hit and Elvis Presley a star! Sammy Salvo was over the moon: “I was so excited to be signed on RCA. I got 3 ½ percent. It was the kind of deal they gave brand-new artists. That was of the retail sale price. They gave me a three-year deal.” George: “I wasn’t excited because I had the thing sold for $10,000. I knew that we would be getting more from the other day [working with Poncio and selling their own records]. I was very humble. I told Chet Atkins that he didn’t need my brother, because of all the big names that he had. I told him I would like the contract back. He said he was sorry, but it had already been worked.”
When he got to Nashville, Sammy was given four songs (enough for two double-sided 45 rpm singles) and spent a week rehearsing them before going into the studio. During a lunch break a deejay brought in a demo of a song called “Oh Julie.” This song had been written by singer Ken Moffet and released by Ernie Young of Ernie’s Record Shop on his Nasco label. A local group in Nashville called the Crescendos performed it. Chet liked the song and told Sammy to rehearse it: “We cut it. It only took us three takes. It was a really easy song. We did that, then we did the other three songs.” On the B side of the RCA single, he recorded Wayne Handy’s “Say Yeah,” which had been released on the Renown label. “Oh Julie” is a ballad done in rock ’n’ roll style, but many stations played “Say Yeah” because it was an up-tempo dance tune. The Crescendos’ version of “Oh Julie” beat Sammy Salvo’s record into the Billboard Top Five in December 1958. Sammy made it to number 23.
The outlook for Birmingham rock musicians in the late 1950s was promising. Baker Knight and Sammy Salvo had achieved the rock ’n’ roll dream of a contract with a major record company. Jerry Woodard, a young singer who got his musical training in his father’s Church of God ministry, was the next budding star to record in Birmingham. Jerry could sing both church music and country. His friend Jerry Grammer noted the similarities with Elvis Presley, who could sing gospel songs with the best of them. Charlie Colvin had no doubt: “Jerry Woodard was wonderful, probably one of the most multitalented singers of the guys who came out of here. Jerry is dead now. He cut ‘I’m Just a Housewife’ for RCA, and he cut a lot of demos for me.” Pianist Bobby Mizzell: “I met Jerry at WHTB in Talladega, Alabama. He had a radio program there, like I did. I just remember we both liked rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll boogie and all that stuff, so we got together because of that … We cut songs at WHTB … and the people there made little 45 demos for us … Jerry Woodard and I both left Talladega because of Country Boy Eddie, he had a show on WBRC-TV and WAPI-TV … This is how we first got recognition in Alabama, through the medium of television there.” Country Boy Eddie: “I always wanted to be what I called a ‘radio star.’ I met Happy Hal Burns and he kindly helped me along … I was on in the morning from about five to seven, and at night from seven to ten. That was during the time when rock ’n’ roll came along. Even though rock was hot, I still had the number 1 show in Birmingham … At that point I wanted to get on television … So I went to this fellow named ‘Big Hearted’ Eddie Right. He had a used car lot … so I got him to sponsor me on Saturday night on Channel 13 … From there I went to Channel 6 TV … That was in 1957, and I stayed on there from 5 a.m. until 7 a.m. through 1993 … I think it was the longest-running country music show with one host in America.” Bobby: “When Jerry and me came to Birmingham, the first club we played was the Starlighter, then we played Pappy’s Club and the Escape Lounge too.” In 1957 Woodard recorded his first singles in Birmingham: “Six Long Weeks” / “Blue Broken Heart,” backed by Jerry Reed on guitar and Charles Matthews on piano, followed by “Downbeat” / “Our Love and Romance.” In 1958 he recorded “Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby” for Reed Records, which became his best-known release. This song was the lament of a young rock ’n’ roller conscripted into the army (and the fate of Elvis that year). “She’s a Housewife, That’s All” was a slower country song about the way many teenage love affairs ended up in tedious domesticity. These two tracks were good enough to be picked up by RCA, and Chet Atkins re-recorded them in 1959.
Jerry Woodard and Sammy Salvo’s hot records propelled them into larger markets, and they were soon performing outside Alabama. Both were asked to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, the most popular music show on television, with a huge audience of teenagers who watched it every afternoon after school. “Oh Julie” propelled Sammy Salvo’s career, and he now lived the life of a teen idol: “There were a bunch of screaming girls. It was fantastic … The first car I ever bought with any money that I made was a 1950 pink Mercury. That was what I used to travel around in. After that I bought a T-Bird. It was special. I didn’t ask the salesman how much it was, I just told him ‘I want that car there.’ There wasn’t all that much money in the business at the time. The companies made a lot of money. They would spend all the artist’s money before he even got a check. For instance, the check that I was supposed to get for ‘Oh Julie’ had been mostly spent when I got it. They spent all the money on promotion pictures and album covers.” George: “The artists paid for their own sessions. The money came out of their advance. Back in the 1950s it cost you forty-two dollars a minute to record.” Sammy: “I had a three-year contract. I had to live with it. I couldn’t have quit. They wouldn’t have let me record [with another company]. It would have been over with. They held me there for three years. It started wearing out for me. The tempo changed to something I didn’t know. I just wasn’t getting any hits. I wasn’t doing the right tunes. I don’t know. Maybe I was out of the groove … I was on my way down. I was singing at a place called the Southern Steakhouse. It was in Bessemer in 1961. There was a knockdown drag-out fight, and I ducked from many a beer bottle.”
Bobby Mizzell and Jerry Woodard cut acetates in Birmingham studios and radio stations in 1958. The duo formed a band (Bobby on piano, Jerry on guitar) and also did session work in studios, backing vocalists Sammy Salvo and Len Wade (whom Bobby recorded on his record label singing a song he had written called “Found Someone”). Bobby and Jerry added other band members over time: Newman Cohely on guitar, Billy Self on drums, Tommy Willingham on drums, Lee Hood Carzle on bass, Johnny Carter on drums, and Sam Newfill on guitar. They backed the big-name singers when they played in Alabama: Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, Mark Dinning, Brenda Lee, George Morgan, Roger Miller, and Tex Ritter. Their first record on Reed was Jerry’s “Don’t Make Me Lonely,” and Mizzell had the instrumental “Atomic Fallout” as the flip side — an appropriate title for a country in the grip of the Cold War. Mizzell played on Jerry Woodard’s “Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby” and on numerous other records cut in downtown Birmingham. Two tracks he produced for Reed in 1959 caught the attention of 20th Century Records and were released on their label. “Heart and Soul,” his best-known song, was issued in instrumental and vocal versions. It had more than a hint of the boogie-woogie piano style that was to make Jerry Lee Lewis famous. On the B side was “Same Thing,” with vocals by Jerry’s brother Lee Wayne Woodard.
Dinky Harris met Jerry Woodard at Birmingham International Raceway, where he was racing his car, “TV6.” Jerry needed work done on his car, Jerry had his tool kit handy, and the two got to know one another while working on the motor. Dinky had been playing music since high school, where he had gotten together with a classmate who played bass and with guitarist Carl Hanson. Dinky was the only member of the band with a day job, so he bought a drum set and they started to play a few gigs. After meeting Woodard, Dinky reorganized his band as the Spades, with Jerry Woodard, Bobby Mizzell, Johnny Carter, and Frankie Benefield. In 1959 they recorded “She Left Me Crying,” written by Jerry Woodard. It was recorded at Homer Milam’s Reed Studios and released on the Fad label, a company formed by Woodard that Jerry, Dinky, and Bobby used as the vehicle to market their music. “She Left Me Crying” was an outstanding rockabilly number — a song described later as capturing “lightning in a bottle.” It became a Birmingham favorite. Duke Rumore had a call-in request show that most teenagers listened to, and “She Left Me Crying” became the number 1 song on the station’s chart.
As rock ’n’ roll became more and more popular, the output of Reed, Heart, and Fad Records increased exponentially. Dinky Harris was recording under many different names: Dinky Harris and the Nuggets (“Linda”), Dinky Harris and the Draft Dodgers (“Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby”), Dinky Doo (“Think It Over, Baby”), and plain Dinky Harris (“I Need You”). Bobby Mizzell formed his own Kim Record label (named after movie star