Our special 2022 Series continues as we throw the spotlight on BOBBY VEE this month, courtesy of interview segments provided by Jeff March and Marti Smiley Childs from their book "Where Have All The Pop Stars Gone, Volume 1" ...
Insights into … Bobby Vee
[38 Billboard Hot 100 singles, 1959 – 1970; one certified RIAA gold]
Bobby Velline, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Fargo, North Dakota, was excited about going to see one of his favorite groups — Buddy Holly and the Crickets. He had a ticket to see the group perform on February 3, 1959, at the Winter Dance Party in nearby Moorhead, Minnesota. “There weren’t many rock and roll acts that ventured that far out into the prairie,” Bobby explained.
He was stunned upon learning of the plane crash in which Holly and fellow performers Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died, along with pilot Roger Peterson. But when the remaining tour performers — Dion and the Belmonts, the Crickets and Frankie Sardo — pulled into Moorhead, sponsoring radio station KFGO and disc jockey Charlie Boone decided to go on with the show. “They asked for local talent to help fill in the evening,” Bobby said. So he, his brother Bill and two friends in their impromptu band answered the call.
“It wasn’t like we were trying to start a career or anything. We were just trying to help them get through the night and help people get through this tragedy, ourselves included. We climbed on stage, knees knockin’, and when Charlie said, ‘What’s the name of the band?’ we didn’t have a name, so I quickly replied, ‘The Shadows.’”
Bobby didn’t sing any Buddy Holly tunes that night, although it’s been said that he did. When the newly dubbed Shadows stepped off stage following their 15-minute set, a local talent agent named Bing Bengtssen introduced himself to them. “It hadn’t occurred to us that we could do anything beyond that concert, but he started booking dates for us.” The band soon signed with Soma, a small Minneapolis-based regional label that released the group’s first hit, “Suzie Baby.”
Their improvised performance and that chance encounter marked the beginning of a prolific hit-making career for Bobby, who shortened his stage name to “Vee” and later changed the name of his group to the Strangers — the members of which briefly included a rockin’ piano player who called himself “Elston Gunnn (with a triple “n”) before adopting the name Bob Dylan. After A&R man Snuff Garrett signed Vee to a contract with Liberty Records in the autumn of 1959, Bobby’s course for pop stardom and chart success was set. Years later, Billboard magazine recognized him as “One of the top 10 most consistent chart makers ever.”
Bobby died at age 73 on October 24, 2016, five years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Insights about Bobby’s classroom versus career dilemma
“I was 16 years old and had a No. 1 record in the upper Midwest,” Bobby recalled. “So I went to my school counselor and told him what was going on, and I really wanted him to talk me out of leaving school. But he said, ‘Wow! A No. 1 record. Man, that’s gotta be exciting.’ And I said, ‘Well, it is, and I’m signing a record contract with a company in Los Angeles.’ He said, ‘That’s great!’ Instead of talking me out of it, he asked, ‘If this whole thing didn’t work, would you come back to school?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He said, ‘Then let me set you up with some correspondence courses at the college here.’ And he did. So I’d be out there on the road, rockin’ away, and I’d come back to my room and be doing algebra. And that got me through ’60 and ’61, when I was a senior. And my career got so busy that I ended up not finishing. I was a few credits away from getting my high school diploma. But it was a great experience.”
How Bobby became a singer in his brother Bill’s band
“My brother Bill was a great guitar player. He didn’t use a guitar pick. He plucked the strings with his thumbnail and first two fingernails on his right hand, sort of like Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. He pulled on the strings. Nobody sang [in his band in 1958]. They just played the music of all these Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran and Elvis songs, and they would get lost in the music. Bill knew that I sang because we used to go to all the country music shows together that would come through the area, and he would say, ‘Bobby, how’s the bridge go on this?’ And I would sing it to him. And that’s how I became a singer in the band.”
Developing stage presence
“I studied acting for a couple of years with Agnes Moorehead, who played Samantha’s mother, Endora, in the television series Bewitched,. Then I studied with Jeff Corey, who was blacklisted as a communist during the whole McCarthy thing. He was a great instructor. When Jeff was finally able to get back into acting, he turned his class over to Leonard Nimoy, and I studied with Leonard for about a year and a half. I learned a lot in those classes about performing, about singing to the back of the room and gesturing, and those kinds of things that seem phony and foreign until they become part of you, and it’s part of performing.”
Bobby’s three sons performing in his late-career band the Vees
“The Vees started working with me on my shows in 1994, and they’re great players. We always had a lot of music around the house, a lot of musical instruments, but they worked all that stuff out in their own personal sandbox. I wouldn’t want to try to manage that, and I didn’t. And it’s the best band I’ve ever had. And they’re so respectful of the people that we work with, and the other acts that we do shows with. They know the time period, they love the time period, and they’re playing the music the way it’s supposed to be played.”
The narrative and quotations in this article are excerpted from the book Where Have All the Pop Stars Gone? — Volume 1, by Marti Smiley Childs and Jeff March. This material is copyrighted © 2011 by EditPros LLC and may not be reproduced or redistributed without written permission.
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