Smokey Joe’s in Los Angeles served beans and barbecue and was immortalized in a song by songwriting royalty – Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

The renowned songwriting duo met in 1950 when they were both 17 and Leiber was in his senior year at the city’s Fairfax High School and Stoller was a student at LA City College.

They went on to write hundreds of songs such as Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock for Elvis Presley, There Goes My Baby for the Drifters, Stand By Me for Ben E King and Is that All There Is? for Peggy Lee.

But before all that, they wrote Smokey Joe’s Café sung by The Robins, an influential R&B group of the late 1940s and 50s.

One day while I was eating beans (at Smokey Joe's Café)
Just sittin', diggin' all them scenes (at Smokey Joe's Café)
A chick came walking through the door
That I had never seen before.

Smokey Joe’s was located next to an oil well at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega, a common sight in the city in those days. It offered ‘rip-snortin’ chili and beans, beef sandwiches and ‘humdinger’ sundaes. The décor was cowboy themed with sawdust on the floor and seats shaped like saddles.

‘I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of the oil well and the greasy spoon,’ Jerry Leiber recalled. It’s wonderful to think of these two teenage songwriting geniuses sitting in Smokey Joe’s, their illustrious careers still ahead of them.

In 2017, Smokey Joe’s Café became the title of a musical revue of the songwriting duo’s many hits and played in major American cities.

Celebrities such as comedians Billy Cristal and Bob Hope were  spotted at Smokey Joe’s over the years, but it is also fondly remembered as a place where many Los Angelenos had their first restaurant experience, taken there as children by their parents.

There was another Smokey Joe’s near the corner of Riverside and Coldwater in Sherman Oaks.

We believe Smokey Joe’s closed after a fire in the 70s. We’ll update with more information when we can.

Courtesy Bob Reiss.