Ben E King, Still Melting Hearts

“There are very few people, who are aware of how great being hip is. Being cool is one thing, but being hip is better. This song puts you in that hip mode,” says legendary singer Ben E. King, while discussing his favorite song from his new album Heart & Soul, that being, “The Touch Of Your Lips,” a fitting song for a crooner, who throughout his storied career has melted the hearts of women worldwide. Ben E. King went on to say that he likes the way this song swings and that it is from the hip world.

Recently, Mr. King, who is indeed among the music world’s royal family, was gracious enough to speak with Riveting Riffs Magazine to discuss his career and his new album. The deep vocals, the grateful demeanor and the ability to make you feel relaxed in his presence, were all evident. Ben E. King made his first big splash on the music scene in the late 1950’s as a member of The Drifters. He was with The Drifters for only two years, recording numerous top twenty hit songs, including these three which all landed in the top ten, “There Goes My Baby,” (1959), “Save The Last Dance For Me,” (1960) and “This Magic Moment,” (1960).  Mr. King then left to pursue a solo career and in 1961 released two chart busting hit songs, “Spanish Harlem,” and his monster hit “Stand By Me.” Ben E. King, born Benjamin Earl Nelson would go on to chart numerous songs as a solo artist, among them, “Amor,” which went to # 10 on American R&B charts in 1961 and  “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied,” (# 2 R&B, # 11 Pop – 1962). 

Mr. King whose music career got started in his early teens with doo wop groups such as The Four B’s and The Five Crowns then joined The Drifters, before he embarked on his solo career. It was at that time that a booking agent named Frank Sands decided that Benjamin Earl Nelson needed a new name.

“He said ‘You have to change your name, because there is another singer with the name Earl Nelson.’ He started playing around with his pen and then he said, ‘Let’s call you Benny whatever, and then he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, let’s take the ny off and put the E in the middle. Think of a nice last name,’ and I said like what?  He said, ‘Well who do you know that has a name that you would like?’ I had an Aunt Agnes who was dating a guy named James King and I thought that he was one of the nicest human beings on earth. I said, well I have an uncle named James King and he said that will be it, and I said what James and he said no King. I said that will work, Ben King, Ben E King.  That was a great name that Frank Sands picked for me and it has been a blessing (he chuckles),” says Ben E. King relating the story of how his infamous stage name came to be. 

Although, Ben E. King has been recording and performing for almost sixty years, he remains very active both in the studio and touring, as he regularly performs in the Caribbean where they always seem to request his song “Seven Letters,” (# 11 R&B – 1965), tours the U.K. where he says he revamps his show, because of the popularity of songs that are not requested in other parts of the world and just prior to our conversation he returned from a tour of Japan, where his song “Save The Last Dance For Me,” is a favorite and his fans sing along with him. During the summer of 2010 he performed at several Jazz festivals throughout Canada.

When asked how it is that after so many years of touring and recording he still is motivated to go out there and perform, Mr. King jokes, “Until I find my favorite evening program on TV, I am stuck. (we share a chuckle)  I am honest when I say this to you, I will love music to my last breath and I love, traveling, singing and being on stage. I guess I am an old soul, a throwback to the Lionel Hampton days or Joe Williams or Count Basie, somewhere stuck in that world, even though we are now in 2010. I love it that much and there is nothing that I can find more enjoyable than standing on stage. I don’t really entertain people anymore, I sing the songs that they are familiar with and they basically entertain themselves.”

It was not however, always that easy for Ben E. King to stand on stage. He talks about the transition early in his career, from being a member of a group, to being a solo artist. “It was frightening and I think one of the most frightening thoughts of all was I had no clue, as to how to be an entertainer or how to perform in front of people by myself. I always had the guys around or I was in a group doing harmony with them or whatever the case may be.  I didn’t have the comfort, the feeling that I could do the things like Jackie Wilson who had been doing it before me or even Sam Cooke who had been doing it before me. I wasn’t that brave or that strong. As a matter of fact, for a long time, when I would stand up at the mic to sing, my eyes would be closed, because I couldn’t take the pressure of looking at the audience.”

In the late summer of 2010, Ben E. King released a new album Heart & Soul produced by Linda Nash and Lanny Williamson in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at The Beach, the recording studio that they own.

Mr. King recalls how he came to record at The Beach and to work with Linda Nash and Lanny Williamson, “I guess it is fate, because Linda Nash came to visit me at the Blue Note nightclub in New York and I didn’t know she was coming. She came and she surprised me and it wasn’t until after the show that I was aware that she was there. After the show she came upstairs and she said to me, ‘I have never heard you sing standards like that. Where did you learn that? Would you like to do that again? Would you like to do a project with me in Canada? I have a studio up in Calgary and you will just love it.’ She was just going on and on and I thought she was joking. Then after the week was over she went her way and I went home. Phone calls started coming in from her and Lanny was phoning and saying when do you think you would like to start this project? It is a great idea. I think you will do a good job.”

“I said, well if you are willing to try, I am willing to try along with you. Surely enough they sent tickets, they set up the hotel rooms and before I knew it I was in Calgary. I must admit, it is one of the best studios that I have been in,” Mr. King says.

He then elaborates about the appeal the recording studio holds for him, “It is right up there with the great studios that Atlantic Records had back in the late fifties. It is the magic, the warmth and the sincerity. I was back in the world of Ahmet Ertegun (the late founder and president of Atlantic Records who first signed him as a solo artist). You don’t find that anymore, (someone) who has that much interest in you becoming good at what you do and making it comfortable for you.”

The album Heart & Soul, is a crooner’s album, one that is filled with love songs such as; “For All We Know,” “I Only Have Eyes For You,” “Since I Fell For You,” and “This Is Always.”

“I don’t think any male singer could select songs like these without a female around him. As a matter of fact we still have a half of a CD worth of songs still in the can up there in Calgary. Linda picked so many good songs. I left Calgary and they had a suitcase full of songs. They would call me up and say here is the lineup and then they would call me up a week later and they would say, no, here is the new lineup. It was a great selection of songs, mostly chosen by Linda Nash. Of course Lanny and I would say yay or nay to the ones that we thought were good, but she would more or less have the final decision and from a female’s point of view. She knew what the girls would like to hear,” he says.

The new album opens with the song “Heart and Soul,” a song which most people are used to hearing as being very up-tempo and yet for this CD it was recorded much differently. Music fans will be surprised at the more elegant and down-tempo fashion in which it is both sung by Ben E. King and played by the musicians.

Mr. King comments on the recording of “Heart and Soul,” “I was thinking about playing it at the piano as a kid (he vocalizes the sound of the song) and then Linda said, you know what would be really nice is to slow it down. I said to where? Then she started singing it. She said why don’t you think about it. I thought about it and then Lanny said, get on the mic and try it out.  I got on the mic and I thought this feels pretty good.  What it does for me is it puts the song in a more romantic mood. It has great lyrics and a lot of people do not realize that it has great lyrics, “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you / Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, / Madly…/ Because you held me tight / And stole a kiss in the night,” as he treats me to a mini concert, while singing Frank Loesser’s words.

The album Heart & Soul preserves the vintage feel of the songs as they were first recorded and takes us back to a time when there was warmth in the music and vocals that would cause a woman’s heart to flutter. The musicians were in the studio at the same time as Mr. King, also a rarity in today’s studio sessions and referring to it as old school he says he believes it gives the listener the feeling of being there. The recording of “That Old Feeling,” also revisited the way many of Ben E. King’s songs were recorded, with what today would be considered to be outtakes included on the record.

“Somebody asked why we wanted to leave the talking in there and Lanny said, because it leads up so well to the song itself. It shows we were having fun and when the song kicks off it is just perfect. We were talking mostly leading up to all of the other songs, but that one is better than any of the other songs,” says Ben E. King. 

In many ways the recording of Heart & Soul reminded Mr. King of the days when he recorded with prolific songwriters and producers Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber (“Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakety Yak,” “Hound Dog,” “Young Blood,” “Stuck In The Middle With You”) and in particular the song with which Ben E. King is most identified “Stand By Me,” for which he wrote the lyrics.

Mr. King reflects upon why “Stand By Me,” continues to resonate with people forty-nine years after it first topped the R&B charts and went to # 4 on the American Pop charts, “I guess, it sits up there with other songs, which people find various ways to communicate with someone that they care a lot about or communicate with someone who is not doing well, or to give them comfort in a strange time in their life.  To me it is one of the best songs and I have been told by people that it has helped them to stay level headed with friends that they thought weren’t friends.”

“The song (“Stand By Me”) came about, because we had some studio time left over during one of the sessions that we were doing. I was with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and they came to me and said, ‘We have a few minutes of studio time and the musicians are (here); do you think that we can do something with it?’ I played a little amateur piano, so I played some little chords and I started singing and before I knew it they started recording. They started putting bits and pieces together for this particular song and then they called me back to the microphone and they said let’s try this out. Before I knew it “Stand By Me,” was born,” he says.

Mr. King says that back in the day one of the enjoyable aspects of recording was, “more things came alive at the last minute than people realize. I will give you an example of that.  Most of the things done out of Muscle Shoals Alabama were created like that. Some musicians couldn’t even read music, so when you came up with an idea they created it right on the spot. That is why most of the things that were done by someone like Otis Redding were so heartfelt, because it was pumped out right then and there. Until this very day, when you listen to the music from Motown or Stax and companies and places like that, the music is still alive and well. Even with my music, I did a lot of moaning “mmmmm” and groaning and making little sounds, but I did that to fill up the sound and to do something, while the  music was going on and to keep me from being bored, while I wasn’t singing. Jerry and Mike would leave those things in the record. A lot of my songs have little grunts in there. It was just something that I would do. Even during (the recoding of) “Spanish Harlem,” I did the “la la la” thing and it is not written in there. It is something that I threw in there, because there was a long space and I was just standing at the mic going “la la la la la.” I was just mimicking the last bit of the song.”

Heart & Soul, the new album from Ben E. King, takes us back to yesteryear when crooners had the ladies swooning, when the music was warm and romantic and when Ben E. was King.

Interviewed by Joe Montague, December 2010    Return to Our Front Page

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