Am I Blue

Lois Lee & The Rockets

Am I Blue

Clarke & Akst, Remick Music Corporation (ASCAP)
Cool Records no #

1964

Lois Lee / The Rockets discography

Cool 711 — The Rockets Featuring Lois Lewsader : Special Delivery  / The Rockets : Why Oh Why
Cool 712 — The Rockets : Always Alone    /  Lois Lee & The Rockets : Year 'Round Love
Cool No # — Lois Lee & The Rockets : Am I Blue /  The Rockets : Moovin’’N’ Groovin’

Despite the fact that this Cool label has a Nashville address and may have been linked to the Globe Studios in the same town, I'm pretty sure that the band was from the Chicago area, at least Lois Lee was.

Lois June (Lewsader) Troglia

Lois June Lewsader was born in 1934 in Danville Township, Illinois.  In 1965, she married James W. Troglia on June 12, 1965  . They celebrated 45 years of marriage in June 2010,

Other than that, not much information.   There was several singers of the same name. And there is one who recorded for Okeh Records in 1959 who has a voice strikingly similar, a such point that I think she is possibly the same singer.  Any thoughts ?

 "I've Got It Bad For You Baby"  (Okeh 7119)

Wild Horses

The Frontiersmen & Joanie

Wild Horses

Louise Lewis-E. Whenham

Skyway Records Music Pub. Co.
Hollywood, Calif. 90028

Red Fox Records RFR 104

1964

The Horsemen and Joanie Hall

Leader of The Horsemen was Hi Busse, original member of the legendary "Frontiersmen" and "The Riders of the Purple Sage", Hi Busse left an indelible mark upon Western music.   Busse's career spans seven decades, playing with Roy Rogers and "Gunsmoke's" Ken Curtis, acting in Hollywood westerns in the 1940's and making countless radio and music hall tours.


Joanie Hall started performing at a young age with Marian, her older sister, as the Saddle Sweethearts  :

Joanie played standard guitar, Marian had an Oahu lap steel with “mother-of-pearl” finish and matching amp, and they both sang.   They did shows on “pioneer television,” back when the makeup was orange and the director was also the janitor that swept up at the end of the day. There were TV antennas on about every fourth house then.

Joanie got her recording career started back in 1955 with Sage and Sand Records. Woody Fleener had started the Sage and Sand record label and also signed a top vocalist, Eddie Dean. Also signed at that time was the Frontiersmen and Marian Hall as a featured steel guitar player. Joanie was called in to sing in a chorus or play rhythm guitar. But she began to get noticed.

As the story goes, Eddie Dean told her one day to practice up on her singing a bit as he would soon tell her some good news. Later on, he called to tell her that he wanted her to do a duet record with him. They recorded "Open Up Your Door" b/w "Sign On The Door". After that session, Woody Fleener knew talent when he saw it and signed her to a contract and told her she had just made her first record.

Joanie Hall Discography

The Red Fox label was a subsidiary of Skyway Records. Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham, writers of Wild Horses, owned Skyway.  For some reason, the Red Fox subsidiary was launched in 1964, showcasing Miss Louise Lewis herself with Blimp, Whimp & Skimp.

How Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham managed to convince The Frontiersmen to record two singles for their Red Fox label, that's one more mystery surrounding the story of Skyway Records and the intriguingly elusive biographies of its owners.

Who Can I Believe

Judy Stewart

and her Beatle Buddies

Who Can I Believe

Mayhew-Stride

Janon Music ASCAP

Diplomat 45-0101
Synthetic Plastics Co.

Newark, N.J.

1964

b/w I'll Take You Back Again.  Both songs were also on the album issued by The Beatle Buddies on Diplomat Records (#2313).  The album doesn't have the Judy Stewart credit, doesn't have any songwriter credits.  But it does have a picture of the anonymous ladies on the cover.

Aubrey Mayhew, composer of the song and also probably producer of the Beatle Buddies, grew up in Washington and went into the music business in the late 1940s, first as a booker, then as director of the Hayloft Jamboree on the radio station WCOP in Boston.
After working for budget record companies such as Pickwick Records and Diplomat Records, he formed Little Darlin Records.He was also known as passionate collector of John F Kennedy memorabilia.

Aubrey Mayhew was in Houston in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At the time, Mayhew was working for the New York-based Diplomat Records. “I was staying at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, trying to buy some George Jones tapes from Pappy Daily [the owner of Jones' Starday record label],” he said. “The Kennedy assassination happened right there on television. I immediately called a friend in Houston, who brought over two tape recorders and all the tape he could carry.

“We recorded everything off the television for about 12 hours. I rushed the material back to New York, and we put out the first ‘Kennedy Speeches’ album. At that time, we had 300 Woolworth stores in our pocket. We got prime display. We sold about 3 million albums in four months.”

This incident led Mayhew to his affinity for Kennedy memorabilia.  His prize possession is the Texas School Book Depository. “Why did I buy it?” he asked me. “It was a premium item for my collection. I paid $600,000 for it.”

Mayhew removed the original window where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy. Mayhew claims the window is stored in Nashville, but some in Dallas argue that it is not the original window. “There’s a debate over everything in life,” Mayhew said emphatically. “I don’t lie! I don’t cheat! I don’t steal! I saw them take that window out.”

Mayhew, 81, died in 2009 at hospice care facility in Nashville.

I Hear The Jukebox Playing

Chuck Wyatt

I Hear The Jukebox Playing

Knob Hill Pub. BMI
Tinker 104  

Y & W Enterprize

736 Loma Vista Dr. 

Long Beach, Calif.

1964

Blue-eyed blues by a country singer.  Chuck Wyatt also recorded on Del-Aine Records (Nashville?) on which he also produced a Alice Wyatt single.  Knob-Hill, the publisher, was an off-shoot of Artists Productions, Inc. as was Boyd Records, located in Nashville but formed in Oklahoma by Bobby Boyd, a five-eights Choctaw Indian, who worked in most of the John Wayne movies.

There was a Chuck Wyatt in the fifties billed  "The Howling Hillbilly.", heading a Chuck Wyatt Rockabilly Music Show in 1957 and described as a popular western entertainer with his "Kowboy Karavan" in 1958, I don't known if he's the same artist.

If I Could Buy You For What You're Worth

Leona Payne

with Charlotte & The Kentucky Boys

If I Could Buy You For What You're Worth

Julie Paxton, Sunray Music, BMI

Sunray  400---- produced by Bill Williams
Dist. By Howard & Son P.O. Box 138 Chesapeake, VA

1967 (or 1968?)

Leona Payne was, like Charlotte Duzan, the backing band leader, from West Michigan and had least two other singles on the Rascal label.  She may have been also associated with Wayne Moore, a recording artist and label owner (Wa-Mo Records) from Sparta, Michigan. 

Sunray Records was probably owned by one Ouida Smith who penned the two sides of the Western Airs (Sunray #200) which featured Dick Shu, probably the earliest single recorded by country artist Dick Shuey.  The said Dick Shuey who, according to Billboard, has joined Sunray Records as national promotion manager in June 1968.

The distributor (Howard & Son Sales) was actually located in Dallas, Texas and owned by Howard Bennich, Sr., associated by Danrite Records

Sunray Records discography

100
200 — The Western-Aires And Dick Shu : Picking Up The Pieces  / You Cheated On Me  (1966)

300 — Ron Manning : Why Should We Be Strangers / I'm The One (1967, 2nd issue to Stop 107 (1966)

400 — Leona Payne : If I Could Buy You For What You're Worth / Why Won't Time Stand Still

500
600 — Leona Payne : Two Cigarettes and a Ashtray /  The Kissin' I've Been Mission' (1968)

N.B. #200 & 300  pressed in Cincinnati (200, King Records custom pressing) and 300 (Rite Records)

Santa Claus Rocket Ship

Phyllis Hamilton

Santa Claus Rocket Ship
Larry Edwards, Beycor Publishing BMI

Hark Records #500
Marion, Ohio

1959    

Little Phyllis Hamilton was a regular on "Ohio State Country Round-Up" presented each Saturday night at the Ohio State Fairgrounds and aired 11-12 p.m. over WMNI (emcee : Jimmy Stout). She was later one of the performers at The Paint Valley Jamboree from its debut, formed in 1965 by James Sweeney, of Bainbridge, and Lou Harris, of Portsmouth. 

She gave up music for 40 years until the owner of the Jamboree convinced her to come back recently.   You can see one of her recent performance  here

As Phyllis Ann, she recorded on Karl Records (1961) and as Phyllis Ann Hamilton on Shenandoah (1964-1965).

Dumb Dumb Bunny

Cal Starr

Dumb Dumb Bunny

Erman, Venetian Music, BMI
Arr. by A. Kavelin

Ermine 779

Ermine Record Co.

Chicago, Illinois

1960

The earliest copyright date for Dumb Dumb Bunny is from February 1955, words & music William Thomas Erman & Helen Saltiel Erman.  This Cal Starr recording predates the Steve Bledsoe and Johnny Cooper versions of the same song (on Witch Records and, again, Ermine Records)

Somewhat surprising is the presence here of Al Kavelin as arranger.  Does that mean that it was recorded in Los Angeles ? Probably.
Further association between songwriter and label owner Bill Erman and Cal Starr, singer resulted in two singles : 

• Yes, I'm Robbin' the Craddle, on Sam Wigler and Henry Tobias' Rego label in October 1960 (with the backing of the Anita Kerr Singers and orchestra led by Chet Atkins).
• Pain Of Love / Little Bride, on Thanx Records, a label located in Skokie, a Chicago suburban city.

CAL STARR was born in Chicago, IL but grew up on a small farm in Kentucky. He was taught a few chords on the guitar by his father and began to develop a love of music. This led to him entering and winning a talent contest with Bob Parsons, a highschool friend. His first performance was on a live radio show in Huntington, WVA.. During the early years that followed he worked as a disk jockey on KEBE radio in Jacksonville, TX and had his own program on KFLA TV in Shreveport, LA. He eventually moved back to the windy city of Chicago to pursue his love for music and the world of entertainment.  

Beatles, We Want Our Girls Back - Now!

The Defenders

Beatles, We Want Our Girls Back - Now!
new link in comment

Paul Peterson- Duncan Fife

Realm BK 001

Realm Records Corporation
310 Madison Avenue, N.Y.

1964

Bring back our girls... but PLEASE keep Yoko!

Yes, from the same label who give us Florian Monday.  Realm Records was a label set up by Jackson Leighter.  , a man of many talent. Certainly humorous, multifaceted, he also was, I guess, an imaginative prankster.   A book should be written about his life.