Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus [Hardcover]

Alex Halberstadt (Author), Peter Guralnick (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2007

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus (1925-1991), gave the world a dazzling legacy of musical hits during rock ’n’ roll’s first decade. A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of “Lonely Avenue” to the symphonic soul of “Save the Last Dance for Me” to the pure pop of “Viva Las Vegas.” His songs-“This Magic Moment,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Hushabye,” “Little Sister,” “Turn Me Loose,” and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding $100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an “entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man.” Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, “If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus.” Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York’s underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc’s story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock ’n’ roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York’s punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenue is the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus’s family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of America's most popular songwriters was Jerome Felder, better known as "Doc Pomus." For decades he wrote big hits ("Save the Last Dance for Me," "This Magic Moment," "A Teenager in Love") for such artists as Dion, Fabian, the Drifters, Elvis and Dr. John. Pomus (1925–1991) himself was more of a blues story than anything he could have written. Halberstadt, who writes on music and pop culture, can be awkward writing about Pomus's intimate life, although he definitely knows his music history. The son in a New York working-class Jewish family, Pomus contracted polio when he was seven and lost the use of his legs. From then on, his life was all about music; he started bands, wrote music and promoted artists until the day he died. Halberstadt's understanding of how Jewish and African-American "hipster" subcultures fit together in the music world is particularly sharp. He takes readers to 1940s nightclubs where Pomus was the only white man around; hotel lobbies where Pomus spent afternoons listening for "the random brilliance of overheard speech"; and Pomus's hotel room when Bob Dylan came calling. This strangely affecting biography follows a straight chronology, including wonderful excerpts from Pomus's own diaries and a great selection of rarely seen photos. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Teenage Jerome Felder had never heard of a blues singer "who was crippled or white or a Jew" when he announced in a small club in Brooklyn, "I'm a blues singer . . and I'm here to do a song." Wearing leg braces necessitated by childhood polio, he closed his eyes, shouted out "Piney Brown" in his best Joe Turner style, and was somewhat astonished when he got applause. That night on the subway home, he became Doc Pomus. With that monicker, he achieved success as a blues singer and much more success as a writer of songs recorded by artists as diverse as the Dead Kennedys, Led Zeppelin, Tom Jones, and Dolly Parton. Furthermore, his death inspired Lou Reed's album Magic and Loss. Halberstadt's first book lovingly details Felder/Pomus' life in a streetwise style that makes even Doc's years with the Brill Building pop-song factory sound exciting. The story of this member of both the Rock and Roll and the Songwriters halls of fame is well worth acquiring for pop-music-intensive collections. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306813009
• ISBN-13: 978-0306813009
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,210,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The poet laureate of early rock/pop gets a worthy biography, March 6, 2007

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus (Hardcover)

He was short and stubby. He'd had polio at 9; he couldn't walk without braces and crutches. To see this 16-year-old kid struggle to the stage of a Greenwich Village club in 1943 was to get a taste of what it was like to run into Toulouse Lautrec in a Paris cafe half a century earlier --- you knew this guy was....different.

His dreams, for starters. Jerome Felder wanted to stand in a boxing ring and, though he couldn't move, win the championship. Or fire unhittable fastballs from the pitcher's mound. And the women --- they'd be lined up for him.

In that club, though, Jerome connected with a dream that could come true. He got on stage and sang the only blues song he knew --- and people clapped. The next night, he was back, with a new confidence and a new name: Doc Pomus. He was on his way to becoming the greatest songwriter in the history of early rock `n roll.

There are books you read because you're interested in the subject. And then there are books you read because you just happen to pick them up --- and the next thing you knew, your mouth was dry, your heart was racing and you were turning the pages like the secret of life lay just ahead. "Lonely Avenue" was like that for me: a freight train with no brakes, bound for glory and ruin.

I have a soft spot for stories about people who make something out of nothing --- people who reach into their guts and share their deepest, rawest feelings in a form that makes us feel them too. The Doc Pomus story is the very best of that breed. A Brooklyn kid who didn't want to waste his life at a desk. A misfit who found his first home in black blues clubs. A survivor who realized he was never going to make it as a performer and started writing songs because behind-the-scenes was the closest a white, chunky cripple could come to touching an audience.

He was in his 30s when he teamed up with an 18-year-old composer named Mort Shuman. And when, unaccountably, he persuaded a virginal blond actress to marry him. A few years later, he chanced upon their wedding invitation, and he remembered what it was like to sit on the sidelines while other men danced with his wife. He picked up a pen and watched the words flow:

You can dance
Every dance with the guy
Who gives you the eye
Let him hold you tight
You can smile
Every smile for the man who held your hand
'Neath the pale moonlight
But don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darlin', save the last dance for me...

Before Ben E. King recorded that song, Ahmet Ertegun told him the back story. King's eyes misted. And, as you know, he and the Drifters delivered a record they'll be playing as long as there are lovers.

Silly stuff followed. "Turn Me Loose" and other hits for Fabian, a teen idol "who had a reliable range of four or five notes." But also, more hits for Ben E. King and the Drifters: "This Magic Moment" and "I Count the Tears." For Dion & the Belmonts, "Teenager in Love."And, for Elvis, "Suspicion" and "Viva Las Vegas."

If this were just a story about music, it would be fascinating --- Halberstadt introduces us to a world of sleazy promoters, crooked producers, random hangers-on and freaks. All inhabited Doc's world --- he was not only the ultimate hipster, the insider's insider, but he had infinite time for stories. To read these pages is to enlarge your world.

And then, to read these pages is to watch a world explode and one of its kings have to re-invent himself all over again. What happened? The Beatles. The Stones. And Dylan. "Tin Pan Alley is dead," Dylan announced. "I killed it."

At 40, Doc was broke again. His weight ballooned to 350 and crutches were out of the question --- now he was chair-bound. His wife divorced him and took the kids. This is where the Doc Pomus story gets really exciting for me, because it's one thing to be at the bottom when you've never seen the top, another to wake up in a fleabag hotel after you've known success. Anyone who's been there will tell you: It's harder to make it the second time.

Poc made it twice. That's one good reason to read this book: as a fable of disability denied, as the rugged, raw story of a guy in a wheelchair learning how to become the tallest guy in the room. But there's so much more in these lightning-fast 225 pages. A large claim, but here it is: the story of a great 20th century artist.

Oh, come on, you say. The guy wrote pop ditties for pimply kids.His stuff is like Kleenex. Keats and Shakespeare he ain't. I beg to differ. I say anyone can write arty stuff that only the elite can appreciate; it takes real talent to deliver a clear, powerful message with just a few chords in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Keats and Shakespeare were immensely talented poets, and popular in their day --- but they never reached a fraction of the people Doc Pomus. And admit it: You can quote five of Doc's songs for every Shakespeare sonnet you know.

One of Motown's early mottos was, "It's what's in the grooves that counts." On "Till the Night Is Gone," you can hear Dylan and The Band and Lou Reed and Aaron Neville and Dion and Rosanne Cash --- the kings and queens of modern music --- pay tribute to the master. Every cut is gold.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Providing depth to the inner workings of the music industry., May 7, 2007

By 

D. Lee "Doro" (Pittsburg,CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus (Hardcover)

I met Doc Pomus in a treasured CD by Johnny Adams. Pomus' lyrics fascinate me. I have searched and found bits and pieces of his life. When I read a review of Lonely Avenue, I had to have it. I savored every word as I have a special place in my heart for musicians. I did not want to finish the book because I did not want him to die. I have loaned the book to friends who are musicians and loaned Johnny Adams' interpretation of his music also. Friends of my who are avid readers have been receiving this recommendation from me as "a person I would like to have known." Long Live Doc's Music!

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lonely are the Brave, February 14, 2007

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus (Hardcover)

He wrote many of the lyrics you've sung to yourself again and again, his catchy phrases sticking in your head like musical seaweed in the tide basin of memory. He was intimate with the likes of Duke Ellington, Rodney Dangerfield, and John Lennon. Phil Spector depended on him, yet drove him crazy with his manic behavior. And with Elvis, the king of rock and roll, the two of them forged a musical partnership that swelled in the years just after Elvis' return from Germany after serving in the US Army and meeting Priscilla.

Who you might ask is this man? The one and only Doc Pomus who wrote SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME, TURN ME LOOSE, and HUSHABYE, among many other top ten hits. Long dismissed as a Tin Pan Alley relic, he regained popularity with a new host of musical imitators in the 1970s and 1980s, and Alex Halberstadt's impressionistic, moody biography takes us through the fabulous highs (marriage to two beautiful blondes) and lows (polio and a weight gain some estimated as soaring to 350 pounds). He spent his life on crutches, and later in life Eunice Shriver recruited him for the Special Olympics. I expect LONELY AVENUE to be a natural for best sellerdom not only among pop music fans but for course adoption in disability studies as well, since for the first time Halberstadt tries to show us how Pomus' disability guided and provided some of his most well known compositions-- SAVE THE LAST DANCE, for example, gains poignancy when you realize it was written by the proverbial wallflower.

As the author of a forthcoming biography of Veronica Lake, I was fascinated to hear of Doc's brief liaison with the former Paramount film goddess who had, ten years before, set th screen on fire with her incendiary performances in THE GLASS KEY, THIS MAN FOR HIRE, I MARRIED A WITCH, THE BLUE DAHLIA, SULLIVAN's TRAVELS and SO PROUDLY WE HAIL (to name merely a few of her many stellar performances). I had no idea that she had hooked up with the crippled fat man his friends called, "Doc." But I dispute Halberstadt's characterization of Lake and would ask him to reconsider for a second edition his nasty little hack job on a great star. For one thinbg, he claims that she was so far gone in drink by the time that Pomus met her that he had no idea she was, in fact, "Veronica Lake." Drinking and a "foul temper" had aged her and alienated her from her former perch as queen of the Paramount lot. I don't think so. Her face "bloated and lined," her hair "tangled." "She was sad and nearly always drunk." As Halberstadt tells the story, Pomus was at a low ebb in his career at the time, but when the hag finally told him that, although she was not yet 35 years old, she had once used to be "Veronica Lake," then Pomus got really upset, for her repulsive face was "a memento not only of her failure but of his, too."

I don't know, Alex, maybe you're divine looking but Veronica Lake was still wonderfully good looking in 1955 (or whenever this incident is said to have happened; you leave it novelistically undated, just a memory in passing during one of Doc's down spells). So get over yourself.

Bette Midler was Pomus' protege and Midler fans will not be surprised to find out that one of Doc's wives accused the young singer of exposing herself to Doc's then 8 year old son. Sad, sad, sad.

Buy this book and get inspired, for whatever hurdles you face in your career, Doc had them in multiple waves, and still he persevered.