Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 3: 1971-2008

Here's the third and last of the albums I've made of my favorite songs by Doc Pomus and/or Mort Shuman.

I'm careful to say "and/or" because the collaboration between Pomus and Shuman ended in the 1960s. All the songs here are by either Pomus or by Shuman, sometimes in collaboration with other songwriters. The only exceptions are songs that were written earlier. I think the only case of that is "Young Blood," which was a hit by the Coasters back in 1957. But I'm using this hit version by Bad Company instead, because I included the Coasters version elsewhere.

The vast majority of the songs on this album are associated with Pomus. Shuman was successful as well, but he spoke French and he increasingly directed his efforts to the French market. One song here, "My Death," is his English translation of a song by Jacques Brel. He had a fairly successful solo career in the 1970s. But the vast majority of the songs he did were in French, and most of his success was in France. I've also included "Sorrow," because it probably is his best known solo song that's sung in English.

Meanwhile, Pomus continued to live in New York City. He had given up on songwriting for about a decade after losing the songwriting partnership with Shuman. As the 1970s went on, he slowly returned to songwriting, but he didn't have much success at first because he was seen as someone from an earlier era that had fallen totally out of style.

However, he eventually found a new niche for himself writing for a more mature audience. He focused more on blues, which was his original musical love anyway. He didn't have any more hits, but he gained a lot of critical acclaim for his new style. For instance, he co-wrote all the songs for B. B. King's 1981 album "There Must Be a Better World Somewhere," and King won a Grammy for the album.

Both Pomus and Shuman died of cancer in 1991. The last four songs here date from after that. Either they are versions of songs that were recorded by others earlier, or they are songs that didn't get recorded until later, for whatever reason. Irma Thomas's version of "Be You" is actually the first released version of that song, even though it was done 17 years after Pomus died.

01 Get It While You Can (Janis Joplin)
02 Amsterdam (David Bowie)
03 My Baby (Janis Joplin)
04 Sorrow (Mort Shuman)
05 Young Blood (Bad Company)
06 There Must Be a Better World Somewhere (B. B. King)
07 I Underestimated You (Johnny Adams)
08 Pictures and Paintings (Charlie Rich)
09 I'm on a Roll (Dr. John)
10 Blinded by Love (B. B. King)
11 Imitation of Love (Dr. John)
12 Be You (Irma Thomas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181190/COVRDPomsShumn1971-2008Volum3_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M8jxDgF1

As I mentioned with the two previous albums in this series, I've had a heck of a time finding any photos of Pomus and Shuman together. I don't know when or where this one is from, but judging by their appearance it has to be well after their songwriting partnership ended. I would guess it's from the 1970s or even the 1980s. I don't know much about their relationship after their stopped writing songs together, but based on this photo it looks like they stayed friends, even though they usually were separated by the fact they lived on different continents.

This photo was originally in black and white but I've colorized it. 

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 2: 1962-1968

I just posted the first of three albums I've made that collect the best songs written by Doc Pomus and/or Mort Shuman. I'm posting all three at once, so here's the second one.

Pomus and Shuman worked with each other from about 1958 to 1964. That was the time of their greatest success, when they wrote a series of all-time classics. Like the songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller, their peak era pretty much ended in 1964, because that was the year the Beatles basically took over the musical world. One out of four of all records sold in 1964 were by the Beatles, a truly incredible fact that has never been equaled since.

Suddenly, the "British Invasion" was hot and the older type of music Pomus and Shuman was known for was yesterday's news. The biggest threat posed by the Beatles was that they wrote all their own songs, so they obviously didn't need the likes of Pomus and Shuman. Bob Dylan and others were doing the same.

Pomus and Shuman decided to meet this challenge head on. They actually moved to Britain and began writing songs for British Invasion bands. But their songwriting partnership broke up at this point, because Pomus soon returned to the US and Shuman permanently relocated to Europe. Most of the songs here after 1964 are written by Shuman alone, unless they're versions of earlier songs. Before long, Pomus gave up on songwriting and resorted to running gambling games and royalty checks from his earlier hits to get by. Happily, he would return to songwriting, but that's a topic for the next album in this series.

01 Suspicion (Elvis Presley)
02 Seven Day Weekend (Gary 'U. S.' Bonds)
03 Night Rider (Elvis Presley)
04 She's Not You (Elvis Presley)
05 Sweets for My Sweet (Searchers)
06 Can't Get Used to Losing You (Andy Williams)
07 Troubled Mind (Dion)
08 Here I Go Again (Hollies)
09 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
10 Viva Las Vegas (Elvis Presley)
11 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
12 Go Jimmy Go (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
13 Jackie (Scott Walker)
14 What's It Gonna Be (Dusty Springfield)
15 Mighty Cold (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Machines (Lothar & the Hand People)
17 Stop (Howard Tate)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181033/COVRDPomsShumn1962-1968Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/89hkd8xg

As I mentioned for the first album in this series, I had trouble finding any photos of Pomus and Shuman together. The photo I've used here is very similar to the one I used for the first album. Clearly, they were taken at the same time, judging by the clothes they are wearing and the background. If anyone knows of other good photos of them together, please let me know because I don't like using two photos that are so similar to each other. However, I colorized this, and when I did so I changed the colors of their suits and also simplified the background, so hopefully that makes them look different enough.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 1: 1950-1962

A few days ago, I posted my first "Covered" series, which is made of three albums of songs written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. I plan to post a bunch more of these to highlight the works of great songwriters. Here's the next one.

I don't think the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman is as famous as Leiber and Stoller. But I'd argue they were just as commercially successful and just as talented. I don't want to go into great detail about their personal histories, since these write-ups I write are probably too wordy already. Here are the relevant Wikipedia entries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Pomus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_Shuman

But I will say they were unusually colorful characters, especially Pomus. There's a fascinating documentary film about his life called "A.k.a. Doc Pomus," which I recommend you watch. He had an extremely eventful and interesting life. *By the way, both he and Shuman died in 1991.)

Pomus was hit with polio when a child, and it afflicted him the rest of his life to the point that he spent most of his life in a wheelchair. He also was a white Jewish guy. Yet as soon as he became an adult, he started a career as a blues singer. He wasn't that good a singer, to be honest, but he was able to make a modest living out of it doing concerts, probably due to the novelty factor of being a white Jewish guy singing the blues, and handicapped to boot. I have two songs here from his solo career, which petered out after a few years.

By about 1956, he switched his musical efforts to songwriting. He'd had some success with that already, especially the song "Chains of Love," which was a hit for Big Joe Turner. (Note that he's not credited for writing it through, because he sold his songwriting share for a small amount of money.) Starting around 1957, he began having a lot more success.

Around 1958, Pomus met Shuman through a family connection. Pomus was in his thirties and Shuman was only 18 and had no songwriting experience at all. But Pomus saw something in him, and figured it would be good to get a teenager's perspective since his songs were mainly aimed at teenagers. Shuman quickly learned the art of songwriting and they became a very successful team. Typically, Pomus wrote the lyrics and Shuman wrote the melody. But this wasn't always the case. This can be seen by the fact that both had hits writing songs all by themselves as well.

I've chosen the songs for this series mainly because I like listening to them. But I also have tried to include all the significant hits. Luckily, the hits are usually the best songs, so it's typically easy to include them.

For this album, the only major hit I'm missing is "Young Blood," a hit for the Coasters in 1957. The reason I didn't include it is because Pomus wrote it with none other than Leiber and Stoller, before he began working with Shuman, and I've included the Coasters version in my Leiber and Stoller collection. Instead, I'm including a different version of "Young Blood" here, but it goes on a later album. (Bad Company had a hit with the song in 1976.)

I've made three albums of Pomus and/or Shuman songs. Each one of them is about 45 to 50 minutes long.

01 Send for the Doctor (Doc Pomus)
02 Chains of Love (Big Joe Turner)
03 Heartlessly (Doc Pomus)
04 Lonely Avenue (Ray Charles)
05 Boogie Woogie Country Girl (Big Joe Turner)
06 Love Roller Coaster (Big Joe Turner)
07 A Teenager in Love (Dion & the Belmonts)
08 Hushabye (Mystics)
09 Turn Me Loose (Fabian)
10 A Mess of Blues (Elvis Presley)
11 Save the Last Dance for Me (Drifters)
12 This Magic Moment (Drifters)
13 Surrender (Elvis Presley)
14 I Count the Tears (Drifters)
15 [Marie's The Name] His Latest Flame (Elvis Presley)
16 Young Boy Blues (Ben E. King)
17 Little Sister (Elvis Presley)
18 First Taste of Love (Ben E. King)
19 Gonna Get Back Home Somehow (Elvis Presley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181041/COVRDPomsShumn1950-1962Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xvouYk3A

I suspect the reason more people don't know about Pomus and Shuman is because they kept a very low public profile. One result of that is that I had a hard time finding any photos of them together. All the photos I could find are black in white. So I've colorized them to help distinguish them from each other. I'm not sure what year this photo was taken, but I'd guess it's from around 1960, give or take a couple of years.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.