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He's All Mine

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Miss Judy Wilson


KaRi Records 101
1962

One of the first production of Foster and Rice.  Both were already recording artists and both had singles issued by Fernwood Records in that year 1962.
 
Foster and Rice crossed paths while working some shows together in 1961 and 1962 on the Missouri nightclub circuit, and as radio disc jockeys at KTCB in Malden, Missouri.  The duo discovered that Rice had a special aptitude for melodies (“His melodies would sing to me,” Foster said), while Foster had a penchant for lyric writing, and together they made for a formidable songwriting team.

The songwriting team of Jerry Foster and Bill Rice have become one of the most successful song writing teams in country music.


Onion

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Sherry Grooms

Onion

Boudleaux Bryant
Acuff Rose Pub. BMI
Southern Artists Records

Mockingbird 1001
1965

Sherry Ann Grooms, fourteen-year old of West Memphis, Ark. has won a number of local contests in 1964.  She had been encouraged in her singing career by Fred Bevis, a Florence resident and the girl's general manager.  In 1965, she appeared four times on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour and recorded this first record, possibly in Arkansas at Southern Artists Records.

In December 1965, she was the headliner of a variety show at the Florence Coliseum. On the same bill were the Fame Records Studio Band, "Barry"& the Psychos from Memphis, Lendon Smith and the Genteels, Maggie Sue Wimberly, The Travelons, Fred Frawley and band and others

She had further records on ABC (1966-1967), Cotillion (1969), Elektra (1977, with Even Stevens) and Parachute (1978).  Some were minor hits in the country charts.

Fred Bevis, her manager, was the Florence, Alabama resident who had converted an old casket factory at 3614 Jackson Highway (Sheffield, Ala.) into a four-track studio, which he sold in 1969. The new owners named it "Muscle Shoals Sound Studios"


Johnny B. Goode

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Janis Darlene Martin 
(March 27, 1940 – September 3, 2007)


To the best of my knowledge, Janis Martin never recorded this song. 


Jazzy Little Mama

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Bunny Sigler
(David Reed,  Tinker Music ASCAP)
A Music City Production
Arr. by Dickie Howard

Hi Lo 102
1958

This is the very first record by this Philadelphia soul and r&b artist, " a musician, a singer, a songwriter, a producer, a mentor to others and a man who had rubbed professional shoulders on an equal status with such legendary Philadelphia icons as Bobby Caldwell, Bobby Martin, David White, John Madara, Len Barry, Linda Creed, Cindy Scott and of course The Mighty Three triumvirate of Gamble, Huff and Bell"

It's almost impossible to find reliable information on the Bunny Sigler recording early days and their chronology, even from the usually dependable ones.   The best source of information I've found about the early career of Bunny Sigler in the late fifties is this article from 2013 by Dave Moore found here    (although Hi Lo is spelled Hi Low...)
I've not be able to find much about who was behind this record.  Surely Frank Pingatore was closely associated with its production, but I can't imagine him as a label owner.  Frank Pingatore owned Tinker Music, the publishing company and wrote songs for Steve Gibson and the Red Caps who had the two other known records on this tiny Hi Lo Philadelphia label.  The Music City credited for the production is perhaps the music store and concert venue on 18th Street and Chesnut in Center City opened in 1947 by a drummer named Ellis Tollin and his business partner, William Welsh.

Frank J. Pingatore, Jr.
Frank Pingatore of Wilmington, Delaware passed away December 17, 2012 at the age of 82.

The son of the late Frank and Margaret Pingatore, he was the longtime owner of Pingatore Hair Designs. Prior to owning Pingatore Hair Designs, Frank was in the music business for many years. He began playing trumpet at an early age and became an accomplished professional player and had his own orchestra. He studied with Rhinehart for advanced trumpet skills and performed pop, jazz and rhythm & blues.

Frank attended Julliard for Composition and Theory and was a member of the ASCAP (American Society Composers, Authors, & Publishers) since 1955. He wrote many songs at an early age, and was the founder of Tinker Music Publishers. In 1953 Frank was presented a song, "Around the Clock," to revise, arrange, and rehearse with Bill Haley and the Comets. He arranged the union of country with rhythm & blues, wrote a new intro and revised the lyrics giving birth to "Rock Around the Clock"! He worked on many of Bill Haley and the Comets early hits, writing "Two Hound Dogs" and "Happy Baby," as well as writing for the Jodimars.

Miss Ann

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Harold Horn
 
E. Johnson - R. Penniman
Venice Music, BMI
 
Produced by Bobby Wayne

Jerden 750


Harold Horn was rhythm guitarist in the Bobby Wayne band.  Because Harold is an Indian, Bobby Wayne called his band The Warriors.   Harold Horn can be heard here as the vocalist of the Bobby Wayne band singing Long Lean Baby, a song unissued at the time.

Not sure at all about who was the mysterious Enotris Johnson, composer of Miss Ann, Jenny Jenny and Long Tall Sally, all sung by Little Richard and composer of no other songs.  According to some sources, Enotris Johnson adopted a young Richard Penniman, back in Macon, Georgia :
Enotris Johnson and his wife, Ann Johnson, devout white Seventh Day Adventists, adopted and raised a total of a dozen children, both black and white. One of these was Richard Penniman, who took on the stage name of Little Richard in the '50s. The Johnson's ran the Tick Tock Club, where Richard first performed.
For other sources, Enotris was a little girl :
Honey Chile, a popular disc jockey  introduced Robert Blackwell (Little Richard producer in New Orleans) to a young girl named Enotris Johnson who walked from Appaloosa, Mississippi to New Orleans to find Little Richard and sell him an idea for a song, because her aunt was sick and they needed the money to put her in the hospital.
Go figure. Was Enotris Johnson a real person ?  Or perhaps, the songs were not penned by Enotris Johnson but by another person of the same name ?   You can't really count on internet for debunking the false beliefs.  Incidentally, I've read that Yoko Ono is a singer.  And Tutankhamun is my ancestor.

The Enotris Johnson case is discussed here
 

Dancin' Bill Bo' Jangles

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Stepin Fetchit

Ferris 904 
1956


Stepin Fetchit was born Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.   His bumbling acting style stereotyped African Americans in the early years of cinema.  Though he perpetuated a negative image of African Americans, even the critics agreed he had great comic timing as a stable boy or slave, and he became the first major black film star to become a millionaire.

Perry was born in Key West Florida in 1902. At age 14 he toured the south in minstrel shows and later was a vaudeville singer, dancer and comic. He changed his name to that of a racehorse winning him money in Oklahoma, and eventually made it to Hollywood, where he made dozens of films.

At the height of his fame Perry owned 12 cars and employed a staff of 16 servants. He later squandered his fortune and declared bankruptcy, and by the 1960s was a charity patient at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

Perry died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure on Nov. 19, 1985 in Woodland Hills, California, an extraordinary entertainer who opened doors for black actors that followed, more free to display a limitess range of talent.



Stepin fighting the devil
(Pinkney Roberts' semi-nude exotic dancers "The Pinkettes" in their dressing room)
Young Stepin wanted to be a priest.  He studied for a year in a seminary in New Orleans before coming to Hollywood.  Impurities were troubling Mr. Fetchit.  Temptations had descended along with sudden riches, as they so often do.  Stepin was going to mass each morning to be on condition to wrestle the devil the rest of the day. 






Honky Tonk Woman

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Patti & The Nite-Lites

Patti, Dave, John & Doug
Patti Haack, vocal

Nite 7218


 
Patti Haack
Real Estate Servicing Coordinator at the United Bank of Iowa
(From The United Difference, UBI Bulletin, December 2014)

If you see her in Ida Grove, Iowa say hello from me, would you ?

No Need For Crying

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Ricki Pal
with Adam Ross Orchestra

No Need For Crying

w & m Joe Lubin, Irvin J. Roth a.k.a. Adam Ross, & Ricki Pal (1958-10-23)
Arwin MM-115-45
1958

Ricki Pal, "23-year-old nitery thrush" was signed to a three-year contract by Marty Melcher, head of Arwin Records (and also the abusive husband of movie star Doris Day).  
 
The flipside, Just Outside of Love, saw some action on WIVY, Jacksonville, Florida in November 1958.   Ricki Pal was on American Bandstand on 30 December 1958.  This is seemingly her only record. 

No further info.



Long Tall Sally

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Lincoln Rand
with The Reveliers


Adona AD-1444
(1961)


This is the first record of this Hammond, Indiana native whose real name is Robert Dolan.   Dolan founded the short-lived Guild Craft Studios in 1964 and studied philosophy at St. Meinrad Seminary College.   In his seven years of monastery and seminary, Dolan got involved in recruitment films for the priesthood and convent. He starred in a slick film — as a rock singer — but people became more interested in him as a rock singer than as a priest.   In 1972, he got the music bug again. “I simply went and started a single act and by October of 1972 the Celery' Road Show blossomed."


Father Bob Dolan (1965) 




Bob Dolan as Elvis (1977)



 
 
Adona Records
East Chicago, Indiana
Owners Frank Dudek, Robert Billen
Years active : 1960-1962


1441 Bob Bilen 
1442 Little Satan and the Easy Rocks
1443
1444 Lincoln Rand
1445 The Jades
1446 Dick DeWayne Combo  

Roll On Big Mama

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This video was posted on YouTube by Gary Robinson on May 3, 2012 who wrote : Country singer George Self from Nacogdoches, Texas singing his 1956 release "Roll On Big Mama" (actually 1957, not 1956).

George Self died shortly after  in June 2012. 

George W. Self, 89, of Cushing, Texas, died Sunday, June 3, 2012, in Nacogdoches, Texas.  He was born October 2, 1922, to Tommie E. and Amanda Gage Self in Cushing, Texas. He made a career of serving in the U.S. Navy and was a lifetime member of the VFW. He survived the sinking of the U.S.S. North Hampton at Guadalcanal. He was also a member of Landmark Baptist Church. -


Teenage Vamp

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Jeri Lynn Fraser

Written by Al Siegel

From the LP "Two Tickets To Paris"
Roulette Records R 25182
1962

Her career was guided by Al Siegel who has similarly served Ethel Merman, Dolores Gray and Frances Langford among others.
Jeri Lynne Fraser began performing at age of six in a local talent show at the Bolton, CT Town Hall.  She sang Oh Johnny.  Jeri Lynne performed in many local events in Connecticut and the surrounding communities.  At 11 years old Jeri Lynne was a 3-time winner in the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, a nationally televised program.  This qualified Jeri Lynne to perform in Madison Square Garden.  At 12, Jeri signed her first recording contract with Big Top Records and at 13 signed with Columbia Records.  During this time, Jeri Lynne performed with many notable artists including Sophie Tucker, Frankie Avalon, Gene Pitney, Johnny Tillitson, Brian Hyland, Buzz Clifford, Freddie Cannon, Curtis Lee, Tommy Boyce, and Tony Orlando.

    Jeri Lynne was the female lead in the 1962 “twist” movie entitled Two Tickets to Paris with Joey Dee.
More info here 





Jeri and her Boys at the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour
singing All Shook Up 
(September 20, 1958)


Jeri Lynne Fraser discography
Big Top 3015 : If / Now I'm Of Age  (As By Jeri Lynn)
Columbia 41790 : Poor Begonia / Catch Me
Columbia 42032 : Give My Your Arm, Papa / Lessons In Love
Columbia 42234 : Poor Joe / Take T Easy Baby
ABC Paramount 10395 :  Hush, Harvey, Hush / You Spolied Me
ABC Paramount 10438:  Movie Queen / Are You A Guy With A Line

Beatles, We Want Our Girls Back - Now!

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The Defenders
Paul Peterson- Duncan Fife

Realm BK 001

Realm Records Corporation
310 Madison Avenue, N.Y.

1964


Bring back our girls... but PLEASE keep Yoko!

Yes, from the same label who give us Florian Monday.  Realm Records was a label set up by Jackson Leighter.  , a man of many talent. Certainly humorous, multifaceted, he also was, I guess, an imaginative prankster.   A book should be written about his life.


Dumb Dumb Bunny

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Cal Starr

Dumb Dumb Bunny

Erman, Venetian Music, BMI
Arr. by A. Kavelin

Ermine 779
Ermine Record Co.
Chicago, Illinois
1960


The earliest copyright date for Dumb Dumb Bunny is from February 1955, words & music William Thomas Erman & Helen Saltiel Erman.  This Cal Starr recording predates the Steve Bledsoe and Johnny Cooper versions of the same song (on Witch Records and, again, Ermine Records)

Somewhat surprising is the presence here of Al Kavelin as arranger.  Does that mean that it was recorded in Los Angeles ? Probably.
Further association between songwriter and label owner Bill Erman and Cal Starr, singer resulted in two singles : 
  • Yes, I'm Robbin' the Craddle, on Sam Wigler and Henry Tobias' Rego label in October 1960 (with the backing of the Anita Kerr Singers and orchestra led by Chet Atkins).
  • Pain Of Love / Little Bride, on Thanx Records, a label located in Skokie, a Chicago suburban city.

CAL STARR was born in Chicago, IL but grew up on a small farm in Kentucky. He was taught a few chords on the guitar by his father and began to develop a love of music. This led to him entering and winning a talent contest with Bob Parsons, a highschool friend. His first performance was on a live radio show in Huntington, WVA.. During the early years that followed he worked as a disk jockey on KEBE radio in Jacksonville, TX and had his own program on KFLA TV in Shreveport, LA. He eventually moved back to the windy city of Chicago to pursue his love for music and the world of entertainment.  

Santa Claus Rocket Ship

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Phyllis Hamilton

Santa Claus Rocket Ship
Larry Edwards, Beycor Publishing BMI

Hark Records #500
Marion, Ohio
1959    


Little Phyllis Hamilton was a regular on "Ohio State Country Round-Up" presented each Saturday night at the Ohio State Fairgrounds and aired 11-12 p.m. over WMNI (emcee : Jimmy Stout). She was later one of the performers at The Paint Valley Jamboree from its debut, formed in 1965 by James Sweeney, of Bainbridge, and Lou Harris, of Portsmouth. 

She gave up music for 40 years until the owner of the Jamboree convinced her to come back recently.   You can see one of her recent performance  here

As Phyllis Ann, she recorded on Karl Records (1961) and as Phyllis Ann Hamilton on Shenandoah (1964-1965).

If I Could Buy You For What You're Worth

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Leona Payne
with Charlotte & The Kentucky Boys

Julie Paxton, Sunray Music, BMI


Sunray  400---- produced by Bill Williams
Dist. By Howard & Son P.O. Box 138 Chesapeake, VA

1967 (or 1968?)


Leona Payne was, like Charlotte Duzan, the backing band leader, from West Michigan and had least two other singles on the Rascal label.  She may have been also associated with Wayne Moore, a recording artist and label owner (Wa-Mo Records) from Sparta, Michigan. 

Sunray Records was probably owned by one Ouida Smith who penned the two sides of the Western Airs (Sunray #200) which featured Dick Shu, probably the earliest single recorded by country artist Dick Shuey.  The said Dick Shuey who, according to Billboard, has joined Sunray Records as national promotion manager in June 1968.

The distributor (Howard & Son Sales) was actually located in Dallas, Texas and owned by Howard Bennich, Sr., associated by Danrite Records

Sunray Records discography
100
200 — The Western-Aires And Dick Shu : Picking Up The Pieces  / You Cheated On Me  (1966)
300 — Ron Manning : Why Should We Be Strangers / I'm The One (1967, 2nd issue to Stop 107 (1966)
400 — Leona Payne : If I Could Buy You For What You're Worth / Why Won't Time Stand Still
500
600 — Leona Payne : Two Cigarettes and a Ashtray /  The Kissin' I've Been Mission' (1968)
N.B. #200 & 300  pressed in Cincinnati (200, King Records custom pressing) and 300 (Rite Records)



I Hear The Jukebox Playing

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Knob Hill Pub. BMI
Tinker 104  
Y & W Enterprize
736 Loma Vista Dr. 
Long Beach, Calif.
1964

Blue-eyed blues by a country singer.  Chuck Wyatt also recorded on Del-Aine Records (Nashville?) on which he also produced a Alice Wyatt single.  Knob-Hill, the publisher, was an off-shoot of Artists Productions, Inc. as was Boyd Records, located in Nashville but formed in Oklahoma by Bobby Boyd, a five-eights Choctaw Indian, who worked in most of the John Wayne movies.

There was a Chuck Wyatt in the fifties billed  "The Howling Hillbilly.", heading a Chuck Wyatt Rockabilly Music Show in 1957 and described as a popular western entertainer with his "Kowboy Karavan" in 1958, I don't known if he's the same artist.


Who Can I Believe

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Judy Stewart
and her Beatle Buddies

Mayhew-Stride
Janon Music ASCAP

Diplomat 45-0101
Synthetic Plastics Co.
Newark, N.J.
1964

b/w I'll Take You Back Again.  Both songs were also on the album issued by The Beatle Buddies on Diplomat Records (#2313).  The album doesn't have the Judy Stewart credit, doesn't have any songwriter credits.  But it does have a picture of the anonymous ladies on the cover.



Aubrey Mayhew,
composer of the song and also probably producer of the Beatle Buddies, grew up in Washington and went into the music business in the late 1940s, first as a booker, then as director of the Hayloft Jamboree on the radio station WCOP in Boston.
After working for budget record companies such as Pickwick Records and Diplomat Records, he formed Little Darlin Records.He was also known as passionate collector of John F Kennedy memorabilia.

Aubrey Mayhew was in Houston in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At the time, Mayhew was working for the New York-based Diplomat Records. “I was staying at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, trying to buy some George Jones tapes from Pappy Daily [the owner of Jones' Starday record label],” he said. “The Kennedy assassination happened right there on television. I immediately called a friend in Houston, who brought over two tape recorders and all the tape he could carry.

“We recorded everything off the television for about 12 hours. I rushed the material back to New York, and we put out the first ‘Kennedy Speeches’ album. At that time, we had 300 Woolworth stores in our pocket. We got prime display. We sold about 3 million albums in four months.”

This incident led Mayhew to his affinity for Kennedy memorabilia.  His prize possession is the Texas School Book Depository. “Why did I buy it?” he asked me. “It was a premium item for my collection. I paid $600,000 for it.”

Mayhew removed the original window where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy. Mayhew claims the window is stored in Nashville, but some in Dallas argue that it is not the original window. “There’s a debate over everything in life,” Mayhew said emphatically. “I don’t lie! I don’t cheat! I don’t steal! I saw them take that window out.”

Mayhew, 81, died in 2009 at hospice care facility in Nashville.

Wild Horses

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The Frontiersmen & Joanie


Louise Lewis-E. Whenham
Skyway Records Music Pub. Co.
Hollywood, Calif. 90028
Red Fox Records RFR 104
1964



The Horsemen and Joanie Hall



Leader of The Horsemen was Hi Busse, original member of the legendary "Frontiersmen" and "The Riders of the Purple Sage", Hi Busse left an indelible mark upon Western music.   Busse's career spans seven decades, playing with Roy Rogers and "Gunsmoke's" Ken Curtis, acting in Hollywood westerns in the 1940's and making countless radio and music hall tours.


Joanie Hall started performing at a young age with Marian, her older sister, as the Saddle Sweethearts  :
Joanie played standard guitar, Marian had an Oahu lap steel with “mother-of-pearl” finish and matching amp, and they both sang.   They did shows on “pioneer television,” back when the makeup was orange and the director was also the janitor that swept up at the end of the day. There were TV antennas on about every fourth house then.
Joanie got her recording career started back in 1955 with Sage and Sand Records. Woody Fleener had started the Sage and Sand record label and also signed a top vocalist, Eddie Dean. Also signed at that time was the Frontiersmen and Marian Hall as a featured steel guitar player. Joanie was called in to sing in a chorus or play rhythm guitar. But she began to get noticed.

As the story goes, Eddie Dean told her one day to practice up on her singing a bit as he would soon tell her some good news. Later on, he called to tell her that he wanted her to do a duet record with him. They recorded "Open Up Your Door" b/w "Sign On The Door". After that session, Woody Fleener knew talent when he saw it and signed her to a contract and told her she had just made her first record.

Joanie Hall Discography

The Red Fox label was a subsidiary of Skyway Records. Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham, writers of Wild Horses, owned Skyway.  For some reason, the Red Fox subsidiary was launched in 1964, showcasing Miss Louise Lewis herself with Blimp, Whimp & Skimp.

How Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham managed to convince The Frontiersmen to record two singles for their Red Fox label, that's one more mystery surrounding the story of Skyway Records and the intriguingly elusive biographies of its owners.

Am I Blue

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Lois Lee & The Rockets

Am I Blue

Clarke & Akst, Remick Music Corporation (ASCAP)
Cool Records no #
1964

Lois Lee / The Rockets discography


Cool 711 — The Rockets Featuring Lois Lewsader : Special Delivery  / The Rockets : Why Oh Why
Cool 712 — The Rockets : Always Alone    /  Lois Lee & The Rockets : Year 'Round Love
Cool No # — Lois Lee & The Rockets : Am I Blue /  The Rockets : Moovin’’N’ Groovin’


Despite the fact that this Cool label has a Nashville address and may have been linked to the Globe Studios in the same town, I'm pretty sure that the band was from the Chicago area, at least Lois Lee was.




Lois June (Lewsader) Troglia


Lois June Lewsader
was born in 1934 in Danville Township, Illinois.  In 1965, she married James W. Troglia on June 12, 1965  . They celebrated 45 years of marriage in June 2010,

Other than that, not much information.   There was several singers of the same name. And there is one who recorded for Okeh Records in 1959 who has a voice strikingly similar, a such point that I think she is possibly the same singer.  Any thoughts ?







Let's Have A Party

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Susy Rose

Let's Have A Party

Sur-Speed Records
1971?

Susy Rose was seven year-old at the time of her first record (this one).  Her picture above is from the cover of a later album from the mid-seventies.  She also recorded for Rosette, Starr and Rome Records.  Originally from Prospect, Ohio, she is possibly now Sue Michael of  Worthington, Ohio.


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