I was asked the other day if I remembered Claude Dampier and Derek Roy. The question was put to me by John, the only other Englishman in the two villages, which are separated by a river here in The Tarn, and boast some 2,500 souls.

John is some 20 months older than me and we have fallen into the habit of occasionally lobbing names and incidents from the past at each other.

I had heard of both names and recalled they were on the Light Programme back in my early days of listening to steam radio, as it was to be called. I was right about Claude, who appeared with Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris in Up The Pole, but I was unable to recall that Roy was the star of another comedy programme Hip Hip Hoo Roy. And that was a pity because one of the script-writers, Spike Milligan, appeared on the show, introducing the character Eccles, who would become one of the key components of the trailblazing The Goon Show. Roy also used scripts written by Galton and Simpson, who would become famous via Hancock’s Half Hour, Steptoe and Son etc.

The song Lollipop is being used in adverts to help sell a car and John, recalling it was a hit by the Mudlarks, inquired as to who made the original. That was easy: The Chordettes, who he had never heard of and I will surprise him with a shot of them singing the song on a 50s compilation dvd.

For some reason, I enquired if John remembered the Andreas Dorias? He was baffled by that one. It transpires that in the intervening 59 years, I had added an S to the name of the pride of the Italian commercial fleet, which we watched sink on the television news, some miles off Nantucket on the US coast. It was involved in a head-on collision with a Swedish ship in the fog: one ship turning to starboard and the other to port in order to avoid each other and so collided. Fifty two people were killed - 51 from the immediate impact. A man was shaving in the bathroom and survived while his wife, lying on the bed in the cabin was killed. Another irony was that among the 1,600 passengers and crew saved, was Linda Morgan, a 14-year-old who was thrown on impact from the Andrea Doria and landed unhurt on the deck of the Swedish vessel.

We watched in 1956 as the liner, listing heavily, survived until morning and then sank on our television screens long after the 1,660 passengers and crew were rescued. Cary Grant’s wife Betsy Drake and B-list star Ruth Roman were among the survivors, along with little-known Mike Stoller, which was the reason behind my initial question.

When Mike landed at the pier in New York he was met by his business partner, Jerry Leiber. He informed Mike their composition of Hound Dog was number one in the charts.

“By Big Mama Thornton?” Mike enquired.

“No, some kid called Elvis Presley.”

Two years later the songwriters, working in the famed Brill Building where so many hits were written, were given the task of finding material for The Drifters, who we thought were a successful singing group, but in fact were a collection of salaried musicians, while the owner of the group’s name, took the main slice of the cake. Leiber and Stoller wrote and created a sound that was innovative: it included the unheard-of concept of using strings on a rock/r&b record. That, and the introduction of a Brazilian baion to a rock song rendered it a lavish production. It proved successful and the approach was not lost on the young guitarist on the session (Phil Spector), or on songwriter Berry Gordy, who went on to produce the Wall of Sound and Tamla Motown respectively.

The record, There Goes My Baby did not register in the UK and neither did their subsequent successes Lonely Winds and This Magic Moment, although Dance With Me made the lower reaches of the British charts and it was not until the more commercial and less raunchy Save The Last Dance For Me that the Drifters really registered over here, whereupon their golden era came to an end.

The lead singer, promised a salary increase, resigned when it was not forthcoming and opted for a solo career. One day, working on his tune and adding contributions from Leiber and Stoller, they came up with a song and recorded it. I remember standing in a record booth upstairs in W H Smiths on the High Street, listening to the record Stand By Me, registering the fact someone in the background seemed to spend the entire record trying to light a Swan Vestas match. I loved the record but it failed to register higher than number 27 in the UK charts.

The song was registered in the US Library of Congress five weeks prior to the singer Ben E King’s death last week. I did not know it then but in W H Smiths, I was hearing a recording deemed, as the subsequent citation has it: “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

It contained what became known as the “fifties progressions” epitomized by such as Little Darlin, Diana, All I Have to do is Dream, When, Donna etc.

I would advise anyone reprising or investigating late 1950s music, to listen to There Goes My Baby, Lonely Winds, This Magic Moment and Dance With Me on Youtube and note the move towards more sophisticated rock and doo-wop, courtesy of Leiber and Stoller with Ben E King which prefaced the development of soul music. In the context of what had gone before, it was ground-breaking but then prior to Lennon and McCartney, Leiber and Stoller just churned out the most hits.

Stand by Me, cold-shouldered by the Brits for a further 27 years, is placed fourth in the list of the world’s most played songs in the 20th Century – You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling (another Brill Building export) being top.

So, RIP Ben E King but when I heard of his passing, I did wonder what would have happened to rock and pop if the disaster of the Andrea Doria had claimed one extra victim back in 1956: Mike Stoller.