John Fred

Blue-eyed soul outfit John Fred & His Playboy Band were among the largest one-hit wonders from the 1960s, topping the Billboard charts making use of their tongue-in-cheek Beatles homage “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses).” Created John Fred Gourrier on, may 8, 1941, in Baton Rouge, LA, the vocalist was the boy of professional football participant Fred Gourrier and juggled music along with his personal sports pursuits, developing the very first incarnation from the Playboys at age 15. A popular at regional sock hops and dances, the group’s first live appearances frequently found them on a single costs as Fred’s schoolmate John Ramistella, who later appreciate significant chart achievement beneath the name Johnny Streams. The Playboys cut their 1958 Montel label debut, “Shirley,” at manufacturer Cosimo Matassa’s New Orleans studio room using Fats Domino’s support band; the solo soon got into the pop graphs, ascending to the quantity 82 spot, and may have eliminated higher acquired Fred not rejected a chance to show up on American Bandstand and only playing for his high-school golf ball group during its condition tournament drive. “Reflection Mirror” followed within the springtime of 1959, and despite offering the Jordanaires on support vocals, had not been popular. The Playboys’ following single, “Great Lovin’,” also didn’t chart, so when the next “Down in New Orleans” fulfilled the same destiny, Montel terminated the group’s agreement, and Fred proceeded to go off to Southeastern Louisiana School to review and play golf ball. After graduating in 1963, Fred approached unique Playboys tenor saxophonist Mickey Coerver to re-form the music group, adding Andrew Bernard on baritone sax, Jimmy O’Rourke and Hal Ellis on acoustic guitar, Howard Cowart on bass, Tommy DeGeneres on body organ, Ronald Goodson and Charlie Spinosa on trumpet, Lester Dodge on drums, and Joe Miceli on percussion. After putting your signature on to the small N-Joy label, the revived John Fred & His Playboy Music group released their cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun” in early 1965 — the solitary missed the graphs, but was a popular of Elvis Presley. A proceed to the Jewel label preceded “Dial 101 (Because I REALLY LIKE You),” another graph miss. After “You’re Mad at Me” also vanished, Fred & the Playboys lower 1966’s “HOW DO I Prove” with among the singer’s boyhood idols, Dale Hawkins, presuming production duties, however when this also tanked, Jewel lowered the group, necessitating a change to the Paula label for the band’s following effort, “HAVING INTERCOURSE for you.” Following the 1967 flops “Sunlight Town” and “Keep Her Under no circumstances,” Fred & the Playboys regained their footing with “Along,” which topped the graphs in a number of Louisiana marketplaces but didn’t capture on nationally. For the follow-up, “Agnes British,” the group shed the harder-edged R&B strategy of its recent efforts and only a sound influenced by the English beat boom, once again scoring an enormous regional strike but falling timid from the nationwide charts. The amazing bassline that could end up being the cornerstone of “Judy in Disguise” lurked in Fred’s mind for weeks before he and saxophonist Bernard finally published a full-fledged track to accomplish it — satirizing the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Gemstones” and influenced by the tremendous sunglasses then in fashion among the seaside bunnies in Fort Lauderdale, the solitary made an appearance on Paula in past due 1967 and in early January supplanted the Beatles’ personal “Hello Goodbye” atop the U.S. pop graphs. After appearing around the Tonight Display and American Bandstand, Fred & His Playboy Music group released the follow-up, “Hey Hey Bunny,” which proceeded to go up to number 57. There have been four even more singles in 1958 by itself (“Unhappy Are the Unhappy,” “Small Dum Dum,” “Occasionally You Can’t Gain,” and “Harlem Shuffle,” respectively) but non-e of these charted, and by year’s end Paula slipped the group entirely. Fred & the Playboys after that agreed upon to MCA to concern 1969’s “Silly Sarah Carter (Consuming on the Moonpie),” accompanied by a cover from the Beatles’ “Back the U.S.S.R.” Following that, they recorded a set of 1970 singles for Uni, “Three Deep in a sense” and “Julia Julia,” before dissolving within the wake of the Western tour. Fred spent a lot of the 10 years touring small night clubs before reinventing himself like a producer through the past due ’70s, especially helming several classes for New Orleans spirit queen Irma Thomas. In 1982, he was called vice chief executive of Baton Rouge-based RCS Information. Inducted in to the Louisiana Music Hall of Popularity in 1991 and provided the Louisiana Music Living Tale Prize in 1999, in old age Fred had written jingles for brands including Greyhound Bus Lines, Ban Deodorant, as well as the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and also wrote and documented the one “Baseball on the Box” honoring the Louisiana Condition University football squad. With Joe Stampley and Gee Gee Shinn he founded the Louisiana Guys, launching a self-titled 1997 LP around the Bayou Music label. In 2000 he released his first genuine single LP, I Miss Y’All, adopted two years later on by Somebody’s Knockin’. Furthermore to touring night clubs, celebrations, and casinos, Fred coached high-school football as well as for Baton Rouge train station WBRH hosted a every week radio broadcast The Origins of Rock and roll & Move until his loss of life on Apr 15, 2005, of problems from a kidney transplant almost a year prior.