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There is a connection, though, between the panoramic prettiness of Show Boat and the searchlight grittiness of Smokey Joe's Cafe. Whether or not they realized it, Leiber and Stoller were accomplishing in the '50s what Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein did in the '20s: translating the black music of church halls and barrooms into sophisticated songs that were at once true to the original spirit and acceptable to a mainstream audience. For L&S, that acceptability was a fluky byproduct of their urge to write rhythm and blues for the "race music" market. They didn't need to dilute their material for white listeners: the mainstream diverted itself to reach their fertile backwater.
Stoller, the kid composer from Long Island, found dozens of cunning variations on the traditional 12-bar blues. And Leiber, the Baltimore-born lyricist, poured his love of radio melodrama into the two-minute song. There was no June moon in the lurid Leiber landscape; it was a night town of train wrecks (Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots) and knife Þghts (the show's title song), sawmill slicings (Along Came Jones) and countless jailbreaks. Even a love song could sound like a taunt when Leiber wrote it. Consider the capper to the Peggy Lee I'm a Woman: "I can make a dress out of a feed bag and I can make a man out of you." Pop music was supposed to be kid stuff; Leiber and Stoller gave it a stiff drink and made it grow up fast and strong. Baby, that was rock 'n' roll.
It could have been musical theater too. But Broadway remained a musty gentlemen's club, tweaking the old formulas, calling on the same aging composers instead of summoning L&S, Randy Newman, Roy Orbison, Jimmy Webb, Jim Steinman and the whole Brill Building contingent. Every once in a while rock turns up onstage as part of an oldies package: Tommy, Leader of the Pack and, in London, compendiums of songs by Buddy Holly, Barry Manilow and ABBA. Smokey Joe's Cafe is one such package, snazzy and tightly wrapped. It's just three decades late. With Leiber and Stoller's help, there could've been a riot goin' on-on Broadway.