OK, the rockin' continues...this time I'm strolling down memory lane of the world's most important roots music label EVER, the Yellow SUN Label out of Memphis, Tenn. The home and starting place of the most amazing rooster of roots music talent on the face of the planet!!!! Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee, Charlie Rich, Carl Mann, Rufus Thomas Jr., Dr. Ross, Charlie Feathers, Warren Smith, Billy Riley, Ray Smith, Bill Justis...the list goes on and on!! Not to mention the truckload of blues greats that Sam Phillips recorded (such as Howlin' Wolf, Sleepy John Estes, B.B. King, Walter Horton, Honeyboy Edwards, Little Walter, Earl Hooker, etc) and licenced to independent labels like 4 Star, Modern, RPM, Chess, Gilt-Edge, Trumpet, Duke, Checker, J-B, etc. Not bad for a small independent one man operation that once was described as
(quote): "A hole in the wall completely surrounded by Cadillacs"!!
The track I've pulled out of my tape library for this upload is yet another little toe-tapper that I recorded in (you guessed it!) the '70s, Wade Moore & Dick Penner's (a.k.a.the College Kids') SUN rockabilly jumper, "Bop, Bop Baby"! Straight ahead one take only (on all accounts) and a fun one to stick your teeths into! Hope you get as much pleasure out of it as I did recording it! Get with it...
P.S. You obviously recognise this track from a very similar upload I made on Feb. 13, 2009, except this has been slightly remixed and sounds a bit 'fresher', at least to my ears (that's not a 100% quality statement, mind you, haha!!)...Step On It & Keep The Bop On Top!!!!
TRIVIA:
Allen Richard "Dick" Penner was born 1936 in Chicago, Illinois. In 1954, Penner had enrolled at the University of North Texas where he met Wade Moore. They composed Ooby Dooby in February 1955. Penner and Wade had taken a six-pack of beer onto the flat roof of their Lambda Chi fraternity house and wrote Ooby Dooby in a matter of minutes.
Roy Orbison, then a student at North Texas and friend, became aware of the song and recorded a demo of it with his band, the Wink Westerners, and sent it to Columbia Records. Columbia was not interested in Orbison, but pitched the song to Sid King and the Five Strings, a band from Denton, Texas, who recorded it on March 5, 1956, in Dallas.
On 27 March 1956, a Roy Orbison session was set at 706 Union Avenue. But Sam Phillips was unimpressed with the result and phoned Weldon Rogers to purchase the JE-WEL master. Rogers asked for a high price so Phillips released the Orbison session on Sun 242. By June 1956, "Ooby Dooby" had climbed to 59 on Billboard's Hot 100 and soon thereafter, sold over 500,000 copies.
In 1956, Penner switched from country music to rock & roll. That same year, he and Wade Moore, born Nov. 15 1934 in Amarillo, Texas, formed a duo and recorded for Sun Records. The duo was known as Wade & Dick--"The College Kids". Wade & Dick recorded three songs (with guitarist Don Gilillan), Wild Woman, Don't Need Your Lovin', and Bop Bop Baby,which was included on the soundtrack of Walk the Line, the film biography of Johnny Cash. Penner recorded four on his own (with guitarist "Gypsy" Bob Izer). All four songs exhibited a hard, youthful edge that was targeted towards the then new teen market. Penner's four singles - (i) Move Baby Move, (ii) Fine Little Baby,'Sun 615a' and (iii) Cindy Lou, (iv) "Honey Love Sun 282 consisted of both Rockabilly and ballads. The songs did not rise to the popularity of "Ooby Dooby", which reached a formidable level on the national charts in Orbison's hands and, eventually, became regarded as a classic of the genre. Moore was in businesss following his college graduation. After receiving his M.A. from North Texas State, Penner earned a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for thirty-two years until his retirement in 1990. Penner authored three academic books, his favorite being Fiction of the Absurd.