EXPIRED: 08/03/10 – Bobby Hebb, 72, was raised by blind parents near Nashville’s Music Row, so with parents who were focused on sound it was only natural that he would gravitate to the sounds of the area.
Early on he began performing as a street musician, singing, tap dancing, and playing spoons. His talents got him on a local Nashville TV show, which caught the eye of country star and music impresario Roy Acuff, who asked Hebb to join the house-band at Nashville’s Grand Old Opry.
He accepted, and this being the 50’s, made history. Hebb became the first black performer on stage at the famed theatre.
This “celebrity” or “infamy” – whichever way you look at it – got him a lot of attention, and eventually Hebb was singing back-up for many of rock’s early black stars, including Bo Diddley on his recording of “Diddley Daddy.” In 1960 he got in front of the mike on his own and recorded a version of Acuff’s hit “Night Train To Memphis” scoring a minor hit and raising his stature a wee bit.
Things were looking up for Hebb until things started looking down. On the day following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Hebb’s brother, Harold, was stabbed to death in a fight in a Nashville club. He was down, and while most people grieved and found no solace, Hebb looked up. He wrote “Sunny.”
“Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain / Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain”
EXPIRED: 05/17/10 – Bobbejaan, 85, was a Belgian musician, yodeler, comic actor and whistler who gave it all up to become a successful entrepreneur and businessman – running an amusement park. Then in the last few years of his life he went back to his roots and, in his 80’s, made one of the most poignant collections of music of his career.
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