Graham Vickers

The first joint biography of one of rock n roll's greatest song writing teams, Hitmakers Inc. explores the private lives and public triumphs of lyricist Doc Pomus and composer Mort Shuman. Between 1958 and 1965, usually working out of Manhattan s famous Brill Building, they wrote some 500 teen anthems and timeless ballads for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, The Drifters, Bobby Darin, Del Shannon and Andy Williams among others. Polio-stricken ex-blues shouter Pomus always attracted the press coverage, but after the duo split junior partner Shuman proved the more colourful of the two, acting in films, writing musicals, joining the post-Beatles British beat boom and eventually becoming a chart-topping singer-composer in his own right in of all places France. The story of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, writing together and individually, reveals a personal dynamic that was both warm and difficult but which at its height produced songs like Teenager In Love, Save The Last Dance For Me, Surrender, Little Sister, (Maries The Name) His Latest Flame, This Magic Moment and Lonely Avenue.

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