[Leiber and Stoller] started working for Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic, and produced the Drifters, including "There Goes My Baby" with Ben E. King singing lead, and "Save the Last Dance For Me."

BIG-TIME SUCCESS WITH JAY AND THE AMERICANS

You do a cover of "There Goes My Baby" on your new record. But it's very different.

We do it as a shuffle. But in those days it had a Latin flavor. Anyway, we auditioned for Leiber and Stoller. They were so hot as producers that United Artists had given them an independent record deal, and they started recording us and we had hits. The first was in 1961, which for me seems like yesterday... "She Cried" became a Top 5, then we had "Only in America," "Come a Little Bit Closer" "Let's Lock the Door," "Some Enchanted Evening," [and] "Cara Mia" which was a huge hit.

Then in 1968 I got involved with these two guys who knocked on our door once - Donald Fagen and Walter Becker [later of Steely Dan fame], who became part of the last incarnation of Jay and the Americans, actually playing on a couple of our last hits - "This Magic Moment" in '69 and "Walking in the Rain" in '70. I produced their early "Becker and Fagen" albums which have subsequently come out as bootlegs.

HOLLYWOOD NOSTALGIA

You've taken us up into the '70s now, when there started to be a nostalgia craze for the music of the '50s, with Happy Days on TV etc. When I was in junior high school in the '70s we had "'50s Day" once a year.

I had left Jay and the Americans and I recorded a song [in 1975] with Joel Dorn for Atlantic Records called "Looking for an Echo" (which, though it took 20 years, became a cult classic in that particular genre of radio), but because of that record I was called out to California to work on the movie about Alan Freed, American Hot Wax.

Which was slightly fictionalized.

Slightly, but in looking back I feel proud of it because we really did capture the feeling that was going on at that time, and I know for a fact that there are many people who look at that and - forget about the [movie's] inaccuracies - it really did capture the spirit of that time. If you want to know what it was like at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in 1958, check out American Hot Wax. And for that movie I formed the group The Planotones.

THE PRESENT DAY

Which you revived and have kept going for some years.

It's hard to believe but it's fifteen years! I started it when I was already getting old, it was in 1992, and we're going stronger than ever.