Don't Rock, Let's Roll

Paul Kosty, of Greek origin I think, part-time actor (he played in Buster Ladd in 1969), singer, and prize fighter was a full-time taxi driver in Baltimore.

In his youth, in 1951, he was awarded The Teke Trophy, by the Maryland Chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity - offered to the student who during his four years at the University has rendered the greatest service to football.

To the listening (?) audience, he offered numerous recordings on his own Clarity, Fleet and U-235 (?) labels. For which I'm not aware of any awards.

Here is a (probably incomplete) discography :

Clarity
1 - Dad From Trinidad / Panama Mama
6 - Dolly /Cigarette
7 - Dad From Trinidad/ Jacqueline
9 - Kostylypso / Last Cigarette
14 - Transplanted Heart/Cause Of My Troubles

Fleet
3103 - Don't Rock, Let's Roll / The Last Cigarette

U-235
U-2 - Zembekiko / This Time For Keeps

You can hear the two sides of Clarity 1, courtesy of Bob Purse, HERE.

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Don't Rock, Let's Roll



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Bob Eberly : Heartbreak Hotel

Bob Eberly
Heartbreak Hotel

Popular big band singer Bob Eberly spent much of his career with Jimmy Dorsey's orchestra, starting work in the spring of 1935. His younger brother, Ray Eberle, sang with Glenn Miller and later led his own band.

In his early days, Bob, who changed the spelling of his last name because the announcer of the Milton Berle radio show kept mispronouncing it, gained prominence by winning the ''Allen Amateur Hour'' on Fred Allen's radio show. He began his professional career singing in clubs around his hometown of Hoosick Falls, in upstate New York, where the Dorsey Brothers discovered him and later hired him to replaced the departing Bob Crosby.

He stayed with Jimmy for eight years and became one of the top male vocalists of his day, rivaling Bing Crosby and later Frank Sinatra for that title.

Throughout his career he was encouraged by many in the industry to strike out on his own, but he refused. He was perfectly happy earning a weekly salary with Dorsey's group.

During the early 1950s he was a regular on the television program TV's Top Tunes.

Information above (and picture) from The encyclopedia of big band, lounge, classic jazz and space-age sounds.

"Heartbreak Hotel" was just one of the hits of the day covers that Bob Eberly recorded in the fifties for Enoch Light's Waldorf and 18 Top Hits labels. subsidiary of the Waldorf Corporation from Harrison, New Jersey.

Speaking of Heartbreak Hotel, the Weekly World News issue dated November 1, 1988, inform us of the following :

Scientists say a painting of Elvis Presley weeps when the owner puts Heartbreak Hotel on the stereo and doesn’t stop until she plays Jailhouse Rock. [See the article]

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There Goes Another Rocket

In 1958, American leaders established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Three years later, President John F. Kennedy set forth an unimaginable dream for the nation – for humans to safely travel to the moon and back by the end of the decade.

The race to the moon had begun.

There was a lot of groundwork to be done, including the selection of various sites to implement a space program. By early fall of 1961, NASA officials had chosen three of the four needed locations – a launch site in Cape Canaveral, Fla., a manufacturing site near New Orleans and a spaceflight laboratory site in Houston.

All that remained was the selection of a site for testing the new powerful rocket engines that would be needed to propel astronauts some 238,000 miles to the surface of the moon.

There were several criteria to consider, such as proximity to river navigation and isolation from populated areas. It came down to six sites – all of which were visited by a committee of decision makers. NASA officials settled on a relatively unknown area in western Hancock County, Miss., not far inland from the Gulf of Mexico – an area not so far removed from its swampy, uninhabited natural state.

In the past, the area had been populated by Indians, pirates and soldiers. At the time of the site selection, there were a few small sawmill towns had occupied the area. However, by the 1960s, the lumber industry had declined – and the towns of Santa Rosa, Westonia, Napoleon, Gainesville and Logtown were suffering. Now, the government needed this land for a new purpose, a national purpose. For a year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers negotiated with residents and land owners, relocating the area population.

Source : Stennis Space Center

Resentment followed the shock. Riverboat captain Johnny McKean went home and composed a ballad :

Logtown, Gainesville,
And up the river too
We all gotta go
And it makes us mighty blue

The song (There Goes Another Rocket) was issued as by Johnny Mac on the J&M label, out of Picayune, Mississippi, probably owned (or co-owned by Pee Wee Maddux). It's likely the same Johnny Mac who recorded The Tug Boat Song on the Hi-Lite label.

Further reading about the event : Moon Race Blots Out a Town by Ronald Bailey, LIFE 25 Sept. 1964

Photo credit : LIFE Magazine

There Goes Another Rocket


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Weeds Above My Grave

Jo Anne Stokes

Weeds Above My Grave

Vetco Records

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Murray Cohen with..plus..with...

Murray Cohen
With The Cohencidentals
Plus The Supremes
With The Biscaynes

Twistin' Boogie

Co-En label (or is it Co-Encidental?) was located in Toledo, Ohio

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Johnny H. & his Henchmen

I WISH I REALLY KNEW

Johnny custom made his flying "V" acoustic

Johnny Haemmerle aka ENIS aka Jesse Presley

Jesse was using the name Johnny H when three family members told him he was a Presley, not a Haemmerle. Around this time his legal dad obtained for him a 1-8-35 birth certificate from Tupelo, Miss.

According to his MySpace resumé his influences were : Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, Tiny Tim, Carl Perkins, Andy Williams, Ole Blue Eyes, Motown, Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Mozart.

And what connection does Jesse have with such Stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger , Sylvester Stallone, Frank Sinatra, Frankie Avalon, Peter Boyle, Helen Hays, Ed Fury, Bill Smith Al Pacino, The Isley Brothers, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Pat Boone, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Elvis, Gary Moore, Bud Collyer, Orson Bean, Art Carney, Bob Hope, Ethal Waters, Columbia Pictures and Joe Weider? His space at MySpace has all the answers and much, much more (pictures and sounds).

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Take Me To Your Leader

The Vi-Counts
Take Me To Your Leader