NEW YORK – Songwriter and producer Bert Berns, who had a hand in some of the biggest hits of the 1960s, including co-writing “Twist and Shout” for the Isley Brothers and the plaintive “Piece of My Heart” sung by Janis Joplin, has been inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Berns, who died in 1967 at age 38, was welcomed into the Hall on Tuesday at a ceremony at the 54 Below cabaret club in New York City. It included video tributes by Paul McCartney and Van Morrison and rock royalty like Steve Miller and Steven Van Zandt. It was hosted by Paul Shaffer and Berns’ son, Brett, and daughter, Cassandra.
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Berns joined the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
Berns signed a then-21-year-old Morrison for Bang Records and produced one of rock’s catchiest and most enduring songs, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
Berns co-wrote and produced Solomon Burke's “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” and “Cry to Me,” co-wrote The McCoys' hit “Hang On Sloopy” and produced “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters, which landed on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. His version of “Twist and Shout” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.
He started Bang Records in 1965 in partnership with the three owners of Atlantic — the label name was an acronym drawn from their first names (Berns, Ahmet Ertegun, Nesuhi Ertegun and Gerald Wexler). Bang's hits included the Strangeloves (“I Want Candy”) and Neil Diamond's “Solitary Man″ and “Kentucky Woman.″ He also established the R&B and soul music label Shout Records.
Berns was the subject of the 2017 documentary “BANG! The Bert Berns Story,” and a musical theater version of his life — the jukebox musical “Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story” — opened off-Broadway in 2014 with a book by Daniel Goldfarb — and Van Zandt and Shaffer as producers.
“Bert Berns died so young, so tragically young, that even within the industry, only the insiders know about him. He was a phenomenal talent. The list of songs was remarkable,” Van Zandt told the AP at the time.
It was Berns who took a liking to guitarist Jimmy Page and introduced him to the Atlantic team, which signed his band Led Zeppelin just months after Berns’ death. Zeppelin recorded “Baby Come on Home (Tribute to Bert Berns),” but the track was released only in 1993.
Berns was “one of the great originals of the golden age of rhythm and blues,” according to Joel Selvin’s book “Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm & Blues.”