The Unsung Hitmaker
- Sangamon County News
- Oct 13, 2024
- 2 min read
Do you ever see somebody and think: “Why hasn’t there been a movie about that person yet?” I think that about a guy named Otis Blackwell. If you don’t know who he is, you are not alone.
If you are over a certain age and I said who wrote “Don’t be Cruel,” “Return to Sender” and “All Shook Up” you’d say Elvis; those are some of his biggest hits. Or if I said who wrote “Breathless,” and “Great Balls of Fire” you’d say Jerry Lee Lewis, those songs made him famous; everybody knows that. “Fever” was a classic written by Peggy Lee covered hundreds of times by Madonna Beyonce, Elvis, and Christina Aguilera; except Lee didn’t write it. “Handy Man” was another big hit for James Taylor, Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Tanya Tucker.
You can probably guess they were all written by Otis Blackwell. And he wrote dozens and dozens of songs covered by the biggest artists who have ever recorded; The Who, Dolly Parton, Otis Redding, and James Brown, among others. His songs have sold more than 200 million copies; yes, you read that right.
Born in Brooklyn in 1931 he grew up listening to country western and R&B music; Blackwell was a self-taught piano player a skill he honed by copying performers he heard on the radio. Blackwell left school in the late 1940s, he worked as “floor-sweeper” at a New York theatre and later as a clothes-presser in a laundry. In 1952 he won a local talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem; his prize was a recording contract on the Jay-Dee label. It was at the label owner’s suggestion that Blackwell begin writing his own songs.
Later after Blackwell had penned some big hits for a number of famous artists and his songwriting prowess was well-established, his publisher "Goldie" Goldhawk had shaken up a bottle of Pepsi and said to him: "You can write about anything. Now write about this!" “All Shook Up” was the number one song of the year and along with “Don’t be Cruel” which stayed in the charts at number one longer than any other of Elvis’ hits. With some exceptions, Blackwell preferred to remain behind-the-scenes; one of those exceptions was his 1955 Christmas Eve recorded demo of “Don’t be Cruel” on a piano and used a cardboard box as percussion, which got the attention of Elvis Presley.
As rock and roll became the predominate musical force post 1955, appreciation of Blackwell’s talent spread. He was recognized by the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and the National Academy of Popular Music’s Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991. In 2010 Blackwell was rightfully inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2022 he was admitted to the Blues Hall of Fame.
Otis Blackwell died in Nashville in May of 2002. The Blackwell quote used in his 2002 obituary in The New York Times encapsulates his no-nonsense approach to music: “I wrote my songs, I got my money and I boogied.”
