Stand by Me (song)
Stand by Me is a rhythm - & - blues - Song of Ben E. King and the writing team Leiber / Stoller from the year 1961st
History of origin
Ben E. King was the former lead tenor of the vocal group Drifters , which he had left in favor of a solo career. Together with the orchestra of Stanley Applebaum and the line-up Ernie Hayes (piano), Al Caiola (guitar), Lloyd Trotman (bass), Gary Chester (drums), Phil Kraus (percussion) with Elise Bretton, Lillian Clark and Myriam Workman as background choir Three tracks were recorded in New York's Bell Sound Recording Studios on March 27, 1961 , but there was still half an hour until the scheduled end of the session. The music producers Leiber / Stoller asked King if he could play anything else that would be included in the session. He picked up a piece the Drifters didn't want to include.
On the basis of two gospel songs , King wrote Stand by Me , in which the reliability of loved ones is required, whatever should happen. For this purpose, the producers improvised an arrangement, changed the bass lines and scraped the underside of the bass drum for a scratchy noise. Stand by Me names Ben E. King and Elmo Glick as authors, the pseudonym for Leiber / Stoller hiding behind the latter name. It is said that Jerry Leiber worked on the text with King; Mike Stoller added the bass line to the music. According to other variants about the genesis of the song, King claims to have composed the song more or less solely on the basis of an old gospel song.
Bass line
The song is in A major and has only one chord progression for verse and chorus, AF # mDEA. The distinctive bass line on the double bass is also played continuously. The song can be recognized immediately from this line, which is also partly taken over by the strings.
publication
The single Stand by Me / On the Horizon came out in April 1961 with catalog no. Atco # 6194 on the market. The Atco parent label Atlantic Records did not have a great deal of faith in the solo arts of Ben E. King and initially decided on the Doc Pomus / Phil Spector composition First Taste of Love as the A-side. However, when the airplay clearly favored Stand by Me , Atlantic switched the single. It was worth it, because Stand by Me stayed at number one on the R&B charts for four weeks and was able to advance to number four on the pop charts.
For the film of the same name shown in US cinemas from August 8, 1986, which was based on a novella by Stephen King ( Die Leiche ), Atlantic re-released the single in 1986. Ben E. King's song became the movie's theme song. The film Stand by Me was shown in Germany from February 26, 1987. Atlantic Records therefore released Ben E. King's title again in September 1986 and reached number nine on the US pop charts. Shortly thereafter, Stand by Me was also used in an advertisement for Levi Jeans . In Great Britain, the song reached number 1 on the singles chart after its release in February 1987, mainly because of the jeans commercial. The single was released 26 years earlier, on the other hand, only came to number 27. In Germany, too, the single was successful after its release in March 1987 and reached second place in the charts.
Cover versions
The title received a BMI Award and has been covered countless times, including in 1962 by Adriano Celentano in Italian (with the title Pregherò ), by Muhammad Ali (who was still called Cassius Clay in 1964 and the song was the B-side of his single I Am the Greatest in March 1964), Otis Redding (April 1964), Earl Grant (October 1965), Sonny and Cher (LP In Case You're in Love , March 1967), John Lennon (LP rock 'n' roll and single , March 1975), Ry Cooder (LP Chicken Skin Music , January 1976), Narvel Felts (LP Doin 'What I Feel , October 1976), Mickey Gilley (May 1980), Meat Loaf (single Nowhere Fast , 1984), Maurice White (August 1985), Little Milton (October 1995), 4 The Cause (August 1998), Lemon Ice (single, September 2006 and LP One , September 2007), Lemmy Kilmister 2009, Geeno Smith (January 2016), Florence + the Machine (August 2016), The Kelly Family (March 2017) and Weezer (2019).
Stand by Me is number 121 on the Rolling Stone music magazine's list of the 500 best songs of all time . In 1999, BMI called Stand by Me the fourth most performed song of the 20th century, with over 7 million performances.
In 2018, the song made it back into the charts in a gospel version due to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle .
Chart placements
| year | Interpreter | DE | AT | CH | UK | US |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Ben E. King | - | - | - | 27 | 4th |
| 1975 | John Lennon | 22nd | - | - | 30th | 20th |
| 1980 | Mickey Gilley | - | - | - | - | 22nd |
| 1985 | Maurice White | - | - | - | - | 50 |
| 1986/87 | Ben E. King | 2 | 7th | 3 | 1 | 9 |
| 1998 | 4 the cause | 2 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 82 |
| 2006 | Lemon ice | 11 | 23 | - | - | - |
| 2016 | Geeno Smith | 16 | - | - | - | - |
Web links
- www.br-online.de Darwin and Stand by Me ( Memento from September 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Christian Bielefeldt: Stand by Me (Ben E. King) , in: Michael Fischer, Fernand Hörner (Ed.): Songlexikon. Encyclopedia of Songs, http://www.songlexikon.de/songs/standbyme Status: May 21, 2012
swell
- ↑ Ken Emerson, Always Magic in the Air , 2005, p. 128 f.
- ^ Stand by Them , New York Times, June 14, 2009
- ↑ Ben E. King in the UK Charts (Official Charts)
- ↑ Günter Ehnert (Ed.): Hit-Bilanz, Deutsche Chart Singles 1981–1987 . Taurus-Press, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-922542-34-4 , p. 95
- ↑ BMI entry about Stand by Me ( Memento from December 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Pregherò - Adriano Celentano (1962) , Lofaro, Benvenuto in Italia, January 14, 2015
- ↑ < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZrntE3vNe8&list=RDYZrntE3vNe8&t=4
- ↑ Florence + the Machine - Songs From Final Fantasy XV. Retrieved August 29, 2016 .
- ↑ youtube.com: UK Royal Wedding: Gospel Choir sings "Stand by Me"