Doc Pomus Talks Elvis Presley

EIN fan club member Mark Bingham reminds us all of the fabulous personality that epitomised Doc Pomus - one of pop music's greatest composers and a key to Elvis’ early sixties comeback.  

If Elvis found a creative connection he needed in the 1950s with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller then upon his return from the army in 1960 he found a similar connection with the composers Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. Leaving behind the fifties rock'n'roll category and searching for creative R’n’B writers who also had great pop sensibility, Elvis found the songs he needed with these two great Brooklyn composers.

Jerome Felder, better known as ‘Doc Pomus’ was born in Brooklyn on June 25 1925, so this year he would have turned 100. 

The 2007 book ‘Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus’ by Alex Halberstadt explains more...

Jerome Felder had an oppressive and troubled childhood; short and overweight, he was crippled by polio at the age of seven, and spent the rest of his life in crutches and later a wheelchair. 
But one night in 1943, in a Greenwich Village jazz and blues club, the life of Jerome Felder ended, and that of Doc Pomus was born. Jerome had been holding on to an empty beer glass for an hour when the owner confronted him, telling him to spend some money or get out. Jerome answered, “I’m a blues singer, and I’m here to do a song”. He got up on stage with his crutches and jumped into Joe Turner’s ‘Piney Brown Blues’. Encouraged — and surprised — by the crowd reaction, and even more by their acceptance of him, he returned the next night. Asked his name by the owner, he replied, “My name is Doc Pomus, and I’m here to sing the blues”. 

By 1957 Doc Pomus had given up performing in order to devote himself to full-time song-writing. Working for Hill & Range, in the Brill Building in New York, he collaborated with pianist Mort Shuman producing some of the best known songs of the era, including ‘Teenager in Love’, ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’, ‘This Magic Moment’, ‘Turn Me Loose’ and ‘Can't Get Used To Losing You’.  

Doc Pomus wrote eighteen songs that Elvis recorded, the vast majority with Mort Shuman.

Elvis’ post-army creative comeback would not have had anywhere the impact without these great Doc Pomus contributions that came out as major 45rpm hits, ‘A Mess Of Blues’, ‘Surrender’, ‘His Latest Flame’, ‘Little Sister’, ‘She's Not You’, ‘Long Lonely Highway’ and ‘Viva Las Vegas’. 

His other Elvis compositions were ‘Doin' The Best I Can’, ‘Kiss Me Quick’, ‘Gonna Get Back Home Somehow’, ‘Night Rider’, ‘I Feel That I've Known You Forever’, ‘Suspicion’, ‘ I Need Somebody To Lean On’, ‘Girl Happy’, ‘Double Trouble’, ‘Never Say Yes’, and ‘What Every Woman Lives For’.

EIN fan club member Mark Bingham shares this great story..

.. A friend of mine and I had tickets, in April 1986, to see Jerry Lee Lewis at the Lone Star in Manhattan.  As I had recently fallen in love with Jerry Lee’s version of ‘Money’ from his 1964 Live from the Star Club album, we decided to go really early to the bar to see if we could meet Jerry Lee and request the song.   We got there at 6pm for probably a 9pm show.  The place was deserted so we went upstairs, knocked on the green room door and lo and behold Jerry Lee’s sister Linda Gail Lewis answered and asked what we wanted.   We told her and she turned and said, ‘Jerry Lee, someone’s here to see you’ to which he yells ‘what the hell do they want?’   She says ‘how the hell would I know’ to which Jerry Lee replies, ‘Well then let them in’.   She opens the door more widely exposing Jerry Lee, we chat, tell him he needs to do the song, he doesn’t commit and we leave.

It’s now 6:20, we have three hours and about $10 between us so we sit at the bar ready to nurse a soda for three hours.  There’s one guy in the restaurant part, sitting in a wheelchair eating dinner. My friend says ‘do you know who that is?’

I don’t but he tells me it’s Doc Pomus.  I’m not sure I believe him but I say ‘then let’s go talk to him’.  
He says, ‘no, he’s an ornery prick, don’t bother’. 

I ignore his advice and walk up to his table and stood over him.  I’m 6’7”, he’s eating dinner and he never looks up.  
I start to panic.  I said ‘I’m told you’re Doc Pomus’.  

He says ‘what about it?’  - I said 'I’m a huge fan of your work'.  

He doesn’t even look up but says, ‘you don’t jackshit about my work’.  

I counter, ‘I’m a huge fan of Elvis so I know ‘Marie’s The Name’, ‘Little Sister’, ‘Viva…’.  

He says, again without looking up, ‘You don’t know half of what I wrote for Elvis’ - to which I offer, ‘I may not know you wrote it but I assure you I know it’.  

With that, he looks up; measuring why this 27 year old in a hip NYC place, knows, or pretends he knows, Elvis.

He challenges me, very quietly asking if I’ve ever heard of the album Pot Luck.  
I say, I have, ‘Which songs did you write?’  

He says he can’t remember to which I kneel down, lean into him and say, ‘If I sing you the song, do you think you can remember if you wrote it?’  

He laughs, gestures for me to sit (like Don Corleone) and I proceed to title, half sing, half speak every track on the album as he chuckles at my terrible singing and racks his brain for whether it sounds familiar.   He’s so unsure of any of the tracks so I finally say, ‘How could you not know what you wrote for Elvis?’ and promise that I will make a cassette of every Elvis song he wrote.    I offer to drop it back at the Lone Star so he doesn’t think I’m trying for further contact or anything.  He pulls out his business card and says send it to me.    We chat for another ten minutes, he tells me he never met Elvis, we discuss other songs he wrote for Dion, The Coasters, The Drifters etc  (I knew they wrote ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ but didn’t realize the lyricist had polio so never understood the greater significance of it).

I got home at 1am and made the tape till 4:00am.  I had some room on the tape so I added two ‘bonus songs’ (not sure if he knew the significance of bonus songs in the Elvis-world!)… take 4 of 'Marie’s The Name' where Elvis says ‘it’s a good song’ and The Smiths’ song ‘Rusholme Ruffians’, which borrows  the Marie’s riff, demonstrating to him that he was still influencing music!   

It was an amazing night.  

I certainly can’t speak to whether Doc was otherwise ornery but he wasn’t with me….  He certainly had a wall up that I had to break through but when he realized I really did know and love his work and I didn’t want anything from him, he invited me in and I found him charming, funny, self-deprecating.  

And of course, he certainly didn’t need to send me a note of thanks but he was kind enough to do so and it’s one of my real treasures. 

EIN Note: Although The Smiths ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ was only credited to "Morrissey / Johnny Marr" the band acknowledged the connection by sometimes performing a combined medley with ‘His Latest Flame’ live in concert (YouTube link)

After the issue of Leiber and Stoller getting so close to Elvis (and possibly steering Elvis in a more creative direction against Parker’s wish of “total control”) Col Parker wanted to keep Elvis away from any other worrying influences so very sadly Doc Pomus never actually met Elvis.    Interestingly Bob Dylan reached out to Doc Pomus when he was experiencing writer's block - and Dylan’s 2022 book 'The Philosophy of Modern Song', which features 66 essays on songs that Dylan loves, is dedicated to Doc Pomus.

A 1989 Goldmine magazine interview by Mojo Nixon included some interesting stories where Doc Pomus talked about his relationship with Elvis.. 

Doc Pomus: Most of the time when we wrote for Elvis I wrote with Mort Shuman and we were always told when there was a session coming up or when there was a movie. They'd show us the script but there was no such thing as having automatic Presley records. You know, competition was fierce and intense and we'd just write them and write them and some of my biggest Presley hits were not written for Presley. 

‘Little Sister’ and ‘His Latest Flame’ we had written originally for Bobby Vee, and then we tried them with Bobby Darin but they didn't come off too good. So right after that we got a call from the firm - we were contracted to Elvis Presley Music- that Elvis is coming up for a session very quickly, did we have any material for him? So we said 'Latest Flame' and 'Little Sister' and sure enough we got lucky with them and they were back to back records. They both made Top 10.

Mojo Nixon: Did you ever talk to Elvis and the Colonel?

Doc: I talked to Elvis once on the telephone and that was when he was having problems with a lyric and he called from the recording session and I didn't even realize it was him. You know, somebody called me to talk about a problem with a lyric; I was out at my house in Long Island at the time. The guy picked up the extension phone when the phone rang and they told me you are speaking to Presley, so that was the only time I ever spoke to him. 

And another time, the only time I had ever seen him, was when he was at a press conference at the Hilton in New York. I tried to speak to him personally and the Colonel, whom I had met a few times, wouldn't let me talk to him. The Colonel said he would never let Presley talk to songwriters, you know. 

So, I didn't get a chance to speak to him that day and I was pretty much heartbroken. Right after the interview- it was a press interview- I went to have lunch in the hotel and next to me was Vernon, Elvis' father, and I told him the story of how Colonel had stopped me from talking to Elvis, and Vernon said you know, "Elvis would love to meet you." So he went to get Elvis but Elvis was gone already because he was on his way to work that night. I never saw him perform.

Doc: People always talk about the different influences Elvis had but the truth of the matter is he was an original. And like I have always told people, the one thing about getting Elvis Presley to record one of my songs, that always meant that you were gonna hear your song plus, because he always put something in the song that maybe you never heard. 

Elvis always put himself in them and he was always the song plus. So, I always wildly anticipated the Presley record because you get something in that song you never dreamed of. And you know that's why it was such a wild experience for me to finally get Elvis to record a song of mine, because I had admired his work for so long.

Mojo: Did he do the songs pretty close to the demos?

Doc: Yeah, very close to the demos, very close to the demo singers. That's why it was great working with Otis Blackwell, because Otis in a certain way sang in a style that was not dissimilar to Elvis, and with a middle tempo song you could bet that Elvis was greatly influenced by the Blackwell demos.

Elvis, on a slow tune or a very fast song, was influenced by different people, as most singers are. It just doesn't mean that they copy the person, it means they are influenced. But on middle tempo songs Elvis' greatest influence was Otis. If you ever heard those demos you'd know what I was talking about.

We were contracted with Hill and Range Songs, and we'd be sitting in a little cubicle, a small funky office with a broken piano and one broken down half couch and a rickety piano stool and man, we worked every day to get out of that joint, you know. It's the only way. It's just like, uh, where the conditions are grandiose, I never could do anything, man. I got to have it funky!

- Sadly the funky Doc Pomus died 14 March 1991 age 65.

Doc Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Blues Hall of Fame.

This year - to celebrate his 100th birthday - 'Viva Doc Pomus: Songs For Elvis (The Demos)' a double vinyl compilation was released by the Omnivore Recordings label for Record Store Day 

Spotlight by Mark Bingham / Piers Beagley
-Copyright EIN June 2025. Do Not reprint or republish without permission.

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