The Songs Remain the Same
One generation passes and another generation comes, but the Top 40 abides. For these eight Texas acts, a few hours in a recording studio was all it took to secure an everlasting place in history as that most singular of creatures: the one-hit wonder.
(Page 2 of 2)
Lynn: I wrote “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” because of this young guy named Sylvester. We had started courting, but one night I saw him talking to some woman. I said, “This is it,” and he said, “Wait. This is my friend” or “my sister” or something. I said, “Sylvester, if you lose me, you’ll lose a good thing.” I cried that night, but I woke up the next morning and wrote that song. I’d just had my tonsils removed when Huey Meaux came to my grandmother’s house. He said I had a hit and was going to be on American Bandstand. I couldn’t talk, but I started screaming. That song has brought me many places in my life. No way do I ever get tired of playing it. Because of it, I’m still working. People still remember.
PAUL AND PAULA, “Hey Paula,” NO. 1, 1963
In 1962 Jill Jackson and Ray Hildebrand (above, at his home in Overland Park, Kansas) were students at Howard Payne College, in Brownwood, singing as a duo called Jill and Ray. One Sunday afternoon, they played “Hey Paula,” a song Hildebrand had just written, on a local radio station. The station manager recorded the song and played it again … and again, because people kept calling and requesting it. He suggested they record it with professionals, so they drove 130 miles to Major Bill Smith’s Fort Worth studio, where Amos Milburn Jr.’s no-show became their lucky break. Jill and Ray became Paul and Paula, and “Hey Paula” became the biggest hit of early 1963 and, to some, a signpost for the innocence of an era that was about to end violently. Paul and Paula didn’t last long either. Today, Jackson is a grandmother living in Hidden Hills, just north of Los Angeles, and Hildebrand is a successful Christian recording artist. They still get together every year or so to sing the song at oldies shows.
Hildebrand: It’s a cute little innocent song about love, commitment, and staying together. The melody is so simple it’s just ridiculous. Anybody could have done it; there’s been a lot better songs that didn’t make it. But people will say, “I bet you get sick and tired of it,” and I say, “You should look at my royalty checks.” That song has been played someplace in the world every day for the past 44 years. We’ll go to these oldies shows and do this one little song. Bowzer from Sha Na Na, who’s a promoter now, will get up there and introduce us and say, “If you had to pick one song, just one song from the sixties, it would be this one. Here they are, the Sweethearts of the Sixties—Paul and Paula!”
BLOODROCK, “D.O.A.,” NO. 36, 1971
“D.O.A.” is one of the strangest radio hits of all time—eight and a half minutes of wailing guitars, soaring organ, funereal choruses, and hammy lyrics about a horrific plane crash (“The sheets are red and moist where I’m lying / God in Heaven, teach me how to die!”). The Fort Worth band (above, from left, Eddie Grundy, Jim Rutledge, Nick Taylor, and Stevie Hill; not pictured are Rick Cobb and Lee Pickens) had been discovered by Grand Funk Railroad’s manager Terry Knight. “Bloodrock sounded like Deep Purple if Deep Purple grew up in Texas” was one description of their sound. They called it quits in 1974, though members staged a benefit reunion show in 2005 for keyboard player Hill, who has leukemia. They plan to release a DVD and CD from that event.
Hill: We all wrote the song. We started jamming on the siren sound from the organ and guitar. Jim Rutledge, the singer, started getting ideas for lyrics, and the drummer, Rick Cobb, helped him. The lead guitarist, Lee Pickens, had a friend who had died in a private-plane crash. After the album came out, deejays just started playing the song—everybody thought it was so shocking and controversial. The label wanted us to do a follow-up single, and we looked around at each other like, What do we do? It’s not like trying to write a follow-up to “Wild Thing.” Unfortunately, we got typecast, and if you get typecast you can either love it and go with it or you can choose not to love it and be miserable. I’m proud of the song. We didn’t want to be known as the gory band, but we were thankful for the hit—at least we’re known for something. If you say, “‘D.O.A.’ is like _____”—what can you compare it to? There’s not another song like it. We came up with something original.
TOBY BEAU, “My Angel Baby,” NO. 13, 1978
Formed by a group of teenagers from the Rio Grande Valley, Toby Beau—named for a shrimp boat in Port Isabel—moved to San Antonio in the mid- seventies. The group was a country-rock band in the mold of the Eagles, but it was signed to RCA mostly because of the easy fifties sound of “My Angel Baby,” written by guitarist Danny McKenna and singer Balde Silva (above, at Half Price Books in San Antonio). The song became a national hit, but RCA wasn’t happy with the follow-up, leading McKenna to quit. Silva kept going, taking the stage name Toby Beau, under which he did two more albums. He now lives on South Padre Island, where he and his wife, Rennetta, have a regular Toby Beau gig at Louie’s Backyard. McKenna committed suicide last April.
Silva: Danny was my mentor. We grew up in South Texas and were heavily influenced by groups like Sunny and the Sunliners that played Spanish-influenced fifties R&B songs. We were in a hotel room in New York and he was playing the hook of the chorus over and over, and I grabbed a pencil and paper and four minutes later had the lyrics. They just popped out. We got spoiled after that became a hit. We went to Florida to record the follow-up in the studio where the Eagles recorded and stayed in a huge mansion on Biscayne Bay; we had a cook, limos—we were playing rock stars, and we lapsed into mediocrity. RCA told us, “This stuff stinks.” So Danny quit. RCA said they wouldn’t sue us for breach of contract if I finished the album with studio musicians and a different direction. I said yes. In the early eighties my wife, Rennetta, started playing with me at hotels on South Padre Island. We’ve done fourteen or fifteen summers in a row now. We also do cruises. I love that song. Because of it, I never had to pick up a broom or a shovel or a hammer.
BRUCE CHANNEL, “Hey! Baby,” NO. 1, 1962
Bruce Channel (above, in a Nashville hotel room) was eighteen, living in Grapevine, and singing with the Light Crust Doughboys when he began writing songs with veteran songwriter Margaret Cobb; “Hey! Baby” was one of their first. He recorded it in a Fort Worth studio, backed by the Straitjackets, who featured Delbert McClinton on harmonica. Channel’s smooth voice and McClinton’s bluesy harmonica riff carried the song to number one and the two young men to England, where an unknown group called the Beatles opened for them. Backstage one night, John Lennon buttonholed McClinton and asked him to play the harmonica. A few months later, the lads released their first single, “Love Me Do,” the opening notes of which—Lennon’s memorable harmonica part—draw a direct line from a little Fort Worth studio to the dawning of a new age.
Channel: It’s like tossing pebbles in the water and watching the ripples, seeing what you get back. John already played harmonica, but it was a push-button kind. Who’s to say what makes something like that happen? I’m a professional songwriter in Nashville now. I’ve written songs and gone in the studio a zillion times since 1962 and not had a hit like “Hey! Baby.” I still don’t know why it’s so special. It’s been covered two hundred times and been a hit every decade since. DJ Ötzi, from Austria, took it to number one in Europe in 2001. I still perform at songwriting shows, and I play “Hey! Baby” every time—never get tired of playing it. Well, I did for a time; for the first ten years I thought it was a burden, because everyone expected it. But then I decided I was lucky. To have any of your music remembered for so long—and sung back to you—that’s a real treat.
Pages: 1 2
My Library
