ABSTRACT
Songs like “Kansas City” and “Hound Dog” are often taken to be forms of “authentic” black musical expression, yet their authors were two nineteen-year-old white Jewish teenagers, both of whom felt a powerful attraction to the culture and music of African Americans. As songwriters and “independent producers” for artists ranging from the Coasters and the Drifters to Big Mama Thornton and Elvis Presley, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were responsible for many of the rock ’n’ roll era’s most enduring hits. As Fox points out, Leiber and Stoller’s situation also throws the unusual racial dynamics surrounding 1950s rock ’n’ roll into sharp relief. Much like Johnny Otis, the white musician, producer, and composer of “Willie and the Hand Jive,” Leiber and Stoller’s experiences prove that notions of race in America have been informed as much by culture as they have by the color of one’s skin.
