CHAPTER 5 Walls of Sound: Lieber and Stoller, Phil Spector, the Black-Jewish Alliance, and the “Enlarging” of America

Ari Katorza

In the early sixties, the scene was sizzling, the characters—the Brooklyn songwriters, the Harlem singers, the Jewish and Turkish label owners— breaking their backs to stay afloat in the music maelstrom. It was in the mix of hustlers and geniuses that I met and, for a hot New York minute, worked with the most enigmatic hustler/genius of them all. JERRY WEXLER, the Jewish and co-head of , on Phil Spector, and the Black-Jewish alliance1

In this essay I discuss the connection between the postwar Black-Jewish alli- ance in popular music and American ethnic politics. I portray this histori- cal and cultural connection through a specific case study: the work of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller; the successful duo song-writers of the 1950s and early , and their young apprentice, Phil Spector, who is con- sidered a true pioneer in the field of music production. These Jewish writers and music producers carried out some of their important historical work in col- laboration with Afro-American performers. I argue that the history and atmos­ phere of the ethnic struggle for social justice of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the postwar era affected this collaboration. I claim that this alliance had real influence on American popular music, and was part of a general hegemonic struggle that enlarged and diversified America’s mono- lithic WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) culture during the 1960s.2 My thesis concerning the connection between American , ethnicity, race, and popular culture is offered as an alternative to the most well-known

1 Wexler, Jerry, & Ritz, David, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 139. Spector’s fate was tragic: he was convicted in 2009 of second degree mur- der of the actress and has remained ever since in a Californian prison. 2 This essay is discussed widely in Ari Katorza, “Rock Jews: Rock Music, the Struggle for Social Justice in the USA, and the Conflicts over Cultural Hegemony during the Postwar Era,” Ph.D. diss. (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004204775_007 Walls of Sound 79 approaches of scholars in this field. On one side of the discourse is the “altru- istic” line, based on the assumption that the Black-Jewish alliance in politics and culture was spawned from the Jewish ability to understand the “Other” in general and the Afro-American culture in particular better than other minori- ties could, as a result of similarities in ethnic mythologies about slavery, exile, suffering, and a less privileged position in society.3 Therefore, the alliance was motivated by Jewish humanist notions. On the other side of the discursive spectrum stands the “whiteness” approach, which tends to see the Black-Jewish relationship as an exploi- tation of Afro-American culture by the more “privileged” ethnic group: American Jews. Generally, the argument asserts that in order to become “White American,” American Jews—who were originally considered the most mixed race in America—turned into non-political “melting pot agents.” They reflected the notion that the Jewish interpretation of culture is universal and related to “everyone”; therefore, it corresponds to hegemonic “white” American interests.4 In comparison, as I will explain shortly, I see the Black-Jewish relationship in a much more subversive way. I believe that this alliance was historical and suited certain social and cultural conditions during the twentieth century, especially during the postwar era. It was, in many ways, a “behind the back” anti-WASP struggle which, in the case of American Jews’ popular music, was composed of a strange breed of “elitist humanism.” It was a combination that enabled Jewish writers and producers to achieve social and cultural gains by fusing popular and high culture, colored by a vision of a more multicultural society. They blended African-American cultural charisma with European high art (of which they felt they were its unofficial presenters) to portray alterna- tive images of the meaning of America. In other words, they felt they were

3 For “altruistic” approaches, see H. Lawrence Fuchs, “Sources of Jewish Internationalism and Liberalism,” in The Jews: Social Patterns or an American Group (New York: Free Press, 1956), 595–613; Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (New Jersey: Princeton University, 2001); Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976); Paul Buhle, The Lower East Side to : Jews in American Popular Culture (New York: Verso, 2004); Alfred Kazin, “The Jew As Modern Writer,” in The Ghetto and Beyond: Essays on Jewish Life in America, Peter Rose, ed. (New York: Random House), 1969, 424. 4 For the Whiteness and “melting pot agents” approaches, see Jeffrey Melnick, A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews and American Popular Song (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999); Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); B. Karen Sacks, How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says about Race in America (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1999).