Teenagers especially are very, very conscious about what is hip and what is lame and what is square and what is out and what is in, you know. And, I mean, I grew up right there in the middle of a black culture. And I knew dead-on what it was.

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.

Red-hot songs were born on the black streets of Baltimore, where I delivered five-gallon cans of kerosene and ten-pound bags of coal.

Jerry Leiber Quotes