Skip to content

Doc Pomus

DOC POMUS

YEAR

1992

INDUCTED BY

Phil Spector

CATEGORY

Ahmet Ertegun Award

One of the beating hearts in the music industry from rock’s golden era.

Doc Pomus was a bonafide hit machine: “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “This Magic Moment” and “Viva Las Vegas” are just a small sample of the anthems he wrote.

Doc Pomus

Doc Pomus

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Peter Galunick

Born Jerome Solon Felder in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on June 27, 1925, he became “Doc Pomus” both as an identity and as a disguise.

At fifteen, he fell into the blues through the message embedded in Big Joe Turner’s “Piney Brown Blues”; as Doc frequently said, “It was the transformation of my life.”

At eighteen 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.”

Read More
Class of 1992
he was the light of my life.
Phil Spector
More from the class of 1992
%post_title%

The Yardbirds