Ben E. King, the soundtrack of all love stories – Terra Brazil

His voice trailed off today, but the lyrics and the songs of American singer Ben E. King will be forever in the history of music, which gained ground for more than 50 years and have become inevitable soundtrack of all love stories .

Back in the 40s, when little Benjamin Earl Nelson sang in the church choir of his town in North Carolina, no one could imagine that sick child would leave revelers who narrated much of the novels and the desamores second half of the twentieth century around the globe.

His great classic, a very well known “Stand by me”, has at least 400 authorized covers, some of them by artists of the stature of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, U2, rocker Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton and Phil Collins.

Already in high school, the young Ben had the opportunity to enter the vocal group The Moonglows, but it was still too inexperienced for such a big step, and continued singing in his father’s restaurant, after moving to Harlem in New York, to become the singer of the band bibop The Five Crowns, group embryo that would lead later, The Drifters.

With them began walking to success. In early 1959 they came to record in the studio with legendary songwriters and producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who also helped at the beginning of the careers of Elvis Presley, The Coasters and The Shangri-Las.

Leiber and Stoller gave The Drifters confidence to record their first albums and were the authors of many of his hits.

King, still using the Nelson surname, is co-author of another of the classics of contemporary music, “There Goes My Baby”, a theme that made his career take off, and laid the foundations for the great future who waited with compositions like “Dance With Me,” “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance for Me.”

In 1960, the star of the soul began his solo career with “Spanish Harlem”, another of his hits, written with Leiber and Phil Spector, and “Stand By Me”, a song that had Leiber and Stoller written and never had good reception within the group.

“I came into our office, and Jerry and Benny were working on the lyrics,” said Stoller about when composed the song.

“. Benny started singing and went to the piano chose the chords, the melody of the bass and Jerry said, ‘! Now we have a hit And he was right,’” said the producer.

Today, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Stoller confessed that the singer’s death was for him “a real shock” and recalled the moment she met him, his voice “surprisingly warm and ripe for a young 20-somethings. ”

That unforgettable song reached numerous awards from a special place in the list of 500 best songs of Rolling Stone magazine, to enter the Recordings record of the National Library of the United States Congress.

“I think this is one of the best moments of my life,” said King as “Stand by me” touched the largest library in the world. “To think that my children and my children’s children one day will look around and say, ‘Wow,’ this is what Grandpa did. ‘” And how.