From race records to rhythm and blues records to permutation of rhythm and blues records called soul records, which was another step in the evolutionary process of greater acceptance for black music, whatever shape or form it was in. When they wanted the word soul, it was the first time that black artists really indicated they resented being called rhythm and blues artists. Which is easily understandable. Because when a jazz artist or a pop artist is singing, it didn't matter whether they sang a blues song or an opera, they were a pop artist. Well, why were people singing rhythm and blues, rhythm and blues artists. Or why were black people labeled rhythm and blues artists. No fair, okay. This whole movement of acceptance was getting better and better and more and more recognition was given, being given to black artists, not calling them race artists or folk artists or country artists or blues artists. Soul, feeling, sincerity. With the assassination of Martin Luther King a whole art form was victimized by a world-shattering event. It had nothing to do with music. It had absolutely nothing to do with music, but a whole art form and a whole accepted level of communication was defrocked and cast aside. And it's been replaced by nothing as worthy from the point of sincerity and emotional conveyance, but that's not to belittle the growth of the popular black music or rap music or the music that has since replaced it. But it if were, whether or not it will ever gain the prominence or the sincerity of soul music -- soul music was still the dream, still the ambition, still the aspiration of anybody who was telling a story. Rap today, is like reading a newspaper or listening to the local event, in Selma, Alabama that you won't read about in Des Moines, Iowa, but if you buy the record, you know what they're talking about. That doesn't replace the sincerity or the emotional conveyance that went with this art form that was destroyed and wiped out.

What's the link between that and Martin Luther King? What did that do?

The sensation of a person preaching in the white man's language was the strength of Martin Luther King advocating freedom, “I have a dream.” He was no different than anybody standing on a pulpit in any Southern church a hundred years ago or today, except that instead of going through the pyrotechnics like you see on some of the television preachers today, instead of saying B-I-B-L-E, send your dollar, I'll give you your chrysanthemum bulbs and a family bible and a pair of glasses, just put your hand on the radio and I'll help you feel better, he was more sincere. He was more to the root, and he had the facility and the courage of the conviction of looking anybody straight in the eye and saying, we're entitled to this and we deserved it and we're not mad at you -- when, that was taken away, there was nobody to fill the gap. And he and everybody around him became history. People associated with delivering the message he was delivering, that were inspired by the message he was delivering, were destroyed or put to rest the same way he was. And that went with the whole creative art form, the people who were singing gospel soft, and the people who were non-pyrotechnic about what they were doing and the message they were delivering, basically…

So tell us about "There Goes My Baby," how Wexler thought it was crap and what you thought about it, and how it was a different kind of sound?

"There Goes My Baby" was a Leiber and Stoller invention, I mean, back in the '47, '48 period, Atlantic dared to employ a tenor saxophone along with an almost gospel type quartet doing a pop song and everybody thought we were crazy. For the next ten years, that was the fashion. If you didn't have a sax solo or a sax obbligato in the middle of a vocal record, you weren't making the right kind of record. Leiber and Stoller aspired to using a classical type orchestra with a group called the Drifters, who originally were gospelly motivated by gospel type music who had become pop and novelty, but were still a warm sounding gospel inspired type group. And they came up with this song called "There Goes My Baby" that they aspired to, dared to put strings on, and orchestral percussion. I mean, this was unheard of. You didn't have drums and honking horns and a saxophone do-wah-do-wah-do-wah-do-wah, what kind of record were you making? Well, Leiber and Stoller stuck to their guns and they made this record, I don't know, with perhaps 20 strings, with the cellos doing -- [sings] -- which was a steal from Beethoven, and this, they, that, they have all these classical flags and signature and timpanis and ______ drums -- [sings] -- I, they went the whole hog. And when the record, the acetates we normally make from tapes, so that the record company could hear what they were doing, and what they, when Jerry Wexler heard this thing, he said, get that piece of trash out of here. I mean he couldn't stand it. And he and Ahmet would sit there and argue about this and saying that, and Ahmet was saying, man, it, it's, it could be a hit and Jerry said, listen to it, bom domp -- he was emulating the sound, he couldn't stand -- I mean there was no drums, there was no bass pattern like -- [sings] -- there was nothing like that. Here's all these classical strings and timpani, and -- [sings] -- what is this thing? They couldn't understand it. So it got battered around in the office for quite a while before, uh, Jerry said, hey we got this much money and the group needs a record out and this and that, I mean Ahmet was selling Jerry, and this, Jerry is saying we haven't got time, who wants to put the record, and they're arguing and say -- let Dowd spend an hour with them on the damned thing, if they can make it sound like something, we'll put it out. So Leiber and Stoller showed up with this multitrack tape. And we dicked around and EQ'd and diddle-dawdled with it, and I made an acetate, and I sent it over and I don't know, I don't know if Jerry ever listened to it. I can't speak for him. He might have just thought, what's the use of arguing, put the damned thing out. I don't know if Ahmet ever listened to it. All I know is that the next, the next phone call was like, master it and put this on the backside and we'll put it out. Another record in Atlantic Record's famous history of innovation, had just been released.

What about working with Leiber and Stoller? Can you describe a little bit how Mike and Jerry were at a session? What their style was?

I learned something from them --

I learned something from working with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller that was precious, and I was witness to it for perhaps two or three recording sessions before I sat down, because I had enough of their confidence, or I felt that I could talk to them this way. We busted up laughing. They absolutely killed me. They were so well prepared when they came in to record that Jerry Leiber knew where every syllable of the lead vocal was supposed to be. And he knew everything that Mike Stoller had played to accompany when he was doing the demo that they would give to the artist. Now if they then hired four, five, or 25 musicians to record, the worst thing a producer can do is alienate the musicians. I mean I was witness to some dumb producers saying, I don't like the guitar part, and the guitar player being a very sophisticated guitar player turns around and says, here, play me what you want me to play, and the guy who said it, can't play a guitar, he doesn't know how to hold one. I mean, when you alienate musicians like that, you, you provoke one, and ten others are saying, you tell him, George, you fix his -- get even, right? Jerry and Mike had a way of doing this. But it was only between them. Because Jerry would be in the control room with me, and Mike would be at the piano, and in the middle of the take, Jerry would hit the talk back and say, I don't like what the hell it sounds like -- what are you playing, Mike? I mean, that's not what you played when I was making the demo? And Mike hasn't played a damned thing different. He's saying play it back to me so I can hear what you're talking about. Now, he knows, all the musicians in the studio are saying listen to that son of a bitch picking on Mike, right? And Mike is sitting there, and he's saying, maybe he means you should play like this. Now, if Jerry had said, you play this part, the guy would say, up your bird, right? But if Mike has been whipped and the musicians identify with Mike, now they're willing to go with whatever Mike says to play. So the two of them had a way of putting musicians down and getting good out of it.

Dicker. We were dickering.

Just say the word by itself, dickered.

Dickered. Dickered around, dickered around, dickered around.

And once again clean, before and after. The word. I need the space so I can edit it in.

Dickered. Dickered. [miscellaneous talk] Dickered. Dickered.

Let's start talking about how Leiber and Stoller would rehearse and be so well prepared for the Coasters recordings.

Leiber and Stoller, uh, a throwback to the vintage major record company A and R man would insist that the artist that they were going to record was well prepared, so that they, Leiber and Stoller, knew what the artist was capable of and knew every breath the artist was going to take and where the artist was going to take it, so that they could then make the arrangements and hire the musicians to fit the song. Their strength in this field led them to create a group called the Robins, later known to everybody as the Coasters. And when Jerry and Mike would sit down and write a song for the Coasters, whether it was "Charlie Brown" or "Yakety Yak," "Poison Ivy," "Along Came Jones," "Shopping For Clothes," "Little Egypt" and on and on and on and on, or even other songs, people's songs, like "Zing went the strings of my heart" and things like that, they would sit, Mike at the piano, Jerry on the other end of the piano bench, singing the song over and over again, so that Mike would inspire Jerry to sing it this way and that way, and then when the permutations were done, they would teach the group every note, every phrase, every nuance of what they wanted. So when they pulled up and said we want to record the Coasters next Tuesday or Wednesday, at three o'clock, or five o'clock, when they came into the studio, Mike knew what he had to do, Jerry knew what the group was supposed to do, the group to a man knew what they were supposed to do, and the only thing Leiber and Stoller had to worry about was the four or five musicians they hired and whether they would fit the bill to capture the spirit of the song they were doing. They were prepared to the T. And everything was done live. Very seldom did we overdub a Coasters record. They were all done on the fly. I had musicians spoil takes because they were laughing so hard when they heard the lyric go by, that they'd stop playing or fall off a chair and crack up laughing, and we'd have to start again.

You said you'd be laughing so hard you had tears in your eyes?

Oh, I had. There would be times like about the second time or third time through -- I mean, King Curtis when he was called to play on their records once or twice and he heard what their style was, he started making numerous things that the minute Jerry and Mike heard, they said that's what we want. And all of a sudden you had this chicken type tenor sax horn solo going on in the middle of this song, that when he played it the first time through the Coasters busted up, and when they couldn't come back in singing, I looked in, I'm laughing, and I'm thinking, ah, you're victimized by your own crud, you deserve it, right, because I'm sitting there laughing because they're laughing because somebody picked up on what was making other people laugh and make them fall out where they were supposed to be singing. It was like party time, and everybody's putting the other guy on, trying to break them up collectively. They were having fun all the time, all the time.

"Stand By Me" was destined to be a hit and it was a freak on my part. Uh, it was the first date that I did in the brand new Dowd-designed multitrack Atlantic major studio facility. As far as I understand, the date was originally destined to be done by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. And they had done the preparation, the arrangement concept and so forth. There was some altercation among Atlantic Records, Leiber and Stoller, and some other people going on, whether it ever led to litigation or whatever it ever led to I can't tell you, but the person from Atlantic Records who was responsible for paying like the 40 musicians that I inherited on our first recording date in the brand new studio was Ahmet Ertegun. So Ahmet and I did "Stand By Me" at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning and it was a shakedown date for the studio to see if it was going to work, but it was an expensive success, "Stand By Me."

Is there anything you remember about the instrumentation that was unusual?

Working on that recording session, it was a great test for the studio. I was accustomed to working in large rooms whenever Atlantic dates did, were doing dates outside in Capitol or Coastal or any other studios in New York where we involved 15, 20 strings, five horns, eight background singers -- this was my first opportunity to do it in a studio that I had designed to accommodate this kind of thing in the Atlantic tradition. I looked and I had a typical four, perhaps five piece rhythm section. I had about 15 or 20 strings, I had four or five background singers, I had two percussionists. I had a marimba, I had a scraper, I mean I had a bunch of tinker-toys and a little triangle and so forth and I just looked and I thought, they're putting me to the wall -- what, you know, they couldn't make it simple the first time around. A trio, or anything like that -- they had to throw a symphony orchestral percussion section at me in the middle of 20 strings and so forth.

So that leads us naturally into Phil Spector. Tell us about your impressions of Phil when you first encountered him and his talking about the wall of sound.

Before we go on, I'll give you the anecdotes I know.

We're still rolling.

We're rolling. Okay. Phil Spector was an accomplice, using the word loosely of Leiber --

Phil Spector was an acquaintance of Jerry and Mike's. Remember, this country, this is, we're talking 1959, 1960, '61, this country is 2780 miles wide and the East Coast and the West Coast knew very little about what each other was doing. And Leiber and Stoller came East, they were originally from the East, moved out to California. When they came back East, Jerry Leiber described to me, he said, man, it's like being reborn again. He says, like, when you live in California too long, it's like going out there as a prune, prune, and you come out as a goddamned grape, you shrivel up and you dehydrate. You know, I mean, he was talking about the cultural rub and the climate and everything else. They came back East, he said, I feel like I've been born again somewhat. Phil Spector was somebody that they were familiar with out there who was in a group called I believe the Teddy Bears. Reputed a brilliant guitar player, wonderful singer, arranger, concept man and so forth. Uh, Ahmet was on to him through a man who managed and published Leiber and Stoller's work, Lester Sills, who also I think might have represented Phil or been sensitive and aspired to representing Phil. Long story short; Phil was brought East, courtesy of Atlantic and Leiber and Stoller, and has residence in the studio that I am building to accommodate Atlantic Records, because when they moved into the office space, the studio had to be built while we were running a business. So we were doing dates outside and we were building the studio ASAP. And Ahmet described to me, and said, this chap is going to be here, and he's going to audition different groups that he will ultimately record here. And as I said, we didn't have a facility running quite yet, but Phil was able to go into the studio any time he desired and demo anything, because he was going to demo it with a handheld cassette recorder or something else, I didn't have anything running yet. Come 11, noontime, 1 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock -- I might have six or seven groups stacked in the Atlantic reception area, waiting for Phil Spector. And they all walk in and say, Mr. Spector told me to be here at 11 o'clock, oh, Phil Spector told me to be here to record today and -- I'd have 30 people waiting for Phil Spector. And the son of a B wouldn't show up for three days. And I went to Ahmet, and I said, hey, I don't know who this guy is, but we're going to be shoplifted blind -- I mean every guy who stands around here after four hours, an ashcan disappears, the head of a fader disappears, what the hell is going on here? And Ahmet's, don't worry, he knows what he's doing. I might have seen Phil Spector four times in a year. But I saw every group that he ever heard of in New York City. And then finally I had the pleasure of working with him in the studio, and he was brilliant. Phil Spector, when I told the story about if some producer were dare dumb enough and not a good enough musician to say, I don't like what you're playing, and the musician would turn around and say, here, show me what you want, right? Phil Spector would say, I don't like what you're playing, I'll be out there in a minute. And he'd walk out into the studio, pick up a guitar and say, this is what I want. And you better learn to listen to what the hell he's playing, because he's right. He had that facility about him. And he would just sit there and capture all these things, and then when you heard the record, and you realized that there's no use trying to get him to change it or him to play it. He'd overdub it three or four times and keep on adding his ideas, and the things that were initially recorded would be pushed further and further back into obscurity. He wasn't recording multitrack, he was recording mono. And everything was [makes noise], further and further, so that because it was not articulate, it sounded bigger and broader because it was hairy, and because it was out of focus it sounded enormous and it was actually the result of too much overdubbing that created the Spector sound.