{"id":49137,"date":"2016-09-26T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T07:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=49137"},"modified":"2016-09-25T22:22:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T05:22:00","slug":"the-hit-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/the-hit-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hit Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"otis-blackwell\"<\/a>Even if you\u2019ve never heard of Otis Blackwell, you\u2019ve almost certainly heard his music\u2014he was one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century. Here\u2019s the story of the most famous songwriter most people have never heard of.<\/em><\/p>\n

TIGHT CHRISTMAS<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the mid 1950s, Otis Blackwell was a struggling songwriter who pressed pants in a New York City tailor\u2019s shop during the day to make ends meet. He\u2019d been selling songs since he was a teenager and had made a few contacts, but he just wasn\u2019t making it in the business.<\/p>\n

On Christmas Eve 1955, he was so broke that he went and stood on the sidewalk in front of the famous Brill Building (then the unofficial headquarters of the American recording industry), in the hope of spotting someone he knew and cajoling them into buying a song or two so that he\u2019d have some money for Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was standing outside the building with no hat and holes in my shoes. And it was snowing,\u201d Blackwell told an interviewer in 1979. When Leroy Kirkland, an arranger for a popular rhythm and blues artist named Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins, walked up, Blackwell asked if he could sing him a few of the songs he\u2019d written.<\/p>\n

COME ON IN<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was Christmas Eve, after all, so Kirkland gave Blackwell a quick listen…and was impressed enough that he invited Blackwell into the building and introduced him to Al Stanton, who worked for a company called Shalimar Music. Stanton not only bought six songs on the spot for $25 apiece, about $220 today, (an advance against future royalties), he signed Blackwell to a publishing contract and gave him some space to work in the office.<\/p>\n

Not a bad day\u2019s work, but the really big news came two weeks later when the president of Shalimar, Aaron \u201cGoldie\u201d Goldmark, called Blackwell and told him that RCA was interested in one of the $25 songs, the one titled \u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel.\u201d They wanted it for one of their rising young stars\u2014a 20-year-old singer named Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Who is Elvis Presley?\u2019\u201d Blackwell remembered years later. \u201cBut Goldie said not to worry, because the kid was hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

ELVIS, IMPERSONATOR<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a common practice in the music industry for writers to create quickie \u201cdemo\u201d records of their songs to make it easier for the recording artists to pick the ones they wanted. Unlike many songwriters, Blackwell was also a talented pianist and singer, so he recorded his own demo of \u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel\u201d instead of having studio musicians do it, which was how demos were usually recorded. He played the piano, sang, and beat on a cardboard box to simulate the sound of drumming.<\/p>\n

If you were a recording star and didn\u2019t know how to read music, how would you learn a new song? Elvis couldn\u2019t read music, so he listened to the demo tape of \u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel\u201d over and over again until he\u2019d committed the notes, the lyrics, and all of the subtleties of Blackwell\u2019s performance to memory. It took him 28 takes to do it, but when he finished, Elvis had recorded a single that was for all intents and purposes an exact imitation of Blackwell\u2019s performance on the demo tape.<\/p>\n

But Blackwell didn\u2019t just pen a song for the impressionable artist who would soon become the king of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, he was also instrumental in helping him develop the singing style that would put him on top.<\/p>\n

B IS FOR BLOCKBUSTER<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel\u201d was released on the B-side of another Elvis song titled \u201cHound Dog.\u201d In those days B-side songs were like B movies: RCA saw \u201cDon\u2019t be Cruel\u201d as second-rate compared to \u201cHound Dog,\u201d and unlikely to get a lot of airplay or become a hit. That was why they didn\u2019t release it as a single on its own.<\/p>\n

RCA couldn\u2019t have been more wrong\u2014\u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel\u201d not only went to #1 on Billboard magazine\u2019s pop singles chart just like \u201cHound Dog\u201d did, it spent nine weeks in the top slot, compared to four for \u201cHound Dog.\u201d \u201cHound Dog\/Don\u2019t Be Cruel\u201d went on to become the most successful double-sided single in pop-music history. Blackwell didn\u2019t do too badly, either\u2014by the time the next Christmas Eve rolled around, he\u2019d earned more than $80,000 (about $700,000 today) in royalties from his $25 song.<\/p>\n

Blackwell must have felt that he was the one who\u2019d gotten a big break that day when Leroy Kirkland brought him in from the snow, but in truth it was Shalimar Music that had really scored, because Blackwell soon revealed himself as one the most talented and prolific songwriters the industry had ever seen. He became known within the Brill Building as a guy who could write a song about anything.<\/p>\n

Anything? Legend has it<\/a> one day Al Stanton put that claim to the test after he dropped a bottle of Pepsi he\u2019d bought from the vending machine. Now it was too fizzy to open\u2014if he popped the top he would have sent soda spraying everywhere\u2014so he set the bottle down next to Blackwell and told him, \u201cWrite about this!\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether that’s really the genesis of the song or just a story the studio made up after the fact, it, too, became a #1 hit and one of the biggest songs of Elvis\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Even the Post Office could serve as a source of inspiration for a song\u2014in 1962 Blackwell co-wrote another one of Elvis\u2019s big hits after seeing the message \u201cReturn to Sender\u201d stamped on a piece of mail that had been sent to the wrong address.<\/p>\n

HOWDY, PARDNER<\/strong><\/p>\n

So how did Blackwell become such a prolific songwriter? An African American who grew up in a home that played and sang gospel music, he also developed an interest in rhythm and blues as a young man and was a huge fan of the singing cowboys in the movies, people like Gene Autry and especially Tex Ritter (father of John Ritter, who played Jack Tripper in the 1970s sitcom Three\u2019s Company). Blackwell liked the singing cowboys so much, in fact, that when he was a teenager he got a job sweeping up the local movie theater just so he could hang around and listen to them all day. \u201cLike the blues, cowboy songs told a story, but it didn\u2019t have the same restrictive construction,\u201d he explained many years later. \u201cA cowboy song could do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

BY THE BOOK<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blackwell\u2019s wide-ranging musical interests were fertile ground for the types of stories he wanted to tell with his own songs, and believe it or not comic books were what gave him the titles for many of his songs. He\u2019d flip through stacks of romance comic books looking for catchy phrases that would make good song titles, and as soon as he found one he liked, he\u2019d sit down and write a song to go with it. As for the lyrics, Blackwell believed that less was more: He figured that if the lyrics to a song were clear enough and simple enough for a five-year-old child to sing them, the song had a good shot at becoming a hit.<\/p>\n

MUSIC MAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blackwell wrote or co-wrote \u201cGreat Balls of Fire\u201d and \u201cBreathless\u201d for Jerry Lee Lewis (who copied Blackwell\u2019s demos just as closely as Elvis had), \u201cHandy Man\u201d for a singer named Jimmy Jones (James Taylor covered it in 1977), and more than 1,000 other songs that have been recorded by artists as diverse as Carl Perkins, Ray Charles, The Who, The Judds, Cheap Trick, Neil Diamond, Tanya Tucker, Otis Redding, Billy Joel, Frankie Valli, Mahalia Jackson, Pat Boone, and Dolly Parton.<\/p>\n

Did Blackwell even write \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d for Boy George and Culture Club? He certainly thought so\u2014the chorus to \u201cKarma Chameleon\u201d was so similar to the chorus in \u201cHandy Man\u201d that he sued Culture Club in the mid-1980s for copyright infringement and reportedly won a small settlement. \u201cWe gave them 10 pence and an apple,\u201d Boy George joked in an interview.<\/p>\n

DO IT YOURSELF<\/strong><\/p>\n

In all, Blackwell has been credited with selling more than 200 million records over the years, and he might have sold a lot more than that had the Beatles not turned the music industry on its ear in the early 1960s by writing their own songs instead of hiring songwriters to do it for them. Their success emboldened a lot of other recording artists to start recording their own songs, too.<\/p>\n

Even Blackwell tried to get in on the act in the late 1970s when he recorded an album titled These Are My Songs<\/em> and went out on tour. But the man who created so many hits for other artists never did have a hit record of his own. Not that that really bothered him\u2014Blackwell had made an indelible mark on popular music, made a lot of money in the process, and had a lot of fun as well. Or as he once put it in an interview, \u201cI wrote my songs, I got my money, and I boogied!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em>. This behemoth of a book <\/i> is jam-packed with 600 pages of all-new articles (as usual, divided by length for your sitting convenience). In what other single book could you find such a lively mix of surprising trivia, strange lawsuits, dumb crooks, origins of everyday things, forgotten history, quirky quotations, and wacky wordplay? Uncle John rules the world of information and humor, so get ready to be thoroughly entertained.<\/p>\n

Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute<\/a> has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 15 million books in print, the Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n

If you like Today I Found Out<\/a>, I guarantee you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books, so check them out<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader Even if you\u2019ve never heard of Otis Blackwell, you\u2019ve almost certainly heard his music\u2014he was one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century. Here\u2019s the story of the most famous songwriter most people have never heard of. TIGHT CHRISTMAS In the mid 1950s, Otis Blackwell was a struggling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":49139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,2781],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-entertainment","category-featured-facts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49137"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49162,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49137\/revisions\/49162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}