The Songmakers Collection

Leiber and Stoller, Weil and Mann, Goffin and King. They wrote the songs that made the whole world sing…and continue to sing 50 years later. Although media attention generally focuses on the singer or group and not the songwriters whose work propelled unknowns to stardom, The Songmakers Collection series is dedicated to telling the stories of the songmakers, focusing in particular on a group of Brooklyn teenagers who between the years 1958-1964 changed the face of American popular music. The opening volume traces the shift from the days when sheet music publishing houses ruled the industry (roughly from the turn of the century until the end of WWII) to the '50s merging of rhythm and blues, country and jazz to create a new style called "Rock and Roll," which led to record labels popping up and songwriters trying to churn out product as quickly as possible. Unknown singers were propelled to stardom: a background gospel group yielded Dionne Warwick, a janitor evolved into Bobby Darin, and Carole King and Gerry Goffin's babysitter became Little Eva, who topped the charts with "Locomotion." Volume one ends with the British Invasion, the folk revival and the social upheavals of the late '60s. The rest of the series follows the individual careers of Dionne Warwick, Bobby Darin, Burt Bacharach, and the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Combining period footage, photographs, interviews with the singers and songwriters, and lots of music, this series takes viewers back to the innocence of the '50s and early '60s, when politicians feared we were losing the space race because America was "producing a generation of stupid kids listening to stupid music." A terrific series outlining the origins of rock not only in musical terms, but in a social and historical context as well, this is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (L. Stevens)