It’s a sad yet somewhat inevitable truth that great songwriters are almost destined to languish in obscurity compared to the A-list artists and producers who transform their compositions into hits. But even with such inequities in mind, Otis Blackwell’s profile is astonishingly low-key when you consider the raft of classic hits he penned over the years.
From 1955 onwards, Blackwell wrote over 1,000 R&B and rock ‘n’ roll hits, many of them classics. His first success came in 1956 with the sultry composition Fever, a No.1 R&B hit for Little Willie John, before Peggy Lee turned it into an international pop hit.
