NEW YORK (AP) — Songwriter and producer Bert Berns, who had a hand in a number of the greatest hits of the Sixties, together with co-writing “Twist and Shout” for the Isley Brothers and the plaintive “Piece of My Heart” sung by Janis Joplin, has been inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame.
Berns, who died in 1967 at age 38, was welcomed into the Corridor on Tuesday at a ceremony on the 54 Beneath cabaret membership in New York Metropolis. It included video tributes by Paul McCartney and Van Morrison and rock royalty like Steve Miller and Steven Van Zandt. It was hosted by Paul Shaffer and Berns’ son, Brett, and daughter, Cassandra.
Berns joined the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2016.
Berns signed a then-21-year-old Morrison for Bang Data and produced one in all rock’s catchiest and most enduring songs, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
Berns co-wrote and produced Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” and “Cry to Me,” co-wrote The McCoys’ hit “Hang On Sloopy” and produced “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters, which landed on Rolling Stone journal’s record of The five hundred Biggest Songs of All Time. His model of “Twist and Shout” was inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2010.
He began Bang Data in 1965 in partnership with the three homeowners of Atlantic — the label identify was an acronym drawn from their first names (Berns, Ahmet Ertegun, Nesuhi Ertegun and Gerald Wexler). Bang’s hits included the Strangeloves (“I Want Candy”) and Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man″ and “Kentucky Girl.″ He additionally established the R&B and soul music label Shout Data.
Berns was the topic of the 2017 documentary “BANG! The Bert Berns Story,” and a musical theater model of his life — the jukebox musical “Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story” — opened off-Broadway in 2014 with a guide by Daniel Goldfarb — and Van Zandt and Shaffer as producers.
“Bert Berns died so young, so tragically young, that even within the industry, only the insiders know about him. He was a phenomenal talent. The list of songs was remarkable,” Van Zandt instructed the AP on the time.
It was Berns who took a liking to guitarist Jimmy Web page and launched him to the Atlantic workforce, which signed his band Led Zeppelin simply months after Berns’ loss of life. Zeppelin recorded “Baby Come on Home (Tribute to Bert Berns),” however the observe was launched solely in 1993.
Berns was “one of the great originals of the golden age of rhythm and blues,” in line with Joel Selvin’s guide “Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm & Blues.”
