That was the original title that Sharyn Felder gave to the documentary she wanted to make about her father, the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus. The 10-minute trailer that she made consisted of brief snippets of conversation with some of the people he loved, worked with, and influenced: Lou Reed, Little Jimmy Scott, B.B. King, and Doctor John. It could just as easily have included conversations with dozens more – because, as Jerry Wexler frequently said, Doc was the heart and soul, the
conscience,
of the music industry.
Doc would have eschewed such labels, but AKA Doc Pomus, the wonderful documentary that was eventually made by Peter Miller and Will Hechter (with Sharyn’s full participation) and is just now making its way to a theater near you if you happen to live in New York or Los Angeles, makes the same essential point.
He was born Jerome Solon Felder in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 1925 and stricken with polio at the age of six, compelled to spend the rest of his life in braces and crutches, or in a wheelchair. At fifteen he discovered the blues through the message imbedded in Big Joe Turner’s “Piney Brown Blues”; as Doc frequently said, “It was the transformation of my life.”
He started hanging out in Greenwich Village, listening to Frankie Newton’s band at George’s Tavern, and when the proprietor wanted to throw him out one night for nursing a single beer the whole evening, Doc came up with the perfect alibi. “I’m a blues singer,” he said. “I’m here to do a song.” The song he sang, without any further ado or preparation, was, naturally, “Piney Brown Blues.”
He started singing regularly – in the Village, in Brooklyn, “college student by day, professional blues singer by night.” To hide his new avocation from his family he needed a name. That was how he became Doc Pomus, which served as both an identity and a disguise.
He became a songwriter by the same sort of fortuitous accident that he had become a blues singer: he wrote songs for himself, and then Gatemouth Moore recorded one of his numbers for National in 1946 on a session produced by Herb Abramson and engineered by Tommy Dowd. When Abramson co-founded Atlantic with Ahmet Ertegun the following year, and Dowd became the new label’s chief engineer, Doc became an Atlantic songwriter. A couple of years later his idol, Joe Turner, recorded one of his songs for the label.
His breakthrough came with rock ‘n’ roll: Ray Charles (“Lonely Avenue”), the Coasters (“Young Blood”), the Drifters “This Magic Moment,” “Save the Last Dance For Me”), Dion “"A Teenager in Love”), Big Joe Turner (“Still in Love”), and Elvis Presley (“Little Sister,” “His Latest Flame,” “Viva Las Vegas”) all recorded songs written by Doc, some by himself, some with a variety of occasional collaborators, but most with his principal songwriting partner of the decade, Mort Shuman. The song for which they are best known, “Save the Last Dance For Me,” remains one of the enduring monuments of the era, and indeed one of the most enduring standards of our time.
When you think of Doc Pomus, though, you don’t just think of a list of songs. Because no matter how extraordinary the songs are, the man compelled no less attention. After being stricken by polio, it was his dream to become the first heavyweight champion of the world on crutches, “a man among men,” as he would always say. This is a perfectly understandable fantasy for a lost, lonely child, but it is in effect what he did become: if he was not the heavyweight champion in boxing, he became a champion of another sort.
He maintained his perspective. He maintained his humanity. He maintained his no-bullshit sense of compassion, his omnivorous interest in everything and everyone that was going on (tell Doc a story, and you’d always get two in return), his commitment to help everyone and anyone who needed it – without forfeiting his right to grumble about it. What was most astonishing about Doc was that he denied no element of his humanness. More than anything else, that may have been the quality that most defined his writing.
What I loved most about Doc – well, I loved everything, really – was his sense of constant engagement. Not just creative engagement either, though that was certainly part of it. I first met Doc the same way that almost everyone else interviewed for the film did: he called me up – in my case, to express his admiration for something I had written. Within moments, it seemed, we were fast friends, within minutes we were off to the races, caught up in a dialogue which for me will go on in my mind’s ear for as long as I live.
I certainly can’t claim any credit. If it had been left to me, I might have just sat there for hours, for days maybe, a timid acolyte in the presence of the legendary songwriter. But Doc didn’t permit that. He quizzed me, he grilled me, he voiced his enthusiasms, he sought out mine – he conveyed this incredible life force, this pure energy and love for people and ideas that I’ve rarely encountered in so undiminished, so undisguised a form. “Peter, you got a minute?” he would say on the phone and then just launch into whatever was on his mind at that particular moment: music, politics, philosophy, friends, it didn’t matter. The dialogue just bubbled along irrepressibly, taking its own natural course but always brought down to earth, and into perspective, by Doc’s inevitable conclusion: “What can I tell you? Just the same old nonsense.” Which, of course, it was and it wasn’t – but it was.
The thing about Doc was that he unfailingly put himself on the line. Not just in his songs but in every aspect of his life. I think that was what I learned most of all from Doc, the notion that you must put yourself on the line, whether for friends or politics or art or merely in expressing your opinions honestly. For Doc there was no holding back. He was passionate – about everything – but he didn’t bullshit himself. And he didn’t bullshit anyone else. Which I think as much as anything else was what sustained his creativity.
In the last ten years of his life Doc wrote some of his very greatest songs, songs that matched, and in some cases surpassed, the quality of his biggest hits. Most were written with Mac Rebennack, AKA Dr. John, his friend, collaborator, sometime lifestyle-debater, above all his “partner.” (“There’s a lot of kind of partners you can have,” says Mac. “Me and Doc was a lot of different kind of partners on some off-the wall level that I hadn’t had with nobody in a long, long time.”)
With the later songs Doc achieved the kind of profound simplicity that he had been striving for all of his writing life. He knew it, and was proud of it – but he also knew that it wasn’t what went before that mattered, it wasn’t honors or validation (though he liked those, too) that yielded satisfaction: no matter what you have achieved, no matter what recognition may come your way, he would say over and over again – and mean it – it was what came next that mattered, it was the next challenge, creative, personal, it didn’t matter: life was living up to the challenge.
He kept writing almost up to his last breath – on a portable keyboard, with Dr. John, in his hospital room. He kept on reaching out a helping hand to others, too. Towards the end he could honestly say, “I’m doing the same stuff I always did. I’m acting the same way I always acted. The only difference is that now I talk about it. At one time I wouldn’t express my opinions except to maybe my closest friends, because it wasn’t cool to be that animated. Now I don’t hold anything back. I don’t know, maybe it’s just so I’ll get noticed, but I really don’t want to live to see a day where the space that I take up in this world is like some musty closet, some little broom closet somewhere. I want to be able to talk out – even if I’m wrong.”
Doc did talk out, and he filled an enormous space. He lived and died, as this film clearly shows, surrounded by love.
AKA Doc Pomus is available on various video and streaming services including Amazon and iTunes