Chart entered : 28 July 1960
Chart peak : 1
Number of hits : 33
Sanity is restored with the arrival of the Big O.
Roy was born in Texas in 1936, the son of an oil well driller. He got his first guitar at six and was appearing on local radio stations doing country songs from the age of eight. He enrolled at North Texas State College to study geology in case things didn't work out but moved on to Odessa and formed a band called The Teen Kings there. In 1955 they did a radio show with Johnny Cash who suggested they audition for Sun Records. Although less than happy with the idea of Cash acting as his A & R man Sam Phillips offered them a contract.
Their first single was Roy's song "Ooby Dooby" which they had already released on a local label the previous year. It's a sprightly rockabilly tune about a non-existent dance , completely vacuous but quite good fun. Roy's voice is recognisable but not fully developed.It was a decent sized hit in 1956. The tuneless follow-up "Rockhouse" a co-write with Conway Twitty wasn't. After that the band dissolved and Roy was on his own. "Sweet And Easy To Love" was one of Phillips own songs and benefits from the backing harmonies supplied by The Roses. "Devil Doll " contains some seeds of his later work in its dark undertone and the stripping out of most of the rockabilly stylings. "Chicken-Hearted" ( written by Bill Justice ) was Roy's last single for Sun, an empty effort which uses blustery sax to try and disguise the lack of a song. Roy intones the scant verses with palpable disinterest.
Shortly afterwards in 1958 Roy returned to Texas with his new bride Claudette and that would probably have been the end of his career had other artists not started picking up his songs. Jerry Lee Lewis covered "Ooby Dooby's" B-side "Go Go Go", renamed it "Down The Line" and had a hit. Warren Smith took a new song "So Long, I'm Gone" into the Billboard charts and most significantly the Everly Brothers took "Claudette" , made it a double A-side with All I Have To Do Is Dream and scored a number one hit here. The royalties allowed Roy to buy out his Sun contract and start afresh.
The Everlys pointed him towards their music publisher Acuff-Rose and a contract with RCA. His first single for them was "Seems To Me", written by Boudleux Bryant which points the way towards the big hits in terms of its style but is insipid and badly-produced, the guitar being far too loud relative to the vocals. "Almost Eighteen" written by Roy and produced by Chet Atkins is better , a polite rocker with a solid bassline and some neat phrasing from Roy but it didn't sell and RCA let him go. The bassist on the session Bob Moore was buying a stake in a new company Monument Records and tipped off its founder Fred Foster that Roy was available.
The first single on his third label, "Paper Boy" was a further development of his taste for melodrama although the backing track owes a lot to Buddy Holly. It didn't bring an instant improvement to his fortunes and for his next release started working with another songwriter Joe Melson. "Uptown" owed more to Chuck Berry but it did get Roy back into the charts and the next song they worked on was this one.
Here's the Popular link : Roy O. There isn't that much there but I should add the caveat that the original Comments on the early number ones there were lost in an IT disaster some time in the noughties.
Always felt that Popular review was way off the money, though I say that as someone whose old man had a huge thing for the Big O, and thus perhaps had the songs played to the point where I got round to loving them.
ReplyDeleteStill always odd seeing a pic of him without the shades.