Stand By Me

The most famous bassline in soul music was an afterthought?

Ben E. King had just finished recording “Spanish Harlem” and there was a little studio time left on the clock. Instead of calling it “Miller Time,” Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the legendary songwriting duo, asked if he had anything else. King sat down at the piano and played them a rough song he’d been working on, something inspired by an old gospel tune called “Stand by Me Father.”

Mike Stoller heard it and immediately turned to the bass player. “Hey, play this.” What came out was that “Oh s**t!!” bassline. You know the one. Four notes that might be the most recognizable four notes in R&B history. They built the entire arrangement around it, added a güiro for percussion (a scraped gourd, because we all have a few lying around), and recorded the whole thing in two takes.

Two takes! For a song that’s earned over $22 million in royalties.

Here’s another fascinating fact. King originally wrote it for The Drifters because he was their lead singer, and they passed on it! So he recorded it himself, and it became the biggest hit of his career, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961.

But wait there’s more. The song’s DNA goes back. Way back. That gospel tune King was inspired by? It traces to a 1905 hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, which itself draws from Psalm 46. So when you’re dancing to “Stand By Me” at your wedding, you’re dancing to something with roots in a 120-year-old church hymn.

I dunno. Does that ruin the 60s vibe somehow? Let’s not dwell on it.

Then the song died down, as songs do. Until 1986, when Rob Reiner used it as the title track for his coming-of-age film “Stand By Me.” The movie was a hit, the song was re-released, and suddenly it was back on the charts 25 years later.

Since then, everyone’s covered it. John Lennon. Otis Redding. Tracy Chapman. Florence + The Machine. Muhammad Ali (ha! yes). The Kingdom Choir performed it at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding, which is about as mainstream as a song can get. In 2015, the Library of Congress put King’s original in the National Recording Registry, calling it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” That was just weeks before King passed away.

Over 400 artists have recorded it. The royalties made it the sixth highest-earning song of its era. And it all started because there were a few minutes left in a studio session.