Table of Contents
Praise for Always Magic in the Air
Smart and brisk... Emerson... captures the hit-driven hustle, the marriages, the divorces, the fortunes made (and sometimes lost) and the often serendipitous beginnings of these fateful collaborations.
Chrissie Dickinson, The Washington Post Book World
Extensively researched and lovingly written, the books on the top of my charts.... The book has a you-are-there urgency.... [I]n this irresistibly readable book, things are still bomping, and the beat is there, for anyone to catch.Caroline Leavitt, The Boston Globe
Emerson is very good at limning the forcesmusical, cultural, economicthat affected the sounds pouring out of radios and jukeboxes in the 1950s and 1960s.Joanne Kaufman, The Wall Street Journal
Again and again in Always Magic in the Air, his engrossing account of the early days of rock and pop music, Ken Emerson puts you at the moment of creation.David Kirby, Chicago Tribune
Emersons book is just about everything you could wish for. Love and clear-sightedness may be the most delicate of all critical balancing acts. For Emerson, its his true north, the critical compass that makes you believe youre reading a man you can trust....Emerson makes you believe you can hear the world in a pop song, even a world thats lost.
Charles Taylor, New York Newsday
Fascinating.Dave Barry, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Magisterial... scholarly and highly entertaining.
Mick Brown, The Daily Telegraph (London)
The story of these writers is long overdue in the telling, and Emerson tells it splendidly. Under the boardwalk or up on the roof, this is a marvelous read.Kirkus Reviews
I found Always Magic in the Air an unputdownable read. I was a teenage purchaser of many of the records described; and I have never subscribed to the standard critical view of 60s pop. Maybe thats why I had to keep reading so compulsivelyjust to see what each of these people wrote next and whether it was still inscribed somewhere deep in my psyche (yes, mostly).
Simon Frith
This is a book about some of the greatest songwriters of the 50s and 60s, a group responsible for the great blues and rock and roll explosion at the mid-century. This work will add to the general understanding of their importance. Ahmet Ertegun, founding chairman, Atlantic Records
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture and coauthor of Stephen Foster, a documentary film for the PBS series American Experience, has written widely about popular music and culture since the 1960s. His articles and reviews have appeared in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal. The former articles editor of The New York Times Magazine and op-ed editor of Newsday, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
FOR BEN GERSON
I thank God I have low tastes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
INTRODUCTION
Turn the dial, push a button, click the mouse. Go to the movies or a restaurant, ride the subway or visit the mall. Throughout America (and a good bit of the rest of the world), chances are it wont be long before you hear a song composed by a remarkable group of songwriters who huddled in cubicles within a couple of blocks of each other in midtown Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 60s. It could be On Broadway (where the neon lights are bright and theres always magic in the air) or Stand By Me, Save the Last Dance for Me or Walk On By, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Will You Love Me Tomorrow,
Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Youve Lost That Lovin Feelin, or (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman.... Popular music thrives on novelty, yet songs such as theseinstantly identifiable, endlessly replayed on radio, recycled in commercials and film sound tracks, and rerecorded by new generations of performers as well as many an older artisthave enjoyed a run of nearly half a century.
The music reminds baby boomers of their youth, of sock hops and slumber parties, of transistor radios and tail fins, of good girls who said no and the nice boys who took that for an answer, of not-so-nice girls wearing too much mascara and the bad boys with DAs who whisked them away on motorcycles. While an older generation fondly remembers snapping its gum and fingers to the beat, younger ones are captivated by what sounds like exhilarating innocence.
Nostalgia and navet cannot entirely explain these songs persistence. Professional craft and artistry have also made them endure. And so has the way the music not only embodies a long-gone era but anticipates and speaks to our own. Expressing the optimism and outrage of the early civil rights movement, it amalgamated black, white, and Latino sounds before multiculturalism became a concept, much less a clich, and integrated audiences before America desegregated its schools. It helped create a youth marketteenagers were a new breed of human being and a brand-new consumer categoryand trafficked in teen idols from whom Justin Timberlake and the Simpson sisters directly descend. In addition to making life fun for teenagers, the music made life more real for them by introducing racial and economic themes that encouraged a political as well as a consumer consciousness. The combination was in keeping with a period when fear and frivolity, Sputniks and hula hoops, simultaneously girdled the globe. Get me another drink, said a character in Nevil Shutes On the Beach, a best-selling 1957 novel that depicted the dying days of the human race as radioactive fallout swept the world. I want to go somewheredo somethingdance!
This is the story of seven songwriting teams, fourteen men and women who helped create the sound of a city, a nation, and an era: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. The book is about the world that made these songwriters and the world they in turn made in their music.
Most of these songwriters and much of their music are still alive and kicking. After 2,036 performances on Broadway, Smokey Joes Caf, a revue of the songs of Leiber and Stoller, is playing in various venues around the world. In 2004, Sedaka appeared at Carnegie Hall (as well as in the pop charts with a remake of one of his hits by American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken), Mann and Weil performed their songs on another Manhattan stage, and King crossed the country playing benefit concerts for John Kerrys presidential campaign. His contribution to the sound track of Grace of My Heart, a 1996 film based very loosely on Kings life, helped spark a revival of popularity for Bacharach that shows little sign of subsiding. Performing and rerecording the songs he wrote with Hal David, collaborating with Elvis Costello, popping up in Austin Powers movies, Aimee Mann lyrics, and even a White Stripes album, the suave septuagenarian is ubiquitous.
Many other important pop music songwriters were active in New York City during the 1950s and 60s. Otis Blackwell, who wrote or cowrote such memorable songs as Fever, Dont Be Cruel, Great Balls of Fire, and Handy Man, comes immediately to mind. So do Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, who wrote most of the Four Seasons hits. But this book is intended as a narrative, not an encyclopedia.
