A dual portrait of the music team that shaped rock-and-roll music in the 1950s and 1960s describes their humble origins, their relationships with such performers as Elvis Presley and the Coasters, and their record-setting collaborative achievements. The snappy, oral-history-style dual autobiography of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who brought Brill Building patter and production values to R&B chart supremacy in the early 1950s, probably owes much of its zing to longtime celebrity biographer and “with” author David Ritz. Their story appears in alternating blocks headed “Leiber” or “Stoller,” which can’t help suggesting the call-and-response structure of two of their hits for the Coasters, “Charlie Brown” and “Yakety Yak,” songs that lightheartedly sketched urban teen predicaments. Leiber and Stoller scored as big commercially as songwriters could at the time through their association with Elvis (they penned “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog”), but their arguably best songs were hits for black performers, including Ben E. King (“Stand by Me”), the Drifters (“There Goes My Baby”), and Big Mama Thornton (“Hound Dog” before Elvis whitened it up). Celebrated today mostly as R&B and rock hitmakers, in their extended heyday, they also wrote for MOR pop stars, jazz artists (Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”), and anybody who needed a well-crafted song. --Mike Tribby Jerry Leiber was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 25, 1933, and Mike Stoller was born in Queens, New York, on March 13, 1933. They first met in Los Angeles in 1950, moved to New York in 1957 and returned to L.A. in 1989, where they both still reside. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. David Ritz is the only four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award. He has collaborated with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and Don Rickles. He also cowrote, with Gaye, the song “Sexual Healing.” “ I knew all about Leiber and Stoller. They were those bad white boys who wrote the blackest songs this side of the Mississippi. I loved what they did.” RAY CHARLES “Jerry and Mike were brilliant; they were the poets, producers, and visionaries who took the business into a whole new dimension.” JERY WEXLER “As a songwriter, I was deeply influenced & inspired by Leiber and Stoller. They showed me what musical creativity is all about.” SMOKEY ROBINSON “I studied the masters and, believe me, when it came to turning out songs & making records, Leiber and Stoller are the founding fathers.” ISAAC HAYES “I fashioned myself as something of a writer and producer - that is, until I witnessed Jerry and Mike at work. They redefined the art.” AHMET ERTEGUN