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Scorpio story exchange :: 6 )
Scorpio - BOB SANDERSON
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Scorpio story exchange :: 5 )
Scorpio - BOBBY TROUP
Born Robert William Troup, Jr., 18 October 1918, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Died 7 February 1999, Sherman Oaks, California
Songwriter / pianist / vocalist / actor / producer. Among rock 'n' roll fans, Bobby Troup will probably be best known for writing two songs: "Route 66" and "The Girl Can't Help It". Without his lyrics to "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66", the American tradition of cruising just wouldn't be the same. The blues-based number was composed in 1946 while Troup was heading west on that venerable roadway. Little did he realize at the time that it would become a signature song, the one number that - despite his numerous other accomplishments - would forever come to mind when his name is mentioned. In fact, Troup wrote many well-known songs, some well before his road song classic. Among the more familiar items are "Daddy" (his first hit, a # 1 song for 8 weeks for Sammy Kaye in 1941), "Baby, Baby All The Time", "The Meaning of the Blues" and the lyrics for "Girl Talk." "Get Your Kicks On Route 66" was first recorded by Nat "King" Cole (Capitol 256), whose version reached # 3 on the R&B charts and # 11 on the pop charts in the summer of 1946. Transcending all formats of music, the song has also been recorded by popular music artists Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Harry James, the Four Freshman, and the Andrews Sisters; rock musicians Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Dépeche Mode; country groups Asleep at the Wheel and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys; and Manhattan Transfer won a Grammy for their 1982 rendition of the song. Some 50 performers have recorded the tune, and the list continues to grow. Troup was drawn to music at an early age through his piano playing father. And despite earning a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania, he soon turned to songwriting as a career. After serving in the Marine Corps as a captain during World War II, he headed to California, giving himself two years to make it in the music business, helping his ambitions enormously by writing "Route 66" along the way. Much of his time in the 1950s and '60s, was spent as an active participant in Los Angeles' then-burgeoning West Coast jazz scene ("I think I worked every club in Los Angeles," he once said). But his closest connection to jazz came in 1957, when Troup began a 2 1/2-year run hosting a KABC television series titled "Stars of Jazz," which went national for a few months in 1958. One of the earliest and most successful airings of jazz on television, the show featured an extraordinary lineup of artists, including Stan Getz, Carmen McRae and Erroll Garner, as well as West Coast stars June Christy, Julie London (Troup's wife), Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank and Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars. " Television and film fans of the 1970s, however, knew Troup from a completely different context. His film career included parts in "M*A*S*H," "The High Cost of Loving," "Number One" and "First to Fight." He also was cast in musical roles in "The Five Pennies," "The Gene Krupa Story" and "The Duchess of Idaho," and wrote scores for "The Girl Can't Help It" and "Rock Pretty Baby". According to Art Rupe, Troup was shocked when he heard what Little Richard had done to "The Girl Can't Help It". It was not written as a rock 'n' roll song. Troup appeared in the television shows "Dragnet," "Fantasy Island," "Acapulco" (for which he also wrote the music) and "Musical Chairs.">From 1972 to 1977 he played the role of Dr. Early in the medical series "Emergency!" His wife, singer Julie London, also appeared in the show (which was produced by her first husband, actor Jack Webb) in the role of Dixie. Despite the success of "Emergency!," the show largely marked the end of Troup's visibility as a songwriter and musician. In the intervening decades, he and London lived quietly in Encino, raising what they described as a "his, mine and ours family" that included two children from Troup's first marriage (Cynnie and Ronne), two children from London's marriage to Webb (Stacy and Lisa) and three children from the Troup-London marriage (Kelly and the twins Reese and Jody).
 Saturday, February 21, 2004 at 18:35 |
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Scorpio story exchange :: 4 )
BERNIE LOWE
Born Bernard Lowenthal, 22 November 1917, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died 1 September 1993, Wyncote, Pennsylvania
Label owner / producer / arranger / songwriter / pianist / bandleader. Bernie Lowe was a Julliard-trained pianist playing, arranging and conducting the orchestra on "The Paul Whiteman TV Teen Club" in the early fifties when he met Dick Clark, the announcer for the show's live Tootsie Roll commercials. The two became friends and, later, business associates.
At the end of 1956, Lowe founded Cameo Records, with an old friend, Kal Mann (real name Kalman Cohen) and set up offices in the base- ment of his house in the Wincote area of North Philadelphia. Lowe and Mann got into the record business as songwriters for Hill & Range Songs in New York. Together they wrote "Teddy Bear" for Elvis Presley, which he recorded in January 1957. Lowe was looking for his own Elvis. He found Charlie Gracie, one of the first white artists who had recorded rock 'n' roll. Lowe tamed Gracie into a polite rocker and supplied him with the songs "Butterfly" and "Ninety-nine Ways", both Mann-Lowe compositions (though the writing credit on "Butterfly" went to "Anthony September", their joint pseudonym). When "Butterfly" went to number one in April 1957, Bernie Lowe was convinced that rock 'n' roll - or at least an approximation of it - was the way to go. Still, Lowe and Mann were the products of an earlier, much different generation and never fully concealed their contempt for rock 'n' roll. It was just that Lowe's "love of money exceeded his dislike of rock 'n' roll", as Bill Millar has put it. In a way, "Butterfly" foretold the shape of things to come : R&R records whose sound was determined more by a producer's formula than by a singer's uninhibited spirit. It was no coincidence that this development started in Philadelphia, a city associated more than any other with the corruption of rock 'n' roll.
Lowe and Mann wrote more songs for Charlie Gracie (Just Lookin', Fabulous, Wanderin' Eyes) and Lowe also plays piano on all of Gracie's Cameo recordings. But by mid-1958, Gracie was gone. "I was expendable", Gracie said. "I was the first one to get screwed by Cameo. I sued for my royalties, settled for $40,000 and left". Lowe and Mann launched Cameo's sister label, Parkway, in 1959. By this time, most of the A&R work was done by Dave Appell, who also led an instrumental group, The Applejacks. Lowe co-wrote the early hits of Bobby Rydell (Kissin' Time, We Got Love, Wild One, Good Time Baby), but after that he left most of the songwriting to Mann and Appell. Apart from Rydell, Cameo-Parkway had success with Chubby Checker, the Dovells, Dee Dee Sharp and the Orlons. Jerry Gross of the Dovells says: "Cameo-Parkway was not what I call a professionally run company. It was quick turnover, get the product out, jam as much as they could down the public's throat and sell as much as they could... Bernie Lowe's thing was don't go for quality, go for quantity. Throw enough up against the wall, something's going to stick."
Cameo-Parkway suffered its greatest loss when patron Dick Clark defected from Philly to Los Angeles in March 1964. By then Kal Mann had already retired and Dave Appell had moved on to other projects. Lowe sold the company to a couple of Texas businessmen a year or two later. In July 1967, Allen Klein, the manager of the Rolling Stones, bought controlling interest in Cameo-Parkway. However, Kal Mann chose to retain the master tapes and after years of litigation, Klein and Mann (who died in November 2001) became bogged down in a legal stalemate, with the consequence that Klein still cannot release CD's of Cameo-Parkway m | |
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