Jerry Leiber (April 25, 1933 – August 22, 2011) and Mike Stoller (born March 13, 1933) were American songwriting and record producing partners. Leiber and Stoller’s initial successes were as the writers of such crossover hit songs as “Hound Dog” and “Kansas City”. Later in the 1950’s, particularly through their work with The Coasters, they created a string of ground-breaking hits that are some of the most entertaining in rock and roll, by using the humorous vernacular of the teenagers sung in a style that was openly theatrical rather than personal, songs that include “Young Blood”, “Searchin’”, and “Yakety Yak”. They were the first to surround black music with elaborate production values, enhancing its emotional power with The Drifters in “There Goes My Baby”. In all, Leiber and Stoller wrote or co-wrote over 70 chart hits. They were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. (More from Wikipedia)
The girl group era attracted some of the greatest songwriters of all time: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, etc. Carole King would go to become one of the outstanding singer-songwriters in music history; her Tapestry album is one of the largest selling albums ever, with more than 25 million copies sold worldwide.
(October 2013)
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The song was written by the prolific songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. “Is That All There Is?” has little in common with their better known songs like “Jailhouse Rock”, “Hound Dog”, “Kansas City”, or the numerous hits by the Coasters; although songs that the two co-wrote with others, such as “Stand by Me” and “On Broadway” have some of the flavor of this song.
(January 2014)
