Five years before they hit paydirt when Elvis covered “Hound Dog”, back in 1951 Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were scraping a living from penning gin-joint fodder for minor R&B labels. Bull Moose Jackson’s “Nosey Joe” typifies the duo’s nascent repertoire, which blended 12-bar boogies with black slang and bawdy double-entendre.
This, the first of three compendiums, traces their triumphant rise from those same jukejoints to the Paris Olympia four years later, where “little Sparrow” Edith Piaf gives “Black Denim Trousers And Motorcycle Boots” a peculiar Gallic twist.
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