Fresh Air - Roots of R&B: 'Stand By Me'

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

All week we're revisiting archival interviews with key figures in early rock and roll, rockabilly and R&B. Soul singer Ben E. King began his career in the ‘50s with The Drifters but it was the '61 hit "Stand by Me" that sealed his musical legacy. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1988. We also listen back to a 1991 interview with lyricist Jerry Leiber and composer Mike Stoller, who wrote and produced music for King. Plus, we'll revisit Terry Gross' 1993 interview with Jerry Wexler, the hitmaker who coined the term "rhythm and blues."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Life is a mystery for those of faith or no faith. Ye gods with Scott Carter is the podcast that makes sense of how we make sense of life. Each week we talk to celebrities, scholars, and mere mortals to on earth what on earth we believe and what we don't. Listen to Ye gods with Scott Carter, part of the NPR Network wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley. Today, we continue our series of R&B, rockabilly, and rock and roll interviews from the archives.

and we begin with Ben E. King. Ben E. King sang lead with the drifters before embarking on a solo career. His voice was heard on many classic recordings from the 1950s and 60s. His biggest hit was a song he wrote. When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we'll see. No, I won't be afraid. Oh, I won't be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me. So, darling, darling, stand by me.

Oh, stand by me. Oh, stand by me. Stand by me Stand by me If the sky Stand by me made it to number four in the charts in 1961

25 years later Stand By Me was used as the theme for the film of the same name The record was re-released and landed back in the top ten. Other Ben E. King's solo hits included Spanish Harlem

Don't Play That Song and I Who Have Nothing. Earlier with the drifters, He recorded, There Goes My Baby, This Magic Moment, and I Count the Tears. He died in 2015 at age 76. Terry Gross spoke with Ben E. King in 1988. Before he ever sang on stage or in the recording studio, he sang with his friends on the streets of Harlem.

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

Now, you also sang, before you started recording, you sang at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Did you all have matching suits in your group? Yeah, we had pink jackets. Oh, great. I know, right? That's what I said. Pink jackets and black shirt and black trousers. I mean, it was a sight to behold that.

Did you save up for the suits? Yeah, we did. What happened was that our parents gave us some money for it because we were all like in school, you know. So our parents gave us money to go and buy these little uniform jackets and stuff. And we just found our own black trousers and stuff. Now, you sang with the crowns. Yeah.

The five crowns. And you sang bass before you started singing lead. Can your voice still go that low? I think so. Yeah, I'm naturally a bass baritone, so I can't sing bass still, I think, yeah. Did I have a certain prestige to be the bass man in a vocal group?

Well, girls always thought so. Girls like the bass singer, I guess, because they have that more mature depth to his voice. And at that time, you have to realize that most of the bass things were done in the du-op groups and stuff like that was the featured thing in the song. You know, so the bass singer was the one that was doing a do-da-wob-a-doole-wob-a-doole-wob, all that stuff.

See, so you couldn't go wrong with that. I had the chance to do all those things, and the girls was just standing around and giggle and stuff. So I think that that was, you know, getting me introduced to the females there. You went from bass singer with the crowns to lead singer with the drifters. Yeah. And before I ask you to tell us a story about how the crowns became the new drifters and how you got to sing lead, I want to play the first song that you recorded singing lead as the lead singer of the drifters. And this is, this is, there goes my baby.

There goes my baby. There go my baby. Moving on down the line. Wonder well, wonder where, wonder where, wonder where, wonder where, wonder where, wonder where. She is bound I wrote her heart And made her cry

Now I'm alone So all along What did I do What did I do They're both my baby That's Benny King Singing lead with the Drifters on There Goes My Baby

So tell us how the crowns Who you sang with became the drifters. Well, that's one of those strange stories, really. I joined the crowns because the guy that was managed him by the name of Lover Patterson lived across the street from my father's restaurant. So he came in one day and asked me to join the crowns.

He brought him into the store and we rehearsed in the back of my father's restaurant and I became a member. And the crowns were, I would imagine, a very good, like, vocal type group, semi-pro. and we opened up at the Apollo with Ray Charles and I think was Fay Adams on the building of course the drifters were on the build as well

and we were the opening act during that week we were approached by their manager George Treadwell and he had mentioned to us that he had been watching us and he thought we were a very good group and would we be interested in becoming a new set of drifters he had just what fired Clyde McFadder who had been the lead singer

yeah well what had happened in that I think Clyde really wasn't in the group at that time Clyde had more or less gone solo, but the other members were in the group, and he had, I guess, had problems with the group, or the group had problems with him, and they decided to just split company, and they did so, you know. Right, so Clyde McFadder had left the group, and then the producer fired the rest of the drifters. That's the way it worked. Right, yeah.

And when the producer decided that your group would be the next drifters, did they do anything different with you or tell you to do anything different for you to become drifters? Not really. I think that was the strange thing about the whole situation, is that when we became a new set of drifters, there weren't any instructions at all given to us. We used to go on the road as the new set of drifters before the record was released, and we were booed off the stage, and we had bottles thrown at us and chairs in the whole nine yards. So we weren't given any warning to what to do, how to act. We got uniforms, and I think we got a new station wagon or something like that. But that's the only thing that we received as far as become a new set of drifters, as well as the fact that we had to fulfill the drifters recording contracts. And we weren't aware of that.

You know, we were just four or five kids coming out of Harlem from a very, very amateurish background. Even during the time with the Five Crowns, we were just more or less, as I said before, semi-pro. So we didn't know about all the particulars that professionals would go through to more or less make a living. business. You got booed because the fans were expecting the other drifters and here you were with no explanation. That's right, exactly. Well, it's like going to see the four, I always say it's like going

to see the four tops and all of a sudden the curtain opened and there's four guys about 17 years old. That's the kind of thing that you would face. Now when you were telling us about the crowns, you had sung bass with the crowns, but you ended up singing lead when the crowns became the drifters. How did you get to sing

lead? I wrote the song, There Goes My Baby. while we was on the road, and when I got back to New York, I showed it to Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who produced the date. And while we were in the studio, I was trying to show the lyrics to Charlie Thomas, who was the lead and did all the tenets to the songs. And for some strange reason, he couldn't get the feel of the song, and Jerry Wexler, who was involved with the date as well,

came into the control room and said, Look, Charlie's having trouble with this song, you sing it, you know. And I just went to the mic. I had advantage over me because I had written the song. Anyway, so I went to the microphone and started singing, and I was stuck with lead since then. Stuck, huh? Yeah, stuck, right?

Well, I want to play another song that you recorded with the Drifters, and this is Save the Last Dance for me. Of course, you're singing lead on it. This is a song that made it to number one, both on the R&B charts and on the pop charts, which was a pretty big deal. No, that was a great deal during that time, because in that time you have to allow for the fact

that they weren't actually playing a lot of black records, And not only weren't they plan a lot of them, they weren't even thinking about crossing them over. You can dance, every dance with the guy who gives you the eye to let them hold you tight. You can smile, every smile for the man who held your hand beneath the palmer light. But don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're going to be. so darling say the last dance for me oh I know that the music's fine like sparkling wine go and have your fun laugh and sing but while we're apart don't give your heart to anyone but don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're going to be

So, darling, say the last dance for me Baby, don't you know I love you so Can't you feel it when we touch? That still sounds very terrific. Thank you. I never got to see the drifters perform in the early 60s. And I was wondering, we were talking a little bit earlier about choreography. Did you have a lot of choreography in your eye?

Not a lot. We did, there are steps that I call short steps, and short steps are done by groups like platters and drifters and then the fast, wide steps are done like Gladys Night and the Pips and Temptations do wide and fair. And there was the Olympics, a group called the Olympics. They do fast movements and fast steps. We do those short, cute things, you know, things that don't require a lot of sweating and falling down. I'd never learn how to do the split stuff like that I left all that stuff out

I don't know that I don't know nothing about doing the split I could never get into that you never took off your jacket and threw it into the audience I did that yeah I did that that was those things was great

that was easy you know throwing your handkerchief away and stuff I did those brave things I used to love that at the rock and roll shows oh it was good a lot of fun that yeah you know what I'd like to do

I want to ask you about how you started to perform solo so why don't I play some of the record that launched your solo career. Okay. And this is Spanish Harlem. There is a rose in Spanish Harlem. All red rose up in Spanish Harlem.

It is a special one. It's never seen the sun. It only comes up when the moon is on the run, and all the stars are green. It's growing in the street right up through the concrete, but soft and sweet. And Vinnie. Vinnie King, would you explain how you left,

the drifters and started singing solo? Well, once we got involved with all the recordings and we had all the hit records that we had once we started with the drifter situation, we were on salary as the new set of drifters, and we were making like maybe $100

a week or somewhere in the neighborhood. And we were all, more or less trying to make ends meet because that $100 would have to keep us alive on the road and, of course, tried to send some money home. So we, in other words, to make a long story short, we had manager problems.

And I, along with Charlie Thomas, Doc Green, and Ellsbury, Hart, we had discussed trying to go to George Treadwell and ask for a raise. And this is a group with the number one record. And once we got to the office, we had set up a meeting, we got to the office to discuss this problem that we were having as far as salary, he told me, instead of me standing up to speak for the group,

to speak for yourself, and I did so, and he fired me. He was great and had firing people. And I walked out of the office, assuming that the other guys were following, they didn't. The only guy that followed me was the same when they came across the street to my father's restaurant and convinced me to join the Five Crowns, who was lover Patterson. And it was his determination and his, I guess, feeling that I had something in my voice that he insisted that I stayed in the business. and he was the one still, I find very responsible for me still being here now.

I hold him very near and dear. He's long passed away for many years now. But to answer your story, he's the reason why I more or less stayed and started a solo career. The record that you just played recently was Spanish Harlem. It was originally supposed had been a drifter record. And although I was out of the group, Atlantic, which a lot of companies at that time was doing that, they would call the lead singer back in the group and pay him scale just to keep the sound in the group. So they were doing that to me as well.

That's why the, if you look at my recording world, the things that go on with me as far as a recording artist, you'll find that I left the group in 1960, but yet and still I recorded a record with the group in 1962. And yet in still, I had my own solo career started in 1961. It's very crazy all that. That's because Atlantic would ask me to come back and to do some drifter recordings and just pay me scale. But did you think of Spanish Harlem as a solo record or a drifters record? No, no, no, no. To get back to that problem, what happened, that, it should have been a drifter record.

Jerry Lieber and Mike Stola, who at that time, we had developed a very strong friendship as writers and producers and friends. And they're the ones that went to Atlantic and spoke to Ahmed Erdogan. and asked him, would he consider a Spanish Harlem being a Benny King record opposed to a draft record? And that's how I started a solo career with that record there, really. I want to play one of your solo records that I think is one of the most dramatic-sounding pop songs I know. And this is I Who Have Nothing. And this is really high drama.

I love this record. As everyone will hear, there are great pauses in this record. And when you come on, there's like timpani behind you. Were the pauses written in? Did you decide how long to pause? Did you know the timpony was going to come in with you? Some of the things I would rehearse with Jerry Lieber and Mike Stola, but that was just three guys around the piano.

So most of the performing things that was done on the records was just the way I felt at that time. I'm not one of those regimented type recording persons where I know exactly what to do at each particular time in the song. I just closed my eyes and go for it. Let's hear it. This is Benny King singing, I Who Have Nothing.

I, who have nothing. I who have nothing. and want you so I'm just a no one with nothing to give you below I love He He buys your diamonds Bright, sparkling diamonds but believe me

dear when I say that he can give you the world but he'll never love you the way I love you It breaks me up every time I hear that Were you as emotionally involved in that recording as you sound? Yes, I think What happened in that is that my manager and I, to make a long social,

my manager and I, at the time, its name was Al-Wa, while, we were traveling over to Europe to get myself established over in the European market. And we got up one night while we were in Rome, and he had found this songwriter, and we went by this office. And this guy, he was Italian, of course, and he was speaking in Italian, he was playing Italian songs, but he played this one particular song, and my manager and I picked it up right then. there and said, this is a hit record.

The guy was singing in the tag and had the same kind of deliverance and the same kind of feeling about the song. I didn't know what the words were saying, but I know the feeling was great. When I got home and we showed it to Jerry Lieber and Mike Stolen, they wrote the English lyrics to it. We knew

that the song was great. I think that during that time when I was singing songs, I got very, very involved with it. The whole feeling song. It's amazing when you, it's amazing when you grow older, your attitude change, and you tend to not

be as involved, and not as, you don't throw your whole self into songs. I listened to myself when I was singing years ago, and I prefer my performance much more than I do today. And I did that with a feeling. When I was doing I Who Have Nothing, I tried to at that time

compliment a song, as a songwriter, would have meant it to be. Now, you also record it stand by me as a solo record. Now, you wrote that record. Yeah. You wrote, and someone named Elmo Glick gets a co-writing credits. Did he co-write it with you, or was that someone who just? Elmo Glick was a silent partner for years.

Elmo Glick is the pen name. I found this out maybe four or five years ago of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Oh, no. Those were my ghost writers, and I didn't know it for many, many years. So just go to show you, right? But as I said earlier, you know, we were just kids out of Harlem with no knowledge at all about legalities and what. should happen and what shouldn't happen in this business. And I'm only one out of hundreds and thousands of the artists that got those things

happen to, you know, so... Well, a lot of artists were deprived altogether of writing credits, so... Oh, gotcha. So I guess in some respects, it was... I were lucky. I'm one of the lucky ones, yeah. I'm only the lucky ones. Well, I love your singing, and I thank you so very much for talking with us.

Thank you, Terry King, speaking to Terry Gross in 1988. After a break, we hear from more music-making legends, songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and record producer Jerry Wexler. I'm David B. In Cooley, and this is Fresh Air. Every time I kiss somebody new out, make me believe I'm kissing you butter. I can't kid making heart costs up. on my heart knows we're still a part and know each night is like a thousand years I can't lose this young boy I'm blue

I want to cry when I hear your name but if I cry and feel ashamed On this week's wildcard podcast, author Ocean Vong says we need to reframe how we think about trauma. The trauma comes on one side of a coin that also has strength on it. Find that wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. On Codeswich, learning to swim often means overcoming fears older than we, are. Her fears are in my genes. And when I'm in the water, I really believe it because my mom is deathly afraid of the water. How having swimming skills today is wrapped up in who was allowed

to swim generations ago. Check it out on Code Switch from NPR wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Thorne. What does it take to write a hit album? Good lyrics, catchy melody. Sure. But for Haim, it starts with the drums. An album doesn't really start for us until we get the drum sound correct. Follow this one weird trick to learn how to make a Haim album. It's on Bolzai for Maximumfund.org and NPR. We continue our R&B Rockabillion Rock and Roll series with lyricist Jerry Lieber and composer Mike Stoller, who wrote some of the most memorable rock and roll songs of the 1950s and 60s.

I'm going to Kansas City, Kansas City, here I come. I'm going to Kansas City, here I come. They got some crazy little women there, and I'm going to get me one. Warren threw a party in the county jail. The prison band was there and they began to wail. The band was jumping and they jumped again to swing You should have heard it was locked out Jayalberg sing let her rock

Everybody let the rock They say the neon lights are bright On Broadway On Broadway They say there's always magic in the air I took my troubles down to Madam Ruth you know that gypsy with a gold cap tooth she's got a pat on 34th and vine

selling little bottles of love potion number nine what I say oh oh ruby ruby I will want you like a ghost I'm gonna haunt you Ruby Ruby Ruby will you be mine Sometimes

Pee, fee, five, five, foe, foe, foam I smell smoke In the auditorium Charlie Brown Charlie Brown He's a clown That Charlie Brown

He's gonna get gone Just your way to see Why's everybody Always picking on me When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon

is the only light we'll see no I won't be afraid oh I won't be afraid just as long as you stand stand by me

so dark And don't stand by me. Lieber and Stoller wrote for Elvis Presley, The Coasters, the Drifters, and Ben E. King. They not only wrote songs, they often produced them. In fact, Lieber and Stoller were the first rock and roll producers to actually get credit on a record for their work. One of Rock's greatest producers, Phil Spector,

got his start as one of Lieber and Stoller's assistants. Lieber and Stoller met in L.A. when Lieber was still in high school, and soon they were writing songs professionally. Lieber was especially known for sassy phrases that captured the vernacular spoken by young people of the day. Jerry Lieber died in 2011 at the age of 78. Terry spoke to Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller in 1991. They began by listening to the original 1953 version of Hound Dog, sung by Big Mama Thornton. Nothing but a hound dog It's snooping around the door

You ain't nothing but a hound dog It's snooping around the door You can wag your tail But I ain't gonna feed you no more You told me you was high clad But I can see through that Yes, you told me you was high clad Well, I can see through that

And Daddy, I know You ain't no real cool cat You ain't nothing but a hound dog Well, Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, welcome to fresh air Thank you. The record we've been listening to Big Mama Thornton's recording of Hound Dog was your first major hit as songwriters and producers.

What was it about her that led to this song? Well, Mike and I were invited to Johnny Otis's rehearsal studio to listen to and look at some of his artists. Big Mama was one of them, and she was really formidable. She was scary looking. She was big, and she must have weighed about, oh, anywhere from 275 to 350. And she had this really gutty, guttural growling sound in her voice. And the both of us fell in love with her. And we just love what she looked like

and we love what she sound like. She sang ball and chain. And we decided to take off that minute and go to Mike's house and try to write something for her. How did you come up with this song, though? Well, Mike was driving, and I was banging on the roof of the car,

and I was trying to come up with something nasty that would be at the same time playable, that wouldn't be censored, you know? And the closest I could get to what I was thinking was you ain't nothing but a hound dog so you were thinking four-letter word epithet and

you came up though with hound dog right which sort of you know made it felt right and it seemed like it would be passable Mike let me ask you how you think Elvis handled this song differently from Big Mama Thornton how he handled it differently well he handled it very differently he didn't

sing it in the same tradition of blues intonation that Big Mama used and also the lyrics were considerably different because

Big Mama's the way the song was written for Big Mama is really about a jigolo it's a woman complaining about a gigolo and Elvis couldn't sing that song.

So he sang a version of it, which I think, as I'm told, he heard from a lounge act in Las Vegas, that he heard singing the song in Vegas. Now, I had heard that he knew Big Mama's record and loved it, but it was only after he heard this lounge act

do it, that it seemed appropriate for a male singer. A lot of the songs that you wrote over the years were novelty songs, songs like Charlie Brown, Love Pushing Number Nine, Yackety Yack, Poison Ivy. I think I just named all Coaster's songs here. But how did you get so involved with novelty songs? We didn't think of them as novelties. We thought of the dark dramas.

We were both trying to imitate Tolstoy and Dickens, and I guess we just fell short of the mark. We wrote novelies songs because we're both essentially gag writers and we like to tell funny stories and anecdotes. Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller speaking to Terry Gross in 1991. More after a break, this is fresh air. One of the things that you are famous for having pioneered was bringing a string section to rock and roll or to rhythm.

That was Mike's fault. Yeah, let me ask you, you know, And the drifters, the drifters recording It There Goes My Baby, that's the classic example of you bringing strings on. What went through your mind to do it? I can tell you exactly what was on my mind. Just the line, the melodic line.

And I was playing it. I used to joke about this one because it sounded like Borodin and I sounded like one of the Caucasian melodies. I don't know if you get the point. but he's been saying this for many years and I always thought it was funny. The fact that he would use a Caucasian melody

on this... But Jerry heard it and he said, that sounds like strings and I said, why not? And so, why not? We had five violins and one cello and they were all basically playing in unison. Because Jerry Wexler wouldn't spring for six violins and two celly.

No, another thing that happened on this record was you introduced a Latin rhythm that you used. The bion rhythm was one that both Jerry and I adored, and we had always looked for a place to use it. We'd used it maybe once before

on a early record that was not particularly successful. And we had the opportunity to use it on this record date, and there happened to be a timpony left over from another recording session in the studio. And we used,

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

which in case anybody's wondering is boom boom boom boom boom which finally was used I think and it's as responsible for maybe over a thousand hits because this Brazilian rhythm supports a slow ballad without the ballad seeming to be slow or sluggish it keeps it moving and everyone from Bert Backrack to Phil Spector

to you name it have leaned heavily on the support of this rhythm pattern. Wonder well, wonder well, wonder where she is bound. I wrote her heart and made her cry. Now I'm a lot, so all along, what can I do? What can I do? They're both my baby. My guests are the songwriting and production team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller.

Thank you both very much for talking with us. Thanks. Right, oh, yeah, it was fun. Songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller speaking with Terry Gross in 1991. Coming up, we conclude this week's R&B, Rockabilly, and Rock and Roll series of interviews, which continues through Labor Day,

with record producer Jerry Wexler. This is Fresh Air. We've got one more in today's lineup of R&B, Rockabilly, and Rock and Roll interviews. Some of the greatest soul and rhythm and blues recordings wouldn't have been made if not for Jerry Wexler. Wexler was a partner in Atlantic Records from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s.

His specialty was finding great singers and matching them with the right band and backup singers to create a sound that was both artistically true and commercially successful. The short list of people with whom he's worked includes the drifters, Ray Charles, Aritha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and Solomon Burke. Terry spoke with Jerry Wexler live from the public radio conference in Washington, D.C. in 1993.

He died in 2008 at the age of 91. Here are just a few of the records for which we have Jerry Wexler to thank. I've been loving you. to stop the night You see the girl with the diamond ring She knows how to shake that thing All right now, no Hey

Hey Hey I'm going to wait until the midnight That's when my love come to summering down I'm going to wait till the midnight out when there's no one else

arrives I'm there the boys walk out of the sun we'll be having some fun people walking above we'll be making love we'll be making love What you want, what you want, what you need to do, do you know I got it too?

All I'm asking you is for a little respect when you come on. Just a little bit. Hey, baby. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Mr. I ain't going to do you wrong Why are you going?

I want to get started with You work with Aretha Franklin. I think that's a good place to start. Now she had made about, oh, I don't know, 10 or so recordings on Columbia Records before coming to Atlantic. John Hammond produced her. And he was producing her like a jazz singer

kind of in the Dinah Washington tradition. When she came to Atlantic, you work with her. You heard something completely different. What did you hear when you started producing her? Well, I heard the Aretha Franklin who sang in church, who sang precious Lord when she was 13 years old

and a man in the audience was so overcome he said, he said, listen at her, listen at him. And I listened, and it wasn't so much that I tried a new approach to her. It's that what she did fit very well in with what we were doing anyhow. Well, you sat her down at the piano. You had her play herself,

which I don't think she'd done on the records before that. Not very much. And then you took her down to Muscle Shoals, to Alabama, to the same place, actually, that Arthur Alexander started recording. Exactly. I want you to know that I'm not one of the people who didn't pay him. What was it like at Muscle Shoals? What did you hear there in that southern sound that you wanted? Well, it was the way they recorded, which was ad lib recording without written arrangements,

building the song from the get-go, just from the chord. just from the chords. And the musicians made a fabulous contribution. So these were arrangements which we all did together. And there were just as much arrangements as anything that was ever done by Henry Mancini in the sense of being an arranged piece of music. So you took Aretha down to Muscle Shoals, recorded like a track and a half with her. And there was this really big fight. What was the fight about? There was an explosion that went on because of too much Jack Daniels and not enough prudence. And it had to do with Ted White, who was Aretha's husband at the time, who got it into an dangerous, over-friendly drinking from the same jug, were the gentleman who could best

be described as a card-carrying redneck trumpet player. And it got into what we called the dozens, the southern dozens, and then it got nasty. And the session blew up. And we went back to New York with one song complete, which was, I Never Loved a Man, and a three-piece track on the other side, which was Do Right Woman. And all we had there was rhythm, guitar, bass, and drums, which is not a whole lot to go on. Not even vocal? No vocal. No piano. No background vocal. And then we finished by bringing Aretha and her sisters into the studio. It was a pretty good piece of extemporization in that starting with this very minimal

track, Aretha laid down an organ part and a piano part and then she sang the lead and then she and her sisters got together and did the background and it was a very full finished record

put together with spit and chewing gum. You produced respect. Is there a story behind how the Sakatumis landed on Well, the story is that when Otis Redding did it, it was entirely a different song. The Saketumis were Aretha Franklin's idea, where she injected into the song, which connoted a certain idea of social respect, probably the notion of ethnic respect, combined with with a little judicious lubricity on her part. The respect that she was talking about

was what you might very bluntly call, proper sexual attention. But it was her transmutation of Otis Redding's little Southern song. As a matter of fact, I was mixing the record in our studio on Broadway, and Otis walked in. He said, that little gal done took my song. But he meant that in a very kindly way,

because he saw the cash registers. Now, your first studio was actually the office. That's right. Of Atlantic Records. Who did you... Because when Atlantic was young, you didn't have a studio. So what did you do? You'd move out the chairs into the hallway,

whatever you wanted to record? We did have a studio. It was our office, and it was a studio because we had equipment in it. And my partner, Armid Erdogan and I, shared this big room. We had two desks that were catty-cornered toward each other.

and what we would do is push them against the wall, stacked them, and then our engineer, Tom Dowd, would set out camp chairs, a few microphones, and one mic in the hall for echo. We're just going to adjust your mic a little bit there. There's so much that a record producer is up against, often the real unexpected, and I think a great example of that

is when you were producing the drifters version of Under the Boardwalk. Let's start with the beginning of that story. First of all, they didn't want to even read. record the song. That's right. You gave them an ultimatum. Right. I was not the line producer of that song. I was acting as a supervisor, you know, as an executive of the company, and the drifters were always a concern of mine. And a great producer deceased, Bert Burns, was producing the record, and neither he nor any of the drifters could stand the song. They just couldn't buy it. And I didn't want to interfere because Bert was the producer,

but this sounds like a very self-congratulatory. And I said, this song has to be done. And I said, you can pick all the rest. I said, or else ain't no session. Where did you like the song so much? Because it sounded like a hit. Okay, good enough reason. Okay, so what happened to the lead singer the night before the session?

Oh, yeah. The lead singer at the time was a man named Rudy Lewis. You know, we had three fantastic lead singers in the drifts. The first was Clyde McFatter. The second was Rudy Lewis. His name is not as well known, but he did some great songs. And the third was Benny King, who was having a great resurgence with standby me. I mean, you can't turn around without hearing it anymore.

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

interesting thing about the record was we promoted it all along the eastern seaboard in Atlantic City and so on and it just, it evokes summer all the time. And you actually did a lot of that yourself, didn't you packed up the car and drove around promoting the record? Because you wanted it to break so bad.

That's right, and we did a lot of that in those days. You work with Otis Redding a lot during his career. I was not Otis's producer. I want you to realize that. Otis was produced at Stax Records, in Memphis by that great team of Jim Stewart and Booker T and the MGs, especially Steve Kropper. You saw him change a lot as he became better known.

What was he like in the beginning before he was very famous? Otis was very simple, very unaffected, but he had the magic. And when he came to New York after his first hit record, I picked him up the airport. No roadies, nobody, no nothing, just Sol Otis. And he opened at the Apollo, and he just stood there, just straight on with his arms at his side, didn't move. Another one who started like that was Marvin Gay. But they learned some stagecraft, but what really kicked Otis into moving was having to follow Sam and Dave, who used to be described as a stage full of Jackie Wilson's.

That's really great. You know, we were talking before how you brought Aretha Franklin down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. You brought Wilson Pickett down to Memphis to record. You really loved that southern sound that was coming out of some of the bands there. Why did you think of bringing him there? Well, because everything was winding down in New York.

I mean, it was entropy. We just couldn't get out of our own way. We had been very successful year after year. But our style of recording was a regular old-time standard style using arranges with written arrangements. Now, when you have to change an arrangement, and you almost always do to accommodate the vicissitudes of the song

and where you're going, it's total agony for the entrepreneur to see that clock going around while a man is going around with an eraser, erasing little notes on 13 charts. And this southern style of recording where it's just

all you have is cord indicates, you go out, you sing a lick, do it like this fellas, bang, here's the new chord, you know. But maybe that's overstating it, but actually there's a spontaneity and a fantastic new element that comes in because the musicians are organic to the idea. So you heard that it were supposed to picket? I heard the sound, and I brought Pickett to Memphis, and we cut midnight hour and a lot of other things there, all in a hurry. It was great. Jerry Wexler, speaking to Terry Gross in 1993, live from the public radio conference in Washington, D.C. On Monday's show, we conclude our archive series R&B Rockabillion, Early Rock and Roll with Dion, who brought his guitar and sang some songs.

Also, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and producer Alan Toussaint, who was at the piano for our 1988 interview and sang some of his early songs, including lipstick traces. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez.