlantic Records, where they produced, and often wrote, many classic recordings by The Drifters with Ben E. King, they produced a series of records for United Artists Records. They produced hits by Jay and the Americans (“She Cried”), The Exciters (“Tell Him”), and The Clovers (“Love Potion #9,” also written by Leiber and Stoller.)

In the 1960s, Leiber and Stoller founded and briefly owned Red Bird Records, which issued the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” and the Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love”.

After selling Red Bird, they continued working as independent producers and writing songs. Their best known song from this period is “Is That All There Is?” recorded by Peggy Lee in 1969; earlier in the decade, they had had a minor hit with Lee with “I’m a Woman.” Their last major hit production was “Stuck in the Middle With You,” by Stealers Wheel in 1972. In 1975, they recorded an album of art songs with Peggy Lee, entitled Mirrors.