|
Doc Pomus,
subject of
Lonely
Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus
by
Alex Halberstadt
___________________________
"Doc was more than a man among men. He was the sun." - Lou Reed
_____
One of the most original, influential, and commercially
successful American songwriters, Doc Pomus (1927-1991) is remembered best
for the dozens of hits he wrote during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role
model for several generations of composers, Doc was renowned for his mastery
of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of
"Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic invention of "Save the Last Dance for Me"
to the pop confection of "Viva Las Vegas."
His songs have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles,
Elvis Presley, and B.B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen.
Despite his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox
hits led one of the most dramatic lives of his time. Spanning extravagant
wealth and desperate poverty, suburban family life and the depths of New
York's underworld, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc's story remains
one of the great untold American lives.
Alex Halberstadt's Lonely Avenue : The Unlikely Life
& Times of Doc Pomus is a beautifully written narrative that reads
like a novel, fortified by full access to Pomus's family and friends, voluminous
journals, and archives.#
Halberstadt joins Jerry Jazz Musician contributor
Paul Hallaman in a conversation about the life of this extraordinary American
artist.
____________________________________________
Now my covers they feel like lead
And my head it feels like stone
Well I've tossed and turned so ev'ry night
I'm not used to being alone
I live on a lonely avenue
my little girl wouldn't say I do
But I feel so sad and blue
And it's all because of you
I could cry, I could cry, I could cry
I could die, I could die, I could die
Cause I live on a lonely avenue |
Doc Pomus in the 1940's
*
"He used to talk about how when he was a kid, after he was stricken by
polio, he had dreams of becoming the first heavyweight champion of the world
on crutches, what his father called "a man among men." It was a perfectly
understandable fantasy for a lost, lonely child, but that, in effect, is
what he did become: if he was not the heavyweight champion in boxing,
he became a champion of another sort."
- Peter Guralnick
_____
Lonely Avenue
 , by Ray Charles
_________________________________________
| PH Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life
& Times of Doc Pomus is a story of a great songwriter, the man who
wrote "Save the Last Dance for Me," "This Magic Moment," "Teenager in Love,"
and hits for Elvis Presley such as "Little Sister," "Viva Las Vegas," and
"Marie's the Name of His Latest Flame." Tell us a little about Jerome Felder's
childhood in the Brooklyn community of Williamsburg, and how he became disabled?
AH Jerome was born in 1925 and contracted polio
in the summer of 1932 at a camp in Connecticut. Polio was an epidemic common
at the time in New York City, and his parents sent him to this camp, ironically,
to avoid polio. On the second day at the camp, he woke up and had lost all feeling in his legs. His parents rushed there but weren't allowed to see him because
the camp was under quarantine. Eventually they got him to New York City,
but by that time it was too late -- he already contracted the disease and
was paralyzed. It's a terrifying, unimaginable disease that has been almost
completely eradicated with the polio vaccine, but at the time it was a very
real and frightening thing. Later that summer he was sent to Warm Springs,
Georgia, where he met Franklin Roosevelt, who was also stricken with polio.
The disease changed the course of Jerome's life in a big way because he was
a hyperactive, manic kid who loved to do things like play stickball. Polio
was the crisis in his life that eventually brought him to the blues. |
Jerome Felder, 1934
*
"At the hospital he remembered the faces of other stricken kids
and those of their gray, distraught parents, and [mother] Millie in the bathroom,
running the faucets to mute the sound of her crying...The only way he knew
what was happening was by watching his mother's face. Judging by her
tear-rimmed eyes, he could tell it was something awful."
- Alex Halberstadt |
George's Tavern, Greenwich Village, 1943
"Jerome was fifteen when he discovered
'Piney Brown Blues
' in the bins at Lineker's record shop. He didn't know
much about the blues, only that he thought he liked it. 'Piney Brown'
changed that. Jerome played the 78-rpm disk until the label that read
Decca, and underneath it 'Big Joe Turner & His Fly Cats,' was dark with
fingerprints and spindle marks. From the moment he first lowered the
needle into the groove, the record floored him like nothing he'd heard.
The singer shouted the lyrics with such stupendous, effortless force
that Jerome imagined him to be eleven feet tall, six hundred pounds, and
powered by a steam engine."
- Alex Halberstadt
*
Doc Pomus, 1940's
"Jerome could pinpoint the exact moment when everything changed...It
was the audience's response -- not just the lukewarm applause, but the routine
acceptance of him as someone who belonged on that bandstand, as a
legitimate performer, that flipped the switch in his
mind."
- Alex Halberstadt
_____
Doc's Boogie , by Doc Pomus
|
PH Yes, and once he became paralyzed he
would stay up half-the-night listening to people like Count Basie on the
radio, and discovered the blues. He fantasized about doing many things --
of conducting an orchestra, of being the first crippled heavyweight
champion...How does he decide on becoming a blues singer?
AH In 1943, when Doc was 17, he and a saxophone
playing friend of his went to Greenwich Village, which at the time was sort
of a no-man's land -- it was truly Bohemian, unlike today. They saw Frankie
Newton, the great jazz trumpeter who at the time was best known for playing
on some Billie Holiday recordings, who was playing at George's on Seventh
Avenue, which was a Village institution that was frequented by dilettantes,
painters, and artists. Thomas Wolfe had gone there, as did James
Baldwin
who, according to Doc, was there later that night. He went to see Newton
with no real intent other than being a spectator in the audience, so he only
had enough money for a pint of beer.
Halfway through the second set, with nothing to show for it other than an
empty beer glass on his table, the owner of the place wandered over to his
table and told him in no uncertain terms to either spend more money or "get
the hell out." At that moment, Jerome must have experienced a moment of intense
fear and told an outrageous lie, saying that he was a blues singer there
to perform a song. The owner called his bluff and told him to get on stage
and sing a song. Everyone in the club was watching, curious about this heavy-set white teenager on crutches trying to make his way up to the bandstand to
shout out a blues song. Jerome sang the only song he knew, a Big Joe Turner
song called "Piney Brown Blues." Turner was his idol and this was the only
song he had completely memorized. He did the best that he could with it,
and by the time he was done, half of the people in the place were clapping,
which completely blew his mind. It was at this point that he realized this
was something he could really do, that he wouldn't have to be an accountant
or salesman or try to fit into the square world as he thought previously.
It was a more realistic view than being a boxer or a baseball pitcher who
pitched on crutches, that's for sure. At that moment, he believed he could
be an artist, and this was one way he could do it. I am sure the fact that
no white person had ever thought about shouting the blues for a living before
never crossed his mind.
Afterwards, he and his cousin Max came up with the stage name of Doc Pomus
because they didn't think Jerome Felder was going to cut it as a blues singer.
Doc told a thousand different versions of how he settled on this name, and
all of them contradict each other -- my guess is that he never remembered.
The next day he went back to George's and, right before taking the stage,
said his name is now "Doc Pomus." So, in the course of 24 hours, he transformed
himself into a blues singer. I think that the name change was done partly
as a cover from his parents, who likely would have disapproved his being
a blues singer. He was right, because when they eventually found out they
did disapprove, but that didn't stop him. He made a living performing and
singing all over Brooklyn, Harlem, and New Jersey for the next 12 years.
|
| PH He recorded a radio commercial for
Alley's Clothing Store in Brooklyn that had a major impact on his career,
because when he later met Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Stoller remembered
the ads. It was about this time that he also met the singer Jimmy Scott,
who was as unlikely a blues singer as Pomus was. Scott suffered from Kallman's
Syndrome, is that right?
AH Yes. He and Doc were good friends during
the 1940's and 1950's. While Doc was a blues shouter in the mold of Joe Turner,
Jay McShann, and Jimmy Rushing, Scott was a pre-eminent ballad singer greatly
admired by Billie Holiday, and, later, Nancy Wilson and Nina Simone. He was
singing jazz but, like Doc, came from the R & B scene. When he was younger,
he would perform with lowdown musicians like Little Miss Cornshucks -- artists
that weren't well known to the upper class jazz fans. |
Doc Pomus and Jimmy Scott, late 1980's
_____
Unchained Melody , by Jimmy Scott |
Doc with Willi, c. 1960
*
"At first, though she barely dared to admit it, she felt sorry
for him and made sure to not let her eyes stray to the crutches. He
had, Willi thought, a kind and curious face and spoke in the most fascinating
voice -- a raspy baritone accented almost equal parts Jewish and black, his
sentences full to the kind of hipsterisms she'd heard Steve Allen poke fun
at on TV. Doc asked where she was from, and when Willi answered, he
hung onto her every word."
- Alex Halberstadt |
PH In 1956, Doc met Willi Burke, the first
love of his life. They make an unlikely couple, don't they?
AH Yes, they really do make an unlikely couple,
and their relationship was one of my favorite things to write about. Wilma
Burke was an actress her entire life, and she can still be seen on television.
She was a young, blonde,
Lithuanian girl who grew up in a very difficult family situation in Illinois.
She had an abusive alcoholic father who created a fear of men in Willi.
Doc was nine or 10 years older than her and came from a totally different background, but he was good to her.
Their relationship was in some ways both very beautiful and very sad. The
two of them found in each other what they needed at the time, but for very
different reasons. In Doc, Willi found someone who was a great friend and
who she could be herself with. She needed the confidence that Doc gave her,
and she loved how sophisticated and funny Doc was. As for Doc, Willi gave
him a new lease on life. Before he met her he was in a very dark place in
his career -- he had given up singing after RCA pulled his one hit record.
He was 31-years-old and in need of a fresh start, and he found that in Willi.
Their relationship and their first child were the main reasons he turned so energetically away from singing and towards songwriting.
Having to support a wife and child meant 40-dollar weekend gigs at the Cobra
Club or Snooky's weren't going to cut it anymore. |
| PH Transitioning from singing to songwriting
wasn't easy for him, was it?
AH He wasn't a songwriter like Cole
Porter or Irving Berlin, who wrote both the music and the lyrics. I always
imagine that it came easier for them, and it seems as if they had an early
love and aptitude for it. Doc, on the other hand, never aspired to being
a songwriter when he was young -- he always wanted to be an artist or a musician.
Writing songs was just a way to support his singing habit and to pay the
bills. But eventually he met his hero Big Joe Turner, who asked him to write
some songs for him, which is when Doc probably first realized that he could
be a successful writer. Some of the songs he wrote for Turner,
"Still In Love ,"
"Chains Of Love ," and
"Boogie Woogie Country Girl ," were his first great pieces, and were very much
his first attempt at trying to see how well he could write. By the time he
met Willi he had already written
"Lonely
Avenue" for Ray Charles and some songs for Ruth Brown and Lillian Green,
so he knew he could write a good R & B song. The Rock 'n' Roll writing
was yet to come, and while it was something that he reluctantly turned to,
he became one of the great practitioners.
|
Big Joe Turner |
Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus
*
"Doc first wrote with his new partner up in the Stratford Arms.
At the beginning, he offered Mort 10 percent of every song just to
sit beside him and watch him work. Mort was flattered. Gradually
he began to pitch in, mostly up-tempo melodic ideas with a strictly Top 40
sound. They began by listening to the tape recorder, into which Doc
had hummed a melody, and looking at some words he'd written; they hashed
out the rest. When Doc relocated to the Broadway Central a couple of
months later, they went down to the ballroom and wrote around the upright
piano. The hotel dick snuck them leftovers from the Jewish weddings,
and between songs Mort gorged himself on pastrami sandwiches."
- Alex Halberstadt
*
*
"At times the work plodded along or broke down completely.
Doc had trouble getting excited about the teenage material,
and Mort could be plain lazy. they spent too m uch time bullshitting
about any topic that came into their heads, a pattern that usually culminated
in Doc giving Mort jive advice about women. Sometimes he lost his temper
with Mort for being distracted, but he sounded hypocritical even to himself.
Doc knew the real problem. Most of the time, he just didn't believe
they'd make it."
- Alex Halberstadt
_____
Save The Last Dance For Me , by the Drifters
Suspicion ,
by Elvis Presley
|
PH Around the same time he met Wilma Burke,
his cousin introduced him to a friend of hers from Brighton Beach, Mort Shuman,
an unbelievable counterpoint character to Doc Pomus who came along through
sheer serendipity…
AH Mort and Doc were both children of Jewish
immigrants from Brooklyn, but Mort was 11 years younger. He was too hip for
Brighton Beach -- he smoked pot and listened to R & B records, and fantasized
about getting out of the middle class life he saw that a Jewish man in the
1950's was expected to lead. Doc was somebody he wanted to be like -- he
slept all day and stayed up all night, smoking marijuana and hanging out
with musicians at the clubs, which seemed like a perfect life for the 18-year-old
Mort. I don't think he was clued into the fact that it wasn't all fun, that
there was a lonely and desolate aspect to it as well. Doc and Mort both rejected the straight world, and neither one of them could have been anything but
some type of artist.
Before meeting Mort, Doc was very insecure about Rock 'n' Roll, which he
initially didn't like very much -- he saw it as an adulteration of the jazz
and R & B music that he loved, and felt it was simplistic and light and
vapid lyrically. But he also understood that this was where the future of
commercial music was going. As much as he liked Charles Brown and Big Joe
Turner, he understood that he would have to adapt to the new sound. Mort had a great ear for Rock 'n' Roll, and one
of the reasons they were such a devastatingly effective team is because of
his ear for melody and progression, while Doc was a very deep lyricist, and,
like Irving Berlin, a very versatile lyricist.
Doc wrote more than 1,000 songs in his life, and he wrote very different
kinds of songs -- he could write songs that were very dark, and he could
write a song like "Viva Las Vegas," which was sort of tailor-made for an Elvis
movie. He was very versatile and could adapt to this new kind of melody,
although I don't think he really could have written it. Doc gave Mort an
education in the blues and jazz, while Mort provided Doc with a bridge to
Rock 'n' Roll. They needed each other and very much complimented one another.
PH You called "Save the Last Dance for Me,"
a troubadour song and described how Doc wrote the lyrics on the back of his
old wedding invitation. I think this is one of the best 45's ever made…
AH I agree -- it's such an exciting record.
It wasn't a song that just came out of nowhere, it was a great collaboration
-- an example of the very best people working together to create a real
breakthrough in Rock 'n' Roll music. I think of those sessions from 1959
and 1960 as groundbreaking recordings because they introduced so many new
sounds. |
Fabian
Turn Me Loose
*
Dion and the Belmonts
|
PH You do a wonderful job describing the
Brill Building scene that was going on at the time, where they're plugging
songs door to door, and how they meet the Crowns, Charlie Thomas, Ben Nelson
and their manager, Lover Patterson. This great group of singers becomes the
new Drifters because of George Treadwell, who sends them out on the road.
About that time Otis Blackwell introduces Doc and Mort to Paul Case at Hill
& Range Music. Tell us about how Doc and Mort came to specialize in writing
for Fabian and other Italian American pop singers from Philadelphia. Doc
coined a great name for these guys, right?
AH That phrase is actually from Doc's journal,
where he called them the "beautiful singing and non-singing men of Philadelphia."
I believe he's referring to Fabian as the non-singing man. Bobby Rydell,
Fabian, Dion and James Darren became what
in the book I describe as proponents of
"Italian-American radio operetta." All of these guys were Italian
by birth and had the teen-idol good looks. There was a doo-wop sound and feel that was heard
all over the radio at the time. Some of the songs Doc and Mort
wrote for them were quite good, especially "Teenager in Love," which I think was one of the first
great Rock 'n' Roll songs they ever wrote together. Paul Case had a great deal to do with their success at this stage; he was a brilliant manager who was brilliant at helping put a song together and also at pairing a song with an artist and a record company. |
Bobby Rydell
*
James Darren
Angel Face |
| PH In a recent documentary, Ahmet Ertegun
recalled his writing "Chains of Love" for Joe Turner. But, in fact, Doc and
pianist Van Walls wrote it and sold it to Ertegun for $50 each. It seems
unfair, but $50 was a lot of money in the early 1950's.
AH That's right. There is a famous story about
Syd Nathan, the head of King Records in Cincinnati, being approached by Pee
Wee King, who wrote a song called "Tennessee Waltz," and offered to sell
it to Nathan for $50. Nathan replied by saying that there is not a song in
the world that's worth that much money. Of course, the song became a huge
smash! But, those were the days.
This kind of thing was especially prevalent with black artists -- I don't
think this would be happening with Mitch Miller and artists like that. But
when dealing with the black artists, there was a lot of chicanery going on.
This was an era when a crooked record company executive would have a black
artist come into his office to tell him that the company was so pleased with
the success of the record that they have a new Cadillac for him. They would
hand the keys to the artist, who would drive away with the car only to discover
later that the car was rented. There was a lot of stuff like that going
on. Ahmet Ertegun was probably among the more scrupulous of the executives
of the early 1950's, but he certainly wasn't above buying a song and later
claiming to have written it. He was convinced he wrote "Chains of Love,"
and Doc never called him on it because he and Ahmet were friends -- he realized
he had sold it and was content to live with that decision. He told only a few
friends and family members that he had written it, and wanted them to know he gave one-half of it to Van Walls because he had written the song's piano introduction. Ertegun later said he paid Van Walls $400-500 years later to buy
out his half of the song, but at the time Doc sold his half, Ertegun paid
him $50. To Doc, it was $50 he didn't have and needed, and it probably made
his week. |
Ahmet Ertegun
_____
Chains Of Love, by Big Joe Turner
|
PH After "This Magic Moment" and "Save the
Last Dance for Me," Doc and Mort went through a period where they were annointed
as the favorite writers in, as you describe it, the "House of Elvis." They
proceed to write "A Mess of Blues" and "Surrender," and "She's Not You."
Mort subsequently decides he has had enough of that and gets a little stir-crazy
trying to come up with melodies to go with the songs while working in the
small room they shared, so he and Doc drift apart at about the
same time Doc and Wilma do…
AH Yes, this was the beginning of a very
dark period in his life. Doc fell out of his wheelchair and tore the cartilage
in both knees at the same time he was gaining quite a bit of weight, and
following the injury he pretty much decided that he was going to stay in
his wheelchair. I know he later told his girlfriend Shirlee that had he not
done that, he would have died from the strain of standing up on crutches.
He and Mort had been growing apart at this time -- they hadn't had a hit
song for over a year, and Mort was spending time in Europe with people like
Marianne Faithful and the Rolling Stones and their management. He was still
a very young guy at this time -- in his mid-20's, while Doc was in his late-30's
and had a much different perspective. Mort always wanted to meet girls and
travel and have fun, but Doc was immobile. He was a guy who sat in that small
room because he didn't have much choice.
Doc would tell his secretary that Mort was gone again but that he was "stuck,"
and it used to piss Doc off. By the time he was in the hospital they were
working together very infrequently because Mort was trying to escape as much
as he could. Mort eventually told Doc that he was going to France because
he had discovered a
songwriter and performer named Jacques Brel, a Belgian living in Paris.
He wanted to find him and work with him, which is exactly what he did. A
couple of days after this news, Wilma came to the hospital and told Doc she
was leaving him.
Later, when they tried to sell their house during the divorce proceeding,
the IRS seized the entire proceeds from the sale, which was close to $40,000
-- at that time a good deal of money -- because Doc had neglected his taxes for five years. So, in the space of one month, he lost his wife, his songwriting
partner, his house, and pretty much everything he owned. It was an extremely
difficult time for him.
This was also the era of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, when rock music was taking
over, and the idea of writing songs in an office building was becoming very
passé. Many songwriters were moving to Los Angeles to write music
for bands like The Monkees, so Doc suddenly felt completely alone -- and
not only without a songwriting partner, but without a profession. So at 40
years old, he finds himself at the same place he had been 20 years earlier,
broke and without prospects. He turned to poker as a way to make ends meet
-- it was the only way he knew how to pay the bills. While he never stopped
writing music for a day, he became a gambler living in a hotel.
At the Hotel Forrest, early 1960's
*
"The Forrest was a more colorful venue than most. The couches
were home to an assortment of ancient fighters and fight managers, world-weary
car thieves, Tin Pan Alley has-beens, vaudeville-era radio personalities,
and Ozzie, a vintage bellboy from the Barbados who knew the goings-on of
every long-term guest. Doc was fascinated by all of them. When
he wasn't leaning on his crutches and holding forth, he sat on a couch with
a notebook in his lap, taking down stray bits of conversation. The
ostensible purpose was to find ideas for a song, but he did it mainly because
he craved the random brilliance of overheard speech."
- Alex Halberstadt |
PH And what a hotel it was, the Hotel Forrest,
where he encounters the likes of Rodney Dangerfield and an entire cast of
colorful characters. At this time he met Shirlee Hauser, an 18-year-old girl
from Connecticut, and moved to 888 8th Avenue, where he hosted the poker
games and she made the sandwiches.
AH It's a very colorful scene, but what goes
along with it is also very sad, because the people he plays cards with are
essentially addicts, which Doc understands. He met a card shark named Johnny
Mel who taught him how to play cards, and the games Doc hosted were competitive
high-stakes poker. Doc was a decent poker player, and there were some days
when could walk away with a couple hundred bucks, and other days he would
basically break even. Because he needed to make more money he began to run
the games out of his apartment, where he could keep a small part of the pot
when the games were over. Some of
the players were hilarious -- there was a gangster named Willie Wald
from the Brill Building; Chico Marx's widow Mary; Stu Ungar, whose mother
would bring him to the games and who would later become a very famous poker
player, but also a casualty of cocaine. Some of the players were gangsters,
enforcers, and petty criminals -- it was an incredible collection of sad
characters.
PH Addicted gamblers…
AH I think Doc appreciated the color of the
scene, but he saw it as a necessity and eventually grew to hate it. It was
boring and it was dangerous, and these weren't really the kind of people
he wanted to be with. Doc was a very smart, very soulful person. It was something
he grew to loathe, but it went on for about 15 years. |
| PH In the early 1970's, Doc had a role
in the career of Bette Midler. How did that come about?
AH Doc used to go the Improv, a comedy club
in New York, where he happened to run into a friend
of his from the Brill Building named John Leslie
McFarland, who went by Johnny Jungletree, and who told
him about a "broad" there who was going to be a huge
star. Doc trusted Johnny's judgement because he had
latched onto the career of a young black girl from Detroit named Aretha Franklin before anyone had really heard of her -- he discovered her even before John
Hammond at Columbia did. He took Aretha under his wing, and she
wound up recording quite a few of McFarland's songs
for Columbia. So Doc trusted
his taste, and he stayed around one night to watch this "broad" -- a singer
named Bette Midler -- who he was blown away by. She was an energetic, terrific
performer, and he wound up helping her get a few early breaks. He got everyone
at Atlantic Records to take notice of her, and he midwifed the deal for her first record, which became a smash hit. He also worked on her stage act and song selection.
I would never claim that Doc was in any way responsible for her talent --
she was always very independent-minded and a very original singer -- but
Doc did help pave the way for her early success. I think there was some mutual
affection between them, but she decided to purge that part of her history
and never really acknowledged him, and has never even mentioned him in interviews
or books. I don't think Doc ever understood this, and was hurt
by it because he was one of the people who was there in the beginning for
her. She even lived in his apartment for a while. |
Bette Midler's The Divine Miss M
_____
Do You Want To Dance
|
Mac Rebennack, a.k.a "Doctor John"
*
"The man who shook Doc's hand was a huge, bearded frontiersman
in a lizard jacket and Old Testament sandals who carried a carved wooden
cane. He spoke in a self-made dialect -- a mix of Creole, street, and
sheer insanity --that in comparison made Doc's Brooklyn jive sound as staid
as Cronkite. He'd named himself Doctor John, after a nineteenth-century
voodoo practioner, and onstage appeared in wooly Mardis Gras costumes. The
guy hailed from New Orleans's Third Ward and knew everything about Louisiana
music down to the name of the drummer on Eddie Bo's most obscure single.
He also knew all about cooking, gris-gris religion, extraterrestrials
and drugs. Doc liked him immediately."
- Alex Halberstadt
_____
I'm
On a Roll, by Doctor John |
PH About this time he also linked up with
Mac Rebennack -- better known as "Doctor John" -- which was the beginning
of Doc's revival. How did they get together?
AH They were introduced by Joel Dorn, an
Atlantic Records jazz producer, who brought them together to write a song
for a movie that was never made. During his prime in the 1970's, Doctor John
was a pretty freaky looking guy who was into voodoo and extra-terrestrials,
but he was an incredible musician who, like Doc Pomus, loved old-time R &
B. The two of them bonded over their love of
that music. Both were incredibly
deep hipsters who could talk to each other in this kind of made-up language
that only they understood -- they had a real chemistry together.
To the end of Doc's life, Mac was a very important person and, after Mort
Shuman, his second great collaborator. Mort's leaving was always devastating
for Doc, and Mac was someone who, to a certain extent, filled his shoes.
They were very different melody people; Mort was European in his sensibilities
and was someone who was very international and brilliantly eclectic, whereas
Mac came out of a blues/funk tradition, and had a more straightforward
take on the songs. But they were similar for Doc in terms of him having someone
to work with on a day-in and day-out basis. His relationship with Mac was one of the big pillars in the last 20 years of his life. They
were partners who had a great rapport -- they wrote a couple of hundred songs
together. |
| PH "There Must Be A Better World Somewhere"
won a Grammy for B.B. King, and other songs of theirs were recorded by the
likes of Johnny Adams, Irma Thomas, Jimmy Witherspoon…
AH Some of the songs Mac wrote like "There's
Always One More Time," "There Must be a Better World Somewhere," "Dreams
Must Be Going Out of Style," and the songs he wrote with Willy DeVille are
quite beautiful and at least as good as the classic records Doc had
in the 1960's. While Doc's songs written in the late 1950's and early 1960's
are wonderful records -- some of which will remain among the peaks in Rock 'n' Roll history
-- in terms of songwriting, the later songs with Mac were the best
songs Doc ever wrote; the lyrics were incredibly direct and personal,
philosophical, and economical in the way they were written. It was like Irving Berlin at his best. They were filled with a literary sensibility -- they were like
great short stories -- very adult songs about what it's like to be down-and-out
your whole life, what it's like to be an underdog, and "The Real Me"
is a great song about learning to love and accept yourself. This wasn't like writing "Turn Me Loose" or "I'm a Man" for Fabian -- this was
deep, literary material that never became commercial only because the style in which
the songs were written was no longer contemporary. Doc wasn't going to
write for Bon Jovi or Phil Collins, and I don't think he ever really understood
the appeal of those kinds of artists. He was someone who loved great singing
and musical artistry, and he was often bewildered by where rock was going
-- he remained very attached to people like B.B. King and the early jazz,
blues, and R & B singers. |
Pomus and Dr. John, late 1970's
_____
Dreams Must Be Going Out of Style
, by Johnny Adams
The Real Me , by Johnny Adams |
PH At the time Doc and Doctor John wrote these
songs, I was working at a record store outside of Berkeley called Down
Home Music, and Doc would call to order some records...C.O.D! This
must have been in 1980 or 1981. When I realized who I was talking to we struck
up a conversation that must have gone on for over an hour. I wish I could
have taped it, because he told me some great stories about Ray Charles and
Ben E. King. I sent him a couple of my Drifters 45's, which he signed and
returned to me. They now hold a place of honor in my record collection.
AH See, you did something that I was never
able to do -- you talked to him. I never met him or had a chance to talk
to him.
PH Lacking that conversation, what resources
did you use for the book?
AH This was very much a group effort. I was
fortunate in being able to work with Doc's family -- mainly his daughter
Sharyn Felder and her husband Will who took me under their wing and opened
Doc's world to me. Their help was incredibly valuable. Doc turned out to
be a pretty good chronicler of his own life, and the main resource were the
notebooks he kept, which were essentially his diaries of the 1970's and 1980's.
There were more than 70 very difficult-to-read handwritten composition notebooks
filled with things like baseball scores, boxing results, letters to newspapers,
and parts of conversations. Many of his memories were actually typed out
-- childhood moments, singing in George's, the
stories about The Crowns. Obviously, it was great to have Doc's own memories. He was very introspective and up front about his feelings,
which was helpful because that allowed me to write a book about how he felt,
not just where he was and what he did. I realize some readers would prefer
a more by-the-numbers, journalistic result, but because Doc was so outspoken
and up front, I felt that to write about him as a distant character would
be a disservice to him. So, his notebooks were a very important part of the
research.
I also interviewed more than 50 people -- Jerry Wexler, Ahmet Ertegun, Ben
E. King, Willy DeVille, and Joel Dorn among them. Also, a huge amount of
information came from his wife Wilma, who was extremely thoughtful and very
open about the book, as was his girlfriend Shirlee Hauser, who was a central person in his life for the last 25 years of it. Then there were the dozens
of interviews he gave to radio, hundreds of clippings, home movies -- there
is actually a home movie of Willi and Doc's brother dancing at his wedding
reception, which was the
scene that partly inspired "Save the Last Dance for
Me."
It was a huge undertaking, trying to find people from the 1940's who had
remembered him as an artist, and I could only find three or four of them
who were able to provide accounts about the R & B scene in New Jersey
and Brooklyn. To my great surprise, there was almost nothing written about
it. It was very easy to find out about Kelly's Stable on 52nd Street, and
about Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington, but try to find
something about Mr. Google Eyes and the Cobra Club -- that wasn't so easy,
because Whitney Balliett, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff and the other critics of the era were certainly not writing about that scene.
_________________________________
Doc Pomus, 1991
*
Sometimes I wonder just what I'm fighting for
I win some battles, but I always lose the war
I keep right on stumblin' in this no man's land out here
But I know, yes I know
There must be a better world somewhere
_____
There Must Be A Better World Somewhere , by B.B. King
*
|
A sampling of songs by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman
_____
I
Ain't Sharin' Sharon, by Bobby Darin
Hushabye,
by The Mystics
(Marie's
the Name) His Latest Flame, by Del Shannon
First
Taste of Love, by Ben E. King
Double
Trouble, by Elvis Presley
Viva
Las Vegas, by Elvis Presley
Little
Sister, by Ry Cooder
I'm
Gonna Cry 'Til My Tears Run Dry, by Irma Thomas
*
Lonely
Avenue: The Unlikely Life & Times of Doc Pomus
by
Alex Halberstadt
*
Alex Halberstadt's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, GQ, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, Salon, Grand Street, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
________________________________
Doc Pomus products at Amazon.com
Alex Halberstadt products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
Interview took place on March 30, 2007
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Sam Cooke biographer Peter Guralnick.
*
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
* Text from the publisher
|
