Marking the centennial of his birth, Omnivore Recordings will release an expansive collection celebrating the genius of Doc Pomus, the legendary songwriter behind classic hit records that shaped rock n’ roll including Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue" and The Drifters' "This Magic Moment.”
The 6-CD box set, You Can’t Hip A Square: The Doc Pomus Songwriting Demos, compiling a treasure trove of never-before-heard Doc Pomus demos will be released on August 15. The set includes performances from Pomus himself, longtime writing partner Mort Shuman, and a who’s who of legendary figures key to the development of rock n’ roll including Ellie Greenwich, Scott Fagan, Peter Anders, Mickey Baker, Phil Spector, King Curtis, Titus Turner, Toni Wine, Bobby Andriani, and many more.
To accompany today’s announcement, Omnivore Recordings has released a first glimpse of the collection with “Viva Las Vegas (demo),” performed by Mort Shuman.
Listen to “Viva Las Vegas (demo)”
A larger-than-life almost mythic figure in rock ‘n’ roll lore, Jerome Solon Felder—better known as Doc Pomus—was born June 27, 1925, in Brooklyn, growing up crippled by childhood polio. After buying Big Joe Turner’s “Piney Brown Blues” at a local record shop, his world was irrevocably altered, starting a lifelong obsession with blues music and writing songs. Adopting the alias Doc Pomus—a nod to St. Louis bluesman Doctor Clayton—he performed at Greenwich Village clubs from the mid-‘40s to mid-‘50s, then transitioned to songwriting. His first hit as a writer came in 1956 with Ray Charles’ “Lonely Avenue.”
Inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, Pomus, alongside his most trusted collaborator Mort Shuman, created one of the most enduring catalogs of the Brill Building era, including “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “A Teenager in Love,” and “This Magic Moment,” along with a number of songs specifically written for Elvis Presley, among them “Viva Las Vegas,” “Little Sister,” and “Surrender.”
The six CD set contains 165 individual demos, many featuring Doc’s partner Mort Shuman on vocals and piano. The project began when Doc’s daughter Sharyn Felder discovered a closetful of demos while organizing her father’s archives. “I didn’t want them to end up in some dusty closet, never to see the light of day,” explains Sharyn, who contacted Cheryl Pawelski, co-founder of Omnivore.
“A project like this doesn’t come along very often,” says Pawelski. “I’m always grateful when someone like Sharyn entrusts me to help shape the legacy of a great figure like Doc Pomus. He had to overcome so much in his life just to get to the place where he could be the great writer he was, expressing that heartbreak and yearning.”
The CD-set package also includes a hardbound book which features a track-by-track analysis by Felder and Pawelski, along with essays by Felder, critics Geoffrey Himes and Peter Guralnick (one of Doc’s closest buddies), as well as TV producer/writer/historian Eddie Gorodetsky.
“What’s so impressive is the depth and breadth of Doc’s catalog,” Pawelski exclaims. “The demos he made with Mort were open to interpretation in any number of styles, which they had to be. The most fascinating, to me, are the ones that got left behind, the what-ifs, the songs that never saw the light of day… We want to bring those hidden gems to light.”
“Doc often claimed to have written more than 1,000 songs,” adds Felder. “Now I think he might have been underestimating. In the past few years, I’ve discovered demos for hundreds of songs I never even knew existed. He was the consummate songwriter in that he could write for any occasion or artist.”
After Alex Halberstadt’s critically acclaimed 2007 biography, Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus and the Sharyn Felder-produced 2012 documentary A.K.A. Doc Pomus, there are further plans for a feature biopic as well as a planned box set sequel covering his later collaborations in the ‘70s and ‘80s with Dr. John, Willy DeVille, B.B. King and Lou Reed.
“The hope is my dad’s songs will be rediscovered, that people will get turned on to some they never knew,” Felder concludes.
Doc himself describes his thoughts on songwriting in a recorded interview, which appears on Disc Six in the collection. “There are always ideas deep inside me,” he says. “To me, it’s always a question of bringing them out. Sometimes a little event might be the catalyst, or a word might be the catalyst. I have an amazing ability to meet women and get very crazy, and that’ll stimulate me into writing a couple of songs.”
For both long-time Doc Pomus fans and those about to discover him for the first time, “This Magic Moment” is here.
Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/mxG2GeBUZm8
Pre-order and view tracklisting: www.omnivorerecordings.com/shop/you-cant-hip-a-square
