Otis Blackwell

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Otis Blackwell (born February 16, 1931 in Brooklyn , New York City , † May 6, 2002 in Nashville , Tennessee ) was an African-American songwriter, singer and pianist whose work has significantly influenced rock 'n' roll . Among his compositions is Fever , sung by Little Willie John ; Great Balls of Fire and Breathless sung by Jerry Lee Lewis ; Don't Be Cruel , All Shook Up and Return to Sender (with Winfield Scott) sung by Elvis Presley ; and Handy Man sung by Jimmy Jones. He was one of the most successful American composers of rhythm & blues and rock & roll, from whose works many white singers benefited.

Career

Beginnings

Otis Blackwell had won a singing competition at the Apollo Theater in New York in 1952 and received a recording contract with RCA Records as a reward . As an interpreter and pianist, he recorded more than 30 tracks for Elvis Presley's later label RCA Victor and other labels in 1952, starting with the single Wake Up Fool / Please Help Me Find My Way Home (recorded on October 22, 1952). 16 more singles follow with numerous other record labels. His most famous recording session, however, was September 22, 1953, when his compositions Daddy Rolling Stone / Tears, Tears, Tears were leveled (published October 19, 1953). The A-side is now regarded as the characteristic, representative style of Otis Blackwell's oeuvre. Titled as Viola Watkins And The Otis Blackwell Quintet , Really Real / Paint A Sky (Jubilee 5095) was released in September 1952 . Overall, he wrote almost all of the songs himself; However, they remained without any hit parade resonance.

composer

Otis Blackwell wrote a total of 11 songs for Elvis Presley , but without neglecting his service to other artists. He often cooperated with Winfield Scott or Bobby Stevenson .

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley - Don't Be Cruel

On the cold Christmas Eve of 1955, Otis Blackwell was hanging out moneyless at the Shalimar Music publishing house in New York, where he was received by the owner, Aaron "Goldie" Goldmark. He sold 6 compositions to him for $ 25 each to "get some Christmas bonus". RCA Records had decided in May 1956 to release You're the Apple of My Eye with the Four Lovers , the predecessor group of the later Four Seasons (Rank # 62 Pop). They were supposed to get Don't Be Cruel , but label colleague Elvis had priority. From the selection it was decided that Don't Be Cruel would be the B-side of Hound Dog for the first recording session at RCA (July 2, 1956, released July 13, 1956). Unfortunately, Blackwell had to make the usual compromise to forego 50% of his royalties , because Presley's manager "Colonel" Tom Parker wanted to register his protégé as a co-author, even though Elvis had not played a role in the composition. This "cut-in" shouldn't be the only thing. Even Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as authors of the A-side ( Hound Dog ) had to give up a third of their royalties in favor of Elvis Presley. Now Blackwell made money, because the single sold over 4 million copies. Both sides of the plate, i.e. the A-side with Hound Dog and the B-side sold and placed equally well. Since then, Blackwell has been on the staff of the few established authors whose material was regularly adopted by Presley.

When Blackwell preferred to keep a fallen and therefore pressurized bottle of Cola closed, he came up with the idea of All Shook Up . The next Elvis hit was born in March 1957, a transatlantic number one hit . For Presley's second LP, Paralyzed was considered (October 1956, # 1 LP chart). After Presley's military absence in Germany, he recorded Make Me Know It , an R&B song for the LP Elvis Is Back (March 1960, # 2 LP charts) during his first recording session in Nashville on March 20, 1960 . Two years later (Such An) Easy Question appeared on the LP Pot Luck (June 1962). The need for film music for the many, cinematic profile-less movies with Elvis Presley was immense, so that Blackwell compositions were also required for this. We're Coming In Loaded is on the LP soundtrack for Girls! Gils! Girls! included (November 1962, ranked 3 LP charts). In the single hit Return To Sender , Elvis tells the story of a girl who rejects a boy's request for contact and even sends his letters back unopened (October 1962, rank 1 Pop). One Broken Heart For Sale for the film It Happened At The World's Fair was sold over 1 million times, but only reached medium chart notes (January 1963, 11th place). The tame rocker Please Don't Drag That String Around then served as the B-side of Devil In Disguise (May 1967, from the film Double Trouble ). Stranger In The Crowd was Blackwell's last contribution to the Elvis catalog, hidden on the LP That's The Way It Is (December 1970, 21st place).

Compositions for other performers

Little Willie John - Fever

One of the first compositions by Otis Blackwell (under the pseudonym of his stepfather John Davenport was together with Eddie Cooley the Evergreen Fever , originally recorded by Little Willie John on March 1, 1956 and published in April 1956 (rank 24 pop). It became a hit the piece only in the jazzy version of Peggy Lee (June 1958, rank 8), and Elvis Presley also picked up Fever with a snap of his fingers (LP Elvis Is Back , April 1960) The list of cover versions ranges from the McCoys (November 1965) to Helen Shapiro (January 1964), Rita Coolidge (December 1972) to Madonna (March 1993, # 6 Great Britain), a total of between 65 and 72 versions are inventoried.

Jerry Lee Lewis took advantage of Blackwell's services with Great Balls of Fire (recorded October 6-8, 1957, published November 1957; ranked 2). The song, created in cooperation with session pianist Jack Hammer, sold 5 million copies, which made Lewis - Elvis' former label colleague at Sun Records - a serious competitor for Presley. The hit was Sun Records' biggest sales success. This was followed by Breathless (recorded on January 16-17, 1958) with an unusual intonation, because Lewis bridged the music breaks with audible breath passages based on the title (February 1958, rank 7). The destroyer of several pianos took over Let's Talk About Us (June 1959) and the composition Livin 'Lovin' Wreck (February 1961) as the B-side of the Ray Charles standard What'd I Say . Even Bobby Darin could n't do without with All the Way Home (Otis Blackwell / Luther Dixon, recorded January 24, 1958; LP For Teenagers Only , September 1960). Thurston Harris released I'm Out To Getcha (May 1958) on a B-side , Johnnie Ray sang Up Until Now (recorded June 15, 1958), Johnny Restivo did The Shape I'm In (September 1959), and Dee Clark made Just Keep It up a mean hit with the distinctive Bo Diddley beat (May 1959, rank 18). Dee Clark took over as his follow-up single Hey Little Girl (recorded on March 27, 1959, rank 20). Jerry Lee Lewis tried unsuccessfully with Let's Talk About Us to stabilize his dwindling career (July 1959). Ben E. King took over as the soloist Brace Yourself , recorded on December 17, 1959 and released in January 1960.

It is difficult to understand the authorship of the top-selling hit Handy Man , which was released by Jimmy Jones in January 1960 (rank 2 Pop). What is certain is that the original was released in January 1956 by the Sparks of Rhythm , which Jimmy Jones was a member of before the group recorded the song. The original recording lists the group member Andrew Barksdale and Charles Merenstein (employee of the Apollo record label) as authors. BMI also registered Otis Blackwell with this BMI Award winner in the version of Jimmy Jones. The cover by James Taylor performed only slightly worse in June 1977 (4th place). Cliff Richard was very successful in his British homeland with Nine Times Out Of Ten (3rd place). I Feel Good All Over was written for the Drifters , which they recorded on June 28, 1962 and was published as the B-side of I'll Take You Home in October 1963 .

Daddy Rolling Stone was often covered . Jimmy Ricks & the Raves (recorded November 10, 1961, published February 1962) were the first to pick up the piece, followed by Derek Martin (January 1963), Hank Ballard (November 1964), The Who adopted it as their B-side Hits Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere (April 12-14, 1965), Liverpool beat band Earl Preston's Realms (LP Earl Preston's Realms , November 1965), Phil Alvin (LP Un 'Sung Stories' ; August 1986), Johnny Thunders & Friends (LP So Alone ; October 1978) or The Blasters (live in Pittsburgh, March 17, 2011).

statistics

The LP Brace Yourself: A Tribute To Otis Blackwell (December 1993) includes 15 songs by one of the most important and style-defining authors of rock music. In 1984 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1992 Blackwell received the Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation . For Blackwell, a total of 394 titles are protected by copyright at BMI , 8 of which have received a BMI Award. His songs have been sold more than 185 million times.

The Rolling Stone listed Blackwell in 2015 at number 98 of the 100 best songwriters of all time .

Otis Blackwell's early recordings

  • Recording session October 22, 1952: Fool That I Be; Wake up fool ; Number 000 ; Please Help Me Find My Way Home ;
  • Recording session September 22, 1953: Tears, Tears, Tears ; Daddy Rolling Stone , On That Power Line ; Don't Know How I Loved You ;
  • Recording session December 30, 1953: You're My Love ; Go Away Mr. Blues ; Bartender Fill It Up Again ; I'm travelin 'on ;
  • Recording session May 14, 1954: My Josephine ; Ain't Got No Time ; I'm coming back baby ;
  • Recording session May 26, 1954: Nobody Met The Train (composed by Benjamin-Weiss-Dash-Cray); I'm Standing at the Doorway to Your Heart ;
  • Recording session June 24, 1954: I Face This World Alone ; OOO-Oh! ; Oh! What a babe ; Here I Am .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ace Collins: Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits . Chicago Review Press, 2005, ISBN 1-56976-507-3 , pp. 70 (English, 272 p., Limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ^ Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book Of Number One Hits , 1985, p. 14
  3. ↑ Bar Biszick-Lockwood, Restless Giant: The Life And Times of Jean Aberbach & Hill and Range Songs , 2010, SS 205
  4. ↑ Jerry Hopkins, Elvis , 1971, p. 118
  5. ^ Ace Collins, Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits , 2005, p. 70
  6. ↑ Blackwell was under contract with Jay-Dee Records and was not allowed to deliver compositions to King Records for which Little Willie John sang. Jay-Dee Records was owned by Joe Davis, who founded the label in 1953 after leaving RCA.
  7. ^ Cover info database with the entry Fever
  8. ↑ in the original by Kenny Lee Martin (October 1958)
  9. ↑ The Kool Gents with Dee Clark recorded I Just Can't Help Myself by Otis Blackwell in July 1956 , which was covered by Thurston Harris & The Sharps (recorded August 10, 1959)
  10. ^ BMI page Otis Blackwell ( Memento of the original dated December 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / repertoire.bmi.com
  11. ^ Ace Collins, Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits , 2005, p. 68
  12. ↑ The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Rolling Stone , August 2015, accessed August 7, 2017 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Blackwell, Otis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City, USA
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 2002
Place of death Nashville , Tennessee, USA