Ben E. King
Stand by Me
1961 · Don’t Play That Song!
Official audio. Official audio on the Ben E. King channel. Provided to YouTube by Rhino Atlantic.
Documented
Single written by Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber, and Mike Stoller. Recorded 1960 and issued in 1961 on Atco. It appears on the album Don’t Play That Song! The link is official audio on the Ben E. King channel, supplied by Rhino Atlantic.
What can be seen or heard
Night, a dark land, and the moon as the only light. Then the sky tumbling, and the mountain crumbling into the sea. The promise against those pictures is that someone will stay. The collapse is in the lyric. The comfort is also in the lyric.
What the artist said
King and Stoller have described the writing session. Stoller told The Guardian in 2013 that he arrived to find King and Leiber at work on lyrics from an older gospel song, “Lord, Stand by Me,” and that he added the bass line. The song is also documented as an updating of Charles Albert Tindley’s hymn, which draws on Psalm 46: the earth removed, the mountains carried into the sea. The romantic frame is the record’s. The hymn is the documented ancestor. A cosmic reading is not required to hear the verse.
Living Realm comparison
A falling sky and a mountain going into the sea are images this chart meets elsewhere. Here they are the test of a promise: someone stands anyway. The comparison may notice the collapse. It does not turn a vow between people into a secret history. The hymn and the psalm stay in the chain.
Related
A link is a place to compare. It does not move this recording onto that record.