Born On This Day- April 25th... Lyricist Jerry Leiber

Jerome Leiber is one of the most important & influential songwriters of the 1950s, 1960s, & 1970s. He was a member of The Brill Building stable, & along with his writing partner- Mike Stoller, wrote some of the biggest hits of their era:
There Goes My Baby
Hound Dog
Kansas City
Smokey Joe's Cafe
Yakety Yak
Poison Ivy
Charlie Brown
Ruby Baby
Stand By Me
Jailhouse Rock
Love Potion #9
Searchin
Young Blood
Is That All There Is?
On Broadway
Spanish Harlem

Here is one of my favorite Leiber lyrics:

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes in a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
& they say
That she once was a winner in a contest

Pearl's a singer
& they say that she once
Cut a record
They played it for a week or so
On a local radio
It never made it

She wanted to be Betty Grable
But now she sits there
At the beer stained table
Dreaming of the things she never got to do
All those dreams that never came true

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes in a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She stands up when she plays the piano
In a nightclub

Pearl's a singer
She sings song for the lost & the lonely
Her job is entertaining folks
Singing songs & telling jokes
... in a nightclub

Jerome Leiber 1977