Motorcycle Michael

"Motorcycle Michael" has been issued on CD by Cees Klop on his Collector label in 2000 on a double CD titled "50 Early Rockin' Tracks".  The accompanying booklet had a picture on a single on the Mesquite label, a single that never was, as it was another of these fabricated images sometimes found on the Cees Klop's releases' booklets.

The song was issued on "Hollywood On The Pike" (Mesquite Records) an album presenting 13 tracks by various performers and recorded from the bandstand at the Hollywood On the Pike, a Long Beach show club (no dancing) located on West Pike.

Cindy Carson was mainly a Long Beach club performer, vocalist, bassist, and yodler. According to a musician who worked with her " Ol' Cindy had a great set of pipes and played a solid country bass. At one point she was with Capitol Records. We worked together a good bit over the years, mostly private stuff....."

Motorcycle Michel was a minor hit for Jo Ann Campbell in 1961. 
Peter Udell wrote the lyrics and Gary Geld the music.  Born in 1935 in New Jersey) Gary Geld was a writer and producer for Connie Francis, Brian Hyland, Jackie Wilson, Gene Pitney, and Skeeter Davis.  His main collaborator was Peter Udell. Geld-Udell team's greatest hit was perhaps "Sealed With a Kiss".

★

Cindy Carson
Motorcycle Michael 
Mesquite Records,   1965


Jo Ann Campbell
Motorcycle Michael 
ABC-Paramount 10200,    1961

★

P.S. I've just learned today the passing of Mr Klop (See this blog)
Sure, a controversial figure. But how many obscure recordings and artists were saved from the oblivion thanks to him and other music collectors from Europe. He will be forgiven for his [minor] sins. I fondly remember these wonderful albums with so many obscure artists I've never heard before... 

R.I.P. Cees

Big Bowl Of Soul

The Huntsmen

Big Bowl Of Soul

Label : PAM (?)

Instrumental original. The flip is "Fever" comped on "Songs The Cramps Taught Us"  (it's on YouTube)

Date is generally given as 1961, but I am not quite sure and would rather say mid-sixties?

The Huntsmen came out of Millikan High School in Long Beach, and were friends with the Emperors and also likely the Royal Knights.  The Huntsmen had two singles on the Pam label in the early ’60s:

Pam 1001/1002: “Send Me Some Lovin'” / “Wishbone”
Pam 1003/1004: “Fever” / “Big Bowl of Soul”

“Wishbone” and “Big Bowl of Soul” are band originals.

Jim Bradshaw – lead guitar and lead vocals
Jerry Christensen – drums
Mick Lorito – rhythm guitar
Bill McKinney
Don Zabish  

Jim Bradshaw had a long career in music after the Huntsmen, including the Disciples of Soul, and stints with Johnny Otis, Shuggie Otis, Eddie Vinson, Taj Mahal, Etta James, Junior Wells, and Henry Vestine of Canned Heat.  James Bradshaw, 55, bled to death one Saturday in 2003 after cutting himself while trying to enter his Eugene (Oregon) home through a window.

Acknowledgments : http://www.garagehangover.com/huntsmen/

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.

Low Blow Blues

Charles (Shorty) Bacon 

and his Rhythm Rascals

Vocal Pat Patrick

Low Blow Blues

Smead F. Kelley, Barrister BMI

Mohawk Records

and Publishing Company
P.O. Box 2731, Long Beach I, Calif.

1959

Shorty Bacon and his band played in several clubs in Southern California and on Cal's Corral show on KCOP Channel 13.   Shorty returned to Texas where he performed in the Temple area in the mid to late 60's.  With his Rhythm Rascals and later with The Scrambled Eggs (70s), he recorded for Ozark ('60), Impact ('61), Toppa ('63), TSM, Stoneway (72), Chart ('73) and Resco ('78).

Owner of the short-lived Mohawk label was likely Smead P. Kelley (was he a barrister?)

Relatively few info is available on Shorty Bacon.  There is few interesting (but scattered) tidbits found at The Steel Guitar Forum 

Even less info (no info at all, that is) as for the singer, Pat Patrick, who (I assume) is also the singer on all the Shorty's other Mohawk sides.

"Super Jivin' Lulu", the other side, is on YouTube.

Judy Tracy on Young

Judy Tracy

Lonesome Boy / Come On Baby Let's Dance Wayne Cunningham (Composer)    Young Records
3953 Lees Ave., Long Beach 8, Calif.    mid-sixties  

 

Judy Tracy is a graduate of the  Woodrow Wilson High School, 1961-1965. No further trace of Tracy.

Certainly young and frail,  this Long Beach label released at least two other singles :

• Little Davey and his Charms (David Luzitano a.k.a. Davey London) and his all-girl band)
• The Kordels