Ben E. King

Ben E. King made an indelible mark on his time, both as lead singer of the Drifters and as a solo artist. A North Carolina native who had honed his vocal chops in church and carried the explosive style of the Sensational Nightingales' Julius Cheeks into the secular arena, Benjamin Earl Nelson was an original member of the 5 Crowns, a quintet that made a little bit of noise in 1958 with the Doc Pomus–Mort Shuman song "Kiss and Make Up," recorded for Pomus and Shuman's own R&B label. A year later the remaining original Drifters assembled by Clyde McPhatter fell apart, but the group's enterprising manager, George Treadwell, recognizing the commercial value of the group's name, simply recruited the 5 Crowns to be the new Drifters. Ben E. Nelson then renamed himself Ben E. King, after his favorite uncle, and stepped up to the lead-tenor role, making his 1959 debut with a magnificent song he had written, "There Goes My Baby." It peaked at #2 on the pop charts and inaugurated a bona fide golden era that produced innovative productions largely from the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. King's tenure with the Drifters lasted only through 1960, when he went solo with a lovely Jerry Leiber–Phil Spector song "Spanish Harlem," which topped out at #10 on the pop chart. His finest hour as a writer and vocalist came in 1961, with the stark, haunting "Stand by Me" (a cowrite with Leiber-Stoller), a song that is as unsettling in its pronounced sense of dread as it is uplifting in its promise of fidelity, and which has assumed its proper grandeur as a monumental work of popular art. The hits pretty much ceased after "Stand by Me," but he returned to Atlantic in 1975 and produced a substantial #1 R&B and #5 pop single in the two-part "Supernatural Thing." By that time King had adopted a cooler vocal approach, sensual in its muted nuances, and well suited to his maturity.

King's glory years are well documented. The 20-track Ultimate Collection and Rhino's 16-track The Very Best of Ben E. King hit all the Drifters' high notes in the King era and contain most of the key solo recordings, though neither set includes "Seven Letters," a curious omission. A bracing set of songs comprises the Collectables twofer Spanish Harlem/Don't Play That Song, solo albums from 1961 and 1962 respectively. Spanish Harlem in particular is fasci-nating, owing to its focus on exotic, Latin-influenced material such as "Perfidia," "Grenada," "Quiza, Quizas, Quizas," and "Besame Mucho," an obscure Pomus-Shuman gem titled "Souvenir of Mexico," and of course the title tune. Don't Play That Song includes the title song and "Stand by Me," but also a number of seldom-heard album sides penned by Pomus-Shuman ("Here Comes the Night"), Pomus-Spector ("Ecstasy" and "Young Boy Blues"), and Gerry Goffin–Carole King's "Show Me the Way." It's a worthy and essential addition to the King oeuvre. Avoid Curb's The Best of Ben E. King as it contains inferior rerecordings of the classic material.

More recently King cut a solo album, Shades of Blue, for the Half Note label. This 1999 effort teamed him with some top-notch musicians (tenor sax man David "Fathead" Newman and the great vibraphonist Milt Jackson, for starters) and found him employing his medium-cool crooning voice in service of some classic American pop tunes ("You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," the Gershwins' "They Can't Take That Away From Me," "Cry," "Learnin' the Blues") as well as Ray Charles' rousing "Hallelujah, I Love Her So." It's not an earth-shaking outing, but it has its moments, and it shows King aging gracefully as a vocalist, which was not always the case in the years leading up to this recording. He's found out that a little goes a long way and that subtlety is a great vocal attribute in an aging singer. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide