Mostly Oblivious Boyfriends

A number of my old 45s contain songs that I, but for some overwhelming aspect of the other side, might have enjoyed hearing regularly. Wynn Stewart’s “Uncle Tom Got Caught,” for example, received so much play that “Wishful Thinking,” a very solid and smooth recording that turned out to be a huge country hit, almost never sat face-up on my turntable. (Incidentally, I bought a violin on Saturday, and the first thing I tried to play on it was the intro to “Wishful Thinking.” I hope this title doesn’t become too tightly associated with my attempt to learn to play a bowed instrument.)

Today’s song fits into the overshadowed category, but for a completely different reason. “Uncle Tom Got Caught” was too much fun; the flip of “Are You Trying to Tell Me Somethin’” by Mitch Torok and the Matches (Inette 105) scared the bejeebers out of four-year-old caithiseach. Even so, I couldn’t help playing it on a regular basis, but its reputation made me decide I didn’t need to hear the other side.

That’s too bad, because, as clichéd as the cheery side sounds now, I don’t know for sure that the theme of clueless-guy-meets-homicidal-girlfriend was overdone by the time this single reached the DJs. If so, it still manages to be a congenial tune, and the narrator is likeable enough to gain my sympathy.

As is often the case with the artists on my cutout 45s, this disc flopped, but Mitchell Torok had a reasonably successful career. Born in Houston, Texas in 1929 and ready to celebrate his 79th birthday on October 28, he picked up a guitar when he was 12 and took a shot at the Country scene. He gave music up to study art after struggling for a while, but his songwriting helped him turn the corner.

In early 1953, while Mitch was still studying, a song he had written (in hopes of selling it to Hank Snow) wound up on the radio. He seems to have heard it there before anyone told him it had been recorded, but that could be apocryphal information. At any rate, it wasn’t Hank Snow, but a relative rookie named Jim Reeves, who recorded “Mexican Joe.” It was Jim’s first chart hit, and it spent nine weeks at #1.

That brought Mitch out of retirement, and he worked out a recording contract with the owner of Reeves’s label, Abbott Records. That man, you may remember from an earlier post on Bobby Lee Trammell, was Fabor Robison. Mitch’s August, 1953 debut on Abbott was another Torok-penned tune called “Caribbean,” and that one went to #1 as well, spending six months on the Country chart. His follow-up, “Hootchy Kootchy Henry from Hawaii,” also climbed into the Country Top Ten in early 1954.

On the pop side, Mitch took “Pledge of Love” to #25, beginning the Top 40 run on April 29, 1957. Ken Copeland, soon to become televangelist Kenneth Copeland, charted the same song on April 20, 1957, and reached #12 with it. However, the song was written by Ramona Redd, a future songwriting partner of Mitchell Torok, and Mitch’s photo appeared on the original sheet music, so who got burned there?

A reworked “Caribbean” hit the Top 40 on August 31, 1959, and it peaked at 27. “Pink Chiffon,” which charted ten days before I was born, stalled at #60. And that was that, chart-wise. Mitch has registered more than 200 titles with BMI, including several he wrote with Ramona Redd, such as “Taco Bell” and “Take a Chance on Me.”

The “Take a Chance on Me” you are most likely to know was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the guys who co-wrote the musical Chess with Tim Rice. They also produced a lovely album of their compositions, as sung by Josefin Nilsson, called Shapes (1993). If I talk about female vocalists next year, she’ll be part of the deal. Benny Andersson was in a 1960s rock band called the Hep Stars, and Björn Ulvaeus led a folk group called the Hootenanny Singers. They recorded with other female vocalists as well.

But the Ramona Redd-Mitchell Torok “Take a Chance on Me” is not that song, and I can’t tell you anything about it. I can, however, tell you that Torok-Redd compositions made their way onto Dean Martin and Glen Campbell records, so they managed to do well for themselves. Mitchell Torok wound up recording as Mitch Torok and the Matches for Inette Records.

Today’s recording has a grumbly spot in it for the first 30 seconds, then it clears up nicely. I’m sorry about that. There is an amazing 4-CD Mitchell Torok compilation on Bear Family Records, Mexican Joe in the Caribbean. That set stops just shy of his time with Inette, which is why you get the scratchy 45.

For Inette, Mitch recorded at least two tunes that Ramona Redd wrote with Norris Green (clever, that), including today’s song. Ramona Redd has nearly 200 BMI songwriting credits, while Norris Green has 7. But whereas 0.52% of Ramona Redd’s songs gave four-year-old caithiseach nightmares, 14.3% of Norris Green’s managed to do that to me. And the song of nightmares, friends, comes Saturday and begins my countdown to Halloween. See you on the flip side!

Mitch Torok, Are You Trying to Tell Me Somethin’

Do Me a Fabor

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

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