Behind the Hits: An Interview with Mike Stoller of the Legendary Songwriting Duo.

Donate to The Music Soup

By Bassam "Mighty Slim" Habal

Before Lennon & McCartney and Elton John & Bernie Taupin came a songwriting team that lasted 61 years together, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They wrote huge hits, such as Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Kansas City, Love Me, Ruby Baby, Lovin You, Framed, Yakety Yak, Love Potion Number 9 and so many more. Their songs have been covered by so many music industry legends, from Elvis Presley to The Coasters, Ray Charles, Rolling Stones, Big Mama Thornton, Steely Dan and numerous others. The list of their hits is lengthy as are the number of musicians that made them popular. Leiber and Stoller were the top writing duo of the pop music culture in the mid 1900's, without question, and are inductees of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, back in 1985.

I got this interview by way of a guy I keep running into at venues in the music scene over the past several years, Bassam "Mighty Slim" Habal, or as he's better known as, "Slim". I saw Slim in the city the other night at a gig and he requested I share his interview with Mike Stoller in The Music Soup...Lucky us!

After reading this interview I have a renewed appreciation of the path from where popular music originates. We've all heard so many covers of Leiber & Stoller hits but I never knew who actually wrote some of them. I am most familiar with the Stones tunes like Love Potion Number 9 and Poison Ivy. Those were Leiber & Stoller songs. And before the Stones were Leiber & Stoller hits made popular by Elvis when he blew the rock n roll world up with Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock. Years later Steely Dan covered Ruby Baby, another familiar tune in the soundtrack of our lives. The Music Soup hopes you enjoy reading a little bit of history from one of the mid-century pop music culture creators, Mike Stoller. And a big thank you to Slim for sharing it with The Music Soup community. 🎼 🙏🏼 🎵 Please enjoy this interview.... With peace, love, art and music, Cheryl  ☮ ❤️🎵  PS...Check out and SUBSCRIBE to The Music Soup's new You Tube channel: youtube.com/@TheMusicSoupVideo?sub_confirmation=1

Bassam 'Mighty Slim' Habal meeting Mike Stoller

Bassam Habal We're here with the great, legendary Mike Stoller. Mike, how are you?

Mike Stoller I'm fine. How are you?

Bassam Habal Very good. Very grateful to talk to you, such a important man in the history of rock and roll. So what got you interested in being a songwriter?

Mike Stoller Well, I loved music. Number one, I loved blues.

Bassam Habal Where did you first meet Jerry?

Mike Stoller At my house. He came over, he had called me. He got my number from a drummer. The phone call was from Jerry Leiber, a guy who wanted to write songs. I wasn't interested at first, he finally wangled an invitation to come over to my house, because I wasn't eager, but then after I saw what he was writing when he came over and showed me, I saw they were in the form of twelve-bar blues. And so I started to play some blues on the piano, he started to sing, and we shook hands and said, "We'll be partners." And we were for 61 years. I said, "Hey, I like this stuff." And we were partners, as I said, for 61 years until he passed away over a dozen years ago.

Bassam Habal What was the first song you wrote with Jerry?

Mike Stoller Well, probably, "That's What The Good Book Says" recorded by the Robins and then in the first year or so we wrote "Hound dog" and "Kansas City".

Bassam Habal What do you remember about the writing session for "Kansas City", which I guess was done by Little Willie Littlefield before Wilbur Harrison's popular version?

Mike Stoller Little Willie Littlefield. Yeah. Well, we worked with Maxwell Davis, who was an arranger, and kind of session runner for the various independent rhythm and blues record companies here in Los Angeles. He was a wonderful musician, a great tenor sax player. And, in fact, on that first recording, you can hear Little Willie say, "All right, Max" and that's when he played the tenor solo. And I think on the cover record, which he became a hit about six years later.

Bassam Habal  The Wilbert Harrison version?

Mike Stoller Well, Wilbert remembered the song and he came out under its original title, which was the song we wrote which was called "Kansas City". Unfortunately, the head of an independent record company decided that what was really hip was "K.C" so he changed it even after it was recorded. It's the same song but he titled on the record "K.C. Lovin'" which didn't help. So fortunately, when the cover record came out, a number of years later, they called it it's obvious title, " Kansas City".

Bassam Habal  Were there were other songs that you shopped around early on that didn't get any traction from interested artists?

Mike Stoller Um, I can't really recall. Most of the songs we wrote we wrote, specifically for particular artists. "Hound Dog" was written especially for Willie Mae Thorton.

Bassam Habal  How did you connect with Big Mama?

Mike Stoller Well, she was working with Johnny Otis' band. And Johnny Otis called me because Jerry and I had written a number of songs for other artists that were with his traveling touring band, like Little Ester. And he called me and said, "Are you familiar with Willie Mae Thorton?' and I said, "No." He said, "Well you better get Jerry and come over to my place because we're having rehearsals and I need songs for her because we're doing a session." So we went over, we saw her, we heard her, she knocked us out. We went back to my house and wrote the song in about 10 or 15 minutes. I came back and presented it to her and performed it for her. And she then performed it and we went into the studio, I believe it was the next day. She did a fantastic, fantastic performance.

Bassam Habal  I guess there was a story where you're overseas, and you heard about that your song was a hit, and you didn't know who this guy Elvis was.

Mike Stoller True. Well, actually, I was coming back from Europe, a three and a half months trip I took to Europe, the first time I had enough money to go to Europe. I had never been there and I went pretty much throughout Western Europe, starting in Denmark and all through and spending quite a bit of time there, loving it. Came back on a ship called the Andrea Doria and it almost made it to New York. A Swedish ship collided with it, and it ultimately sank. And I was fortunate finally to get into a broken lifeboat, got picked up by a freighter and then arrived in New York and Jerry was on the dock because I'd sent a wire from this freighter called The Cape Anne. I sent that wire to Atlantic Records and Jerry was at the dock. I came down the gang plank and the first thing he said to me was, "Mike we got a smash hit." I hadn't seen him in three or four months. And I said, "You're kidding?" He said, "No. 'Hound Dog'." I said, "Big Mama Thornton?" He said, "No, some white kid named Elvis Presley." So that's when I heard about it.

Bassam Habal  When was the first time you met Elvis and what was your impression of him and what was your impression the first time you met The Colonel?

Mike Stoller  
Two different things. We met Elvis in a recording studio. He had heard the demos of songs we'd written for a movie. The script was called "Ghost of a Chance". We wrote four songs for it actually one afternoon in New York in a hotel room. He wanted to meet us. He knew other stuff that we'd written for The Coasters and other groups. And we hit it off right away in the studio, you know, we just had to tell him., "Listen Elvis, this is Jerry and I'm Mike, so don't call us sir." But we then hit it off and we, you know, he knew a lot of stuff of blues and a rhythm and blues records that we were familiar with and didn't know he would be but he was. And so we got along really well. The first time I met the colonel, however, was, I think the day before. He told the music publishers who handled Elvis's music, he wanted to meet us before he would allow us to meet Elvis. And so we had dinner with him, he was kind of boring, and he insisted upon telling jokes, which we had to laugh at. But apparently we passed muster and that's how we got in to meet Elvis. He was not even there. And when we worked with him, because we kind of took over and virtually produced the records and the recordings for what became "Jailhouse Rock" named after one of the songs we had written. That's about it. We wrote four songs for that film - "Jailhouse Rock", "Treat me nice", "You're so sqaure, baby I don't care" and "I want to be free".

Bassam Habal  
At some point, was it due to The Colonel demanding full publishing that you had to sever your relationship with Elvis? 

Mike Stoller  
No, it wasn't that so much. We were. I mean, we knew he was asking for the publishing complete. But we had given Elvis a song, and Elvis decided to record it and they didn't have a contract on it. They went bananas between the publishers and Colonel Parker. And it was like, How dare we give him something directly? It was that kind of trying to totally control this guy, and we weren't attempting to give him a song and then publish it ourselves. Maybe we should have but we didn't. But that created a big problem and then The Colonel wanted us at one point to fly to LA when we were in New York and Jerry had been ill. And he said, "Well, doctors don't know everything. Come fly out." He wants you to be at the studio. And then he offered us a contract which had a blank piece of paper and a signature line at the bottom. He said, "Don't worry, I'll fill it in later." You know, that kind of nonsense. And at one point you know, Jerry said that I said, "We were not gonna". He was on the phone with The Colonel and he said, "Mike said we shouldn't fly down." And The Colonel said, "Why shouldn't you? I'm telling you you should." He said, "Well, Mike said you should go fuck yourself." That somehow created a little schism in our relationship with The Colonel.

Bassam Habal  
Many Elvis fans would definitely say, "Thank you" for saying. "Fuck You" to The Colonel as well. In your partnership with with Jerry, what was the division of labor like?

Mike Stoller  
Well, primarily, Jerry wrote the words. I mean, I sometimes we would bounce ideas off each other. But Jerry was a fabulous wordsmith and I wrote the music. Jerry sometimes had an idea that I should, you know, end this phrase with a note going up rather than down or vice versa. And we shared, I think, a kind of sense of humor so that when we finished a song, and it made us smile or laugh, we knew we had it. We were both in the same ballpark.

Bassam Habal   
Did you write the song "Hard times" for Ray Charles, or is was that a different "Hard Times"?

Mike Stoller  
No, we wrote the song "Hard times" that Charles Brown had a hit with in 1951 on Aladdin records. Charles was a wonderful singer and great pianist. And he had been with a group, The three somethings or other but he was a wonderful, wonderful musician.

Bassam Habal   
That's great. We got a lot to cover in a short period of time. Was it true the song "Poison ivy" was about venereal disease?

Mike Stoller  
Maybe. 

Bassam Habal   
Okay, we'll take that answer on that. What do you remember about writing two favorite Coaster songs of mine that you and Jerry wrote, "Shopping for Clothes", and "Along Came Jones"?

Mike Stoller  
"Along came Jones" was a part of a writing session we did when we had gone to New York. The original records with The Coasters were recorded in Los Angeles, you know, "Searchin'" and "Youngblood" which became a two-sided hit that Atlantic actually paid us for over a million copies. But then, after that, we relocated to New York and so The Coasters did as well, although they did travel and did shows throughout the country. And then we did "Yakety yak" and then "Charlie Brown" and then I believe it was "Poison ivy" and "Along came Jones". I'm not sure of the exact sequence but we used to play them their new songs. Well, they'd go on the road and they would come back and in the studio they would show us how they choreographed the songs, their newest record for audiences, and we'd fall down on the floor laughing and then we'd play them a new song and they'd fall down on the floor laughing It was a lot of fun. They were a very talented group of people. And each one had something special to offer so we utilized what they had which was wonderful and made them each a different character and so we had the different voices to do different parts of songs and so on and so forth.

Bassam Habal  
Now you worked with other your other writers. Did you work with Doc Pomus for "Youngblood"?

Mike Stoller  
Well, actually, it was a title that he had. I mean, Doc was a very good writer and later on, we took songs he wrote with Mort Shuman and produced them with The Drifters. But on on "Youngblood" it was merely a question of, he had this title and we just took his title even though it had been a title of a novel. But we took the title and wrote the song and made it a three-way song. We were very close to Doc and then later we took songs of his, "Save the last dance for me" and "This magic moment" and did them with the Drifters. Together they wrote some wonderful, wonderful songs.

Bassam Habal   
So how common was it for you and Jerry to incorporate a third writer?

Mike Stoller  
It wasn't that common but it happened. It happened with Benny King when we wrote "Stand by me".

Bassam Habal   
So Benny wrote some of the music or the lyrics or. . .?

Mike Stoller  
He had the inspiration for the song, which was actually, the idea was taken from a gospel song with the same title. And he and Jerry were working on lyrics when I came into our office one day. They were there working on lyrics and they then started singing the song and I went to the piano, sussed out the chords and then came up with the bass pattern.

Bassam Habal   
Which is definitely an iconic part of the song played by every bass player I know. Let me ask you a few more questions and I'll let you go. Your favorite Elvis tune and why?

Mike Stoller  
There's a couple. "Jailhouse Rock" which, to me was one of his great performances and "Don't" which, as a ballad, I think really was one of his very best. I loved both of those.

Bassam Habal   
And your favorite Coasters tune?

Mike Stoller  
I think "Along came Jones" is one of my favorites.

Bassam Habal   
And definitely one of mine too. Obviously many people have covered your songs. I'm in a band and I've covered many many Leiber/Stoller tunes. What would be one of your favorite covers of your songs after after the original people had performed it? 

Mike Stoller  
"Ruby Baby" by Donald Fagen.

Bassam Habal   
Excellent.

Mike Stoller  
Anyway, nice to meet you.

Bassam Habal   
Thanks for talking with me, Mike, and thanks for your contribution to American culture.

A few random photos I grabbed from the internet (uncredited/anonymous) :