That weepin`, swingin` 1950s country-blues sound that broke your heart and made Elvis a legend wasn`t born on a bayou porch or in Nashville`s dark honky-tonks.
It came from Brooklyn.
And it came from a man who has been best known for being unknown:
Brooklyn-born songwriter Otis Blackwell.
Elvis` name is on the records, but Blackwell is the man who wrote ”Don`t be Cruel,” ”Return to Sender” and ”All Shook Up” for Presley, and ”Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis.
Blackwell is the quiet black songwriter who spun gold for white musicians during rock music`s halcyon days. Now, more than 30 years later, Blackwell, 56, is no longer silent. He`s preaching to young songwriters across the country, including a recent session in Chicago, about music business scams and how often songwriters get ripped off.
”It`s no different today from when I started writing and singing for $5 a night,” Blackwell said. ”You got to watch everybody, or they`ll take your song and leave you with nothing. I`m successful because I learned the hard way.”
The hard road for Blackwell started in a small movie theater near his childhood home in south Brooklyn. Unable to afford the nickel for admission, he took a job sweeping up and doing odd jobs while watching reel after reel of Tex Ritter, Gene Autry and a slew of lesser cowpoke singers.
The Brooklyn Cowboy was born. ”It got to the point where I loved country music,” Blackwell said. ”It was all I heard, because I couldn`t afford records. Like the blues, it told a story, but it didn`t have the same restrictive (12-bar) construction. A cowboy song could do anything.”
But the market for country singers was a little thin in Blackwell`s neighborhood. So at 15 he began writing and singing the blues in tiny bars for $5 a night. He`s the first to laugh and admit that it was a short-lived career.
”We made a trip to Philadelphia, and I found out how good the audiences in my neighborhood were,” he said. ”When you hit `em with your best stuff, and they just look at you, well, it was time to go back home.”
It was the early 1950s, the big bands were fading and single artists-Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Pat Boone-were dominating record sales. Publishers were looking for any songwriter who could pen the right words or the special sound that could make a hit record sell a million copies.
”My ideas came from love comics mostly,” Blackwell said. ”I`d go through two or three books of them looking for song titles, then I`d write a song around the title.” It was music that combined the influence of blues artists Chuck Willis and Larry Darnell with the cowboy music that obsessed Blackwell: a heavy bass sound that had to have what Blackwell describes as
”the guitars and that twang.”
”Back then,” Blackwell said, ”a lot of people got the breaks, but they didn`t get the money. After I lost my first song to a man who never paid me more than $50 for it, an uncle of mine said, `Whatever you do, don`t sell out a song.` And I never have.”
It`s the same message Blackwell now gives young songwriters. Though he has collected on most of his royalties, there is no way to count the number of checks Blackwell never will see.
”Until I started writing for Presley, I didn`t know the rules,”
Blackwell said. ”There were songs that got sold, and I never saw a nickel. You can make a million or you can wind up busted, depending on how much you know about the music industry.
”I wrote seven songs two days before Christmas in 1955; one of them was
`Don`t Be Cruel.` I quickly went into New York to try to sell them, so I could have some money for Christmas,” Blackwell said. ”Mo Gail and Goldie Goldmacher, the president and manager of Shalamar Music, gave me a $25 advance for each one.”
Two weeks after New Year`s, 1956, Goldmacher called Blackwell and told him Presley was going to record ”Don`t Be Cruel.” As Blackwell remembers it: ”I said: `Who is Elvis Presley?` But Goldie said not to worry, because the kid was hot.”
First-year royalties put more than $80,000 in Blackwell`s pocket as
”Don`t be Cruel” shot to the top of the charts for 11 weeks, a record that still stands.
Blackwell also recorded demonstration disks of his later songs for Presley, revealing an incredible likeness between the two men`s styles and voices. Presley`s musicians, who couldn`t read a note of music, mimicked the recordings while Presley followed Blackwell`s cues right down to every quiver and inflection of his voice.
”He had the hips and the hair and the skin,” Blackwell said. ”I had the music. He got famous, and I got rewards. I think that`s fair.”
