Over the course of this blog year, I have talked about artists who concocted the songs on my 45s, and when the situation warranted it, I have discussed behind-the-scenes figures who got the performers from nowhere to vinyl. Bobby Lee Trammell, the writer and singer of today’s song, “Uh Oh” (Fábor 127), made a respectable number of recordings and earned the admiration of many rockabilly fans. However, my perspective on him reminds me of the time I stayed at a reasonably appointed hotel at Niagara Falls, Ontario: the view beyond the object in the foreground is pretty amazing.
I didn’t know it until I researched this post, but Bobby Lee’s producer, Fabor Robison (1911-1986), informed my early listening, and yours (if you’re old enough to remember the 1968 Democratic National Convention), to a surprising degree. If you don’t already know what you owe this man, here you go.
First of all, I have to tell you that much of the following information comes from BlackCat Rockabilly Europe, a site that seems to be laden with amazing data. The facts I checked pan out, so you can read up on Fabor Robison there with confidence. I provide you with my perspective on the facts as a public service. No, thank you.
We begin with Fabor’s first post-World War II gig, as agent to Johnny Horton. Fabor believed so much in this guy that in 1951 he started a label, Abbott Records, to get Horton on vinyl. Consider for a moment how fortunate any artist, then or now, would be to have such strong backing. Even more remarkable is the fact that, when Fabor couldn’t get decent distribution for the Abbott recordings, he found Horton a better deal with Mercury in 1952. While selling off his right to record Horton would have been worth something to Fabor, the willingness to relinquish control is not common in talent management.
Fabor seems to have had an incredible ear for talent, and his contact with the Louisiana Hayride people in Shreveport allowed him to nurture the career of piano player Floyd Cramer, who constituted the Nashville Sound with Chet Atkins and Boots Randolph (to oversimplify), and who scored three Top Ten hits in 1960-61, including the #2 smash “Last Date.”
In 1953, tiny Abbott Records released “Mexican Joe” by Jim Reeves, and that single was a 9-week Country #1 hit. Later in the year, Mitchell Torok (to be featured here in October) topped the Country chart for 2 weeks with “Caribbean.” Each song spent half a year in the Country Top 40.
Fabor started a namesake label, and the Browns (Jim Ed, Maxine and Bonnie) provided Fábor Records with two Top Ten Country hits in 1954-55. Others in the Abbott/Fábor/Radio Records stable included Bonnie Guitar (mentioned in January) and Ned Miller, whose 1962-63 hit “From a Jack to a King” reached #6 on Fábor. A Phoenix kid named Robert Luke Harshman (coming to the blog peripherally later this month) would go on to record for A&M as Bobby Hart with Tommy Boyce. Apart from their string of hits, these two were the first Monkees mentors and quite the songwriting duo.
So, you see, Fabor Robison’s legacy is not only all over this blog, it’s all over your listening experiences. If, at first glance, Bobby Lee Trammell on Fábor Records sounded like the sort of obscurity I associate with Davi on Stark Records, I know better now. The Bobby Lee Trammell 45 I own is a two-sided gem, which points to the fact that Fabor was a pretty decent producer, on top of knowing whom to sign to his labels.
Fabor was prone to chucking it all when he became unhappy, and he sold off his holdings a number of times. He always came back, though, and he always worked his way back to the top. Not bad for an Army cook from Arkansas who evidently had what it took to be a musical kingmaker. I’m going to keep digging into his world, and at some point, I’ll bring you what I find.
I don’t want to give short shrift to Bobby Lee today, but his story has been told, and “Uh Oh” speaks for itself. A note about the recording: unlike the digital version of “You Mostest Girl” I posted, “Uh Oh” comes from my 45. I played the song so rarely, and it sat buried for so long, that it has fewer pops than virtually all of my Survivor 45s. There is just a bit of surface noise that shows up rarely. Fabor and Bobby Lee really did a good job recording this song.
Next time, I will confess to a fondness for a certain type of rhythm, and I’ll discuss its most notable purveyor. See you Wednesday!
Bobby Lee Trammell, Uh Oh
Showing posts with label Bobby Lee Trammell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bobby Lee Trammell. Show all posts
Friday, September 12, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
What the Heck Is a Mostest?
Recently I offered you both sides of a 45 I could not recall ever hearing. I’ll do that again in November, with two sides by a different obscure artist. Today I am going to discuss one side of a 45 I remember but almost never played.
It seems that four-year-old caithiseach relegated this 45 to the bottom of the box almost immediately, and I never got over that aversion to it. When I note that Bear Family Records in Germany considers the artist significant enough to have released 25-track and 30-track retrospectives with little overlap, and then included him on 11 rockabilly anthologies, I begin to wonder what that little kid was thinking.
I take into account also that I didn’t know rockabilly when I was little—as much as I liked my music to be high-energy fare, not many of the cutouts Uncle Tom bought me had a lot of twang to them. So I didn’t get familiar with the genre until Don McLean brought Buddy Holly to my attention in his megahit “...” Oops, can I mention the name of his song here? He somehow managed to trademark the song title years after he made all his money by writing a musical biography of Buddy Holly et al. I had better be careful about using the title.
Well, it’s time I gave this artist, so obscure in my musical world, his due. Worldly listeners that you are, you will probably snicker at my early ignorance of, and resistance to, “You Mostest Girl” by Bobby Lee Trammell (Fábor 127).
Bobby Lee Trammell seems to have been a merger of those two other Lees, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. He gyrated his hips on stage to such a degree that Elvis began to seem tame. Bobby Lee was motivated to succeed; he talked his way onstage at different times with Carl Perkins and Bobby Bare, and he attracted enough attention to earn a recording contract with Fabor Robison’s label, after first blowing off Sam Phillips because of artistic impatience.
His first single, “Shirley Lee,” sold well enough for ABC Paramount to pick up its distribution, and there is strong evidence that he sold a quarter of a million copies, so slowly, though, that he didn’t chart. Ricky Nelson covered “Shirley Lee,” and Ricky offered to look at more of Bobby Lee’s songs, but the latter didn’t follow up and lost the opportunity.
“You Mostest Girl” was Bobby Lee’s second single, and while Fabor Robison tried to produce it with full orchestration, eventually he pared it down to the tight band you’ll hear here.
Born to musical parents on a cotton farm in Jonesboro, Arkansas in 1934, Bobby Lee kept up his rowdiness in spite of lessons he should have learned from it: Ozzie Nelson wouldn’t let him appear on his show; Bobby Lee was banned from performing in California; his antics at the Louisiana Hayride cost him a shot at the Grand Ole Opry; and, in a really senseless move, he fought with Jerry Lee Lewis before a show and busted the Killer’s piano. That earned him a cold shoulder from nearly every promoter in the country, and he was pretty much done.
An attempted 1984 European comeback ended when, in an attempt to live up to his wild reputation, Bobby Lee tried to jump on the piano, slipped, and broke his wrist.
After that, there was nothing to do but return to Arkansas and enter politics. He was elected in 1997 as a Democrat to the Arkansas House of Representatives, where he served until 2002. Unfortunately, he died this past February 20, at the age of 74, in his hometown.
When you listen to the song, you will hear a fairly crisp piece of rockabilly that deserved better than to wind up in the discount bin at the Big Top department store, a few feet south of Gary, Indiana. If you look at the label scan, you will see that this 45 still carries its Big Top price tag, though the price of the record would have dropped to a nickel when Uncle Tom bought it as part of a lot of 20 singles.
I’m pretty sure that, had I known in 1964 what I know now about music, I would have played this record fairly often. I never gave it enough of a chance, and that seems, unfortunately, to fit in with every other aspect of Bobby Lee Trammell’s music career. Godspeed, Bobby Lee.
For Saturday, I’ll bring you the other tune and discuss the producer of the sides, Fabor Robison. See you on the flip side!
Bobby Lee Trammell, You Mostest Girl
You Mostest Girl label scan
It seems that four-year-old caithiseach relegated this 45 to the bottom of the box almost immediately, and I never got over that aversion to it. When I note that Bear Family Records in Germany considers the artist significant enough to have released 25-track and 30-track retrospectives with little overlap, and then included him on 11 rockabilly anthologies, I begin to wonder what that little kid was thinking.
I take into account also that I didn’t know rockabilly when I was little—as much as I liked my music to be high-energy fare, not many of the cutouts Uncle Tom bought me had a lot of twang to them. So I didn’t get familiar with the genre until Don McLean brought Buddy Holly to my attention in his megahit “...” Oops, can I mention the name of his song here? He somehow managed to trademark the song title years after he made all his money by writing a musical biography of Buddy Holly et al. I had better be careful about using the title.
Well, it’s time I gave this artist, so obscure in my musical world, his due. Worldly listeners that you are, you will probably snicker at my early ignorance of, and resistance to, “You Mostest Girl” by Bobby Lee Trammell (Fábor 127).
Bobby Lee Trammell seems to have been a merger of those two other Lees, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. He gyrated his hips on stage to such a degree that Elvis began to seem tame. Bobby Lee was motivated to succeed; he talked his way onstage at different times with Carl Perkins and Bobby Bare, and he attracted enough attention to earn a recording contract with Fabor Robison’s label, after first blowing off Sam Phillips because of artistic impatience.
His first single, “Shirley Lee,” sold well enough for ABC Paramount to pick up its distribution, and there is strong evidence that he sold a quarter of a million copies, so slowly, though, that he didn’t chart. Ricky Nelson covered “Shirley Lee,” and Ricky offered to look at more of Bobby Lee’s songs, but the latter didn’t follow up and lost the opportunity.
“You Mostest Girl” was Bobby Lee’s second single, and while Fabor Robison tried to produce it with full orchestration, eventually he pared it down to the tight band you’ll hear here.
Born to musical parents on a cotton farm in Jonesboro, Arkansas in 1934, Bobby Lee kept up his rowdiness in spite of lessons he should have learned from it: Ozzie Nelson wouldn’t let him appear on his show; Bobby Lee was banned from performing in California; his antics at the Louisiana Hayride cost him a shot at the Grand Ole Opry; and, in a really senseless move, he fought with Jerry Lee Lewis before a show and busted the Killer’s piano. That earned him a cold shoulder from nearly every promoter in the country, and he was pretty much done.
An attempted 1984 European comeback ended when, in an attempt to live up to his wild reputation, Bobby Lee tried to jump on the piano, slipped, and broke his wrist.
After that, there was nothing to do but return to Arkansas and enter politics. He was elected in 1997 as a Democrat to the Arkansas House of Representatives, where he served until 2002. Unfortunately, he died this past February 20, at the age of 74, in his hometown.
When you listen to the song, you will hear a fairly crisp piece of rockabilly that deserved better than to wind up in the discount bin at the Big Top department store, a few feet south of Gary, Indiana. If you look at the label scan, you will see that this 45 still carries its Big Top price tag, though the price of the record would have dropped to a nickel when Uncle Tom bought it as part of a lot of 20 singles.
I’m pretty sure that, had I known in 1964 what I know now about music, I would have played this record fairly often. I never gave it enough of a chance, and that seems, unfortunately, to fit in with every other aspect of Bobby Lee Trammell’s music career. Godspeed, Bobby Lee.
For Saturday, I’ll bring you the other tune and discuss the producer of the sides, Fabor Robison. See you on the flip side!
Bobby Lee Trammell, You Mostest Girl
You Mostest Girl label scan
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