Smokey Joe's Café: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller

Featuring some 40 songs by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, this musical revue enjoyed a run of nearly five years on Broadway. Smokey Joe's Café: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller captures the final performance on January 16, 2000, with members of the original cast returning to NYC's Virginia Theatre for the occasion. Leiber and Stoller were, of course, instrumental in defining the pop music idiom of the 1950s and 1960s with a string of crossover standards, and their influence on later rock songwriters was incalculable. Smokey Joe's Café includes much of their best-known work—“Fools Fall in Love,” “On Broadway,” “Yakety Yak,” “Loving You,” “Hound Dog,” “Love Potion #9,” and “Jailhouse Rock,” to name just a few—and closes, quite appropriately, with two of their signature pieces, “Stand By Me” and “Baby, That Is Rock & Roll.” There's very little effort made to link the songs together into a narrative, and some fans may find that the heavy overlay of Broadway pizzazz is at odds with the tunes' pop origins, but there's no denying the energy of the singing and dancing on display here, and the enthusiasm of the live audience is certainly infectious. Boasting excellent sound in DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo, this is recommended. Aud: P. (F. Swietek)