All language subtitles for HISTORY OF ROCK N ROLL Vol. 2 - Good Rockin Tonight (1995) eng

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We've set up a 20-man committee...

to do away with this vulgar,
animalistic, nigger rock 'n' roll bop.

The obscenity and vulgarity
of the rock 'n' roll music...

is obviously a means
by which the white man and his children...

can be driven to the level with the nigger.

I think Chuck Berry
is probably up way at the top...

of being considered
the father of rock 'n' roll...

only because
he has influenced so many people.

I mean, the Beatles, everybody.
But he started this whole thing.

He can go in any way.

He doesn't have to carry a band,
'cause everybody knows his music.

If you can't play Chuck Berry,
you can't work in no club.

If you ever played,
you had to know certain songs.

If you didn't, they'd say,
"You're not a rock-and-roller."

There was an integration problem
in this town...

and in this part of America.

Pretty severe integration problem
back then.

But there was no integration in music.

When you walked up to...

an old '54 or '55 model Wurlitzer jukebox...

and it said "Blue Suede Shoes,
Carl Perkins, white..."

'"Blueberry Hill, Fats Domino, black."

No, there was no difference.

Kids danced to Little Richard,
Chuck Berry, Elvis, Carl.

Chuck Berry said to me one time,
"You know, Carl...

"we might be doing
as much with our music...

"as our leaders are in Washington
to break down the barriers."

He was right.

... pot of integration...

out of which will come
a conglomerated mulatto...

We used a to go motorcade
when we did a lot of the tours.

Like, we would follow each other.

All of a sudden,
these troopers came from nowhere...

and they stopped us.

It wasn't about, "Well, what do we do?"

It wasn't about that. It was like,
"Get in them cars and follow us."

He took us way back up
in the woods somewhere.

It was like a house...

sitting way back off the road,
up in the woods.

And they filed us all out in the cars.

They put the ladies in one room,
and they had these cells in the back.

They made the guys take off
all their jewelry...

give up the money, everything...

and put them in the cells.

They had their little kangaroo court.
We had to pay to get out of there.

We were lucky to get out of there,
but maybe there were so many of us.

I remember those times well.
They really do happen.

Rock 'n'roll music is black music.

If it was white music,
I would say it's white music.

But it's nothing but rhythm and blues.

That '"r & b'" stands for '"real black. '"

Same old blues, but what we did...

we took boogie-woogie that black people
was playing all the time...

and we put the blues
and the boogie-woogie together.

Rock 'n' roll.

See, rock 'n' roll is nothing
but rhythm and blues up-tempo.

Rhythm and blues up-tempo
is boogie-woogie.

It's just like...

Boogie-woogie. That's Lucille.

My music broke down racial barriers.

I would play places,
and they would have white spectators.

The white people would sit upstairs.

The black people would be downstairs,
'cause that was a black band.

And the white people
would leap over the balcony...

come down where we were,
and the audience would start integrating...

because music has no racial boundary.

Little Richard is an institution,
and the books is closed on that.

All you can do when you say
"Little Richard," is think of rock 'n' roll.

I was still a different complexion,
you know.

It was hard for me, 'cause the white girls
were screaming over me...

and the system didn't like that.

But I wasn't after the girls.
I wasn't after the boys.

I was there to entertain them
and to give them some joy.

I didn't believe when people attacked it
saying the purpose of rock 'n' roll...

was to lower the white man
to the level of the Negro.

But it turned out it was true.

It did, I think,
raise us to the level of the Negro.

It raised us into being more emotional,
more honest...

being in touch with our feelings.

But we was one of the main doors
that it came through.

Chuck Berry was a main door himself.

And we're not saying
that Elvis wasn't a main door.

I would never say that.

Because Elvis started white people
really singing rock 'n' roll.

Elvis Presley, I didn't miss a lick
when I heard him.

B.B. King...

Rosco Gordon...

Joe Hill Lewis, Little Junior Parker,
Bobby "Blue" Bland.

Now listen to this.

These are people
that nobody would look at...

let alone audition,
let alone make records on.

Then I'm gonna
take you to another generation.

'Cause I knew there wasn't a big difference
between me, except skin color.

And a lot of my "soul brothers,"
you call them now...

We didn't have that name for them then,
you know.

Then I go:

"As hard as it is
to get a black record played...

"what can I do for black people
as well as white folks?"

I said to myself, "There's got to be
a broadening of the base."

What's all this segregation in music?

Country music, pop music, race music.

Music, man. Music.

I had the perception
it was like being in a religious meeting...

that you really are digging
what that preacher is laying down.

I had that feeling.

"This sounds like, to me,
that this is something...

"that the nation, and the world possibly,
should hear and know about."

After Presley was on...

I received 700,000...

pan letters.

Not fan mail, pan mail.

There is no room in this city...

for the vulgar performances
of Elvis Presley.

I watched him gyrate his legs
and swivel his hips...

and our parent-teachers group feels
he should not be on television.

It was all on my shoulders.
They put the burden on my shoulders.

Like, "Uncle Miltie,
we'll never watch you again.

"How dare you put a man,
a young fellow like that...

'"to gyrate and do those motions
which are disgusting. '"

What did I do?

I called up Colonel Tom Parker...

about four days after I got the mail.

I said, "Tom, you have a star
on your hand."

A couple of weeks ago,
on The Milton Berle Show...

our next guest, Elvis Presley,
received a lot of attention...

which some viewers interpret one way
and some interpreted another.

We want to do a show the whole family
can enjoy, and we always do.

Tonight we are presenting Elvis Presley in,
what you might call, his first comeback.

At this time, it gives me extreme pleasure
to introduce the new Elvis Presley.

Here he is!

Steve had to more or less book him
on his shows...

to keep up with competition.

And come to find out
he didn't like Elvis very much at all...

and was very critical.

I must say you look absolutely wonderful.

I think if he'd had to go back in
and do it again...

he would have never done it.

He absolutely hated it,
thought that it was stupid, which it was...

to how they... With the tuxedo...

Elvis just wasn't dressed...
It just didn't feel good for him.

- Thank you, Mr. Allen.
- I'm holding the guitar here.

It's not too often
that I get to wear the suit and tails.

A lot of people just don't realize
that this guy had a sense of humor.

He'd laugh and he'd joke.

He'd get you laughing so hard sometimes,
you'd fall on the floor.

People don't know that.

They thought he was always serious,
but he wasn't.

I got you a cute little hound dog
right here.

And away you go.

I always thought that Elvis heard
Big Mama 's record and rearranged it.

That wasn't so.

Elvis picked up his version
from a lounge act, I'm told...

that was playing in Vegas in 1956.

He copied their version, word for word.

In fact, they changed the words
I'd written.

I had never written:

"You ain't never caught a rabbit,
and you ain't no friend of mine."

That's got nothing to do with...

The original song of Hound Dog
for Big Mama...

is the story of a woman...

kicking a gigolo out of her house.

The first chorus is,
'"You ain't nothing but a hound dog...

"quit snooping round my door.

"You can wag your tail,
but I ain't gonna feed you no more.

"You told me you was high-classed,
but I can see through that...

"and, daddy,
I know you ain't no real cool cat.

"You ain't nothing but a hound dog."

That's the original song.

Black, white, red, I don't care.

You've got to be colorblind other than...

Whatever moves you, moves you.

In the case of Elvis Presley, believe me,
he was colorblind.

He didn't care
what the color of the skin was.

When he heard something he liked,
he remembered that...

and his version was, believe me,
Elvis Presley.

This was a huge pivot point in America...

because it was the emotional revolution...

of young, white America.

They had never experienced music.

This music had been in black communities
for years and years.

And now it was exposed
by a white performer...

to the public at large.
They still cut him off at the waist...

so you couldn't see him shaking his hips.

Don't Be Cruel.

The black music from the South...

and the white music from the South...

that we were able to create
at Sun Records...

with Elvis Presley as a catalyst...

and those wonderful black artists
that I had recorded previous of that...

it changed the world
and the concept of not only music...

but how we think about our fellow man.

My mother was a bit of an Elvis fan.
We saw him on Ed Sullivan.

I remember sitting
on the living room floor...

and feeling something come over me,
you know.

And I said,
"Mama, I want to play the guitar."

Elvis Presley is like
the big bang of rock 'n' roll.

It all came from there.

And what you had in Elvis Presley
is a very interesting moment...

because, really,
to be pretentious about it for a minute...

you had two cultures colliding there.

You had a kind of
white European culture...

and an African culture coming together.

The rhythm of black music...

and the melody and chord progressions
of white music just all came together...

in that spastic dance of his.

That was the moment. That's really...
That's it.

Elvis didn't know how much impact
he was having on people.

See, Elvis had music.

But he had a look
that no kid before had ever had.

He didn't realize. I did, 'cause I played
some of the first shows with him.

I've seen teenagers
tear their fingernails off...

and didn't miss them
until the morning after.

I saw them crying...

when they didn't know they were crying.
Somebody'd shake them and say:

"What are you crying about?"
"I love him, I love him."

And all he would have to do
is walk out there and say, "You!"

And just curl a lip. It was magic.

See, God intended for Elvis Presley...

to do what he allowed him to do
on the face of this earth.

That's why he made him so good-looking.

I used to get close to him.
I tried to find a fault.

I wanted to go out and tell the world,
"He's got a big mole back here."

No, he didn't have a mole back there.

He was right, and he was my friend.

Rock 'n' roll is where it is today...

because the front door of this studio
was opened...

and that kid walked in here
and moved an awesome mountain...

that sat in the way for people like me.

I might have never got anywhere.

Elvis was the first white boy
to record in this studio.

Then I was second, Johnny Cash.

Then Jerry Lee hung around
as a piano player here.

I paid him $15
for playing on Matchbox one day...

when that million-dollar quartet picture
was made.

Can you imagine one little label
in Memphis, Tennessee...

having Elvis Presley, not forgetting
all the other great artists...

and Jerry Lee Lewis on it?

Can you imagine that happening
in Memphis, Tennessee?

And you don't think
we laid some music on the world?

We wasn't even sure
we could even get on a television show...

much less do a song
on The Ed Sullivan Show...

or Steve Allen Show.

We got turned down by Ed Sullivan,
but we got in to see Mr. Steve Allen.

He heard me do
Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On.

I just took my bubblegum out of my mouth
and laid it on the piano.

And my funny book, I laid it down.
I was reading.

I was only 20 years old. And I played
Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On.

He's tapping with his pencil
like he's playing the drums.

I knew I had him.

He said, '"I want you doing that song
on my show tonight, son...

'"word for word,
just exactly the way you're doing it now. '"

What some people called race music
or black music...

At a time when this country
was very segregated...

there's a white guy singing black music.

It was an affirmation
of the value of that music...

and of your freedom to do what you want.
It was happening.

When the Crickets came along,
Buddy Holly and the Crickets...

it was so shocking...

that you couldn't help sitting up
and thinking, "God! What is that?"

So that's where I got excited,
hearing this stuff...

which sounded very raw,
very adventurous...

and very much spontaneous
and from the heart...

as opposed to this other stuff...

which, to me as a kid,
sounded like old people's music.

We did wind up working
with Buddy and the Crickets.

I'd heard of them, of course.

We met them. They were from Texas.

Phil and I were from Nashville.

It was so funny, the difference
from the Texas to the Nashville...

But we all loved rock 'n' roll,
we all loved Bo Diddley...

we all loved all this music.

It was camaraderie from the beginning.

They became very close, dear friends.

Buddy was a musical genius.

He had a great gift.

It is our feeling, here in Jersey City...

this rock 'n' roll rhythm
is filled with dynamite...

and we don't want
the dynamite to go off...

in the Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City.

What do you think
of the Mayor of Jersey City?

I think he's a square. He don't know
what's happening, that's all.

- 'Cause rock 'n' roll is cool, you know?
- Yeah, I see.

I think that mayor
must have been nowhere...

because rock 'n' roll is cool, daddy,
and you know it.

Rock 'n' roll is the most...

and if they stop that,
they ain't gonna have no more music.

My department made
a very thorough investigation...

of these so-called programs.

We had telephone conversations
and correspondence...

with various municipalities...

included among these
being Hartford, Connecticut...

Orange, New Jersey, Asbury Park,
and the city of Hoboken.

We find that these programs
are not for the good of the community...

and that's why I order them banned.

Body music was not only a way
for the Afro-American to speak his mind.

But the general public,
and the white man in particular...

was frightened of this,
because of all the old myths...

about black sexuality...

and the fear of the integration
of the races.

At the time in the '50s...

most parents didn't want their children...

and this is mostly a white frame of mind...

influenced by black music.
It was very frightening to them.

When guys like Jerry Lee Lewis
and Elvis Presley got involved in it...

it got even scarier.

Because they figured,
"If only black people were doing it...

"then I can somehow separate it."

But when Elvis showed up on Ed Sullivan...

and kids at home were watching it
over TV dinners...

just after Mickey Mouse Club...

the parents realized
that music was a very powerful tool...

and they also realized
that this would be something...

that most kids
would absorb into their own culture.

It scared the hell out of them.

I tell you, I don't wanna even
be around good niggers.

I'm with them no-good Negroes.

That's what they called Rodriguez:
A good Negro.

I wanna be with the bad niggers...

'cause I know
what's happening with the bad nigger.

That's where I wanna be.
I wanna be with the niggers.

...the FBI and the Army
to force us white people...

here in St. Augustine
and other parts of the nation...

to mix up with niggers.

If he sends troops in here
and puts a bayonet behind each of us...

we still will not mix up
with a bunch of black savages.

I pledge allegiance...

to the flag
of the United States of America...

and to the republic...

for which it stands...

one nation, indivisible...

with liberty and justice for all.

They thought rock 'n' roll
was gonna destroy everything.

Rock 'n' roll was hated
for the first five years of its life.

It's so funny. Until the '60s came along,
and the baby boomers...

rock 'n' roll was having a real struggle.

They didn't like it. People didn't like it...

especially the press, especially the media.
They hated it.

When I graduated high school in '55...

we immediately got in the car
the next day...

came to Nashville, and got a place to live.

I went out to Wesley Rose's...

and he got us an audition
with Archie Bleyer of Cadence.

Archie came down to Nashville
to do the sessions.

Him and Boudleaux
sang a little bit of this song to us.

Phil and I, this was our chance.

We were looking to make this record,
so we weren't gonna say no.

We liked the song, anyway.

The Everly Brothers came out of
a nightclub they'd been at until 2:30 a.m.

Instead of shining us on
and just signing an autograph...

and then going into the hotel...

they took time, at 2:30 in the morning
in a rainstorm...

to talk to Allen and I
and listen to what we were doing.

"Yeah, we do some of your songs.

"Yeah, we're little musicians.
We sing, and play, and stuff."

They were very kind to us.

And it affected me so much,
I began to realize...

exactly how important...

contact with your idol is.

Fats, this rock 'n' roll music
seems to be under an awful heavy attack...

from all over the country.

There's been riots. It's been banned
in parts of this country and abroad.

You know of any reason for that?

As far as I know,
music makes people happy.

- I know it makes me happy.
- You wouldn't blame it on rock 'n' roll?

No, indeed.

Phil and I met Roy Orbison up in Indiana
at a show.

And after the show,
downstairs in the basement...

we said, "Roy, you got a song for us?"

He brought in Only the Lonely,
and I remember him singing...

doing the demo to me
with the doo-wahs in the background.

I said, "Roy, you should cut that yourself."

That's what got him off the ground.

Roy's music was that
he was the ultimate outsider.

He had a tremendous physical frailty,
ethereal, otherworldly.

His face, the way he stood at the mike
and didn't move...

and his eyes hidden.

He had tremendously dark music.

I used to turn my lights out,
sit in my room, and put his records on.

It was so purely about
just the way his voice sounded...

that pure spirit voice
that came out of him.

I took a shot at it on some of my records,
and I didn't get there.

In the mid '50s, when I moved to Boston...

I had seen that...

hip, young white kids in the big cities...

were into some black music,
r & b music, at the time.

And so I started playing this music.

There was an anti-rock-and-roll feeling
in the city...

if such a thing could happen.

But, truly, the police, the church,
the city governments...

had a great reluctance
to allow rock 'n' roll...

to appear in dances and on the radio.

Because what Presley
and Little Richard did...

For the first time ever,
there was a division in music...

that what the parent listened to,
the kid didn't necessarily listen to.

And we were selling records
like we could not believe.

Kids liked a certain kind of music and,
for the most part, their parents didn't.

They had their own clothes.

They liked their style,
and their parents didn't.

Nothing ever changes.

The same thing goes on today as did
yesterday. They had their own thing.

Here is one song that will be in the top 10.

Where, I can't tell you.
It's Danny and the Juniors, At the Hop.

We directed the whole thing toward kids...

but 51% of the audience was over 18.

Older people loved to watch younger kids,
so we got them both.

Many teenagers are as concerned
as their parents...

with the public's conception
of today's youth.

These students are portraying...

what we consider bad taste
in school attire and behavior.

This student is wearing
an ankle bracelet, dungarees...

and dropped earrings.

This student is wearing
an extremely tight skirt...

and tight sweater.

Open shirts, black jackets, dungarees...

are mentioned in the code
as not proper school attire.

This group is our ideal...

of the proper school attire
and social behavior...

of the Hicksville Junior High student.

Also, during that time,
because disc jockeys became so popular...

along came payola.

And payola was an integral part
of record promotion...

during those years.

Each and every disc jockey
in this country receives...

anywhere from 150 to 200 records a week.

It's physically impossible
to listen to each and every record.

Record manufacturers, naturally,
are sensitive to whether or not...

the jockeys in the important markets
are at least listening to their records.

This is what the remuneration was for.

I know many people are going to say,
"Well, what's wrong with it?"

We're investigating it because
it has occurred over the airwaves.

And these are the property
of the American people.

It's common knowledge...

that some politicians
have this money contributed.

And this is, in my mind,
no more of a payola...

than a disc jockey receiving a gift
because he's been nice to somebody.

We never knew what was on the books.

It was very uncommon for us...

to walk in and say,
"Show me your books."

We were afraid to, maybe.

Because, in that era,
it was thumbs-down if you mess up.

So you wouldn't record anymore.

We were teenagers.

We didn't have any sense of responsibility
or business sense.

All we wanted to do
was get out there on that stage...

get in front of that mike,
start singing our song...

and try to get us a girl for the night.

That was it, man!

Business? What kind of business?
We don't know anything about business.

Most of us didn't even finish
high school.

So the hell with what people say.
I want my money.

And I want it as fast as I can get it.

It's a shame if I get it now.

I'm 65 years old.
I can't have the fun that I wanted.

But I still want what is due me...

and the pioneers of yesteryear.

We didn't know anything about publishing.

Copyrights and all that.
They kept that hidden from us.

But I don't feel bad about it...

because what goes around comes around.

We came to a mutual dissolvement
of the contract...

WNEW and myself.

What about the payola charges?

- What payola charges?
- That are rife in the industry now.

- Have you ever taken payola?
- No, I have not.

- It was about your personal integrity?
- Correct.

When you're on in New York at night,
in the winter...

there's mystery, there's romance...

there's something,
there's danger in the air.

And that's what Alan Freed projected.

The combination of this revulsion
against the rock 'n'roll shows...

and the payola thing
got him busted out of New York.

He just was totally disheartened,
dispirited, and died shortly thereafter.

I'd love to answer
all your questions, fellows.

I'd like to be nice, but my attorney
doesn't want me to say a thing.

I'm trying my best...

I just can't say. I'm under subpoena here.

Whether it was the payola,
or radio stations afraid of it, it dropped off.

But rock 'n' roll
went into a coma, almost...

with very few exceptions.

But what most people
don't understand is that...

all those hit records that Little Richard,
Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison made...

all happened within two or three years.
And it was over.

I didn't know anything about it.

But my God Almighty,
God the wonderful Savior...

the God that died out on Calvary...

the God that spilled his blood for me...

he was willing to save me.

I was very sad
when I heard the news on the radio...

that Little Richard
had given up his singing career...

and thrown all of his diamonds
in the river...

and no one would tell us what river...

and he was going into the ministry.

His power was available.

I said, "Take me to God,
the God that died for Little Richard!"

I went back...

And maybe that change preserved him...

to be as great as he is today.

An entertainer is really
a force to be reckoned with, socially.

So let's put him in the Army...

calm this boy down.

Chuck, in jail.

Chuck went through a lot of things,
like white girls...

taking girls across the border.

In that era, if you were busted
behind things like that...

it was thumbs-down.

A little trouble at the border, you know.

Conveniently, Buddy went down.

I was probably the last one to talk
to Buddy, because I said:

"I got a registered letter at the post office
my mother sent to Fargo.

"Would you pick it up for me?"

He said, "Yeah, I need some identification.
Let me have your driver's license."

I said, "Here, take my wallet."
So he just stuck my wallet in his pocket.

So when the plane was found
the next morning...

they found four bodies
and five identifications.

Stars Ritchie Valens, J.P. '"The Big Bopper'"
Richardson, and Buddy Holly...

died today with their pilot
in the crash of a chartered plane.

Following an appearance before 1,000 fans
at Clear Lake last night...

they chartered a plane
at the Mason City Airport...

It's a sad thing...

because I think he would have gone on
to be a big influence in music.

Which he was already. But it's a sad thing.

Phil went to Lubbock.
I couldn't bring myself to go.

I think I went and stayed in the room
for a while.

Jerry Lee.

Whoops, she's 14.

The papers reported that
you were greeted with silence over there...

and with catcalls from the audience.
Is that right?

I can't agree with them there, sir.
The audience was very nice and very good.

- Were you there, Mrs. Lewis?
- I was there, but I wasn't at the shows.

You weren't at the shows?

Did you notice anything like that,
that sort of reception?

No. It was a really good reception,
I thought.

When were you married?

- Pardon?
- When were you married?

Why don't we leave personal questions
out of this?

All right. Good luck.

They're all gone.

That is my theory on that early period.

It just suddenly got too wild,
calmed down...

and taken over by businessmen.

Teen idols were always on the defensive
because of the image makers...

making these people into something
they really weren't...

and were basically thrust upon...

the young girls of the world...

as being an alternate
or substitute boyfriend.

Some people liked that,
some people didn't like it at all.

I was part of that teen idol scene:

Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Rickie Nelson,
Paul Anka, myself.

I had no plans to ever be in show business.

Because of an illness of my father...

I met a guy on my front doorstep.

My father was being taken out
in an ambulance.

This guy had a good friend
that lived next door.

He was in the record business.

Certain guys of a certain look
were making it during that period.

He asked me if I'd be interested.
I told him no.

Frankly, I didn't know
what the hell he was talking about.

But then I found out
that my father couldn't work.

I was the oldest of two...

I was the oldest.
I had two other brothers and my mom.

And I asked him
if I could possibly make some money.

All of a sudden,
I was the head of the household.

He said, "I think so."

And I loved rock 'n' roll.

And that's how it started for me.

Howie Greenfield knocked on my door.

October 11, 1952.

I was 13 and he was 16.
He was a young poet.

He said, "Do you wanna write a song?"
I said, "I don't know how to write a song.

"I'm gonna be a concert pianist."

He convinced me that day...

and we wrote a song a day
for the next 52 weeks.

It was a Neil Sedaka sound.

Not bubble gum. I think the songs
were a little more sophisticated.

The cornerstone of pop music,
Aldon Music...

which was Al Nevins'
and Don Kirshner's company...

was situated at 1650 Broadway.

And there,
Howie Greenfield and Neil Sedaka...

Carole King and Gerry Goffin,
Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil...

People that were writing
all the top 10 songs...

were in that building in those cubicles
at Aldon Music.

This was the most exciting place to be...

because this was where
it was all happening...

in the late '50s and early '60s.

Songwriters, for the most part,
were given an assignment:

"Go into your garret and write a hit,
crank it out.

"Write it for this man, or this woman,
or this group."

It was a manufacturing process...

and some of the best and most reflective
lyrics came out of that period.

I remember the first time I walked into,
supposedly called, the Brill Building.

It was 1650 Broadway.

Al Nevis and Don Kirshner
had just opened the office...

and when we knocked at the door,
they said:

"Sorry, we're in conference.
Come back an hour later."

I think the conference was about
how they were gonna pay their rent.

There were little cubicles.
We all had pianos.

We were all in competition
with each other.

You could actually hear in the next room
some of the sounds coming through.

So all of the songs started to sound alike.

Will You Love Me Tomorrow
sounded a little like Locomotion...

sounded a little like
Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.

At the end of the day,
we would all go in to Al's piano.

He had a red piano.

And we would play the songs
that we finished that day.

We were in competition with each other.

Whoever had the best song
would get a Righteous Brothers record.

We went to the Brill Building,
and it was like...

This was, again,
a couple of guys from Orange County.

I mean, we're dumb, stupid, young,
and we wanna have a beer once in a while.

But that was an interesting deal,
to go into that building...

and these cubbyholes...
I mean, all those little cubbyholes...

Factory.

Neil Sedaka, Carole King,
Barry, and Cynthia.

And we shook hands with a few of them,
met them a few times.

It was like, "How are they doing this?"

'Cause they'd just write hit after hit.

We loved Loving Feeling.

But you have to understand,
before it was released...

we didn't think
there was a chance in hell...

that that was gonna be a hit record.

- It was way too long.
- Too slow.

It was a four-minute record.

Even the producer, Jack Good,
wouldn't allow us to do it.

- He thought it was too slow...
- He didn't think it was a hit, either.

He finally let us do it, and it went
and reached number four in the nation.

Remember that?
He finally let us perform it.

He said, "Guys, I think it's gonna
be a hit for you."

Today, to find a hit song...

or a song that sounds like it's a hit
that you want to go record...

is really very tough to do.

And I guess Spector...

turned us on to the Brill Building.

He's talent number one,
best of any producer I've ever met.

More imagination. He's a great songwriter.

He's a great arranger, great engineer,
great producer.

He knows exactly what he wants,
and he doesn't stop until he gets it.

Never compromises. Never.

He totally dominated the artist...

and with a very strong attitude.

It had to be his way, or there was no way.

But like I say,
this is what it may have to take.

I don't know how close genius
and eccentric go together...

and I feel that Phillip is...

Was, and I can't say whether he still is...

because the business
has changed so drastically.

But Phillip was a music genius.

We had to create things.

We had to wear our hair...
Most girls would wear it 3 feet.

We had to wear it 10 feet.
We had to exaggerate everything.

We wore the slits in our dresses
because we danced.

We couldn't dance unless we had the slits.

So we created all that stuff, the eyeliner...
We had to be different.

On the other hand,
there were lots of other things going on.

That's always been the pattern
of American music.

There's a spawning ground...

and it does a lap dissolve
all over the country.

I've seen that go on for 48 years,
and it keeps coming, like waves.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller came along.
They did all kinds of things.

Lester Sill, myself, and Mike Stoller...

started a little record company in LA...

Very underfinanced.

...called Spark Records.

The guys at Atlantic Records
had heard our stuff.

They got hold of us, and they said:

"Look, you're not selling
any meaningful amount of records."

They convinced us...

to make records for them
that they could sell.

The first big success we had
was Searchin'and Young Blood.

Here were two Jewish kids
that knew my culture...

better than most blacks
knew their culture.

And they amazed me. I would look at them
like, '"Who are you guys?

'"How'd you know
how to write this kind of stuff?

'"It's true, what you're writing about. '"

But it so happened they knew it,
it was correct, and right on time.

We used to live a semi-black existence.

In fact, we thought of ourselves as black.

We were mistaken,
but that's what we wanted to be.

We aspired to be black...

and to be able to make the music...

that was black and the poetry
that comes from blues music.

We had black girlfriends.

We used to constantly be in...

totally black nightclubs and dance halls...

and we were treated very courteously.

I mean, sometimes people were amused,
you know...

that we might have been
the only white faces in the joint that night.

But no one was ever rude,
or aggressive, or anything.

Doo-wop is the music that was started
because there was no instruments.

So the background singers
had to do all the work.

And that's why the bass singer
would do...

See? I was a bass singer, too.

I used to walk up...

let's say from 119th Street
to 129th Street...

with the group The Four B's.

We would actually have a competition
with whichever group was in that block.

All you had to do is stand there
and start singing...

and gather the crowd,
and the others would come around.

You'd just actually have
a little duel between you...

and the group that's in that neighborhood.

And it was like one of those
fighting things without gloves.

I had a session to do with Jerry Leiber
and Mike Stoller.

It was the Spanish Harlem day.

They asked me, at the end of that session:

"You have any other tunes
that you've written?"

I said, "I have one I showed to
The Drifters. They don't want it."

I showed them a little bit on the piano
how it went.

He said, "It's not bad."

So he called all the musicians back in,
and we did it right then and there.

I wrote Stand By Me for the Drifters...

even though I'd had an argument
with George Treadwell, their manager...

and he had threw me out of the group.

That's okay.
I was still friendly with the guys...

and they set up a meeting downtown
for me to go down...

and for them to sing the song
for George Treadwell.

So we all got together
and went downtown.

The guys stood up there
and they did Stand By Me really great.

It sounded good.

And after it was all done,
he looked at me and says:

"It's not a bad song, but we don't need it."

So I took it, tucked it under my arm,
and I left the office.

If there was anything that people heard
in Stand By Me...

it was a sadness that I was doing it
and not the Drifters.

I had no intentions
of ever singing that song. Not one.

Not from the first time
I put the first word down did I say:

"This is a song I'd love to do."

Never had I ever even thought
of singing Stand By Me.

If it wasn't for the fact
that we had a little time left over...

the song would never have been born.

We fell in love with black music,
which is a product of black culture...

and we started imitating it.

And we made a career out of it.

Then, after us...

a lot of other young people came along
and started imitating it...

imitating the singers,
and making careers out of it.

And before you know it, the whole world...

is playing aspects of this music.

But it does represent
some kind of change in our standards.

What has happened to our concepts...

of beauty, decency, and morality?

The funny part about it was
someone asked me:

"What's the most significant
rock 'n' roll record ever?"

I said, "Easy. It's The Twist. '"
He said, '"The Twist?

"What redeeming qualities
did The Twist have?"

I said, "It was the first time
in musical history...

"that all generations could freely admit
that they liked rock 'n' roll music."

November 11, 1950.

I wrote a song called Twist.

I rewrote it three or four times
before it came out.

The first people that had a shot at Twist
was B.J. Records.

When I first took it to them, they stuck it
in the vault. They didn't like it.

I rewrote the lyrics,
changed my groove and everything...

because I knew the lyric "twist"
had to be a hit. Just the lyric.

I saw a pair of black kids in the studio
at American Bandstand...

doing this strange-looking thing.
I said, "What is it?"

They said, "It's the twist."

I said, "Hank Ballard did that
about a year ago."

They said, "But there isn't anything
to dance to it now, so we improvised."

So I said to Bernie Lowe,
who owned Cameo Records:

"There's a wonderful opportunity
out there.

"Kids need a dance record
for a dance called the twist.

"Get me one.
You remember the Ballard song.

"Do it. Turn it sideways. Write a new one."

He sent me back a record
with Chubby Checker on it...

that had two sides.

He liked the other side.
I don't even remember what it was.

I said, "No, I need the twist."

He said, "We couldn't change it enough,
so we did it again."

This is a pretty frightening thing.
It's sweeping all over the country.

Hottest dance sensation in four years.
A thing called the twist.

Ladies and gentlemen,
here's Chubby Checker!

It was doing hips...

and that was nasty in 1959, 1960.
They don't do things like that.

We just got over the jitterbug.
We just got over Elvis Presley gyrating.

We just got over kids going crazy
dancing to Little Richard.

"Tutti frutti au rutti."

I mean, now we got this?

When I first heard about Chubby Checker,
I thought it was me.

I'm back there in Miami taking me a swim.

I heard this Twist record
blasting across white radio.

I thought, "Man, at last
I'm getting some white airplay.

"Yeah, I'm gonna be a superstar."

The disc jockey said, "Chubby Checker."

To regulars at the Peppermint,
the twist is not new.

But then society discovered it.

Almost overnight, the Rolls-Royce set
began to mingle with the motorcycle set.

The visitors to the Peppermint Lounge...

now include
such notables as Mrs. Jean Smith...

a sister of the President
of the United States...

and a United States senator, Jacob Javits.

And sometimes,
even high social standing can't get you in.

As many as 1,000 customers
are turned away every night.

It really is the in thing to do.

What would be
some of the out things to do?

I guess the only comment I could
make on that is, not to do it would be out.

If you don't do it,
you're just considered out.

I don't know of anyone
that doesn't do it at the moment.

You are knocking yourself out
having a wonderful time...

and you're not thinking of sex.

- What are you thinking of?
- You're thinking of green fields...

blossoms, Venice.

A Persian garden. You're thinking
of anything in the whole world but sex.

Soul, gospel, fusion, jazz, whatever,
are all...

They're shards of this large wellspring
of black music...

which is a product of black culture.

The whole world
is imitating these sounds.

I find that very interesting.

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