If you’re the kind of obsessive who checks out songwriting credits (and as an RC reader, you probably are) then Pomus’ name was likely one of the first you noticed, inscribed along with his partner Mort Shuman beneath titles such as Lonely Avenue, A Teenager In Love and, of course, Save The Last Dance For Me. As one of the Brill Building’s writing teams, Pomus (words) and Shuman (music) helped to inject guts and intelligence into the three-minute single, fusing pop with soul and even a shot of R&B. Though they were eclipsed by the Beatles era, they lived to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as one of the immortal songwriting partnerships.
Though his story has been well-told before, notably by RC contributor Spencer Leigh (www.spencerleigh.demon.co.uk), this book underlines how truly remarkable Pomus was. Struck down by polio aged six and condemned to a life of leg-irons, crutches and wheelchairs, he refused to be beaten. Heaving himself up on to the stages of scuzzy clubs in 40s New York, he became, improbably, the world’s first white, Jewish, crippled blues singer, and never looked back. Sheer bloodymindedness carried him into a career that included Ray Charles, Presley, Spector, Dylan and The Dagenham Girl Pipers (true!). He was a millionaire by the mid-60s and broke by the mid-70s, living in a Damon Runyan world of sleazy hotels, unpaid bills and all night poker games with gangsters and junkies.
Based on hundreds of interviews with his friends and family, this is a great biography with the qualities of a novel, by turns informative, moving and lifeaffirming.
