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Bert Berns

Bert Berns

11 articles

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Erma Franklin: If It Wasn't For Bad Luck...

Interview by David Nathan, Blues & Soul, 12 October 1973

SOME GUYS (so the latest Persuaders' single on Atlantic would have you believe) have all the luck and that goes for the gals too. In ...

Bert Berns: The Soul Man with a Huckster's Heart

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1998

HE WAS, said Jerry Wexler, "a paunchy, nervous cat with a shock of unruly black hair". He looked like a vaguely disreputable cross between Gene ...

Bert Berns

Book Excerpt by Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, 2001

b. Bert Russell, 1929, d. 31 December 1967, New York, USA ...

Cry to Him: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns

Book Excerpt by Joel Selvin, 'Here Comes The Night' (Counterpoint Books), April 2014

In these two excerpts from Joel Selvin's splendid new biography of Bert Berns, the soul hustler from the Bronx oversees the 1961 session for Solomon ...

Joel Selvin: Here Comes the Night – The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm & Blues

Book Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 12 May 2014

EVERY SO OFTEN, a music bio arrives that becomes "the book to read." Think of Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and ...

Hit Man: Joel Selvin's Here Comes the Night

Book Review by Robert Gordon, The New York Times Book Review, 30 May 2014

BERT BERNS the producer is the Phil Spector you've never heard of. Bert Berns the songwriter is the Leiber and Stoller you've never heard of. ...

Here Comes The Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm & Blues by Joel Selvin

Book Review by Kirk Silsbee, Downbeat, July 2014

AMERICAN POP MUSIC from the no-man's-land after The Day The Music Died (Buddy Holly's fatal 1959 plane crash) and before the arrival of the Beatles ...

'Sloopy' Hangs On: How a Latin-R&B Song Became a Pop-Rock Anthem

Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2016

'HANG ON SLOOPY' is one of the dozen or so songs (along with 'Wild Thing,' 'Gloria,' 'Louie Louie,' 'Twist and Shout,' 'Hey Joe') that make ...

Bert Berns: The Ecstatic Agony of a Producer/Songwriter

Report and Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Best Classic Bands, 7 August 2016

The Rock Hall member behind such classics as 'Brown Eyed Girl,' 'Twist and Shout' and more. ...

Roll with the Punches: An Interview with Jerry Ragovoy

Interview by Dan Nooger, Record Collector, May 2017

The late Jerry Ragovoy wrote and arranged some of the greatest records of the last century. This unpublished interview by Dan Nooger found him recalling ...

How 'Twist and Shout' Shook the World

Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, November 2019

UNLIKE MOST stories, this one begins with a twist. "Come on, baby," Hank Ballard commanded, "let's do the Twist," immortalizing a dance that was catching ...

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