What The Gershwin Brothers, Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer were to the vintage years of jazz, the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were to the Baby Boomers. These two guys penned some of the most popular songs of the Eisenhower years, including pieces like “Kansas City”, material swallowed up by Elvis Presley in “Hound Dog”, “King Creole” and “Lovin’ You” and supplying The Coasters with a surfeit of material such as “Searchin’”, “Charlie Brown”, “Young Blood” and “Smokey Joe’s Café”, and I’m not even getting started.
This album has 30 songs penned by Leiber and Stoller, but are from the more obscure side of town, as few of these became big hits, all the more reason to enjoy them because they have the same flair, humor and mischievousness of their more popular tunes. Thus, there’s a blues shuffling double entendre’d “Nosey Joe” by Moose Jackson, Ruth Brown belting out “Papa Daddy” a Ray Charles inspired Frankie Marshall on “Just Say The Word” the the doo wopping Drifters having a hoot on “Drip Drop”. Three are some hard hitting jump tunes with Little Esther on “ Hollerin’ and Screamin’” and Bobby Byrd snapping “Bippin’ and Boppin’”. Somehow the Coasters missed out on “Ten Days In Jail” and “I Smell a Rat”, but “The Robins and Young Jessie do impressive work with them respectively. You’ll have a great time with the tongue in cheek humor, as on ”Get Off My Wagon” and “One Bad Stud”, making you realize music doesn’t have to get in your face to put a smile on it. A definite party album.