Doc Pomus

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This feature appeared in four parts in Now Dig This from June to September 2003 and has been amended in March 2006. I am sure that the songography (if there is such a word - if not, I have just coined it) is not complete. I have added a few songs from readers' comments, and I would welcome more. Please write to Spencer Leigh.

“If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus.” (Jerry Wexler)
“You believe this shit?” (Doc Pomus)

In my adolescence, I was fascinated by the songs of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman - “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Little Sister”, “Mess Of Blues”, “A Teenager in Love”. I became intrigued by their names on a record label and although it wasn’t always a guarantee of quality, they were often associated with classic songs. As Phil Spector said, “Doc Pomus is the greatest songwriter who ever lived.”

Now, in 2002, I am even more fascinated by their work - I know of Doc’s early years as a blues singer in New York and I know that several compositions echoed events in his life. He and Mort Shuman were as odd a couple as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. They formed an unlikely partnership, especially one for creating teenage love songs. After Mort moved to Europe in 1965, Doc had some lean years but, encouraged by Dr John, he wrote some of his best songs and certainly his most introspective lyrics towards the end of his life.

Before I had written a word of this four-part feature, I knew that Doc Pomus was great, but researching it has made me realise just how great he was and how much we have to be thankful for. His story demonstrates the power of the human spirit in adversity, although he wouldn’t have seen it that way. He may have lived his life in a wheelchair but his mind was one of the most agile in New York. Doc Pomus was a wonderful songwriter, being especially adept as a lyricist, and the Brill in Brill Building stands for Brilliant when considering his best work.

Many sources have been used to write this feature on Doc Pomus including my own interviews for BBC Radio Merseyside with Doc and Mort and with several people who have known them and/or recorded their songs. My interview with Doc was published in “Now Dig This” (January 1987) and my various conversations with Mort in “Stars in My Eyes” (a book of interviews published by Raven Press, 1980), “Now Dig This” (June 1988) and “Record Collector” (February 1991). Mort also wrote about his work for Elvis Presley in a collection of essays, “Aspects Of Elvis” (edited by myself and Alan Clayson for Sidgwick and Jackson in 1994).

• “Growing Pains” (Interview with Doc Pomus from “In Their Own Words” by Bruce Pollock, Collier Books, 1975)

• “The World Of Doc Pomus” (a series of articles by Doc in the early 80s for the magazine, “Whiskey, Women And..”. Doc wrote these articles with a view to preparing for his autobiography, but it was never completed.)

• “What’s Up, Doc? - The Doc Pomus Interview” (Joseph Sapia, “Goldmine”, November 1982)

• “A Taste Of The Blues” (Doc Pomus talks to Anton Mikalsky, WBAI, 26 April 1984)

• “Echoes” (Mort Shuman talks to Stuart Colman, BBC Radio London, over two weeks in November 1986)

• Interview with Doc Pomus by Pete Frame in December 1987 for “The Atlantic Story” on BBC Radio 1. (The producer Kevin Howlett has let me hear the full unedited two hour interview - some amazing stuff from Doc: “I knew the guy who did the charts for ‘Billboard’ and the charts could be bought. If you had X amount of money, you could get on the charts.”.)

• “Call The Doctor” (Interview with Peter Guralnick, Voice Rock And Roll Quarterly, Summer 1988)

• “I Couldn’t Care Less…” (Mort Shuman talks to Trevor Cajiao for “Elvis - The Man And His Music”, September and December 1990 and reprinted in “Talking Elvis”, Elvis - The Man And His Music and Tutti Frutti Productions, 1997)

• “Tribute” (Doc Pomus obituary by Gerri Hershey, “Rolling Stone”, 2 May 1991)

• “Remembering Doc Pomus” (Mort Shuman writes Doc’s obituary, “Now Dig This”, May 1991)

• “The Sweet Music Lessons Of Doc Pomus” and “Tell The Truth Until It Bleeds” (Tribute by John Alan Friedman, “Buddy” magazine, September/October 1991)

• “Death Of An Unassuming Legend” (Trevor Cajiao writes Mort’s obituary, “Now Dig This”, December 1991)

• “The Journals Of Doc Pomus (1978-91)” (From “Antaeus On Music”, edited by Daniel Halpern, Autum Publications, 1993)

• “Treatise On The Blues” by Doc Pomus (from Doc’s Journals) and “Save The Last Dance For Me” by Phil Spector (Induction speech for Doc Pomus in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, 1992) (Both reprinted in “Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay”, Edited by William McKeen, W.W.Norton & Co, 2000)

I would recommend both the contents and the sleeve notes on the two Doc Pomus LPs released by Dan Kochakian for his Whiskey, Women, and…Record Company: “Send For The Doctor” (1983, KM-700) and “It’s Great To Be Young And In Love” (KM-713). They concentrate on his blues recordings although the second includes some early demos with Mort Shuman, hence the unlikely title. A footnote states that Doc receives artist royalties of 40 cents per LP, something I have never seen on an album before and a joking reference to the miserly amounts he originally received.

My thanks to Tim Adams, Will Bratton, John Broven, Trevor Cajiao, Dave Clarke, Howard Cockburn, Stuart Colman, Pete Frame, Bob Groom, Kevin Howlett, Rob Hughes, Joop Jansen, Dan Kochakian, Dave McAleer, Jon Philibert and Walter at honeydhont. Will Bratton, who is Doc’s son-in-law, says that “Doc never fabricated anything in his interviews” and this is borne out by all the material I have read. Even if interviews are divided by ten years, Doc is likely to respond to a question in the same way and not embellish the material. Although I have not spoken to him, the “New York Times” music writer, Alex Halberstadt, is working on an official biography.

Every Doc Pomus composition I can find is listed in the text, together with any co-writers, and the BMI listings, which are available through the internet, were invaluable in this regard. It would appear, though I am not certain of this, that Doc would copyright his songs with the BMI before they were recorded and hence, there are several unrecorded titles in his listings. Either that or my research has been lacking.

The key artists who have recorded the songs are listed in this feature along with the years of issue. American chart placings are taken from the “Billboard” Hot 100 and also the magazine’s Country and R&B charts. UK chart placings are taken from “British Hit Singles” (Guinness Publishing). On occasion, I have reprinted extracts from the lyrics - the ones with Mort Shuman are published by Carlin and the ones with Dr John by Stazybo Music.

Initially, the first part of my research was going to be for a stage play about Doc and Mort to be written by Bill Morrison. Although Bill wrote an excellent play, it has never been staged but a radio version, called “Save The Last Dance For Me” was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 December 1999.

There has been an unexpected benefit from writing all this: I am sure that researching Doc’s life will help to make me a better, more tolerant person. I hope you feel this way when you read it - Doc Pomus was an extraordinary man.

“I’m boring I’m boring I’m boring
It’s a natural fact
I’m an opening act.”
(Doc Pomus, Journals, c.1980)

Jerome Solon Felder (Doc Pomus) was born on 27 June 1925 into a poor but respectable, middle-class Jewish family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Doc’s father was a public-spirited attorney and Doc told “Goldmine”: “My father was a neighbourhood lawyer, who was a captain of a political district. Consequently, we never had any money, but say he had a butcher client, we could get a free meal.” That sense of serving the community runs through the family: Doc’s mother, Millie Goldstein, had been born and raised in London, so Doc, like Bill Haley, is half-English. Her cousin was the left-wing politician, Ian Mikardo, an East End MP who, in the face of considerable opposition, advocated more public ownership in the 1950s.

Doc’s brother, Raoul Lionel, who was born in 1934, became a divorce lawyer. Doc, who had a way with words, might also have been a lawyer, but his father saw him an athlete. Recalling his childhood, he reflected to Peter Guralnick, “I lived in a dream world. I have few happy memories of my father. I knew him to be bitter and sullen and what I felt was completely unsympathetic to my needs. Much later I figured out that I was supposed to his living flower - you know, a great athlete - and when I turned out to be a cripple, he was devastated.”

In 1931 there was no such thing as a vaccine against polio. The young Jerome was sent to a summer camp in Connecticut to escape the epidemic in New York. It didn’t work. Doc contracted polio and for some time was in plaster from the neck down. Doc was interested in music and to help his lungs recover, he practised on the saxophone. Unfortunately, he broke his hands in an accident and they did not repair sufficiently well for him to continue playing. He also played a little piano, but as he discovered, “I found I could do more by singing.”

Doc would never walk properly again, using crutches and braces in his early years, although he was able to drive. After a fall in the mid-60s, his condition deteriorated and he relied on a wheelchair. But, from a young age, he was determined to do something with his life. Hardly ever changing his phrasing, he told interviewer after interviewer, “I was going to do something to show the world that I could cope with my handicap and be a man amongst men.”

His salvation was in music. He told me, “The first records I bought were ‘Traffic Jam’ by Artie Shaw and ‘Scatterbrain’ by Freddy Martin. I bought them in a neighbourhood record bin for five cents. I liked the trumpet sections and the saxophone sections of an orchestra, but when I heard Joe Turner and my life changed. That’s how I felt singing should be, that’s how I felt music should be.”

Big Joe Turner was born in Kansas City in 1911 and started recording in the 1930s. He established himself with Pete Johnson’s band on the “Spirituals To Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938 and his popular records included “Cherry Red” (1939) and “Piney Brown Blues” (1940). “Most people sing blues slow and draggy, but I put the beat into it,” said Big Joe. Turner wrote about a character he knew in Kansas City in “Piney Brown Blues”, but he later moved to New York.

Doc Pomus recalled, “I heard Joe Turner sing for the first time in 1941. I was 16 years old and it was his recording of ‘Piney Brown Blues’. I was a lover of Joe Turner’s music before I was a lover of the blues, but from that moment on, I had to be a blues singer and a songwriter. The cavern of his voice and the grandeur of his phrasing touched the deepest part of me.”

When Doc was 18, he was studying political science at Brooklyn College, but in the evenings he would watch the trumpet player Frankie Newton with his band at George’s Tavern in Greenwich Village. When he was invited to sit in with the band, he sang “Piney Brown Blues” and, as a result, he was invited to sing with the band on a regular basis. He called himself Doc Pomus so that his parents would not be embarrassed: “White kids didn’t sing blues with negroes in the 40s. I called myself Doc because it sounded like a hip midnight character. The name, Pomus, sounded foreign and mysterious.”

B.B. BLUES (Doc Pomus)
Doc’s first composition was about staying with his grandparents at Brighton Beach. It has never been recorded.

Doc sang at George’s Tavern and also at a place round the corner, the Pied Piper. From time to time, the young Milt Jackson was playing with him. The noted jazz critic and blues songwriter, Leonard Feather, heard Doc at the Pied Piper and asked him to make a record. Feather wrote both sides of Doc’s first record, which was made for Apollo with the Tab Smith Septette in October 1945, “Blues In The Red” / “Blues Without Booze”. The first blues is about being broke and the second has an outdated lyric about prohibition. They are well performed and, if you heard the record blind, you would swear Doc was a black blues artist. The Big Joe Turner influence is self-evident and runs through his blues recordings. The single was recorded quickly as Willie Bryant recorded the two-sided “Blues Around The Clock” at the same three hour session. Doc sometimes appeared on Bryant’s radio show with Ray Carroll, “The Willie And Ray Show”.

LOVE DOCTOR BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Gatemouth Moore (1946)
Gatemouth Moore, like Joe Turner, came from Kansas City and he sang with the Walter Barnes Orchestra. He was lucky to escape from a fire at Natchez Rhythm Club, which killed most of the orchestra. He was brought to New York in 1946 for sessions with the Tiny Grimes Swingtet. Some of his other tracks (“I Ain’t Mad At You, Pretty Baby”, “Did You Ever Love A Woman”) were R&B hits, but not the bragging “Love Doctor Blues”,which Doc had originally written for his own performances:
“I’m a doctor of love and I don’t charge no money fee,
So come around all you women and get some great loving that’s free.”
This may have been too strong for Gatemouth as he turned to gospel music in a new career as Reverend Moore. The record was produced by Herb Abramson, who became one of the founders of Atlantic Records.

MY NEW CHICK (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1947)
This was one of four sides cut with the Curley Russell All Stars. It is a fun song about the demands of a nymphomaniac but it is marred by an imbalance between the tenor sax and Doc’s vocal. Fortunately, the balance is okay on the other three tracks from the session.

DOC’S BOOGIE (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1947)
Dancing as a synonym for sex. It’s a good track with a very abrupt ending, but that can happen to sex too.

FRUITY WOMAN BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1947)
When I saw the blues singer, Guy Davis, in St Helens in June 2002, he said, “The worst question you can ask someone is ‘Where did you stay last night?’ A lot of blues have been written on that theme.” Here’s one of them.

MY GOOD POTT (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1947)
Doc appears to have realised the medicinal qualities of cannabis before anybody else. The reefer is compared to a woman:
“Long and thin but awful sweet
A perfume smell that can’t be beat.”

These four tracks play to the interests of his audience. Doc has written, “Everybody was out every night having a good time. It was a world of pimps, hookers, maids, chauffeurs, good-time whites, factory workers, white collar workers, musicians, entertainers, bartenders, waiters - everybody hanging out together. A little money went a long way and there was no tomorrow.”

POMUS BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1947)
This live recording from the Pied Piper Club starts off with Doc lamenting the loss of his woman, but he then gets excited about their good sex: “She’s got no teeth but she knows how to chew.” On the same night, Doc put down his version of Billy Eckstine’s hit song, “Jelly Jelly”.

Another student at Brooklyn College, Rector Bailey, was a jazz guitar player with the Herman Chittison Trio. He took Doc to an exclusively black club to hear his band and from then on, Pomus sought out black clubs. He would go to Paul’s Caf� and hear Otis Blackwell and, despite his own colour, he became, at different times, the house singer at the Verona with Buddy Tate’s band, the Sports Inn with Mickey Baker and the Central Plaza with Willie “The Lion” Smith. He also worked with Dan Burley, the man who conceived the original skiffle sessions. Doc was briefly managed by Maele Bartholomew, the wife of the child actor Freddie Bartholomew (“David Copperfield”, 1935). She managed Charlie Parker, but after some bounced cheques, Doc decided to do things himself.

Doc commented: “I was the only white person singing in these clubs, and especially singing that kind of music, and at that time I took it for granted that there were people like me working all over the world, white men working in black clubs, and it was only much later on that I realised that wasn’t true.” He also remarked, “To the world, a fat crippled Jewish kid is a nigger.”

Much to Doc’s surprise, the magazine, “The Music Dial”, gave him a rave review: “I really didn’t know that I was any good. I thought that this was the only way I could express myself and the blues was the only way I could channel my feelings and tell the world who I was.” He was starting to become a man amongst men.

ALLEY ALLEY BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1948)
Doc Pomus was one of the first to write an R&B commercial: “The Brookyn neighbourhood that I was singing in was mostly around Fulton Street, and there was a very high fashion clothing store called Alley’s. I used to buy my clothes there and one day, Alley, the guy who owned the store, asked me to make a commercial for them. With the full length version, we did a nasty blues about being in an alley instead of it being about Alley’s pants.”
“Alley Alley Blues” wasn’t far removed from “Jelly Jelly”. It would have worked as a duet, but rather than use a girl, the guitarist Ralph Williams was asked to sing as high as he could. This spoils a good record as there is not much difference between the voices. It could be taken as the world’s first gay duet.

NAGGIN’ WIFE BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1948)
Good boogie woogie number and yet another song about sex. Doc is ready for his evening ride and Ralph Williams adds squeals of delight.

KISS MY WRIST (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1949)
One of two tracks that Doc recorded with Freddie Mitchell and his Orchestra. Doc’s woman has left him but he doesn’t sound too sad about it. “Kiss my wrist” is a euphemism for “kiss my arse”.

TRAVELLING DOC (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1949)
Not satisfied with one woman, Doc is now looking “for three or four”. This is the second track with Freddie Mitchell and his Orchestra. As Doc would say in his live performances, “Maybe I can’t run the hundred-yard dash, darling, but I’m still a 60 minute man.”

FOOL ALL THE TIME (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (demo, 1949)
A revealing snippet on the LP, “It’s Great To Be Young And In Love” shows how Doc was writing his songs. He sings the blues lyric into a tape recorder and to save time he says “Repeat” rather than sing the first line of each verse. Doc would record the song over and over until he had completed the lyric to his satisfaction. “Fool All The Time” was never recorded, but there’s no reason why not.

BABY GET IT OUT YOUR MIND (Doc Pomus - Reginald Ashby)
• Doc Pomus (demo, 1950)
Another example of Doc’s songwriting. He sings the song unaccompanied and then Reggie Ashby joins him on piano. The final take with a vocal group and some rhythm could easily have been worked into a commercial record. Good song.

NO HOME BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1950)
Doc was always based in New York but he recorded a single for Chicago’s Chess label. “No Home Blues” is a sad story of a man who has had too much whiskey and too much jelly roll. The overall feel is similar to Ray Charles’ “I’ve Had My Fun”.

SEND FOR THE DOCTOR (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1950)
The TV host, Ed Sullivan criticised Bo Diddley for singing about himself, but clearly he hadn’t heard many blues. “Send For The Doctor” is a quicker-packed companion to “Love Doctor Blues”. Doc enjoys encouraging Ray Abrams on tenor sax and Rex Stewart on cornet. This track on Chess 1440 was included on the box set, “The Chess Story”, and Doc is on the same CD as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf.

From 1951 to 1955, Doc Pomus had a residency at Snooky’s, a white club in Manhattan, that was a hangout for pimps and hookers. He said, “Wherever I worked, I was always a feature act, but I couldn’t work outside these places. I never thought anything was going to happen with my life. On the one hand, I had this crazy desperation, where I was pushing and pushing. On the other hand, I was afraid I was going to end up on the streets. And I’d be living in these fleabag hotels.” There is an hilarious but telling reference in a later song, “The Night Is A Hunter”, to playing “upholstered sewers.”

The pianist Bill Doggett took a residency at the KC Club in Brooklyn because he wanted to develop his organ technique. Whilst he was there, he arranged four tracks for Doc including a Coral single, “Blues For Sale” / “Give It Up”. Although the label credits “Bill Doggett and his Orchestra”, it is Doc’s pal, Reggie Ashby who is playing piano.

BLUES FOR SALE (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1951)
Blues don’t come much sadder than this. In “No Home Blues”, Doc was at least returning to his woman. Here he wishes,
“Could make it to the graveyard, I’d kiss my mother’s grave,
I’d lie down beside her ’cause dying is all I crave.”
Bill Doggett’s arrangement featuring some muted trumpet is very effective.

GIVE IT UP (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1951)
A cheerful call-and-response number, once again about sex, and with some neat originality coming through in the lyrics:
“If Hollywood saw you, they’d make you a star,
I’d rather have you than a fish-tailed car.”
Chuck Berry could have written that.

TOO MUCH BOOGIE (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus (1951)
Similar to “Give It Up” and we all know what too much boogie is…

The fourth track that Doc recorded with Bill Doggett and his Orchestra was a cover of Amos Milburn’s “Pool Playing Baby”: “We’re rolling up and down and then from side to side, I always get them in ’cause the pocket’s opened wide.” Ramblin’ Syd Rumpo had nothing on this lot.

WORK LITTLE CARRIE (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus All Stars (1952)
And yet another song about energetic sexual couplings. This hoarse shouting rave-up is not far removed from what Little Richard was doing in 1956. Attributed to the Doc Pomus All Stars, the single features the first recorded sax solo from King Curtis. Curtis was living above Snooky’s and would borrow Doc’s car for his gigs.

THE LAST BLUES (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Pomus All Stars (1952)
More from the Doc Pomus All Stars and this time a slow big band blues featuring Mickey Baker’s guitar. The accompaniment is better than the song which sounds like Doc is retreading old ground. He is leaving his woman and looking for “three or four” new ones. Poor rhyming of “coin” and “scene”, which is unusual for Doc, so possibly he wrote this in the studio.

“Work Little Carrie” / “The Last Blues” was on After Hours and in a sense, these singles were often gig records as After Hours was one of the New York clubs. It was Doc’s last single for three years, but he was having his songs recorded by other artists. Considering that he worked with many of the same musicians, I am surprised that he didn’t get songs to Wynonie Harris, but as might be expected, Big Joe Turner was a welcome recipient.

One night at the Baby Grand in Harlem, Doc Pomus saw his hero: “I met Joe Turner when I was 26 and he was way over six feet tall and big all over - like a football player or a nightclub bouncer. But somehow a kind of sweetness and gentleness got through to you. I was mesmerised and terrified at the same time and I was too shy and embarrassed to introduce myself. The next afternoon I went to Atlantic Records, hustling some new songs. Big Joe was there. He had been talking about me and from that day on, I wrote for him, trailed him around and finally became old and mature enough to be a close, close friend.”

However, Doc soon found that there was a problem in working with Joe Turner: “At Atlantic at first I was too poor to make demos and I would sing the songs to Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Joe Turner couldn’t read or write so I had to do a piano and voice demo for him so he could memorise the lyrics. Every once in a while I had to go to a session and whisper the lyrics in his ear. When you hear the records, you wouldn’t believe that was so. He did the songs magnificently.”

DON’T YOU CRY (Doc Pomus)
• Big Joe Turner (1952)
A lot of thought went into the arrangement of this slow R&B song, but the song is not especially memorable. Much better recorded than Doc’s own tracks, but following Joe’s hits, “Chains Of Love” and “Sweet Sixteen”, he needed something better.

STILL IN LOVE (Doc Pomus)
• Big Joe Turner (1952)
• Jimmy Rushing (date unknown)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
• Solomon Burke (1995)
And then he got it. This aching blues ballad was given a terrific performance by Big Joe Turner and it is the earliest of Doc Pomus’ songs still being performed today. Joe’s performance was topped in 1991 by a superb arrangement by Red Tyler for the New Orleans gospel singer, Johnny Adams. The Solomon Burke version is okay, but the arrangement is too busy. Doc said in 1982, “The song was a complete success for me as I did exactly what I wanted to do. I wrote it when I was 24 and I don’t think I could do it better now.” He was delighted when Big Joe made the R&B charts as he wanted to be a professional songwriter. Although he liked playing, he was tiring of the club life and he hated his living accomodation. In another revealing quote, he said he hated going out in the rain as he would be worried about falling over. In another he said, “Until I was 32 years old, my good years were when I was able to buy a suit.”

HEARTLESSLY (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Palmer (1955)
This slow blues for Dawn Records is easily the most distinctive of Doc’s own records, although he released it under the name of Doc Palmer. Doc has more light and shade in his voice than usual and the excellent arrangement includes Sam “The Man” Taylor on tenor sax and Mickey Baker, who had started working with Sylvia Vanderpool, on guitar. Dr John: “Doc had a Chuck Willis voice, a little uneven maybe, but a real pleasing bluesy tenor.”
Alan Freed loved “Heartlessly” (perhaps along with the payola it generated) and played it every day on his radio show. RCA-Victor bought the rights to market it nationally on their new subsidiary, X Records, but it never happened. The song would have suited Elvis.

BYE BABY BYE (Doc Pomus)
• Doc Palmer (1955)
An upbeat blues shouter with Sam “The Man” Taylor on top form. The lyric is a nothing but a live recording from Club Musicale shows that Doc used the song to link other numbers. The 18-minute extract on “It’s Great To Be Young And In Love” includes an extended version of Joe Turner’s “Wee Baby Blues”, a snatch of Cousin Joe’s “You Ain’t No Such A Much”, Wynonie Harris’ “Here Comes The Blues”, more Joe Turner with “My Gal’s A Jockey” (double entendres gone mad) and “Mad Blues”, and three versions of “Bye Baby Bye”. In his introduction, Doc refers to recording it for Groove, so is there another single I haven’t listed? Possibly he used the Doc Palmer name because he had already recorded it as Doc Pomus, I don’t know.

BOOGIE WOOGIE COUNTRY GIRL (Doc Pomus - Reginald Ashby)
• Big Joe Turner (1955)
• Sleepy LaBeef (1979)
• Bob Dylan (1995)
Big Joe Turner had adapted to the new rock’n’roll phenomenon by slightly changing his style with “Shake, Rattle And Roll” and “Flip, Flop And Fly”. Doc gave him one of his most insidious tunes and included references to rock’n’roll and “a good rockin’ band”. This tremendous record was wasted on a B-side, admittedly the B-side of a very big hit, “Corrine Corrine”, and because of its long lyric, Turner was reluctant to perform it in concert. Doc says that he wrote the song himself: “The pianist wrote the lead sheet and I gave him 15% of the song. He got lucky. Years later his daughter called me and said that I had stolen the song from him. Until I was 30, I never wrote a song with anybody else.”
After years of neglect, Bob Dylan revived this excellent song in 1991. Dylan’s performance will be too nasal for some, but it is great to hear him sounding so happy.

MY HAPPINESS FOREVER (Doc Pomus)
• LaVern Baker (1956)
LaVern Baker’s manager met Doc at Atlantic Records “and asked if he had any songs for her: “I said, ‘Of course’. That’s what a songwriter always says.” “My Happiness Forever” was the first of Doc’s singalong pop ballads. It was the B-side of her single, “Get Up, Get Up (You Sleepy Head)” and included on her album, “Rock And Roll With LaVern Baker”. Good song: if Connie Francis had recorded “My Happiness Forever” instead of “My Happiness”, she still would have had a hit record.

In 1955/6 Doc was singing and MC’ing at the Club Musicale, a white club, and living at the Stratford Arms Hotel: “My neighbours were welfare cases, small-time hookers and seldom-employed musicians. If there was any kind of loser, he or she was there. The hotel rooms were small and shabby and dark and airless. You had to share a bathroom with whomever was living next door, so you had to hope that he or she didn’t have some kind of communicable social disease.”

He noted in his Journals: “My hotel room was always the scene of endless trips in and out of the bed, in and out of the bathroom, constantly changing clothes, always on the phone, anything to keep me from quietly living with myself and thinking about what was going to happen.” Maybe that inspired the next song…

LONELY AVENUE (Doc Pomus)
• Ray Charles (1956) (US R&B 6)
• Marty Wilde (1963)
• Crickets (1964)
• Everly Brothers (1965)
• Gene Chandler (1968)
• Van Morrison (1993)
• Los Lobos (1995)
• Joe Cocker (unissued)
Because Atlantic was, at that time, a black label, they didn’t record Doc Pomus but they respected his opinions and encouraged his songwriting. One night in 1952, Herb Abramson woke him in the middle of the night to hear a tape by a new artist, Ray Charles: “Atlantic wanted to record him in New York and wanted to get him some gigs there for $100 a week at the same time. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to take a chance on an unknown singer but they made the record anyway.”
Doc became friends with Ray Charles, who asked him for a song and, with his new girlfriend Wilma Burke on backing vocals, they recorded a demo of “Lonely Avenue”. Will Bratton: “Doc told me that the song was based on personal experience. He had been rejected by a girl, probably because of his handicap.” Dr John has not recorded the song himself but he says, “That is one of my favourite tunes, and a place where Doc may have lived in his heart but never showed it.”
Although Doc wrote “Lonely Avenue” about himself, Ray Charles, also disabled, would identify with the song:
“Now my room has got two windows,
But the sunshine never comes through,
It’s always dark and dreary
Since I broke off, baby, with you.”
And just listen to Ray Charles’ performance - his gasps and pants enhance the lyric.
The booklet for the Ray Charles’ box set, “The Birth Of Soul”, says that the song was based on a gospel song by the Pilgrim Travellers’ “How Jesus Died”. I don’t know this track and can’t comment, but its jerking rhythm gave the impression that this was about a drug addict - another reason why it might have appealed to Ray Charles. Doc Pomus: “Mac (Dr John) always said that was the junker blues. It’s got a monotonous and sad lyrical line that for some reason has always attracted junkies. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum - I imagine they’re shuffling along to it, or something. All the junkies, Mac told me, thought I must be a junkie. Mac couldn’t believe how straight I was.”
“Lonely Avenue” was on the US R&B charts, but it never did anything here. Marty Wilde’s 1963 revival was very good but he had passed his sell-by date. The Crickets miss the point completely and their version sounds like party time. The Everlys were in their “lonely” period as they recorded “Lonely Weekends”, “Lonely Island” and “Lonely Street” around the same time.as “Lonely Avenue”. The Everlys are going through the motions on this hurried, rather busy arrangement - with a little thought, they could have done something excellent. On his oldies collection, “Too Long In Exile”, Van Morrison with Georgie Fame on Hammond organ give the song a six-minute jazz setting but Van’s love of scat singing takes over when one verse consists of nothing but the word “you”. Cesar Rosas perfects his Howlin’ Wolf impersonation to David Hidalgo’s guitar on Los Lobos’ treatment, and it makes me wish that Wolf had recorded it himself.

The most that Doc had earned in a year was $2,000 and often he would be singing in blues joints with his friend, Otis Blackwell, for $8 a night. Appearing in the clubs must have been very stressful for Doc. Not so much performing there as getting there. Clubs did not have disabled entrances and, indeed, Doc didn’t play the Savoy Ballroom because there were too many steps. The crippled Merseyside drummer, Arthur Davis, told me an horrific story of having to crawl down the steps to the Cavern because he was playing there with his group in the 60s. Doc was able to hold his own and one evening he prevented Charlie Parker from being beaten up.

Fortunately for Doc, his personal and professional life were about to change dramatically. Within a year, he would be married and would be writing in a totally new direction with a young pianist he had discovered, Mort Shuman.

“His was more than a lust for life. He was a whole teeming soul neighbourhood in one man. The sparkling eyes, the moving hands, the booming voice…Doc oozed personality � la Lloyd Price.”
(Mort Shuman, “Now Dig This”, 1991)

Last month we looked at Doc Pomus’ early years as a blues singer and songwriter around New York. In 1956, he had written a hit record for Ray Charles, “Lonely Avenue”, but his own record, “Heartlessly”, had done disappointingly after a good start. He was tiring of his life in the “fleabag hotels” and, at the age of 31, wanted some uniformity to his life. And he wanted something to happen:. “I didn’t want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men.”

Two major upheavals to Doc’s life happened at the same time, both related to finding partners.

Mortimer Shulman (later Shuman) was 13 years younger than Doc Pomus, being born in Brighton Beach, New York on 12 November 1938. His parents came from Russian stock and he wrote about where they lived in his 1973 composition, “Brooklyn By The Sea”. The song is not revealing, but Mort’s melody is eventually engulfed by traditional Jewish music. Cole Porter once said to Irving Berlin, “I envy you, Irving, because you know all those Jewish melodies.” Mort was a very good pianist and he had attended courses at the Juilliard School of Music.

When he was 15, Mort enrolled at New York City College but he was asked to leave the following year for spending too much time playing piano in bars. He wanted to be a songwriter and when he met a cousin of Doc’s, Neysha, he had to be introduced. Here was someone who had had his songs published. But Doc Pomus wasn’t making much money. To make ends meet, he was writing stories for “Confidential” magazine.

Mort loved R&B, one of his favourite records being the largely instrumental “Please Don’t Leave Me” by Fats Domino (1953). Mort told “Now Dig This” in 1991, “Doc’s jazz records filled an entire room of his parents’ flat in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn where he usually came to lick his wounds for a while, get his act together, eat some chicken soup and wait for advances, royalties or a gig. The gigs were fewer and far between. It was a crossroads in his life and I just fell in kind of like a signpost pointing to rock’n’roll heaven.”

Doc loved Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” and he needed someone to help him to write teenage songs. His previous themes of the joys of uninhibited sex or smoking pot were hardly suitable, although in reality they might have been for the delinquent Lymon. He showed Mort his songs and said he would take him as an apprentice. Doc’s friend, the writer Albert Goldman, told me, “For the first six months, Shuman was just an apprentice. He would sit with Doc while the latter worked and once in a while throw in a suggestion of his own. He was not familiar with this type of music and was just a lad of about 17. Doc, on the other hand, was a highly experienced blues singer, familiar with all kinds of popular music.”

In Doc’s Journals, he looks at this Job Creation scheme from Mort’s side:
“I was kind of hip and sly
I had that faraway look in my eye
you came along and grounded me
your choice of words astounded me
you put me under your wing
and that sort of thing
and from that day
I became your prot�g�.”

Although the label on their first compositions might say, “Doc Pomus - Morty Shuman (sic)”, Doc would only give Mort 10% or 15% of the publishing. However, this arrangement only lasted for four or five songs.

YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Mort Shuman (working demo, 1955)
• Doc Pomus (demo, 1955)
Doc Pomus: “This is a quasi-amateurish song at the beginning of my partnership with Mort Shuman. Mort would sit at the piano playing rhythm and I would feed melodies to him which he would then play. Then I’d compose the lyrics to go along with the melodies and then Mort would eventually sing the lyrics.” At the beginning it sounds like Mort is going to go into “Smack Dab In The Middle”, clearly the template for the song. The working tape on “It’s Great To Be Young And In Love” is followed by Doc’s demo. Sounds good.

THE CURTAIN FELL (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Cardinals (1956, unissued)
How strange that a songwriting partnership should start with a dramatic song about the end of a relationship.

MY ISLAND OF DREAMS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Clyde McPhatter (recorded 1956, issued 1958)
After R&B hits with Billy Ward and the Dominoes (“Sixty Minute Man”, 1951) and the Drifters (“Money Honey”, 1954), Clyde McPhatter had a solo crossover hit with “Treasure Of Love” on Atlantic in 1956. It was a schmaltzy ballad, but McPhatter was a superlative singer who made it sound sincere. Knowing everyone at Atlantic, Doc and presumably 15% of Mort wrote something similar.
“The sea is always blue,
The skies are never grey,
Nature painted a perfect colour scheme,
As long as there’s you
Here by my side,
This will be my favourite dream.”
Whatever happened to scansion? Nice song though and would have suited an Hawaiian arrangement.

(WAKE UP) MISS RIP VAN WINKLE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Tibbs Brothers (1956)
Doc had worked with Andrew Tibbs on a Battle of the Blues at the Club Caravan in New Jersey. He considered Tibbs to be “up there with Joe Turner and B.B.King as the three greatest male blues singers who ever lived. Tibbs was small and thin and had an innocent angelic face that was marred by a knife scar that ran down an entire cheek. He looked like a choir boy gone bad. The combination of good and evil in his looks and the bend and quiver in his voice drove the girls crazy.” Here he was featured with his brother, Ken, and the harmony vocals come from Doc and Mort. Doc also brought along King Curtis and Mickey Baker, making their first appearances for Atlantic.
The Tibbs Brothers were junkies so, despite this being a good record, they were totally unsuited to a nursery rhyme lyric, but it does show how Doc was trying to break into the market with its references to the Atomic age and “Tutti Frutti”.

I’M GOING CRAZY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Tibbs Brothers (1956)
I love this. A witty call and response ballad about someone whose world is upside down: “Putting pepper on my coffee, Sugar on my eggs, I’m going crazy.” Good dirty sax break too. Whatever Mort did for his 15%, it was worth it.

Mort Shuman’s father died in 1957 and as well as studying at university, he was taking part-time jobs to help his mother. He was very keen that their songwriting partnership should be successful. Mort was studying philosophy. “That could be useful,” said Doc, so who knows what they would be writing next?

LOVE ROLLER COASTER (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Big Joe Turner)
• Big Joe Turner (1957)
Doc played Mort a batch of Joe Turner’s records and then they wrote this, which Big Joe Turner then amended for himself. This cheerful song, full of fairground images, was an A-side and it made the US pop charts. Could easily be revived today.

I NEED A GIRL (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Big Joe Turner (1957)
Big Joe needs a non-stressful job, a flashy car, a fashionable suit and lots of money, but most of all he needs a girl. Lighthearted novelty item and good fun.

Doc Pomus married a beautiful blonde actress, Wilma Burke, on 28 June 1957 at the Waldorf Astoria. They drifted around the state of New York on an extended honeymoon. When they were in Ellenville, they looked at the contents of a juke-box in a bar. Doc was surprised to find “Young Blood” by the Coasters as one of the records. Had they recorded the tune he had given to Jerry Wexler a year or so earlier?

YOUNG BLOOD (Doc Pomus - Jerry Leiber - Mike Stoller)
• Coasters (1957) (US 8, R&B 1)
• Beatles (Decca audition tape, 1962)
• Leon Russell (“Concert For Bangla-Desh”, 1971)
• Bad Company (1976) (US 20)
• Bruce Willis (1987)
• Jerry Lee Lewis (1995)
• The Band (1995)
No. Doc had taken a piece of street jargon - “young blood” for a good-looking girl - and written a song around it. The CD booklet with “50 Coastin’ Classics” says that Doc only had the title but this is not so. Jerry Wexler had the demo of Doc’s song and thought that the title would be perfect for the Coasters. He passed it to their producers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Mike took Doc to lunch. He asked if they could rework the song and Doc said yes and forgot about it, not even wanting approval for the final version.
Leiber and Stoller produced the record in February 1957 and Mike Stoller has said, “Each of the guys took one of the lines one after the other, and they were cracking up in the studio when they were doing it.” It was a perfect record and it went soaring up the charts as a double-sided hit with “Searchin’”. Doc Pomus remarked in 1982, “Most of the articles about ‘Young Blood’ never mention my name. Although Leiber and Stoller wrote most of the song, the title and concept was mine. C’est la vie. Sometimes my name doesn’t make the label credits. I weigh too much be invisible.”
When Doc played that record on the jukebox, he immediately called Atlantic Records and asked for an advance. They held such high hopes for the song that they gave him $1,500 and this saw them through the first year of their marriage. More than that, it showed Doc the way to go: “I had been writing for a mature black audience, the Coasters were easily palatable and appealed to young white teenagers.
“Young Blood” is one the Coasters’ classic songs about kids in New York. The Beatles remained true to the original on their audition for Decca, but they were turned down. Bruce Willis, an unlikely Motown act, showed his love of Atlantic pop with covers of “Under The Boardwalk” and “Young Blood”. Levon Helm sings the lead vocal on the Band’s version but when they take the individual lines at the end of the verses, they sound too world-weary for the song. The Coasters sound like cartoon characters and although Jerry Lee Lewis and the Band sound like old men looking for young girls, Jerry Lee’s version does have a storming piano break.

When a friend of Doc’s married a millionairess 25 years old than himself, he decided to form a record company. So, in November 1957 Doc became the president of the R&B Recording Corporation at the Brill Building. Doc was paid $100 a week and Mort $40 to write for their acts. The first act they signed should have done well for them as Doc had discovered Ben E. King with the Crowns.

MISERY’S CHILD (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Richard Hayes (1957)
• Marty Wilde (1958)
This echo-drenched, doom-laden song was Marty’s follow-up to “Endless Sleep”. Would have been better if they’d ditched the vocal backing. To date “Misery’s Child” has been an endless sleeper.

KISS AND MAKE UP (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Crowns (1958)
Doc and Mort have taken the successful ingredients of doo wop records - strong lead vocals, nonsense background sounds, a deep bass voice and a sax break - and recorded the Crowns on “Kiss And Make Up”. That it works is largely down to Charlie Thomas’s performance, although Doc realised that Ben E.King was the singer with the real potential. “Billboard” described the single as a “rhythmic meshuga-styled pleaser with a slighly Latin beat. Side has potential if pushed.” And it was pushed in Boston, Providence and Pittsburg. Sadly, however, the millionairess had found out about the record company and declared that this was not the way she wanted to spend her money.

Not to worry, George Treadwell owned the name the Drifters and when the group split up, Treadwell asked the Crowns if they would like to become the Drifters and take over their engagements. Doc and Mort were to continue their association with the group.

Donny Kirshner, who wrote songs with Bobby Darin, asked for Doc’s advice. Doc thought their songs, which included “Wear My Ring” for Gene Vincent, were “really bad” and recommended that he took up publishing. When he formed his own company at 1650 Broadway, he offered Doc and Mort a contract with a weekly retainer. Doc said that he would need $200 and Mort $100 and when Kirschner couldn’t pay that, Doc recommended Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. Doc: “Neil went to Aldon because he was willing to work for almost nothing.” Thus started the famed Aldon Music, while Doc and Mort slogged away in the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway. They had a contract with Hill and Range, a company owned by the Aberbachs, and their song plugger was Paul Case, who had made the transition from Broadway songs to rock’n’roll very effectively and proved to be a good editor for their work. Doc and Mort actually worked in one of those legendary cubicles with a piano and two chairs. When they became more successful, they were given a bigger room with paintings and a plush carpet but it soaked up their creativity and they returned to a cubicle for both inspiration and perspiration. Doc regretted that they hadn’t been forward enough: “We could have had a piece of the publishing and owned some of the songs.”

SUNGLASSES (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Wilma Burke)
• Shades (1958)
Sounds like Doc and Mort wrote a song for the Coasters, but couldn’t get it past Leiber and Stoller. Mort recorded it himself, using King Curtis on sax and featuring the unrelated Knott Sisters, actually Wilma and some Broadway friends, on backing responses, and you can hear how it would have suited the Coasters.

SAY THE WORD (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Mickey and Sylvia (1958)
Doc gives a song to his old friend, Mickey Baker.

YOU BE MY BABY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Ray Charles)
• Ray Charles (1958)
Really good interplay between Ray Charles and the Raelets on this catchy song, which was released as an A-side in 1958. Shane Fenton and the Fentones used to perform this a lot and I’m surprised that it didn’t become a beat group favourite.

PLAIN JANE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Darin (1958) (US 38)
As Bobby Darin could sing in a variety of voices and styles, he was one of the best demo singers around the Brill Building. Doc and Mort often used him and they would tease him about his hypochrondria, not realising that he had a damaged heart and knew his life could end abruptly. He had made some singles for Atlantic that hadn’t sold and the label owner, Ahmet Ertegun, was giving him one last chance by producing the record himself. He was recording Darin’s song “Splish Splash” and Darin was so nervous that he collapsed in Doc and Mort’s office. They calmed him down and “Splish Splash” was a US Top 10 hit.
In keeping with the spirit of the time, Doc and Mort wrote him a song around a girl’s name, “Plain Jane”. It wasn’t a difficult day for coming up with a melody as they used the folk song, “Buffalo Gals”.

Doc and Willi Burke have a daughter, Sharon Ruth, later called Sharyn, which was reported in “Billboard” in June 1958. Cue for a song.

I AIN’T SHARIN’ SHARON (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Darin (recorded 1958, released 1960)
• Buddy Knox (1958)
• James Darren (1959)
Bobby Darin shares the spotlight with the horns on this medium-paced rocker, but it stayed on the shelf for two years. Buddy Knox recorded the song with Norman Petty at his studio in Clovis, New Mexico in 1959. Knox’s vocal is fine but his attempt to do the background vocals on his own is ridiculous. Didn’t anyone ever play these records back? Unusually, Doc and Mort produced a version for James Darren in October 1959, so we can only blame them for the annoying girlie chorus. Same comment.

(SINCE YOU’RE GONE) I CAN’T GO ON (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Darin (1958)
A track from Bobby Darin’s first LP, “Bobby Darin”, released in July 1958.

CARRYIN’ THE LOAD (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ray Charles (1959)
This sounds like a gospel song that has been secularised. Ray Charles with the Raelets sound more inhibited than usual but it is a strong performance, which was released as an A-side, with little effect, once he had left Atlantic.

YOU’RE TEASING ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• LaVern Baker (1959)
The B-side of LaVern Baker’s US Top 40 entry “I Waited Too Long”, which was written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. A happy song with a Latin feel and yet another sax break from King Curtis.

Until this point, quality artists had been recording Doc and Mort’s songs. Their impressive credits included Ray Charles, LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and Bobby Darin, all excellent Atlantic acts. Everything changed with Hill and Range’s requirements for other record labels.

I’M A MAN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Fabian (1959) (US 31)
• Mort Shuman (1959)
• Adam Faith (1960)
One of Doc and Mort’s first assignments at Hill and Range was to write some songs for Elvis. They came up with a wild rocker, “I’m A Man”, which Elvis rejected. Elvis was in the army in Germany and possibly he knew that he was going to move away from rock’n’roll when he returned. In any event, why should he want to record a retread of “Hard Headed Woman”?
Doc and Mort had also been asked to write for Fabian, a good-looking lad (or so they so, he looks a little greasy to me) who couldn’t carry a tune. Mort Shuman: “I met Fabian two or three times and he was a sweet kid. He was not presumptuous at all. I suppose he knew that he was good-looking and that was why it had happened for him. We’d written ‘I’m A Man’ and ‘Turn Me Loose’ with the old-style Elvis in mind, or for that matter any other tough rock’n’roll singer. Fabian couldn’t sing those lyrics as he wasn’t allowed to sing anything that was sexually explicit. Doc changed them into something teenybopperish.”
Fabian’s record made the US Top 10 and Mort Shuman, on a visit to the UK, recorded the original words with Joe Brown on guitar. He said in 1987, “I heard it recently and I couldn’t believe how bad I was.”
Adam Faith also sang the original words, and the song was given a typical John Barry arrangement. Faith’s version was parodied by Dennis Potter in a sketch about him for the BBC’s “That Was The Week That Was”:
“I may be young but I still go to school,
When it comes to chicks, I’m no poor little fool,
I’m a man.”

TURN ME LOOSE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Fabian (1959) (US 9)
• Cliff Richard (performed on “Oh Boy!”, 1959)
• Mort Shuman (1959)
• Adam Faith (1960)
• Dion (1995)
At a guess, Doc and Mort heard Elvis do “One Night” and determined to write something similar. “Turn Me Loose” would have been ideal for Elvis and he should not have turned it down. Again, it went to Fabian, but he recorded the original lyric (with Mort on piano) and took it into the US Top 10. It gave him an image and led to his next hit, “Tiger”. Both Doc and Mort told me that Fabian had sung the amended lyrics, but they are mistaken. Fabian sings:
“Gonna have a thousand chicks
And get a thousand kicks.”
The wimpy lyrics were, however, recorded by Adam Faith, but, curiously, John Barry’s menacing brass arrangement would suit the original words, so make what you will of that. Cliff Richard performed a moody version on the “Oh Boy!” show, but didn’t record it. I was excited by the prospect of Dion reviving the song as he could give it a “Wanderer”-style workout. His version is the best, but is still lack-lustre.

PAJAMA PARTY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Pedrick Jr (1959)
Recorded by Pedrick as a follow-up to his US hit, “White Bucks And Saddle Shoes”. The record featured King Curtis on sax and was produced by Leiber and Stoller. Bobby Pedrick Jr had a US No.l, “Sad Eyes”, as Robert John in 1979.

TREAT ME LIKE A WOMAN (Doc Pomus - Allen Jeffreys)
• Doc Pomus (demo, 1959)
• Joya Sherrill (1960)
Joya Sherrill was a highly-rated vocalist with Duke Ellington’s Orchestra. A demo with Doc singing and Mort playing organ was recorded for her use with the title, “I’ll Treat You Like A Woman”. I’ve never heard Joya Sherrill’s record but if it’s anything like this demo, it will be excellent.

A TEENAGER IN LOVE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion and the Belmonts (1959) (US 5,UK 28)
• Marty Wilde (1959) (UK 2)
• Craig Douglas (1959) (UK 13)
• Dickie Valentine (1959)
• Rikki Henderson (1959)
• Four Preps (parody version, 1961) (US 17)
According to the legend, Doc and Mort were asked to write something along the lines of “Poor Little Fool”, Ricky Nelson’s 1958 hit. Whatever the truth of the matter, we can hear how they were getting on as their demo of their first attempt, “It’s Great To Be Young And In Love”, has been released. It is very cheerful and jaunty with Mort singing,
“It may be raining but the sun will be shining in my heart,
I’m not complaining because I know that you love me from the start,
Each night I thank the stars up above,
It’s great to be young and in love.”
The melody for the verses was there but both its optimism and its middle section were changed. The only line from the original lyric to be salvaged was “Each night I thank the stars up above”. Mort liked to joke, “‘Why must I be a teenager in love?’ has to be one of Doc’s lines. No teenager would ever write like that. All teenagers are either in love or they want to be. It’s all they think about. They don’t query it.” Doc had only just found out what teenagers were: “When I grew up in Brooklyn, you had short trousers and you were a child. One day you had long trousers and you were a man.”
“A Teenager In Love” was given to the Mystics at Laurie Records, but the label then decided that the song was too good to give to an unknown group and passed it to Dion and the Belmonts, who had already had three hits. Dion has since said that he preferred “I Wonder Why”, but I wonder why. Now a medium-paced, plaintive rocker, the song is given a great reading by Dion and his Belmonts. It should have done very well in the UK too, but it became part of a chart race. Dion lost to Marty Wilde, but there was no shame in that as Marty’s version was excellent.
One of the covers was by Dickie Valentine, almost as old as Doc and asking, “Why must I be a teenager in love?” Craig Douglas sang it pleasantly but without the grittiness of the original, but if you want to hear why the Brits were no good at rock’n’roll, play Dickie Valentine with his girlie chorus. I rest my case.
In 1961 the Four Preps parodied Dion and the Belmonts on their send-up, “More Money For You And Me”, recorded live in Pasadena:
“Each night I ask the stars without fail,
Why must I be a teenager in jail?”

I’VE CRIED BEFORE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion and the Belmonts (1959)
The B-side to “A Teenager In Love” and the first time that Doc and Mort had both sides of a single. Nice song but Dion takes it too formally. “Billboard” called it an “interesting weeper ballad”.
Doc: “I’ve always liked it better than ‘A Teenager In Love’.”

HUSHABYE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Mystics (1959) (US 20)
• Beach Boys (1964)
• Jay and the Americans (1969) (US 62)
The Brooklyn doo woppers, the Mystics had lost out on “A Teenager In Love”, but they were given something almost as good. Inspired by the Elegants’ “Little Star’ (but not handicapped by using a nursery rhyme) or possibly by Doc singing to his daughter, “Hushabye” is a beautiful lullaby which gave their harmonies a chance to shine. In 1964, even the Mystics’ version was topped by an extraordinary version by the Beach Boys with both Brian Wilson and Mike Love at their best. It’s a rare example of a cover improving an original, and what an original they had to beat. Jay and the Americans take it slower, which I suppose makes it more effective as a lullaby, and add a middle section. After all, if you’re not asleep at the end of the record, has the song worked?

The Brill Building was full of old-time music writers who were horrified that rock’n’roll had come along or were trying, somewhat ridiculously, to adapt themselves to it. Billy Rose who wrote “Me And My Shadow” and “Happy Days And Lonely Nights” said of Elvis Presley, “Not only are most of his songs junk, but in many cases they are obscene junk, pretty much on a level with dirty comic magazines. It’s this current climate that makes Elvis Presley and his animal posturings possible.” Doc Pomus: “It wasn’t acceptable to the other songwriters. Even when I had the hits, I thought it would be all over in three years. There were no rock critics, just the magazines that had the lyrics in.”

TWO FOOLS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Frankie Avalon (1959)
Considering that they had written Frankie Avalon’s labelmate, Fabian, and considering that those songs had been published by Frankie Avalon Music, it is surprising that they didn’t immediately write for Avalon. This pleasant song was the B-side of 1959 US Top 10 hit, “Just Ask Your Heart”, and could easily have been on the top.

ANGEL FACE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• James Darren (1959) (US 47)
• Billy Fury (1959)
Doc and Mort wrote this ballad for the actor James Darren to sing to his fianc�, Evy. They produced his version too, but I could have done without the heavenly harmonies. Billy Fury, a far superior singer, takes the song in too high a key but it is a much better production from Jack Good.

TEENAGE TEARS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• James Darren (1959)
You can imagine Doc being delighted with this title, but it isn’t much of a song. And what a plodding vocal group. Ironically, the B-side of Marty Wilde’s “Sea Of Love”, also called “Teenage Tears”, is far superior.

SWEET TALK (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Comstock and the Counts (1959)
Don’t know this record.

NO ONE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Doc Pomus (demo 1959)
• Connie Francis (1960)
• Brenda Lee (recorded 1960, released 1965)
• Ray Charles (1963) (US 21, UK 35)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
Doc recorded a demo of this smoky ballad in 1959 and it confirms what Mort Shuman said about him, “The greatest blue-eyed blues shouter of them all.” The full potential of this song has never been realised. Connie Francis recorded it three times, once in 1959 and twice in 1960, with the third version being used on the B-side of her US hit, “Where The Boys Are” in 1961. It was also recorded by Connie’s chart rival, Brenda Lee, in Nashville in August 1960. She was only 15 and it is a remarkably mature performance, but it was not issued at the time. Ray Charles gave the song a big band jazz interpretation in 1963. Eventually, Brenda Lee released it on the B-side of her US and UK hit, “Too Many Rivers”, and it is also among the better tracks on her “Too Many Rivers” LP. Johnny Adams with Dr John on piano give it a funky workout and I love the bit where Johnny plays his “mouth trombone”. Frank Sinatra should have recorded this.

THE TIGER AND THE MOUSE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Connie Francis (1959)
Connie Francis recorded “The Tiger And The Mouse” in July 1959, but something was wrong and she tried again in October. The first version has never been issued but the second was eventually released on the 1987 CD, “Rocksides (1957-64)” (US, Polygram 831698 2). Interesting that this was recorded before “Robot Man” as the songs sound like close cousins.

Like Woody Allen, it was hard to get Doc Pomus out of New York, but Jack Good persuaded him and Mort Shuman to come to the UK for a special edition of the ITV show, “Boy Meets Girl” on 21 November 1959, which would be devoted to their songs. They would meet many of the up and coming British rock’n’roll stars, some of whom Jack produced, and they were asked to bring a portfolio with them. The photo of them at London Airport looks as though they were hawking their songs as soon as they step from the plane.

Mort Shuman performed “I’m A Man” on “Boy Meets Girls” and Jack Good coaxed him into Decca’s studios for a single of “I’m A Man” and “Turn Me Loose”. Jack described it as “the wildest rock’n’roll session I have ever experienced.” Both of them were surprised by the interest in their work - after all, they were just two of scores of songwriters in New York - and they were delighted by the press coverage. The fact that three versions of “A Teenager In Love” had made the UK charts gave the newspapers a peg for a feature. Joe Brown told me that they could have appeared on “What’s My Line?” and no one would have guessed what they did for a living. Of course, their American publishers would hardly want to promote Doc as a writer of teenage hits in the way that Aldon did with the young and good-looking Carole King. Carole, incidentally, had fun at Shuman’s expense by recording “Short Mort” as a companion to Annette’s “Tall Paul”.

In their subsequent interviews, Doc and Mort refer to “the intellectuals” being interested in their work, presumably Jack Good, although Doc can hardly have been pleased at The Intellectual calling him Long John Silver. Most of the songs recorded here were published by Jack Good Music, so this man had a finger in every pie. He wasn’t accepting payola but he was promoting artists that he was recording and whose songs he was publishing. Doc met up with his relations but there was one sour moment to their visit: Doc’s daughter was kidnapped, but everything was soon resolved.

Doc remarked, “There was something back doorish in the States about writing this sort of music, but it was considered legitimate songwriting in England. We were treated very well and we went out with Tommy Steele and Lionel Bart. I like the fact that comedians told political jokes. You would never get that in America: Alan Freed never told a political joke. My wife went back with our daughter and she became very indignant that I didn’t come back immediately. Eventually I went back to save my marriage. When I got back to the Brill Building, the elevator man said, ‘I’ve not seen you recently: have you been sick?’”

THE SNAKE AND THE BOOKWORM (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Pat Shannon (1959)
• Cliff Richard and the Shadows (1959)
• Coasters (1960)
After the success with “Young Blood”, Doc had wanted to write for the Coasters, but they couldn’t match the witty vignettes that Leiber and Stoller wrote for the group. They almost got it right with “The Snake And The Bookworm”, which was recorded by Dick Glasser's brother, Pat Shannon. He takes the song too fast but it is not a bad version and the pay-off, "The snake is a bookworm" is different from both Cliff Richard and the Coasters. The song, like that other Cliff favourite “Willie And The Hand Jive”, is based on the Bo Diddley beat, but with Hank Marvin adding a typical solo. When Pomus and Shuman returned home, they gave it to Leiber and Stoller and it became the B-side of the Coasters’ glorious “Shoppin’ For Clothes”. The Coasters’ version is mostly harmony singing with King Curtis’ sax and the beat is played down. Mort Shuman remarked, “It is not one of my favourite songs. It was Jerry and Mike who had the knack of writing of writing for the Coasters.” Doc Pomus: “Leiber and Stoller were the real geniuses. They put comedic ideas into pop songs. They gave us a lot of hints and they were great collaborators.”

TOO HOT TO HANDLE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Mae McDonald)
• Jimmy Simmons (1958)
• Michael Cox (1959)
Good rocker and probably a Fabian reject (if there is such a thing). I wish Michael Cox had sung it straight, and it should have gone to Billy Fury. Some good lyrics, admittedly with a mixed metaphor:
“If you keep carrying on like a flea-bitten mule,
Before you know it, you’ll run out of fuel.”
Don’t know who Mae McDonald is - it’s her only song on the BMI listing.

SERIOUS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Michael Cox (1959)
Obviously not written for Michael Cox with its reference to a graduation ring. A high-school teen ballad and the intended recipient could have been Frankie Avalon. B-side of “Too Hot To Handle”.

PEOPLE GOTTA TALK (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ersel Hickey (1959)
• Joe Brown (1959)
The A-side of Joe Brown’s first single, produced by Jack Good. It’s a pleasant country-sounding rockaballad about the problems of gossip. The Bruvvers sound more like the Vernons Girls to me.

COMES THE DAY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Rusty Lane (1959)
• Joe Brown (1959)
Rather a meandering song for the B-side. Doesn’t sound like Joe Brown at all.

SAVAGE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Sneaky Petes (1960)
Mort Shuman shouts out, “Okay, let’s hear it one more time, Joe” and we are into an instrumental single released under the pseudonym, the Sneaky Petes. Good fun, good riff but no melody. The only Pomus and Shuman instrumental in the entire feature. Mort on piano and probably done in ten minutes at the end of a session.

TOO GOOD (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Little Tony and his Brothers (1959) (UK 19)
In 1959 it was unusual to find an Italian based in the UK, but Little Tony made a name for himself on “Boy Meets Girls”. Doc and Mort gave him a pleasant rockaballad and I’m surprised that they didn’t pass this over to Frankie Avalon or Bobby Rydell. Little Tony’s diction is not too good and the phrase “another one” is almost cockney. Had he been talking to Joe Brown?

FOXY LITTLE MAMA (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Little Tony and his Brothers (1959)
A pleasant rocker on the B-side of “Too Good”.

IT’S BEEN NICE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Marty Wilde (1959)
• Gene Vincent (1961)
• Les Pirates (1962) (As “Je Te Dis Merci”)
• Everly Brothers (1963)
• Freddy Cannon (1963)
• Dick Rivers (1972)
• Marty Wilde (new version, 1996)
Mort brought this song to Europe with the vague hope of going to Germany and giving it direct to Elvis. Indeed, he met Elvis’ buddy, Lamar Fike, in Manchester but he changed his mind and gave it to his new best friend, Marty Wilde. Marty invited him to play piano, but someone shopped them to the Musicians Union and, just before the tapes could roll, an official stepped in and read the Riot Act. They’d all be expelled if this continued. Marty Wilde and the Wildcats recorded a fine version of this dynamic song without him and it goes to show that these rockers were very docile when confronted by authority. (Presumably by the same token, Mort shouldn’t have made that Decca single.) “It’s Been Nice” was the B-side of Marty’s Top 10 hit, “Bad Boy”, and it has been so requested on his oldies concerts that it became the title song on his 1996 CD.
A few months later Gene Vincent came to Britain and befriended Marty Wilde. I would guess that he heard Marty’s 45 and decided to do it himself, recording it in 1961 and releasing it on the 1963 LP, “The Crazy Beat Of Gene Vincent”. He loses the song’s drive and the song has too many words for him. Freddy Cannon performed the song in the 1963 film, “Just For Fun”, but his diction can’t have been too good as Fred Dellar, writing in “The NME Guide To Rock Cinema”, calls it “I Gotta Get Up Early In The Ocean”. The Everly Brothers have sublime vocals but some terrible female vocalists who turn the song into a conversation, and then curiously the songs changes tempo for the ending. Most odd.

“It’s Been Nice” apart, some decidedly dodgy songs were given to the British artists (and you’ll read about some more next month). A comparison can be made with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who, once they started having hits, were very particular about what was released and hence, the standard of their work is consistent. I suspect that Bacharch has lots of substandard songs that have never seen the light of day. Doc and Mort, though, were workaday songwriters, bespoke songwriters who would write a great song one day and rubbish the next. They didn’t have a quality control and they would still pass on songs that they can’t have been happy with. If they hadn’t been inspired that day, then, what the hell, somebody might still record it.

Doc was impressed with what he saw: “When I was in England, we had a joint interview with Lionel Bart and I said the English singers are always imitating someone American, like Presley. The English writers and performers should be able to come up with something for themselves. A couple of years later our friend the actress Anna Quayle wrote to me and said that there is an English group that could do your material, the Beatles. The Beatles weren’t such a shock to me. I’d been waiting for it to happen and it should have happened before.”

“We would know when we had written a good song but after that we didn’t know. We didn’t know how it would come out of the studio or what kind of singer is going to do it: there are so many intangibles involved.”
(Doc Pomus, 1987)

Doc Pomus’ wife, Wilma Burke, was having success as an actress at the same time he was making hit records. She appeared in a Broadway musical, “Fiorello!”, written by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock about Fiorello La Guardia, a politician who became Mayor of New York. She also appeared in a touring version of the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “The Sound Of Music”. Doc and Mort enjoyed their visit to England because they had been appreciated. It was different back home. Doc Pomus: “I had a house, a swimming pool, all that shit, and we had nothing but these Broadway characters hanging around. None of them paid any attention to me and if they asked what kind of song I wrote, I felt embarrassed. If I had written a fifth-rate Broadway song, my God, they would have been proud.”

Strangely, Doc never had any inkling to write a Broadway show himself: “My kids said it was our music that was going to stay around. I wrote it the same way I would write a symphony but I have no reason for thinking it would last. I don’t think that Leiber and Stoller got it in perspective, they got scarred by the old-time songwriters and they wanted to do Broadway shows.

YOU’LL NEVER TAME ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Rydell (1959)
• Fabian (1960)
The B-side of Bobby Rydell’s first hit and probably intended for Fabian anyway.

I DIG GIRLS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Rydell (1959)
• Vernons Girls (1960 as “We Like Boys”)
The B-side of Rydell’s second hit, “We Got Love”, and clearly a title that Boy George or Elton John couldn’t cover. When Pomus and Shuman came to the UK, they revised the lyric for the Vernons Girls including references to London and Liverpool: “Boys from Devon send us to heaven.”

STAMPEDE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Norman Allen)
• Danny Valentino (1959)
A-side of an MGM single.

YOU GOTTA BE A MUSIC MAN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Danny Valentino (1959)
And the B-side.

(IF YOU CRY) TRUE LOVE, TRUE LOVE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1959) (US Pop 33, R&B 5)
Changing their name from the Crowns to the Drifters, Ben E. King’s group had hit the US Top 10 with “There Goes My Baby”. Ben E. King took the lead vocal on the next A-side, “Dance With Me”, but Johnny Lee Williams’ high tenor was used on the B-side, “(If You Cry) True Love, True Love”, which was produced by Leiber and Stoller and has a dramatic arrangement along the lines of “There Goes My Baby”. “Dance With Me” was a Top 20 record, but the B-side was on the chart in its own right. It’s not a bad song and you can hear “This Magic Moment” waiting to get out.

HOUND DOG MAN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
Fabian (1959) (US 9, UK 46)
Just as Doc and Mort regarded Fabian’s tuneless vocalising as a challenge, the film director, Don Siegel, decided that Fabian wouldn’t complete any of his songs in “Hound Dog Man”, the very title being a jokey nod to Elvis Presley. “Hound Dog Man”, for all that, wasn’t a bad song but Fabian, as always, lets the side down. Doc Pomus: “Fabian did learn to sing a little but by then his career was gone.”

GO JIMMY GO (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Jimmy Clanton (1959) (US 5)
Taking the line, “Go, Johnny, Go!”, from “Johnny B.Goode”, Alan Freed put together a rock’n’roll film starring Jimmy Clanton with Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens and the Flamingos. Altering the film’s title to “Go, Bobby, Go”, Doc and Mort wrote a new song and offered it to Bobby Rydell. He wasn’t keen on something with his name in the lyric and his version was never released. Doc changed it to “Go, Jimmy, Go” and gave it to Jimmy Clanton, who came from Baton Rouge to New York for the session. It was worth his while as it became a US Top 10 hit, but the alternate take on the Westside’s “Jimmy’s Tunes” is livelier than the issued single. Clanton’s subsequent hits, “Another Sleepless Night” and “Venus In Blue Jeans”, also came from the Brill Building. As Doc said, “We wrote songs that a lot of people could sing so if they turned it down, we could easily find somebody else.”

THIS MAGIC MOMENT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1960) (US 16)
• Jay and the Americans (1968) (US 6)
• Richie Furay (1978)
• Lou Reed (1995)
Ben E. King had decided to leave the Drifters but he agreed to this session, two days before Christmas in 1959, because they hadn’t found a replacement vocalist. This magical Pomus and Shuman song was given a swirling string arrangement by Stan Applebaum. Curiously, Ben E. King, instead of being deliriously happy, sounds like he’s crying at times. The record made the US Top 20 but it deserved to do better, eventually making the Top 10 when Jay and the Americans revived it in 1968. “I was always very unhappy about ‘This Magic Moment’,” said Jay Black in 1990, “because I like the Drifters’ version better. Ours sold twice as many as theirs. I still can’t understand it.” The song has never made the British charts so there’s an opportunity for someone. I love Lou Reed’s half-spoken version from 1995 which includes references to “Dance With Me” and “Save The Last Dance For Me”.

LONELY WINDS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1960) (US Pop 54, R&B 9)
• Walker Brothers (1965)
Rather more forceful than other Drifters’ records of the period with a strong vocal from Ben E. King. A long instrumental break showcases Stan Applebaum’s string arrangement. The arrangement is so forceful for the Walker Brothers that they sound like guests on their own record.

Mort Shuman, always a musical maverick, had discovered the Palladium, a Latin-American ballroom in New York and he would listen to Tito Puente and Machito. In March 1960 he went to South America and he was captivated by the Latin-American rhythms that he heard. He was writing for black R&B acts but he didn’t let that bother him.

SENOR BIG AND FINE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• LaVern Baker (1960)
Mort gives a tango to LaVern Baker. Great fun, but Mort hasn’t quite worked out how to adapt his new enthusiasm to the commercial market. Doc’s lyric could be taken as a message to Mort:
“Senor Big And Fine,
Please take your time,
Don’t rush me.”

SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1960) (US 1, UK 2)
• Dion (1960)
• Damita Jo (1960) (Answer version, “I’ll Save The Last Dance For You”) (US 22)
• Billy Fury (1961) (Answer version: “You’re Having The Last Dance With Me”)
• Jerry Lee Lewis (1961)
• Buck Owens (1962)
• Jimmy Justice (1962)
• Lou Christie (1966)
• Ike and Tina Turner (1969)
• The Beatles (“Let It Be” sessions, 1969)
• DeFranco Family (1974) (US 18)
• Nilsson (1974)
• Mort Shuman (1976)
• Jerry Lee Lewis and Friend (1978)
• Emmylou Harris (1979)
• Ralph McTell (1979)
• Herbie Armstrong (1983)
• Dolly Parton and the Jordanaires (1984) (US Country 3)
• Ben E. King (1987) (UK 69)
• Neil Diamond (1993)
• General Saint (1994) (UK 74)
• Aaron Neville (1995)
• Manhattan Transfer with Ben E. King (1995)
Doc Pomus would take his wife to ballrooms but he was incapable of walking, let alone dancing. As he didn’t want to deprive her, he let her dance with various partners. At the end of the evening, he would stagger to his feet and she would take him onto the floor. Hence, “Save The Last Dance For Me”. All through my youth, I thought this a wonderful teenage song and now, knowing the story, I realise that the lyric is brilliant as it also describes Doc’s feelings. There is a voyeuristic element in the lyric as the singer is enjoying watching his girl dancing with other men. Doc claimed to have written the lyric quickly, but if so, it reminds me of a conversation I once had with Charles Aznavour. I asked him how long a lyric had taken and he said, “20 minutes of writing and 20 years of living.”
Doc’s lyric was combined with a wonderful melody, largely from Mort Shuman that tapped into his Latin-American experiences. Because of the Cuban baion feel, Doc wanted to write a lyric that “sounded like it was translated.” He quoted “And in whose arms you’re going to be” and said, “That’s not the way people talk, it sounds like a translation, but people don’t even realise it. Those are some of the tricks that I think are responsible for a lot of these songs lasting so long.” The song was written in their Brill Building cubicle. Doc: “Mort played the song on piano or guitar for Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They had sharp ears and they knew what could be done with it. They got a magnificent rhythmical sound on ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’.”
But, amazingly Leiber and Stoller were not sure about what they’d got. Doc Pomus: “‘Save The Last Dance’ was written especially for the Drifters but the record company wasn’t that enthusiastic about the song and so I started doing it with Jimmy Clanton. It was going to be his next record, and then we got a call from Jerry Wexler to say that it was going to be the Drifters’ next record, so I had to tell Clanton that there was a mix-up and he couldn’t record the song. We gave him ‘Go Jimmy Go’ which was originally ‘Go Bobby Go’ for Bobby Rydell, so Jimmy ended up with a hit anyway. ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ was released with ‘Nobody But Me’, another of our songs, on the A-side. It was Dick Clark who told Atlantic to turn it over. You see why it’s so hard for me to take this business seriously.”
Ben E. King, according to Doc, “always thought he was one of the best singers in the world” and he proved it on “Save The Last Dance For Me”. It was the biggest hit the Drifters ever had and it is among the greatest pop records of all-time. Leiber and Stoller, when speaking at the National Film Theatre in 2001, said that they had changed some of “Save The Last Dance For Me” but not enough to merit a co-writing credit.
Dion has a lovely plaintive vocal but the vocal accompaniment and arrangement is so clich�d that it is a waste of a good song. Damita Jo made minimal lyrical changes and Billy Fury altered just a couple of lines in their answer versions. After Elvis’ death, Jerry Lee Lewis’ version had an added vocal in a feeble attempt to pass it off as a lost Elvis track. It fooled no one - except Doc Pomus, who endorsed the record on its sleeve, but I suspect his tongue was firmly in his cheek.
I enjoyed Nilsson’s ultra-slow scorcher that was produced by John Lennon: so did Mort Shuman as he copied it but sang the lyric in French. Emmylou Harris recorded it as a beautiful country ballad in 1979 (with a lovely piano solo from Glen D.Hardin) and Ralph McTell’s arrangement is in a similar vein. Mort Shuman suggested to Herbie Armstrong that the song could be taken in a minor mode. Ben E. King’s dance version in 1987 was not the brightest of ideas, but Aaron Neville was an inspired choice on the Doc Pomus tribute album, Till The Night Is Gone, its very title being taken from the song.
The Beatles, who sang “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Nobody But Me” and “I Count The Tears” at the Cavern, twice performed snatches of the song during their sessions for the “Let It Be” film and album. When Doc Pomus went to a BMI dinner and John and Yoko were there, John told him that they had pinched a bit of “Save The Last Dance For Me” for “Hey Jude”.

NOBODY BUT ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1960)
• Honeycombs (1965)
This is a good song but it is incredulous that Atlantic thought it should be the A-side to “Save The Last Dance For Me”. It did gain radioplay in its own right and although it is a decent song, it is let down by cheesy backing vocals from the Drifters. The lads only had 20 seconds work and they blew it.

I COUNT THE TEARS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1960) (UK 28, US 17)#
• Searchers (1964)
• Rosanne Cash (1995)
Three Pomus and Shuman songs, “Save The Last Dance For Me”, “Nobody But Me”, “I Count The Tears”, and one of Ben E. King’s own songs, “Sometimes I Wonder” were recorded at the same three hour session for the Drifters at the Bell Sound Studios in New York. Unusually for the Pomus/Shuman partnership, the melody is largely Doc’s. The record deserved to be a bigger hit but this sometimes happens when you are following up a monster. Listen to the last couple of seconds of the Drifters’ version and ask yourself, What is that strange sound? The Searchers give the song a “Sweets” arrangement but it is a little disjointed and I can see why it was never a single. I like Rosanne Cash’s more intimate arrangement: you can imagine a housewife crying silently while her husband’s gone away.

WAIT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Jimmy Clanton (1960)
Interesting failure. I would guess that Doc and Mort were trying to write a teen ballad that was also true to Clanton’s Louisiana roots.

MY PRIVATE JOY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion and the Belmonts (1960)
One of the few Pomus and Shuman songs that I really hate. The lyric is a nothing and the horns are so irritating. It is surrounded by some of the best standards ever written in the “Wish Upon A Star” album. Brickbats to all concerned.

IT TEARS ME ALL TO PIECES (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Donna Fair)
• Ruth Brown (1960)
• Jess Conrad (1961)
A rewrite of “Lonely Avenue”, right down to the arrangement and vocal group. Ruth Brown’s version is excellent, but Jess Conrad is very, very flat.

A MESS OF BLUES (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1960) (UK 32, UK 2)
• Led Zeppelin (1971 BBC concert version issued in 1997)
• Delbert McClinton (1979)
• Status Quo (1983) (UK 15)
• John Hiatt (1995)
• Restless (2000)
• Cliff Bennett (2001)
Elvis says Yes at last and makes one of his best records. Mort says that the phrase “a mess of blues” was just the way Doc talked: “I really like ‘A Mess Of Blues’. I thought it was a really down home, raunchy good blues song. Doc had this knack of finding weird titles like ‘A Mess Of Blues’, you don’t really say that, you do say ‘a mess of something’ but it would not be used to describe the blues.” Whilst Doc and Mort were in England, they hung out with Lamar Fike, who was staying with Elvis while he was serving in Germany. They recorded a hurried demo of ‘A Mess Of Blues’ and gave it to Lamar for Elvis. In the US, it was the B-side to “It’s Now Or Never” but here it was combined with “Girl Of My Best Friend”. The John Hiatt revival ain’t bad, but it ain’t Elvis. Restless take it too fast. Very good bluesy version by Cliff Bennnett on his “Soul Blast!” CD, but why do both Bennett and Restless sing “A mess of the blues”? They ruin the poetry of the song.

SORROW TOMORROW (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Darin (1960)
A pleasant enough rocker from Bobby Darin and a song that Shuman particularly liked.

ONCE UPON A TIME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ricky Valance (1960)
This lightweight pop song was the B-side of Ricky’s controversial No.l, “Tell Laura I Love Her”, so Doc and Mort got a free ride to some considerable royalties. Quite catchy, but the song’s payoff can be seen a mile off - “that boy was me”.

I’M ON FIRE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Tommy Bruce (1960)
Where did this come from? Gravel-voiced Tommy Bruce had a UK hit with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in May 1960 and he followed it with another Top 40 hit, “Broken Doll”. On the other side was this Pomus and Shuman rocker. They should have stuck with Fabian.

DOING THE BEST I CAN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1960)
Tacky or what? Elvis Presley decided that his first post-army film would be a light-headed, sorry, light-hearted romp about his days in Germany, “G.I. Blues”. Doc and Mort were asked to submit songs and wrote the sensitive ballad, “Doing The Best I Can”. Mort: “Doc and I were into Don Robertson who was a great country and western writer, his songs were just spot-on, like ‘I Really Don’t Want To Know’. We were in that Don Robertson easy country ballady mood, and that is how it came out. I always felt that Elvis was very much influenced by the Ink Spots when he recorded it.” “Doing The Best I Can’ is one of their best songs, a song that could easily be revived by a New Country artist or a Pop Idol today.

DESDEMONA’S LAMENT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Joya Sherrill (soundtrack, 1960)
Doc and Mort wrote this song for Joya Sherrill to sing in the sci-fi comedy, “Visit To A Small Planet”, which was written by Gore Vidal and starred Jerry Lewis.

IF YOU NEED ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dave Sampson (1960)
Dave Sampson had a UK hit with his own "Sweet Dreams" and, rather than encouraging his writing, EMI gave him American songs. "If You Need Me" was the A-side of his second single and he also recorded "Wide Wide World".

HAVIN’ FUN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion (1960)
Dion’s solo career had got off to a good start with “Lonely Teenager”, but “Havin’ Fun” didn’t sound right at all. It was more suited to a MOR balladeer and the trombone a few seconds in is appalling.

Doc and Mort got to know Phil Spector. Doc took him to the Spindletop restuarant and while they were there, a hoodlum came in and shot someone dead. A few weeks later, they were going out again and Doc said, “Let’s go to the Spindletop.” “Let’s not,” said Spector, “I’m not going there again. We might get killed.” “You gotta look on the up side,” said Doc, “The salads are incredible.”

YOUR OTHER LOVE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Flamingos (1960) (US 54)
A typical example of the Drifters’ Latin-scented pop, but it’s by the Flamingos who were hot with “I Only Have Eyes For You” in 1958. Did the Drifters turn it down and so Hill and Range passed it to the Flamingos? Everything about the record is a crib. Okay though.

LOVERS GOTTA CRY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Flamingos (1960)
The B-side of “Your Other Love”.

TEENAGE HEARTACHE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ray Peterson (1960)
Typical teen ballad of the day: "Such tears on my pillow, I drowned in my bed."

FIRST TASTE OF LOVE (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• Ben E. King (1960) (UK 27)
• Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders (1964)
On 27 October 1960 Ben E. King had a remarkable three hour session at the Bell Sound Studios in New York. He recorded the utterly brilliant “Stand By Me”, which was largely written by himself, and not content with that, he also cut “Spanish Harlem” (Jerry Leiber, Phil Spector), “First Taste Of Love” and “Young Boy Blues” (both Doc Pomus and Phil Spector). The first single, “Spanish Harlem”, was a US Top 10 hit, but it was the B-side, “First Taste Of Love”, which was promoted in the UK. It retains the Latin flavour that he had with the Drifters and would have been a fine follow-up to “Save The Last Dance For Me”. Wayne Fontana’s hurried version is the B-side of his Top 10 hit, “Um Um Um Um Um Um”.
Doc Pomus: “Phil Spector and I wrote a lot of songs in the Forest Hotel. I would stay there during the week and go out to Long Island at the weekend. Ben E. King left the Drifters and we wrote ‘First Taste Of Love’. Atlantic went with that song first, which again shows you what they know.”

YOUNG BOY BLUES (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• Ben E. King (1961)
• Conway Twitty (unissued, 1964)
• Wilson Pickett (1974)
• Honeydrippers (1984)
As the dramatic arrangement was so experimental (stop-starts, jazz piano, movie strings, soulful vocal and verses that form one long sentence), it is surprising to find this tucked into a four-song session. Ben E. King coped with the unusual setting very well and the song was put on the B-side of “Here Comes The Night”. Robert Plant was the vocalist with the Honeydrippers on their very creditable revival.

DON’T YOU DARE LET ME DOWN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Conway Twitty (1961)
Nice title but perfunctory songwriting from Doc and Mort. Conway Twitty cut this in Nashville - his performance is fine but whoever thought up that novelty instrumental break? The song did okay as the B-side of his hit single, “C’est Si Bon”.

SURRENDER (G.D.De Curtis - Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1961) (UK 1, US 1)
• Stacy Dean Campbell (1992) (Soundtrack, “Honeymoon In Vegas”)
• Lesley Garrett (2001)
I regard Elvis Presley as the man who wanted to be Mario Lanza. They were both on RCA, they both ate to excess, they both recorded operatic arias and they both took drugs excessively and died at a young age. Elvis was so pleased with his performance on “O Sole Mio” (“It’s Now Or Never”) that he asked his publisher, Freddy Bienstock, to commission a new lyric for “Torna A Sorrento”. Mort Shuman was not impressed and told Doc, “Why should I want to write for some redneck idiot who has so far forgotten his roots that he thinks it’s a good career move to sound like Mario Lanza? You write it, Doc, you’ve already got the music.” And the title as Doc immediately saw that “Sorrento” could become “Surrender”. Pomus and Shuman won through, but Elvis’ record is only 90 seconds long. Long enough in my view as this return to Sorrento is on a second-class ticket. The TV diva from Yorkshire, Lesley Garrett, puts Doc’s words in an operatic setting and it sounds fine. Not sure though that she should have merged with “The Wonder Of You”.

SWEETS FOR MY SWEET (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1961) (US 16)
• Searchers (1963) (UK 1)
• C.J. Lewis (1994)
• Brian Wilson (1995)
Another mambo night in New York and Mort Shuman played piano on this very cheerful and commercial song for the Drifters. Doc Pomus: “I used to hate to go to sessions. When I finish a song, I like to say, ‘That’s it’. I don’t want to see some act going over and over the song. Mort, on the other hand, liked to do that, so he went ahead.”
Charlie Thomas took the lead vocal for the Drifters and I’m surprised that it didn’t fare better on the charts. The Searchers were quick to spot its potential, taking it faster and featuring Tony Jackson with a very nasal lead vocal. Mort Shuman: “There’s a saying in France that you are walking round with a banana in your mouth, upwards smiling shape, so even if perhaps the Searchers wasn’t the best technically or musically, it was so infectious.” Brian Wilson’s lead vocal shows that whatever he had, he hadn’t got it anymore. Queasy listening.
The Drifters, incidentally, sing “Your tasty kiss” and the Searchers’ mishearing the record sing “Your fair sweet kiss”. I told Mort that I had first heard it as “Your thirsty kiss”, which sounded like someone was really desperate for the kiss. In a very proud moment for me, Mort said, “Spencer, you’ve improved the song.” Can the same be said of Peckham's C.J.Lewis with his rap version from 1994?

I JUST WANNA MAKE LOVE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Jimmy Clanton (1961)
This sounds like a Drifters’ song that didn’t work out and was given to Jimmy Clanton. The song has a full orchestration and the instrumental break goes off in all directions. Not bad, but no song called “I Just Wanna Make Love” could have been a hit for a teen idol in 1961.

WHAT WENT WRONG (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Johnny Oliver (1960)
Produced by Clyde Otis and Belford Hendricks and maybe it was intended for their main artist, Brook Benton.

SO CLOSE TO HEAVEN (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ral Donner (1961)
When Ral Donner was recording in the 1960s, my friends and I thought he was a joke, a character who deliberately modelled himself on Elvis. Looking back, his work takes on a new perspective. We know all the Elvis tracks and this is like new or lesser-known Elvis material. “So Close To Heaven” was the B-side of his hit single, “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got”. An excellent song and I can’t believe it’s not Elvis.

Doc Pomus asked the owner of Roulette Records, George Goldner, what he would do if a record company was swindling him out of royalties. George Goldner said, “I would sue them.” “Okay,” said, Doc, “I’m going to sue you.”

SCHOOL OF HEARTBREAK (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ral Donner (1961)
The first Elvis tribute act with a good song that could have been an Elvis album track. If people had taken him seriously, we might have had a host of tribute acts long before the 1990s.

ROOM FULL OF TEARS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1961)
A typical Drifters song about wallowing in self-pity but only just good enough for an A-side. Charlie Thomas was asked to sound as much like Ben E. King as he could and he makes a good stab of it.

HERE COMES THE NIGHT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ben E. King (1961)
• Walker Brothers (1965)
Did Doc and Mort put two separate songs together and then Leiber and Stoller added some arresting sound effects to paper over the cracks: “Do that uummmm again, Benny”, “Oh, that’s nice on the trumpets” and so on. The Walker Brothers’ version is much better as it sounds much more like a complete song.

COULD SOMEBODY TAKE MY PLACE TONIGHT (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion (1961)
The B-side of “Somebody Nobody Wants”, this is a nice teen ballad but not distinctive enough.

IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion (1961)
Tearful beat-ballad, but Dion’s heart isn’t in it.

IT’S NOT TRUE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ricky Valance (1961)
Ideally, a song should tell a short story and the middle eight should tell us something that we haven’t known before. As such, the construction of “It’s Not True” is very good and although Ricky Valance doesn’t do it badly, I would have preferred a plaintive rendition from Dion or Billy Fury.

LITTLE SHIP (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• The Delicates (1961)
• Arlene Martell (1961)
• Jess Conrad (1961)
• The Blue Diamonds (1961) (Holland, No.10)

The demo record was by Jeff Barry and the song was passed to the Delicates on Roulette. The lead singer was Peggy Santiglia, later of the Angels.

RAG DOLL (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Jess Conrad (1961)
Typical anodyne Brill Building pop of the period: jaunty and fun. The backing vocals are too prominent, but perhaps Jack Good was trying to disguise that Jess was there.

WOULD YOU STAND BY ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Billy Fury (1961)
Good bluesy ballad with a plaintive vocal and plenty of sax. At times it sounds as if Billy was about to yodel and then thought better of it.

SOUVENIR OF MEXICO (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Ben E. King (1961)
Although Mort Shuman only contributed one song to Ben E. King’s LP, “Spanish Harlem”, I am sure that much of it was his idea and that he introduced Ben to many of the songs. ‘Souvenir Of Mexico’ could be a synonym for VD, but it is hardly a Latin song at all and it sounds as though everyone was fed up as it fades out abruptly. Disappointing as Doc and Mort could have come up with songs to rival “Besame Mucho” and “Sway”. Indeed, everybody was jumping on the Latin-American bandwagon as Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the excellent “Mexican Divorce” for the Drifters.
Doc Pomus: “Mort would come back with these complicated Mexican rhythms and I would translate them into something that sounded like it came from Spanish Harlem. Then we would fool around with them. Mort did the sessions because the session men couldn’t do it. We did ‘Souvenir Of Mexico’ for Ben E King and there were two versions. One is a swing version and one is the Mexican version. I couldn’t over-simplify it and no one could play it.” A good quote, but why didn’t Atlantic hire the musicians from the Cuban nights at the Palladium?”

A TEXAN AND A GIRL FROM MEXICO (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Anita Bryant (1961) (US 85)

LITTLE SISTER (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1961) (US 5, UK 1)
• LaVern Baker (1961) (Answer version, “Hey, Memphis”)
• Ted Herold (1961) (German version, “Little Linda”) (Germany 25)
• Ry Cooder (1979)
• Robert Plant with Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile (Recorded 1979, issued 1981)
• Dwight Yoakam (1987)
• Residents (1989)
The record producer Snuff Garrett invited Doc and Mort to Los Angeles to write for Bobby Vee and the Crickets and some other Liberty acts. While there, they wrote “Little Sister” and “(Marie’s The Name) Her Latest Flame”. Although he wasn’t on Liberty, they gave the songs to Bobby Darin, who was also in Los Angeles at the time. He recorded them there but didn’t like the way the songs turned out and Doc and Mort passed them to Elvis. Mort’s voice and guitar demo for “Little Sister” shows the song to be a furious rocker, but Presley wisely slowed down the tempo. As a result, Doc and Mort wrote both sides of the grittiest single Elvis made after he came out of the army. “Little Sister” is a great rocker and I’m surprised it is not regularly revived. Indeed, Elvis himself may not have appreciated its worth as he only did it in concert as a part of medley with “Get Back”. LaVern Baker’s “Hey, Memphis” is a very sassy female version of the song, which was produced by Phil Spector. Mort couldn’t recall working on this but why should he, the only thing that changed was the title. Ted Herold was a German schlager singer who was produced by Bert Kaempfert.
Ry Cooder’s reworking with an insidious rhythm and some great backing vocals is on par with the original. I didn’t rate Dwight Yoakam’s version too highly, but both Doc and Mort independently loved it. The Residents are fun, recasting the song as a spooky Lee and Nancy duet. The “Rolling Stone” writer, Dave Marsh, has commented that “Little Sister” with its great Scotty Moore sounds like a forerunner to the Who. It could easily have been a Who record. Robert Plant performed “Little Sister” on the Concert For Kampuchea at Hammersmith Odeon.

(MARIE’S THE NAME) HIS LATEST FLAME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1961) (US 4, UK 1)
• Del Shannon (1961)
• Ted Herold (1961) (as “Sie War All Sein Gl�ck”)
• Les Champions (1961) (as “Sa Grande Passion”)
• Russ Be Bop and the Roadrunners (2000)
Lots of great songs have been written around the “shave and a haircut, two bits” beat - “Not Fade Away”, “Willie And The Hand Jive” and half of Bo Diddley’s repertoire - now they, literally, bring it to Jerome. For this track, Elvis copied Mort Shuman’s demo. It had an unusual organ effect in the middle and Presley himself rang Doc to ask about it. Doc gave him the answer but it wasn’t until after the call that he realised it was Elvis himself. Otherwise, they had no contact with Elvis. As Mort said, “It’s said that Elvis was very generous and gave Cadillacs to his friends, but I wrote several of his hits and he ever even sent me a Christmas card.”
Del Shannon brings in the horns for the Diddley beat and the “Runaway” organ for the middle eight. Del recorded his version before Presley’s version was released. If you thought British rock’n’roll was bad, just listen to Les Champions’ hurried version. Russ Be Bop loses the powerful Bo Diddley beat and not studied the lyric sheet. This is the only song I know where Mary (or Marie) is the bad girl: it’s usually Dolores. Although of course in the 1960s, “Mary” was often short for marijuana, e.g. “Along Comes Mary”.

SOMEBODY NEW DANCING WITH YOU (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1961)
Everyone was involved in this session: the Drifters had Rudy Lewis on lead vocal, Dionne Warwick and Doris Troy were among the backing singers, Burt Bacharach had written the arrangement and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were producing. As opposed to “I’ll Save The Last Dance For You”, this could be taken as the true follow-on to “Save The Last Dance For Me”. Good song, but the title is awkward and it’s all very predictable.

YOU NEVER TALKED TO ME THAT WAY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Drifters (1961)
• Del Shannon (1962)
Back to voyeurism. A paranoid lover watches his girlfriend making love to another boy. Okay, but it was done far better by Del Shannon as “You Never Talked About Me”, but then he really was paranoid The trombones with pizzicato strings is odd but it works okay and it was the B-side of his 1962 No.2, “Hey! Little Girl”. Del sang it in the film, “It’s Trad, Dad”!”.

ECSTASY (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• Ben E. King (1962)
• Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (1963)
• Lee Curtis and the All Stars (1965)
• Eric Burton (1980)
The best of the Doc Pomus and Phil Spector collaborations, this fine song should have been a huge hit, but it may have been too explicit. The B-side of “Ecstasy” was, appropriately enough, “Yes”. The song was covered by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and was often performed by Lee Curtis and the All Stars at the Star-Club in Hamburg. Curtis’ German single was played on Radio Caroline North, but by the time it was released in the UK, the moment had passed.

GINNY IN THE MIRROR (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Del Shannon (1962)
The B-side of “The Swiss Maid”, but the song is weak. Del disliked the song, so why did he do it?

WHAT AM I TO DO (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• The Paris Sisters (1962)
• Manfred Mann (1965)
There is a Barry Mann demo from around 1961 that might have been intended for a single. Phil Spector produced the Paris Sisters, and it was picked up by Manfred Mann, who were always looking for obscure American songs. Good choice.

WIDE WIDE WORLD (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
Dave Sampson (1962)
Mark Wynter (1962) From his Decca LP,”The Warmth Of Wynter”.

QUEEN OF THE TWISTERS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bill Haley and his Comets (1962)
Bill Haley, in a bizarre career move, started recording twist songs for Latin America in 1961. Roulette Records thought it would be a good idea for him to make a twist album for the US, hence “Twisting Knights At The Round Table”. Doc and Mort’s song relies on the much-repeated phrase, “She’s the queen of the twisters, don’t you know.” If she’s broken her backbone though, she can hardly be the queen of the twisters.

SHE’S NOT YOU (Doc Pomus - Jerry Leiber - Mike Stoller)
• Elvis Presley (1962) (US 5, UK 1)
The first and only time that Doc knowingly collaborated with Leiber and Stoller on a song. A very good teen ballad. Started as a Fats Domino sound and changed to a shuffle.

KISS ME QUICK (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1962) (US 34, UK 14)
Mort Shuman said that “the Flamingos had the good sense not to do it, but someone submitted it to Elvis and maybe he liked it because it reminded him of ‘Wooden Heart’.” This was the opening track on Elvis’ “Pot Luck” LP. Mort Shuman: “That was the first album I bought. I had to buy that album. See, we never got the records, we had to go and buy them. In those days, they didn’t give the writers records. We were next in line to the lady who swept up after everybody had gone home.”
“Kiss Me Quick” was released as a single in December 1963 when the Beatles were on “Juke Box Jury”. They criticised Elvis for releasing old material as singles. Quite right too. It was a good track but he was insulting his fans.

NIGHT RIDER (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1962)
Mort says that this song was inspired by “Black Denim Trousers”, a Leiber and Stoller song for the Cheers. It starts like a Coasters record and settles into a cheerful rocker. Also included on the “Pot Luck” LP but then used in the 1965 film, “Tickle Me”. Though I have never heard it, Mort Shuman’s demo was produced by Phil Spector who gave it the Wall of Sound treatment.

I FEEL THAT I’VE KNOWN YOU FOREVER (Doc Pomus - Alan Jeffreys)
• Elvis Presley (1962)
Pleasant country ballad that appeared on the “Pot Luck” album, but why was it so short? It was also used on the soundtrack of “Tickle Me” (1965). Mort Shuman: “Alan was a great buddy of Doc’s, who became a buddy of mine. He was a freaked-out jazz trumpet player who liked to write the odd pop song once in a while.”

GONNA GET BACK HOME SOMEHOW (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1962)
Another song from “Pot Luck” and the contrast in the middle eight is identical to “His Latest Flame”. Mort: “There is something about trains that captures the imagination. The influence is a Hank Williams song, ‘Ramblin’ Man’.” Doc and Mort also wrote a song called “Pot Luck” for the project, but it has never been recorded.

SUSPICION (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1962) (UK 9 in 1976)
• Terry Stafford (1964) (US 3, UK 31)
• Billy Fury (unissued, 1964)
• Millicent Martin (1964)
• Dickie Rock and the Miama Showband (1966)
• Jimmy London (1973)
• Robert Gordon (1998)
• Steve Forbert (recorded 1981, released 2001)
Easily the best of the five songs that Doc Pomus wrote for “Pot Luck”. Elvis didn’t release it as a single, but if he had, would he have still received “Suspicious Minds”? Terry Stafford spotted its potential and had a Top 10 single at a time when Elvis wasn’t selling well. An unreleased version by Billy Fury for Decca was recorded in 1964. Mort Shuman: “When I was living in France, I stole from myself because one of the first hits I had as a recording artist was ‘Shami-Sha’ which starts off with the same bass and harmonic structure.” Despite the title and the song’s market, “Shami-Sha” is in English. Sample line: “Even Little Egypt couldn’t do me like you do.” Jimmy London gave the song a reggae treatment. Mort said, “I was losing some of my innocence with that song. I was always pretty neurotic.” Steve Forbert’s recent release, held in the vaults for 20 years, is superb, almost as good as Elvis’s.

RUNAROUND (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• Gene McDaniels (recorded 1962, released 1992)
Good performance from Gene McDaniels on a disjointed song. Not released at the time and wouldn’t have made any impression if it had been. Unusual metaphor: “I’m going to sit right down and cry just like a water hose.”

SEVEN DAY WEEKEND (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)#
• Gary U.S. Bonds (1962) (US 27)
Gary U.S. Bonds was an anachronism: he made old-style raucous rock’n’roll and the records sound as they were made in a sweaty club with cheap equipment. Doc and Mort knew what he wanted and “Seven Day Weekend” is a good rocker that he performed in “It’s Trad, Dad!”. Mort’s life was a seven day weekend at the time. Mort Shuman: “At the time, I couldn’t care less. All I could care about was getting high or renting another convertible to match my red bloodshot eyes or the blue eyes of my new girlfriend.”
Doc Pomus: “I have written songs that don’t have extraordinarily unique titles, but that wasn’t one of them. I was surprised that Elvis Costello should write his own song called ‘Seven Day Weekend’.”

SPANISH LACE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Gene McDaniels (1962) (US 31)
• Drifters (1964)
Everyone was getting into Latin pop. This fine song is a companion to “Spanish Harlem” but is not as distinctive. It became a US hit and was also the title track of Gene’s 1963 LP of Latin standards. Not sure why the Johnny Mann Singers suddenly make an appearance at the end. It was also the B-side of the Drifters’ hit, “Saturday Night At The Movies”.

IT ONLY TAKES A MINUTE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Michael Holliday (1962)
Doc and Mort were writing a follow-up for Brook Benton and Dinah Washington’s “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes), but somehow it didn’t get to them, but to Michael Holliday. Neat line about Moses took his time in crossing the Red Sea but it only took a minute to fall in love with you. Considering their friendship with Joe Brown, would they have known his UK hit, “It Only Takes A Minute”, which has the same title and the same theme and was an American song written only a few doors away by Hal David and Mort Garson?

IT’S A LONELY TOWN (LONELY WITHOUT YOU) (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Gene McDaniels (1963) (US 64)
• Michel Louvain (1963) (French version, “La Ville Pleure”)
If I didn’t know the composers, I would have guessed at Mann - Weil or Goffin - King. It’s the kind of beat-ballad they wrote for Steve Lawrence. Good performance from McDaniels, but it’s predictable.

TROUBLED MIND (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dion (1963)
Dion is seeking peace for his troubled mind, going to China and Mexico. Dion was having his own personal crises and this song reflects his changes. Much bluesier than anything else Doc had written in the 60s.

(IT’S A) LONG LONELY HIGHWAY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1963)
If Presley songs can be neglected, this is among them. Elvis recorded this travelling song in Nashville in 1963 and it was featured in the film, “Tickle Me” (1965). Was used as the opening track on “For The Asking - The Lost Album” (1990). Wonder if JXL has heard it. “I love that song, that’s Doc’s,” said Mort Shuman.

ANOTHER COUNTRY ANOTHER WORLD (Doc Pomus - Phil Spector)
• Crystals (1963)
• Bobby Day (1963)
Considering their friendship and their hits together, it’s surprising that Doc Pomus had little to do with the artists Phil Spector was recording for his Philles label. This slow ballad, like “Uptown”, is about a doomed relationship. The question of race was only touched on in “Uptown” but here it is to the fore:
“My friends all tell me that I’m wrong
To love a guy that don’t belong.”
Heady stuff for 1963. He’s probably from Spain, considering the overworked castanets. Jack Nitzsche also scored a version of the same song by Bobby Day.

JUDY JUDY JUDY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Johnny Tillotson)
• Johnny Tillotson (1963)
Johnny Tillotson went to see Doc and Mort for some songs: “They were playing me demo after demo. They may have been doing it too fast because I passed on a couple of good songs. We went through all their songs and then they said, ‘Well, do you want to write something with us?’ I thought that writing with them would be something so they played me a little baroque melody and I went ‘Judy, Judy, Judy, I love you’. I told them about this girl I dated called Judy Yancey and that was it. The record went to No.l in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, and I sang it in the film, ‘Just For Fun’, which also featured Bobby Vee and Freddy Cannon.” “Judy, Judy, Judy” was the B-side of his US Top 20 hit, “You Can Never Stop Me Loving You”.

CAN’T GET USED TO LOSING YOU (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Andy Williams (1963) (US Pop 2, Adult Contemporary 1, UK2)
• Bobby Darin (1963)
• Jimmy Justice (1963)
• Martha and the Vandellas (1963)
• The Beat (1983) (UK 3)

One of the songs that Johnny Tillotson missed at the Brill Building was “Can’t Get Used To Losing You”, but he wasn’t the only one. Doc Pomus: “‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’ was turned down by ten other artists and Andy Williams hated the song. Bob Mersey, the A&R man, loved the song and coerced Andy Williams into doing it. Andy was singing the other side on his television show until it became a hit.” Excellent cover version by Bobby Darin on his LP, “18 Yellow Roses And 11 Other Hits”. The Beat added a Two-Tone rhythm but the lead singer did his best to sound like Andy Williams.

ALL YOU’VE GOT TO DO IS TOUCH ME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Vee (1963)
Underrated teen ballad with a great title line that Bobby Vee sang in the film, “Just For Fun”.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF LOVE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Freddy Cannon (1963)
Freddy Cannon works through his stocks-in-trade - yelping, stabs from the horns, singing over percussion - in this two minute song from the UK film, “Just For Fun”. All concerned were working to a formula here.

SHALL I TELL HER (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dionne Warwick (1963)
Burt Bacharach had been impressed with Dionne Warwick when he heard her singing background on a Drifters session. He used her as the vehicle for the sophisticated pop songs that he wrote with Hal David. Doc and Mort wrote “Shall I Tell Her” for her LP, “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and it sounds like a Bacharach song with the character in the midst of a typical Hal David dilemma.

Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman were very successful songwriters, but around the corner was the British Invasion.

“I always believed in magic and flying and that one morning I would wake up and all the bad things in my life woud be bad dreams And I would get out of the wheelchair and walk and not with braces and crutches. And I would walk down all the streets and no one would stare at me and young girls in see-through dresses would smile at me, dazzled by my appearance and glow.”
(Doc Pomus, Journals, c.1980)

From 1959 to 1963, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman had an impressive list of hits - and some very impressive misses as well. They had not been as prolific as some of the Aldon writers but they were satisfied with their income. Mort has since complained that he left the business dealings to Doc “and he was even worse than me.” As long as Mort had enough money for his seven day weekends, he was happy. At one stage, he said to Doc, “Let’s just write a big Christmas song. If we wrote another ‘Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, we could retire on that.” Good idea and despite their considerable output, there is not a single Christmas song.

But the scene was changing. At the start of 1964, the Beatles appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and their invasion of North America had started. At first they covered their favourite American records (though nothing by Pomus - Shuman) but then they concentrated on their own material. John and Paul were highly competent songwriters, as polished as anyone in the Brill Building, but it has never been appreciated that their influence permeated to the other groups, who chose to use their own material instead of established songwriters. Often those groups were not up to the task and John and Paul had unwittingly put their favourite songwriters out of work. In addition, Bob Dylan had a fresh approach to pop songwriting, often making incisive social comments on events of the day. Will Bratton: “Doc used to say that Bob Dylan screwed everything up - there were now a thousand people who thought they were Bob Dylan.”

VIVA LAS VEGAS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1964) (UK 17, US 29)
• Dead Kennedys (1980)
• Bruce Springsteen (1990)
• Z.Z.Top (1992)
• Shawn Colvin (1995)
• Billy Swan (1999)
Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret were put together for a lively romantic comedy, “Viva Las Vegas”, and their sizzling dance routine to the title song is among the highspots of Elvis’ career. Although the song only lasts 2 minutes and 20 seconds (and is much faster than Mort’s voice and vibes demo), it packs a tremendous amount of lyrics. If you want to catch them all, listen to Shawn Colwin’s slower treatment from 1995: it loses the song’s excitement but this could represent a punter who has been gambling for several days without sleep.
It is surprising that Elvis Presley’s torrid version did not do much better than it did as it is a great record, and the title song from a hit movie to boot. Well, not quite the title song. It was assumed that the good people of the UK would not understand a foreign word like “Viva” and so the film was retitled “Love In Las Vegas”. It’s okay now as a recent film from the Flintstones was called “Viva Rock Vegas” and its title was unchanged for the UK. In what seems like a scene from a cartoon movie, you can now get married in the Viva Las Vegas chapel.
The 1990 revival from Bruce Springsteen comes from the NME charity album, “The Last Temptation Of Elvis”. It may be Bruce Springsteen but Elvis is still The Boss for me. Strangely, Z.Z.Top’s biggest UK single was with “Viva Las Vegas”, but in Elvis’s day, they would never have got into Las Vegas looking like that. Billy Swan’s accappella “Viva Las Vegas” is on his CD, “Like Elvis Used To Do”, which was recorded at the Sun Studios. I love the song although it is a glorification of a totally artificial world. The Dead Kennedys’ punk version was used in the film, “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”.

I NEED SOMEBODY TO LEAN ON (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1964)
A surprisingly sad and bluesy number to find in the midst of the mayhem of “Viva Las Vegas” and sung very well by Elvis. You could imagine this being sung by Frank Sinatra in some late-night bar and if Frank had done this, it could have been a standard.

ALWAYS IS A LONG LONG TIME (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Michael Holliday (1964)
Michael Holliday recorded this country song towards the end of his life in 1963. It was issued the following year as the B-side to “My Last Date With You” - there’s a tasteless title for a single. It is a pleasant country-styled song and Michael sounds at times like Pat Boone.

I’M GONNA CRY TIL MY TEARS RUN DRY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Scotty Fagin)
• Irma Thomas (1964)
• Linda Ronstadt (1998) (As “Cry Til My Tears Run Dry”)
Irma Thomas, who recorded the original vocal version of “Time Is On My Side”, is an excellent soul singer and I love the sultry way that the record starts. It works itself into a rave-up, which is okay, but it would have been better as a soul ballad.

(WHEN) I GET SCARED (Doc Pomus - Vini Poncia -Pete Andreoli)
• The Lovelights (1964)
Anders (Andreoli) and Poncia were the Lovelights and the record was made for Phil Spector’s Phi-Dan label, though not produced by him. Also in 1964, Phil Spector and Doc Pomus made a single as Harvey and Doc called “Oh Baby”, which was written by Spector.

WRONG FOR EACH OTHER (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman0
• Andy Williams (1964) (US 34)
Egged on by the international success of “Can’t Get Used To Losing You”, Doc and Mort had to come up with something similar a follow-up single. Sadly, “Wrong For Each Other” was just that. It is not a bad song, but it is hampered by the same string arrangement as the hit single. Still, riding on the back of “Losing You”, it did make the US Top 30. The record incidentally was arranged, conducted and produced by Bob Mersey, another example of the Mersey sound.

Mort Shuman spent some time in the UK and wrote several hit records - “Little Children” (a 1964 No.l for Billy J. Kramer was written with the looniest of all American writers, J. Leslie McFarland), “Here I Go Again” (with Clive Westlake for the Hollies, also in 1964), “Love’s Just A Broken Heart” (with Kenny Lynch and the English version of a French song by Michelle Vendome, for Cilla Black, 1965), “Sha-La-La-La-Lee” (with Kenny Lynch for the Small Faces, 1966) and “What Good Am I” (with Kenny Lynch for Cilla Black, 1967). Mort: “Kenny Lynch said I couldn’t write rock’n’roll anymore and so I knocked off ‘Sha-La-La-La-Lee’ in about 20 minutes. I was pretty angry at the time.”

Doc told me that his favourite Lennon-McCartney song was “A World Without Love”, a hit for Peter and Gordon. You can see why. It is very close to being a Brill Building song and the image, “Please lock me away”, is one of Doc’s recurrent themes, that is, being confined to a room. Doc’s attempts at British beat were nowhere near as successful. Perhaps he should have written blue songs for the Rolling Stones.

LUCY (YOU SURE DID IT THIS TIME) (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Dennisons (1964)
The one song that Pomus and Shuman gave to a Mersey group. I know I’ve heard it in the past but as I can’t remember anything about it, it can’t have been distinctive.

TELL ME WHAT CAN I DO (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Tony Orlando (1964)
• Rattles (1964)
“La Bamba” meets Merseybeat but Tony Orlando would have to wait for a new Dawn until he was back in favour. Far better than the rewrite of “Twist And Shout”, “Shake And Scream”, written by Mort and Kenny Lynch, which Kenny recorded.

LET’S DO THE FREDDIE (Doc Pomus - Dave Appell)
• Chubby Checker (1965) (US 40)
Is it possible that a record could be worse than “Shake And Scream”? Yes. Doc Pomus was watching Freddie and the Dreamers’ comic dancing on “Shindig” and he called Dave Appell and they wrote a dance song around it, “Let’s Do The Freddie”, over the phone. It was recorded in haste and then quickly released. As if that wasn’t cynical enough, Freddie himself had his own record, “Do The Freddie”. According to Billboard: “New dance on the scene and Checker’s got it! Exciting number done in his familiar style.”

GIRL HAPPY (Doc Pomus - Norman Meade)
• Elvis Presley (1965)
Elvis’ stock was falling faster than a dot.com share and he didn’t do anything to correct the position himself. Just as Doc was doing the Freddie, Elvis was doing the clam. Doc wrote the title song for “Girl Happy” with Norman Meade, a pseudonym for the producer, Jerry Ragovoy. Ragovoy could write good songs, notably “One Way Love” and “Time Is On My Side”, but this wasn’t one of them. Still, it did reflect Elvis’ lifestyle: maybe he wanted the song to counteract the rumours that he was gay.

In 1965 Doc had a bad fall down the stairs and became bedridden. His father had a heart attack and his mother broke her hand and they were all in the same hospital at the same time. Because a bed wasn’t available, Doc found himself in the cancer ward: “It was terrifying and sad. I learned more about mortality and human courage in that short period than I have in the rest of my life put together.” A family who owned a stationery store found out that Doc was a songwriter and kept bringing him pads and pens. Their 12 year old daughter was dying of cancer and her favourite artist was Bobby Darin. Doc asked Bobby for an autographed album for her. Three hours later, Darin who was rehearsing for “The Steve Lawrence Show” in New York came to see her.

In the midst of his problems, Mort left Doc to go to Europe, this time for good, and his wife Willi files for divorce. Doc had spinal surgery and when he emerged, he was confined to a wheelchair. He never remarried but he did have a long-time companion, Shirlee Hauser. Mort had had an extraordinary single life including a temptuous marriage to a girl who had been in the Israeli army. Later, he married a French girl, Maria-Pia, and they had four children, Maria-Celia (born 1970), Barbara (1975), Maria-Pia (1983) and Eva-Maria (1987).

ONE WOMAN MAN (Doc Pomus - Vini Poncia -Pete Andreoli)
• Garnet Mimms (1965)
• Swinging Blue Jeans (1967)
Garnet Mimms was an excellent R&B shouter, whose records were produced by Jerry Ragovoy. Impassioned performance but despite a good title line, not a great song. The co-writer, Vini Poncia, was to write many songs with Ringo Starr.

MORE THAN A MIRACLE (Doc Pomus - Jerry Ragovoy)
• Garnet Mimms (1966)
More Deep Soul from Garnet Mimms. Good self-pitying song in which Garnet bizarrely shares the limelight with a trombone. Good song that would have suited the Righteous Brothers.

Jerry Ragovoy also wrote with Mort Shuman, notably Janis Joplin’s “Get It While You Can” and Dusty Springfield’s 1974 single, “What’s It Gonna Be”.

PETTICOAT WHITE (SUMMER SKY BLUE) (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Vinton (1966)

ALL THE KING’S HORSES (AND ALL THE KING’S MEN) (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Bobby Vinton (1966)

WHAT EVERY WOMAN LIVES FOR (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1966)
More dross, this time for “Frankie And Johnnie”: “What every woman lives for is to give her love for a man”. I’ve not discovered a cover version by Germaine Greer. Written a couple of years before it was released. Mort Shuman: “Without knowing it, I was probably contributing to the total decline of Elvis and contributing to mine as well, and then I said, ‘That’s the end of it.’”

NEVER SAY YES (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1966)
Another dopey film song, this one from “Spinout”: “Here’s the secret of my success, Never say yes.” Elvis may abhor committments but then he had several million dollars. Mort said that his name should not be on this song as it is all Doc’s.

WORLD OF BROKEN HEARTS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Sissie (Cissy) Houston (1966)
• Amen Corner (1967) (UK 24)
• Elvis Costello (1982)
The original version of “World Of Broken Heart” by Cissy Houston was produced by Doc and Mort, but sorry to say, I have never heard it. This tearjerker was covered with Andy Fairweather Low fronting Amen Corner. Elvis Costello’s arrangement is way over the top.

DOUBLE TROUBLE (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Elvis Presley (1967)
Elvis performs this in an opening scene in a London nightclub - amazing what you can do in films, he was, of course, on a Hollywood lot. Elvis sings, “I’m the sorriest sight in town”. Indeed.

The Pomus and Shuman partnership was in double trouble by then. Mort Shuman had discovered Jacques Brel and was starting to write English lyrics for his songs. A few months after writing “Double Trouble”, he was writing “Jackie”, “Amsterdam” and many other classic songs for Scott Walker. In 1968 he appeared in the off-Broadway musical, “Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris”, which he wrote. It transferred to the West End and gave me one of the best evenings I have ever spent in the theatre. Mort sang the extraordinary “Funeral Tango”, and I had never heard anything like it.

The song “Double Trouble” includes gambling references. Doc’s new preoccupation was playing cards. All it takes is a strong heart and a nerve of steel. Doc was getting more unhealthy: because of his increasing girth, friends called him Buddha.

BRING HIM BACK (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Sissie (Cissy) Houston (1966)
• Dusty Springfield (1967)
If I didn’t know the title of Dusty’s song, I wouldn’t have caught it by listening as the title comes out each time in a frenzied torrent. Good song though, being a Latin-styled party number with a full-blooded instrumental passage that owes something to “River Deep, Mountain High”. If Dusty had worked on this a little more, it could have been a hit single.

SAY THOSE MAGIC WORDS (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Bob Feldman - Jerry Goldstein - Richard Gottehrer)
• McCoys (1966)
• Birds (1966)
The McCoys, like Sloopy, were hanging on but not even this song with its five composers (Doc and Mort and their producers) could restore them to favour. Sounds like the McCoys, but the most exciting bit has been lifted from “Twist And Shout”. Only five composers, did I say? The Birds were a UK beat group featuring Ronnie Wood.

YOUR CONCEPTION OF LOVE (Doc Pomus - Toni Wine)
• Sandy Posey (1968)
Toni Wine wrote” Groovy Kind Of Love”. Perhaps pretentious but probably tongue in cheek.

BAD GIRL (Doc Pomus - Toni Wine)
• Romy Bishop (c.1968)
Okay but can't make up its mind whether to be a pop song or a blues.

EACH AND EVERY PART OF ME (Doc Pomus - George Fischoff)
• James Darren (1968)
• Bobby Lewis (1968) (US Country, 27)
• Jimmy Frey (1969) (As 'Als Een Kus Naar Tranen Smaakt', Belgium No.2)
• Heath Hampstead (1970)
• Geno Washington (1971)

THIS WORLD IS YOURS (Doc Pomus - Riz Ortolani)
• Jack Jones (film soundtrack, 1968)
Doc’s first and only lyric for an international blockbuster. “The Battle For Anzio” starred Robert Mitchum and Peter Falk and the British Film Institute’s “Monthly Film Bulletin” said at the time, “‘The Battle For Anzio’ starts off on the wrong foot with a ludicrously irrelevant song behind the credits, and thereafter it hardly puts a foot right.”

(IF YOU NEVER HAVE A BIG HIT RECORD) YOU’RE STILL GONNA BE A STAR (Doc Pomus - Myles Chase)
• Jackie DeShannon (1973)
Not heard this.

SORRY I’M SORRY (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman - Michel Malory)
• Mort Shuman (1977)
Now here’s an oddity. Mort takes an unrecorded song written with Doc and performs it in French, but leaving the title in English.

Doc Pomus: “I couldn’t relate to the over-amplified music of the late 60s and it wasn’t hard for me to back off being a songwriter.” But he took it philosophically, “I thought I’d had a ten year run with hot dice.”

His regular partner, Mort Shuman, had gone to Europe and his sometime partner, Phil Spector, had his own problems. Doc Pomus: “Phil worked hard on getting everyone to hate him, and they did. He had a lot of emotional problems but he was fine with me. I was in a lot of financial trouble once and he sent me a blank cheque. He told me to write in whatever I liked. I took $3,000, so I have soft spot in my heart for him. He and Joe Cocker remind me out of each other. It is like a giant puppet master is pushing them in all directions, but underneath they are gentle spirits.”

Doc Pomus became Bette Midler’s singing coach, although he did not write for her. He introduced her to the Atlantic producer, Joel Dorn, who produced her first album. Doc Pomus: “I saw her at the Improvisation Club and her first words to me were, ‘You know, I slept with your partner, he’s nothing.’ I helped to get her act together with her pianist, Kenny Hirsch and I saw her three or four times a week for 18 months. We got very very friendly and when she paid me, she said, ‘Half is for you and the other half is a loan.’ I didn’t hear from her from her for some time because Phil Spector told her that I’d said she had no talent. Phil was always doing things like that. I would have said other things about her but I would never have said that.”

With his son Geoff being born in 1963, Doc had two children to bring up and he needed money for their upkeep and also for his disability. For many years, he was gambling to make his living. Will Bratton: “I met him in 1974 when he was gambling to pay for his kids’ tuition. He was running card games. He was more or less a professional gambler and he would provide all the products - cigarettes, drink, sandwiches, cards. I was a 20 year old dating his daughter and Doc would say, ‘Make sure you don’t come back until tomorrow.’ There would be guys asleep on the couch with guns - they were coming from the last card and they were waiting for his card game to begin. It was an interesting situation for me. The guns had to be handed in but you could see the holsters. Doc said they were on a winning streak and that is why they were there.”

Doc Pomus may have been an expert gambler, but he was wasting his talent. In 1977, Dr John went to the bathroom to shoot up and Doc realised that he needed help - or rather Dr John realised that Doc needed help, depending on whose account you believe. Whatever, the two doctors needed each other, and they produced some of their best work together. Doc also loved the stuff he wrote with Willy DeVille.

Was Dr John in card school? Will Bratton: “Well, he wasn’t but he was just the type of character who would be, and so was Willy DeVille in terms of their demeanour and life experiences. Mac (Dr John) is a street kind of guy with a lot of brains. I would often see them together. Doc wasn’t doing so well with royalties and his handicap ate up a lot of money and he lived in a two room apartment. I remember being in the other room while Doc and Mac writing a song and Shawn Colvin was singing the demo for them.”

Doc also held songwriting seminars in his apartment. Each of the 20 songwriters would have a weekly assignment like a love song or a novelty song, which were then critiqued by the class. Sometimes Dr John, Steve Forbert, Tom Waits or Marshall Crenshaw were around to add their comments. Doc would say, “I look at music one way. It’s either soulful or it’s not. I can tell where a songwriter has sat with a line for two weeks. To me, any artist who sits there analysing the lines should be a mathematician instead.”

He also had some stringent comments about inspiration: “The roots of pop music should be classical, jazz, blues and evergreen pop writers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, not rock’n’roll writers like Chuck Berry and even myself. That is why the current music scene is so silly and meaningless and second rate.”

Doc’s main taste never strayed from the blues. In 1977 Doc produced an album for the Kansas City swing of Roomful Of Blues and he also produced the first sessions for the Austin group, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Doc Pomus: “‘Rolling Stone’ called me a talent scout and I got tapes in the mail for about two years after that. I don’t like getting unsolicited tapes as I might steal something subconsciously.” On the other hand, Doc always had his number listed and anybody could call.

LOVE THE DEVIL OUT OF YA (Doc Pomus - John Durrill)
• Cher (1977)
From her LP, “Cherished”.

ELVIS, THE LEGEND LIVES ON (Doc Pomus - Bruce Foster)
• Rick Saucedo (1978)
Bruce Foster, a recording artist for Millennium Casablanca, was asked to write some songs with Doc Pomus for his new album. They considered writing some new rock’n’roll songs for Elvis Presley, but Elvis’s death put paid to their plans. A few months later they were asked to write the title song for a Broadway musical about him, which also went to Vegas, starring a pint-sized Elvis in Rick Saucedo. Doc: “I was so embarrassed about being connected with it. I told them I’d rewrite the show for them.”

Elvis had a lot to do with Doc finding his footing again: “In the two or three years after Elvis’ death, my royalty statements were enormous.”

Joel Dorn wrote the theme for the WWF Wrestling Challenge with Doc, and he invited Doc Pomus and Dr John to write a new national anthem for a film he was producing. The movie never happened, although the song was written and it showed the two doctors that they could work together. Dr John: “We’d sit down at his pad and start talking shit about what was happening or had happened in our lives. The next thing you know, as if by magic, Doc would write something down, and a song had begun.”

DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY WITH YOU (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1978)
The opening track on Dr John’s “City Lights” album combines his choppy “Such A Night” style with Doc’s preoccupations, his love of talking and his wish to be dancing. Dr John: “A real Docism tune.” The album itself was a semi-concept album, said Dr John, “a rambling sort of thing, like what had happened to me and a lot of other musicians, explaining how life is on the road and how you can get caught up in various tricks.”

HE’S A HERO (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1978)
Another “City Lights” track.
About the kind of people who are heroes to night time people.

CITY LIGHTS (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1978)
• Johnny Adams (date unknown)
Doc: “We were calling the album, ‘Too Many City Lights’ and they called it ‘City Lights’ which destroys the concept.” The title track shows what they had in mind:
“Too many city lights,
Too many midnights
On the wrong side of life.”

TANGO PALACE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1979)
The two doctors had a concept for another album, “I Thought I Heard New Orleans Say”, where the parade would stop at different places like the tango palace and a disco. In “Tango Palace”, they tell of a couple who work in a beauty parlour by day and hit the sleazy spots by night looking real sharp and dancing real hot:
“Every town’s got a tango palace,
Old timers chasing broken dreams,
Living out b-movie themes.”

BON TEMPS ROULER (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1979)
Let the good times roll as the two Docs celebrate the joys of New Orleans. Archetypal Dr John from the “Tango Palace” LP and nothing wrong with that.

I THOUGHT I HEARD NEW ORLEANS SAY (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1979)
A sideways tribute to the jazz standard, “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”.

LOUISIANA LULLABY (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1979)
Based on a lullaby that Dr John’s father used to sing to him.

The actor John Belushi tapped Doc for his knowledge of the blues. Doc Pomus: “John loved the blues and he was a great historian of rock’n’roll, memorabilia freak. I helped him get the band together for ‘The Blues Brothers’. I got them Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy and Belushi sent me some champagne for giving him a vote of confidence.” Indeed. Among the extras on “The Blues Brothers” DVD is a “Making Of…” feature in which Matt credits Doc for his contribution.

THAT WORLD OUTSIDE (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1980)
The Doc Pomus and Willy DeVille songs sound like Bruce Springsteen is paying homage to the Drifters and Phil Spector. In this song, there’s harmony at home but trouble outside and Willy is about to fight back:
“Just hold me close and see me through,
So when tomorrow comes, I’ll have the strength to fight.”

YOU JUST KEEP HOLDING ON (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1980)
Very good hook but the song doesn’t go anywhere.

JUST TO WALK THAT LITTLE GIRL HOME (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1980)
Excellent. Very much an updated Drifters, though who in 1980 would have referred to a possible partner as a “little girl”? Will Bratton: “It wasn’t a big seller but it sounds like a standard to me. It has the Drifters influence and a country influence too. I would love to hear Dwight Yoakam do it.”

THE VICTIM (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• B.B. King (1981)
Women trouble: “Bad enough to lose your self control, But every time you lose your bank roll.” A good opener to B.B. King’s Grammy-winning album, “There Must Be A Better World Somewhere”. Almost as good as the title song itself.

YOU’RE GOING WITH ME (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• B.B. King (1981)
“Don’t let me kiss you unless you’re going all the way.” Typical B.B.King funk.

LIFE AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A PARTY (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• B.B. King (1981)
Good time track with Hank Crawford taking an alto sax solo.

BORN AGAIN HUMAN (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• B.B. King (1981)
A happy song but you would never know it. More an improvisation around a groove with Hank Crawford, Fathead Newman and B.B. himself taking solos.

THERE MUST BE A BETTER WORLD SOMEWHERE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• B.B. King (1981)
• Irma Thomas (1995)
• Dr John (1995)
• B.B. King and Dr John (1997)
The melody and its sentiments are taken from the hymn, “This Earth Ain’t No Place I’m Proud To Call Home” that Dr John knew from New Orleans. Doc Pomus: “I think it is one of the best lyrics I ever wrote and it is also my philosophy of life.”
“Sometimes I wonder just what am I fighting for,
I win some battles but I always lose the war,
I just keep right on stumbling in this no man’s land out here,
But I know, yes, I know, there must be a better world somewhere.”
Doc was writing songs that demanded a commitment from the artist and B.B. King was so moved by the lyrics he had been given that he was crying at the session.
Irma Thomas performs the song as a smoky ballad and the stop-start middle eight is particularly effective. Dr John also takes it slowly and then two years his duet with B.B. King finds them trading vocals.

PICTURES AND PAINTINGS (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Charlie Rich (1982)
Everything may have gone wrong, but the memories remain. Charlie Rich’s voice has the weariness necessary for this jazzy track.

BLUES TRAIN (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Joe Turner (1983)
This was the title track of a new album by Big Joe Turner and the Roomful of Blues that was nominated for a Grammy, and Doc wrote the liner notes. Doc; “Producing an album for Joe Turner was one of the highpoints of my life. Big Joe Turner’s small talk was all about his troubles. I told him, ‘If you weren’t in a world of trouble, what could you sing about?’”

When Doc was talking to Joe Turner, he learnt that he had had no royalties from “The Blues Brothers”, even though it featured his song, “Flip, Flop And Fly”. Doc made a few phone calls and found that the money was going, incorrectly, to his ex-wife. Another cheque was about to be sent and soon Joe was $25,000 the richer. He also set him up with gigs in Tramps and the Lone Star Caf�. Will Bratton: “His idol had become his friend and he really loved him.” When they heard of Joe’s problems, both John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd asked if there were other blues singers they could help.

FROM THE HEART (Doc Pomus - Ken Hirsch)
• Johnny Adams (1984)
The title track from Johnny Adams’ 1984 album is a beautiful stately declaration of love:
“Treat me wrong, treat me right,
Sleep through the day, stay all out night,
As long as you love me from the start
From the heart.
Tell me the truth, tell me some lies,
You don’t have to make alibis
As long as you love me from the start
From the heart.”
This song could easily be a No.l song for someone.

I DON’T KNOW YOU (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1985)
Don’t know it.

GIVE A BROKEN HEART A BREAK (Doc Pomus - Ken Hirsch)
• Johnny Adams (1985)
From the album, “From The Heart”. Don’t know it.

EASY STREET (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1985)
From Mink DeVille LP, “Sportin’ Life”. Don’t know it.

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS DYING (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1985)
Try this:
“Your eyes are still that shade of smoky grey,
They don’t melt now when they look my way,
Such a shame that nothing feels the same,
My heart’s crying,
Your eyes are lying,
There’s something beautiful dying.”
Just sounds like the Righteous Brothers, doesn’t it? Willy DeVille sings this ballad with a Spector-styled backing. With a more distinctive melody, this could have been a world-beater.

WHEN YOU WALK MY WAY (Doc Pomus - Willy DeVille)
• Mink DeVille (1985)
From Mink DeVille LP, “Sportin’ Life”. Don’t know it.

In 1985 Doc wrote the theme song for a US disability organisation, Easter Seals, and it was performed by Ray Charles. Doc commented, “This is the age of the underdog with the minority fighting and achieving recognition and rights and respect. But my minority group, the physically handicapped, are still stumbling around, falling down subway stairs and high pavements, and staying home because half the good places aren’t accessible and half of the good people never see us and know us. If I wasn’t a hit songwriter, I might have ended up on relief in some third-rate hotel room with a visiting nurse coming in to help me once in a while.”

Mort Shuman visited Doc in 1985 and they decide to write together again. Doc records in his journal, “We’ll work together again if he ever gets back from France. I wish I could be more enthusiastic but after 20 years of absence, part of me remains cautious and sceptical.” Will Bratton: “Mort had been promising to come over but he never did. They did get together in the mid-80s and wrote a couple of songs. It was like they were brothers, they were very, very glad to see each other.”

NEW YORK CITY BLUES (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
• Chuck Carbo (1993)
• Dr John (1995)
Big Joe Turner died in 1985 and it is likely that the songs on Jimmy Witherspoon’s album, “Midnight Lady Called The Blues” were intended for him. The album is dedicated to Big Joe and Jimmy is backed by a band to die for including David “Fathead” Newman, Jimmy Crawford, Dr John and Bernard Purdie. The opening cut is a homage to New York City:
“Dr Clayton says, Oh, this must be heaven,
’Cause they sure got some angels here.”
But why, when the place is so great, should the song be called “New York City Blues”?
The New Orleans vocalist, Chuck Carbo, does a fine job on his 1993 album, “Drawers Trouble”, which incidentally opens with the song, “Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On”. Ummm. Dr John included two of his songs with Doc on his album of standards, “Afterglow”, and they fit just fine. Love Dr John’s opening piano solo and the big band arrangement by John Clayton is excellent.

THE BARBER (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
This is brilliant. A wonderful saucy lyric from Doc - “They call me the barber, ’Cause I got a barber’s pole” and “And I’ll even use my blower until you’re satisfied.” Definitely not one for Fabian, but I’m surprised that other artists haven’t picked up on this.
As well as the seven songs, Doc also wrote a poem for the sleeve of the LP,
“Now that Big Joe is gone,
Spoon is the last shouter left to carry on,
And carry on this Barber sure can do.
He gives the deepest part of himself to me and you.”

BLINDED BY LOVE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
• B B King (1995)
Johnny Adams and his musicians recreate the feeling of those smokey, big band blues ballads:
“You hope against hope,
You try to drink the bars dry,
And the worst thing about it,
She never even told you why.”
B.B. King, as he did so often in the 1990s, pulls all the stops out and destroys the song’s poignancy in the process.

HAPPY HARD TIMES (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
• Johnny Adams (2000)
Not much change in tempo on the “Midnight Lady” album but they’re all good songs. Here Jimmy reflects on his past: it’s been a tough life with his woman but they had each other. At first it sounds like he is talking about years ago but the long rap about answerphones suggests Doc has something else in mind.

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN EAST ST LOUIS (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
Standard blues about love going wrong.

MIDNIGHT LADY CALLED THE BLUES (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
Lovely imagery in the title track of Jimmy Witherspoon’s album:
“She’s kinda bad news,
That midnight lady called the blues.”

BLUES HALL OF FAME (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Jimmy Witherspoon (1986)
The singer has had the blues so often that he should be in the Blues Hall Of Fame. As it happens, Doc had done much to help establish such a project.

THERE IS ALWAYS ONE MORE TIME (Doc Pomus - Ken Hirsch)
• Joe Cocker (1986)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
• B.B. King (1993)
• Harry Connick Jr (2001)
I see this as Doc’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and someone someday is going to have a smash hit with it. The song is a wonderful hybird between blues and gospel with Doc’s most expressive lyric:
“No matter what you’ve been through
Long as there’s breath in you,
There is always one more time.”
And try this:
“Cutting corners is only a state of mind,
Keeping your eyes closed is worse than being blind.”
B.B. King with his voice down the mix and thunderous percussion loses its way. Harry Connick with Rev. James Moore packs passion with gospel feeling. Joe Cocker recorded the song as the title cut for an album, but when the album wasn’t released, it was wasted as a bonus track on a single. Doc wanted to write more songs with Kenny Hirsch, but he lived in California and only came to New York a few times a year.

HELLO STRANGER (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Marianne Faithfull (1987)
• Walter “Wolfman” Washtington (2000)
Doc Pomus: “Marianne and Mac were doing a rehearsal in New York before they recorded the song. She had lost her tape and Mac had forgotten how it went. He was trying to play for her, trying to remember it and it was different everytime he played it. I don’t know how she knew what was going on and it was a miracle that it came out as well as it did. She sounds like she has been through it all and she does it marvellously. She is in the tradition of the great cabaret singers.”
Marianne half-speaks and half-sings this sultry song in which she tries to comes to grips with the changes in her life. Doc advanced the concept of this song with “The Real Me”.

A WORLD I NEVER MADE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1987)
• B.B. King (1982)
• Ruth Brown (1991)
Another introspective blues with gospel overtones - Doc’s getting good at this! - and some excellent lyrics.
“I’ve turned so many ways, I’m spinning like a top,
I wish that I could get off or that the world would stop.
I’m a stranger and afraid in a world I never made.”

In 1988 Pete Frame visited Doc’s flat for an interview for “The Atlantic Story” on BBC Radio 1: “It was in a nice part of New York but it was a complete mess. He had got a helper-cum-nurse with him and she had high heels and the way they clicked on the tiled floor must have driven Doc mad. Doc wore a big flowery shirt as if he wanted to disguise his weight, rather like Alison Moyet, and he had very short legs with little tiny, handmade shoes.” Doc wore very smart, alligator shoes. They lasted years simply because he never walked in them.

By then Doc was enjoying life, he had his birthday parties, which were packed with industry friends. His long-time companion, Shirlee Hauser, helped him enjoy life as best he could. He wrote in his journal, “I realise I only feel safe and secure with Shirlee.”

Lou Reed befriended Doc Pomus in 1988. “I really loved Doc. A mutual friend said we should meet, and I only lived two blocks away so I started traipsing round. I went to his writers’ workshops and it was a real thrill for these people to have their songs edited by him. He was like the sun. He was one of those people that you feel good when you’re around them. You could be feeling bad, and you go visit them and they say two words and you feel good.”

BODY AND FENDER MAN (Doc Pomus - Duke Robillard)
• Johnny Adams (1988)
Doc wrote this dirty blues with Duke Robillard from Roomful of Blues and it contains some of his wittiest lyrics:
“I don’t care if your body’s brand new
Or if it’s been knocked around.
I swear they’re all the same, baby,
When you turn them upside down.”
Great fun.

KING CRY BABY (Doc Pomus - Dave Alvin)
• James Intveld (miming for Johnny Depp, 1989)
“King Cry Baby” is effectively the title song of the Johnny Depp film, “Cry Baby”, a pastiche of 50s teen flicks. At nearly four minutes, “King Cry Baby” may be too long for a rockabilly song, but it is a dynamite track with Holly hiccups, a wild sax break and fine lyrics:
“I had my first cigarette before I could talk,
I was strumming this guitar before I could walk.”
Wonder why Johnny Depp didn’t sing it himself as he has made records.

SLOW ROLLIN’ MAMA (Doc Pomus - B. Marshall - Andy Paley)
• LaVern Baker (1990)
Doc wasn’t asked to write for Madonna on the “Dick Tracy” soundtrack, but he went one better with a new song for LaVern Baker. He wrote the song with Brian Wilson’s musical partner, Andy Paley, but the sexual euphemisms are pure Doc:
“I’m a slow rollin’ mama and I need a big, long rolling pin,
To get ready and just right for my red-hot oven.”
And the way LaVern sings, that’s a rhyme.

In 1991 Doc Pomus became the first white person to receive the Pioneer Award of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. On 20 February 1991 there was an all-star tribute to Doc at the Lone Star Caf�, where Doc had a regular table. Sadly, not for much longer.

Doc had contracted lung cancer but it was only diagnosed a few weeks before he died. Ray Charles sent him a tape of him singing “There Must Be A Better World Somewhere”. Doc knew that he was dying. Lou Reed went to see him and said he would replace the television with a widesceen colour one. Doc said, “Lou, this is not the time for long-term investments.”

One of Joe Turner’s records was playing as he died. Doc died 14 March 1991 at the NYU Medical Centre surrounded by his family. By all accounts, his funeral was an uplifting occasion. “Save The Last Dance For Me” was played. Jimmy Scott, a great but forgotten R&B singer and friend of Doc’s, sang Doc’s favourite song, “Someone To Watch Over Me”, at the funeral. He did it so effectively that he was given a recording contract by Sire Records. It was though Doc, even in death, could lend a helping hand.

Mort Shuman wrote Doc’s obituary in a loving piece for “Now Dig This”: “It’s difficult to write about someone who was your mentor, professor, big brother, sometime father figure, asshole buddy, and partner all at the same time.”

Phil Spector’s young son had told him not to be sad when Doc had died because he was in heaven now walking with God. Doc Pomus was enshrined in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. Said Phil Spector in the induction speech, “Even with all the physical discomfort, he still approached life with happiness and the giving of love and friendship.”

At the time of Doc Pomus’ death, Dr John was completing the production of Johnny Adams’ album, “The Real Me”. What was going to be a glorious tribute to Doc’s on-going talent became his epitaph.

THE REAL ME (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
The title song of a glorious celebration of Doc Pomus’ new songs, although the CD calls it a retrospective. This track features just Johnny Adams’ voice and Dr John’s piano but it’s enough. A spellbinding track with Doc Pomus laying himself on the line:
“You got through all the surprises,
All those differences and disguises,
And found the real me,
The real me.”

IMITATION OF LOVE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
• Dr John (2001)
Clever idea for a song. Everything is going right in a relationship, but something is wrong. Nice, resigned version from Dr John but Johnny Adams’ diction is much better.

MY BABY’S QUIT ME (Doc Pomus - Joe Kookoolis)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
• Titus Turner (date unknown)
A mid-50s Joe Turner feel for this witty song. Everything’s going wrong in the house because his girl has left:
“The dust is three inches thick,
Ain’t a clock in the house saying tick.”

SHE’S EVERYTHING TO ME (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
A tender declaration of love with gospel-style Hammond organ from Dr John:
“I know that face may be just another face to you,
But every line and wrinkle says what I put her through.”

I UNDERESTIMATED YOU (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
A talking blues with some witty lines about someone who has been duped. Back in the 50s, Doc Pomus once lived on Sunrise Highway, so make what you will of this:
“I used to live on Sunrise Highway but now I live on Lonely Avenue,
’Cause you see now, woman, I underestimated you.”

PRISONER OF LIFE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
Johnny Adams sounds very like Doc himself on this philosophical ballad.

THE NIGHT IS A HUNTER (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1991)
Effectively a blues ballad, but an unusual riff is running through it. Neat lyrical idea about someone “hiding from the midnight hour”:
“The night is a hunter, it finds me all the time,
It captures my soul and then it captures my mind.”

After writing a West End show for Adam Faith, “Budgie - The Musical” with Don Black, Mort recorded his first English CD, “Distant Drum”, which was produced by Rod Argent and Pete Van Hooke. His song, “Jackie”, had been revived by Marc Almond. Mort, like Doc, died from cancer in 1991, Mort dying on 2 November 1991. Their last song together was released after his death. Mort sang in his own “Funeral Tango”:
“The old women are there, too old to give a damn,
They’ve even brought the kids who don’t know who I am.”

YOU CAN’T MAKE A WOMAN LOVE YOU (Doc Pomus - Mort Shuman)
• Mort Shuman (1991)
Don’t really like the arrangement from Rod Argent, but I love the song.
“No matter how you try and try,
If her heart won’t sing and cry,
You can’t make a woman love you.”

In 1992 Lou Reed released an album of songs about the deaths of Doc and another friend Rita, “Magic And Loss”: It is full of gallows humour. Writing of Doc’s funeral, he says,
“I don’t think you’d have liked it,
You would have made a joke,
You would have made it easier,
You’d say, Tomorrow, I’m smoke.”

SHADOWS (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1994)
Typical of the spooky Dr John tracks with some cryptic lyrics:
“I’m a nightmare or a dream
But I’m never what I seem,
I’m a ghost or maybe not,
I’m just somethin’ you ain’t got.”

In 1995 the tribute album, “Till The Night Is Gone”, was released with the royalties going to the Doc Pomus Financial Assistance Grant Program, which supports elderly bluesmen down on their luck and is run by the Rhythm And Blues Foundation. Solomon Burke told me that he was proud to record “Still In Love” for the album: “What a great man, what a powerful man, he and his daughter are wonderful people. He didn’t have a disability to me, he didn’t have a handicap, he had a situation. And he worked it out.”

Although it is an excellent album, everyone of Doc’s friends couldn’t be included. Willy DeVille was particularly unhappy at being omitted. He said, “They had Dr John but they didn’t have me and Ben E. King and we were two of his best friends, and so I don’t think it can be called a real tribute.” Also, another more contemporary friend of Doc’s, Curtis Stigers, told me he was sorry to be excluded.

DREAMS MUST BE GOING OUT OF STYLE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Johnny Adams (1995)
A reflective MOR ballad with a bluesy style about love gone wrong.

I’M ON A ROLL (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1995)
A wry look at life. Everything was going wrong, but all of a sudden, everything is right.

There was a tribute show to Doc in 2001 at St Mark’s Church, a music venue in New York City. Lou Reed, Dr John Garth Hudson and Jimmy Scott took part. The evening included his lesser known songs and readings from his journals.

TO HELL WITH LOVE (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John () (need date)
Short Cuts LP

DESTINATION HEARTBREAK (Doc Pomus - George Fischoff)
• Ruth Brown (1997)
Excellent ballad from Ruth Brown from her “R+B=Ruth Brown” album. She’s always heading for the same old place, the destination being Heartbreak. Fine trombone from Delfeayo Marsalis from the remarkable Marsalis family. I hadn’t heard Delfeayo before but he is famed for writing rave sleeve notes for his brothers whilst pretending he is impartial!

THE BRIGHTEST SMILE IN TOWN (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (1999)
Dr John has a stockpile of songs he wrote with Doc Pomus to draw upon. Don’t know this.

IN THE NAME OF YOU (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (2001)
The jazz drummer and bandleader Art Blakey said, “People love the musician, but they don’t know the guy.” This line impressed the two doctors who wrote this slow jazz-funk tribute to him.

ONE TWO A.M. TOO MANY (Doc Pomus - Dr John)
• Dr John (2001)
A good closer for Dr John’s “Creole Moon” album about a musician who has been playing clubs for years and years: “It’s getting harder to last the night.” Dr John says in the CD booklet, “I have these hip memories of Doc, and this song makes me think of him, especially when it goes through the changes. You can hear New Orleans Street Fonk, Senegalese repercussions, even an R&B feel. This one’s for you, Doc.”

In 2002, the Reading country singer Terry Clarke mentions Doc and Mort in his new song, “Manhattan Blues”.

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