Otis Blackwell

Otis Blacwell (February 16th 1931 with Brooklyn - May 6th 2002 with Nashville) is a pianist, singer and composer-songwriter of Rhythm and blues and American Rock “roll. Author of songs such as Fever , Great Balls off Fire or Don' T Cruel Be , he is the only black artist to have collaborated with Elvis Presley.

Biography

Fan of Country music, it gains a contest of song to the Apollo Theater of Harlem, temple of the rhythm & blues. Encouraged by Doc. Pomus, it records some titles, of which Daddy Rolling Stone in 1953, which will be taken again later by the Who. In 1956, under the pseudonym of John Davenport, he writes Fever with Eddie Cooley for the singer Little Willie John who sells more than one million discs. Recovery two years later by Peggy Lee, this song will become traditional.

July 2nd, 1956, Elvis Presley records her song Don' T Cruel Be . This piece is at the head classified during seven weeks better American record sales. It is the beginning long and profitable collaboration. Blackwell writes a series of tubes to him, of which All Shook Up , and Return To Sender . He also works for Jerry Lee Lewis, Dee Clark, Jimmy Jones, Cliff Richard, etc Its compositions have the characteristic to skilfully combine the country influences and rhythm & blues. It is not satisfied to write and to compose the texts and the musics, it records also all its songs in the form of demonstrations where it sings and is accompanied with the piano and delivers an end product to its “customers”. The legend wants besides that him and Elvis never met.

In the current of the Years 1960, Blackwell is forsaken with the profit of the young generation. It ceases writing for the others and takes again its career of interpreter, without much success. It leaves in 1978 an album with its larger tubes, These Are My Songs! , at Atlantic Records.

He dies at seventy years of an heart attack. In spite of the considerable role that he played in the history of the rock'n'roll roll, Otis Blackwell remains the forgotten eternal of all the rewards in this field.

Famous songs

(year, title, interprets original, better classification, recoveries)

Sources

  • article of Philippe Auclair in Dictionary of the Rock'n'roll , under the direction of Michka Assayas, 2000.

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