Cradle of Rock

And how it was babied along

Hound Dogl They wrote it.

Kansas City (They got a crazy way of lovin' there and I'm gonna get me some). They wrote it. And Charlie Brown (Who walks in the classroom cool and slow?/ Who calls the English teacher "Daddy-O"?). They wrote that too. As well as Searchin'. And Poison Ivy (You 're gonna need an ocean/ Of Calamine lotion ...). And Smokey Joe's Cafe. And Yakety Yak. And Saved.

It is one small measure of the astonishing gifts of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller that all these songs have already slipped so securely into contemporary tradition that they seem less like the work of writers than the product of a shared musical history. That is as it should be, since Leiber and Stoller always worked best close to the roots. In a sense, they even became part of the roots, a fact richly demonstrated in a new book, Baby, That Was Rock & Roll (Harvest/HBJ; $6.95), that is part song compendium, part photo album, part biographical appreciation, and all long past due.

Transplanted Easterners who started collaborating while they were still teenagers in Los Angeles, Leiber and Stoller, who are now both 45, shared an uncanny gift for crossing musical bloodlines. Both loved black rhythm-and-blues music, and could write it with such glancing wit and thorough funk that their songs sounded fresh off the streets. It is worth keeping in mind that at the time of the first major Leiber-Stoller hit, Hound Dog, released by Willie Mae ("Big Mama") Thornton in 1953, pop music had its own kind of enforced segregation. The sudden, seismic synthesis of mainstream pop and down-home rhythm and blues was performed by Elvis Presley, who took R&B, fused it with a little country raunch and came up with rock 'n' roll. Even the generic name was a perfect synthesis: black slang, applied to the raucous music and then popularized by a disc jockey.

Presley, the first certifiable rock superstar, built his legend with a fair assist from Leiber and Stoller, who provided him with not only Hound Dog but such other cornerstones as Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, Loving You and Treat Me Nice. And that wasn't even their best.

Working as producers and occasional writers for the Drifters, Leiber and Stoller brought strings to rock, turned out soaring lyric ballads that remain unsurpassed. As writers and producers for the Coasters, the team gave goofy high spirits and tough sidewalk irony to songs that were essentially comic melodramas in miniature. They also provided a musical definition of rock that still works as well as any: "You say that music's for the birds/ And you can't understand the words/ Well, honey, if you did/ You'd really blow your lid/ 'Cause baby, that is rock and roll."

Rock Critic Robert Palmer has supplied a fleet, smart text for the book, but Baby, That Was Rock & Roll is made up mostly of lyrics (terrific) and old photos (family-scrapbook evocative). Mike Stoller's wonderful music is necessarily shortchanged in print. Its influences can be traced--boogie, R&B, smatterings of Latin rhythm and Broadway melody --but the magic remains in the grooves. Best thing to do while looking through this book is put on some Elvis and some Coasters.

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