Jerry Leiber, Songwriter Featured in Smokey Joe's Cafe and Other Musicals, Dies at 78

Jerry Leiber, the rock-and-roll songwriter whose hits were featured in seven Broadway musicals, died on August 22 of cardiopulmonary failure. Leiber had a 60-year-long partnership with Mike Stoller that produced hits such as “On Broadway,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Hound Dog,” “Yakety Yak,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “There Goes My Baby,” “Charlie Brown” and many more. He was 78.

Leiber met Stoller in 1950 when he was a senior in high school, according to Rolling Stone, and within three years, they were the hottest songwriters in the business, directing their efforts to black musicians. “We're a unit,” Leiber said of himself and Stoller in 1990. “The instincts are very closely aligned. I could write, ‘Take out the papers and the trash,’ and he’ll come up with ‘Or you don't get no spending cash.’”

In 1956, Leiber and Stoller hit paydirt when Elvis Presley recorded a song they had written four years earlier for Big Mama Thornton, “Hound Dog” (currently featured in the off-Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet). Leiber, who specialized in lyrics, was offended that Presley added a line about catching a rabbit, explaining that “the song is not about a dog; it’s about a man, a freeloading gigolo. Elvis’ version makes no sense…of course, the fact that it sold more than seven million copies took the sting out.”

In 1995, Leiber and Stoller’s catalog of hits was turned into the Broadway musical Smokey Joe's Cafe, which was nominated for seven Tony Awards and ran for more than 2,000 performances. Individual songs by the duo were featured in Dancin’, Rock ‘N’ Roll: The First 5,000 Years, All Shook Up, Ring of Fire, Million Dollar Quartet, and Baby It's You!, as well as in Peggy Lee’s 1983 Broadway concerts, which featured their classic torch song “Is That All There Is?” American Idol devoted an entire evening to their music in May 2011.

Leiber and Stoller were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.