Big hit stood test of time

When he wrote Stand By Me, Ben E King came up with an unforgettable song that topped the charts and became his signature tune.

It was covered by more than 400 other artists, ranging from Cassius Clay to John Lennon, and was – according to the music industry’s performing rights body – the fourth most played song of the 20th century.

The United States Library of Congress recently added Stand By Me to its list of recordings of ‘‘cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance’’.

King was proud of his success but slightly baffled. ‘‘I still think my whole career was accidental,’’ he once said. ‘‘I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.’’

The history of popular music might have been very different, for Stand By Me was almost never made, and King had to be coaxed into finishing and recording the song by his producers.

In late 1960 he had just left the Drifters and was noted as a singer, rather than a composer. But he had a melody in his head and a few lines, based on a gospel hymn written by Philadelphia minister Charles Albert Tindley in 1905.

King had hoped the Drifters would record Tindley’s spiritual, but the group’s management had rejected the idea; recording a gospel hymn hardly fitted with the group’s string of secular hits based on vignettes of teenage life.

Having recorded Spanish Harlem as his first solo hit, King’s producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were looking for a followup, and asked him if he had any ideas.

King hesitantly sang them a fragmentary version of Stand By Me, , and Lieber and Stoller – who already had a string of hit compositions to their names – offered to help him to finish the song.

Sung by King in an urbane but impassioned voice, the record went to No4 in the American charts in 1961 and made the top 10 again in 1986, when it was used as the theme song for the movie of the same name.

‘‘It’s a love song, it’s a friendship song, it’s a song where you promise anybody in need to do anything you can to help,’’ King reflected.

King’s favourite cover was John Lennon’s 1975 version. ‘‘He took it and made it as if it should have been his song as opposed to mine,’’ King said, generously.

Benjamin Earl Nelson was born in 1938 in Henderson, North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York, where he learnt to sing in church choirs and joined his school friends in a street-corner doo-wop vocal group.

Despite opposition from his parents, who wanted him to work in the family restaurant business, by 1958 he had turned professional as lead vocalist in the Five Crowns, who soon became the Drifters.

King and the Drifters enjoyed instant chart success but when King asked for a pay rise the group’s manager, who owned the rights to the Drifters name, bounced him out of the group and replaced him with Rudy Lewis.

King’s solo career got off to a flying start, but although he had further hits by the early 1970s he had been reduced to singing in hotel nightclubs.

A devoted family man, he liked nothing more than coming home from his travels and catching up with his six grandchildren.

For more than 50 years he lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, a short distance from New York City. King sang Stand by Me as the highlight to his concerts for more than 50 years, and insisted that he could never grow tired of it.