16 Quotes by Jerry Leiber

I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.

Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.

Our songs did not transcend being R&B hits. They were R&B hits that white kids were attracted to. And if people bought it, it became rock & roll. That's marketing. Why couldn't it still be R&B? The bass pattern didn't change. The song didn't change. It was still 'Yakety Yak' and 'Searchin'.'

Red-hot songs were born on the black streets of Baltimore, where I delivered five-gallon cans of kerosene and ten-pound bags of coal.

Listen to any cantor, any good hazan, sing and you can hear a little bit of Ray Charles going on.

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.

Elvis was incredibly cooperative. He would try anything. He wasn't a diva, no prima donna. When it came to work, he was a workhorse.

Elvis Presley, you can't define him in a couple of sentences, but he was a country boy and he was very respectful.

Teenagers especially are very, very conscious about what is hip and what is lame and what is square and what is out and what is in, you know. And, I mean, I grew up right there in the middle of a black culture. And I knew dead-on what it was.