Exclusive interview with new author legendary superstar Tommy Roe

The Daily Banner had an exclusive interview with new author legendary superstar Tommy Roe regarding his incredible career and the new book he has coming out about his life.  The name of the book is, ‘From Cabbagetown to Tinseltown, and places in between.” The “Dizzy” singer has a career that spans 6 decades and he is still performing at some select shows each year.

The Daily Banner knew talking to Tommy Roe was going to be fun but it turned out to be more than that and educational to boot. Let’s get started.

THE DAILY BANNER (TDB): Tommy, you have had such a rich and remarkable career, take us back where it all started.

Tommy Roe (TR):    I am 74 years old and I have had an incredibly long career.  I actually wrote “Sheila,” when I was 14 years old.  It was originally a poem that I wrote to a little girl I was going to school with.  Her name was Frieda so it was originally called Frieda.

I carried that around in my back pocket until I got out of high school.  Meanwhile my Dad taught me 3 chords on the guitar and I thought, well I will take these two little poems I am writing and see if I can put some music to them.  Who knows, maybe I could become a songwriter?  You never know right?

TDB: Amazing.

TR:  One thing led to another and I got an audition with this record producer in Atlanta and I sang “Frieda” for him.  He said, “Son I love that song but we have to do something about the title.”  We have to change the name.  I don’t know if he had an old girlfriend or what named Frieda but he wasn’t going for Frieda.  We changed it to “Sheila.”  I recorded it when I was in High School with my local band and it was kind of a local hit in Atlanta.

Then when I met Felton Jarvis later on when I got out of High School, he wanted to re-record Sheila but he wanted to go to Nashville and record and he wanted to change the whole way we did it.  That is how it all kicked off again when I was 20 years old.  I went to Nashville when I was 20 and it was great.  I recorded in the old RCA building.

TDB:  Studio B?

TR:  Studio B.

TDB: Wow.  It was recorded in Nashville.  That is so cool.

TR:  Yeah, in fact they told me that the Jordanaires were singing background for me.  I basically used Elvis’s band.  They told me that I was going to be singing on Elvis Presley’s microphone.  Well I was already nervous and when they told me I was singing on Elvis’s microphone, then I really got nervous.  My knees started shaking but it went well. I talk about all of this in my book.  My book is out now and available on Amazon.

TDB:  Tell me more about the book and more about how you got to Nashville.

TR:  Oh yeah, I drove up to Nashville from Atlanta with Felton; you know Felton went on to produce Elvis later on.  Felton Jarvis produced Elvis I guess it was about 10 years before Elvis passed away. Felton and I were very close friends. He was like a brother to me. Every time I would get in the dumps in my career, Felton would come to the rescue.  He was just a great guy and such a giving guy. Then he got sick when he was working with Elvis. He lost the function of his kidneys and to show you how generous Elvis was, Felton was on dialysis and he used to have to go to the hospital twice a week for dialysis. Elvis somehow either leased or bought him a dialysis machine and put it in his house.

He had the doctors teach his wife Mary how to do the dialysis. That is the kind of guy Elvis was you know.  Felton and I were just very close through all those years. We made a lot of great records. He produced “Sheila,” my first hit and my first album with the Jordanaires on it, the Sheila album.  Then we went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and I recorded Something for Everybody there which was my follow-up to Sheila and it became my next big hit.

It went to #3 on Billboard. I recorded Everybody in 1963 and I did a tour in England with the Beatles in 1963.  The Beatles were a featured act on my tour. Chris Montez and I were on tour and the Beatles were a featured act in 1963.  Nobody knew who the Beatles were. On this tour John Lennon used to let me borrow his Gibson guitar to write songs and I started writing Everybody on this tour. Well that guitar last year sold for 2.4 million dollars.

Exclusive interview with new author legendary superstar Tommy Roe

TDB: Oh wow.

TR:  So now the guitar has got to be at least 3 million dollars right?  [Laughter]

TDB:  This is too much and you actually guess starred on the TV show, “Green Acres?”

TR:  I did yes. Tadpole was my character.  I blew into town and I took Ebb on the road with me which really made everybody in the town of Green Acres very unhappy. We went on the road together, Ebb was my tour manager and he finally got enough of the road and he came back to Green Acres.  That was the story.  I had a nice little part in it. I really enjoyed it and I really played it up with a funny looking outfit singing with a real southern accent.

Exclusive interview with new author legendary superstar Tommy Roe

TDB: You didn’t break out into country music being from the Atlanta area and having the southern drawl was different.  Instead you became a heartthrob pop star?  How did that come about that you ended going mainstream?

TR:  Yeah it happened with the influx of rock and roll. When I was a kid Elvis Presley was everything, Buddy Holly was everything, Carl Perkins.  You know I worshipped these guys and my father taught me to play the guitar.  He was a real country guy.  He loved Hank Williams.

TDB:  All the traditional country music?

TR:  All of the old original traditional country was my family’s music. I was the rock and roller in the family and the family wasn’t so happy about that.  When Dad taught me to play the guitar I started banging around the house rock and roll music to his chagrin.  Finally I put a little band together and started doing rock and roll. My influence as a kid and I got lucky at a young age with Sheila so that turned out to be my genre. Then I survived the British Invasion of the Beatles coming to America pushing all the American Acts off the Billboard charts.

Well the powers that be came up with this idea of creating this new sound which I called soft rock but it was tagged Bubble Gum Music. So I was the king of Bubble Gum.  I started my own genre, you know?  That was sort of out of desperation.  When I was in the army in 1964 all the British acts were coming over here and pushing the American Acts off the charts and I remember I used to be in the barracks and I would think, what the hell am I going to do now man?  All these guys are taking over the charts and pushing Dell Shannon off the charts.  I got out of the service and came up with the idea to write soft rock and I wrote “Sweetpea,” when I was in the army.

TDB:  Let me ask you a question about the army.  Did you volunteer or were you drafted?

TR:  Well I was about to be drafted so I joined the Army Reserves.  I was in the Reserves for 7 years.

TDB: So you had more control over where you were going and what was going to happen?

TR:  Right.  See back then we had the draft, you had no choice. If they called you up, you had to go. I saw the writing on the wall so I joined the Reserves before I was drafted.

TDB:  That was a good idea.
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TR:  Yes and I was out of action for a year.  I was in basic training so I was out of commission for a year and it gave me a lot of time to think. Then when I got out of the army or out of my basic training I moved to New York.  Then I moved to California to cut “Sweetpea” myself to see if I could make it a hit. I thought maybe it would bring me back into the charts.  Sure enough it was a Top 5 record.

There I was again with a new sound, you know the BubbleGum. You know I started out as a rockabilly guy.  They called me a rockabilly artist with “Sheila,” and “Everybody.” Here I was in 1966, I was the king of BubbleGum.

TDB:  All genres you were, all genres.

TR:  After Sweetpea I had “Hurray for Hazel,” “It’s Now Winter’s Day,” which was a semi hit and “Dizzy,” came in 1969 and that was a huge record for me.

TDB:  Dizzy was probably your biggest right?

TR:  It sold about 10 million singles.

TDB:  Let’s step back to “Hurray for Hazel,” and let me ask you, was that song inspired by the TV Show ‘Hazel?’

TR:  It was.

TDB:  Do you know that TV show is on Saturday mornings?

TR:  Yeah.  It’s a fun show. I always liked that show and I thought, that name Hazel, I’ve written songs with girls name and I am gonna write one with “Hazel” and sure enough I loved the song and it turned out.  The interesting thing about “Hazel” is that it actually sold more records than “Sweetpea” but it wasn’t a gold record and it didn’t go as high in the charts.  It’s kind of a weird situation. That was it, that was kind of my entry into the BubbleGum thing.

In the book I talk about the transition in the sixties and the seventies and how it happened and the consequences.  In other words it was funny, like over night I was out of the record business. My last hit was in 1972 and that was that. No more chart records after that. I tried to transition into country in 1974-75 and Felton produced that Energy album with Monument Records.

A few of those songs charted on the country charts but didn’t become really big records. I wasn’t able to do that transition to country which I tried for years to do. For some reason they still think of me chewing bubblegum instead of tobacco.  I don’t know what it is.

[Laughter]

TDB: Maybe you need to do advertisements for snuff?

TR:  That will do it.  BubbleSnuff. [Laughter]

TDB:  So you wrote a book and that is huge.  Are you going to be touring the book?

TR:  Yes, we are going to start promoting the book and I do a few music shows a year.

TDB:  What is the title of the book?

TR:  It’s called, “From Cabbagetown to Tinseltown,” and places in between.

TDB:  That’s interesting, Cabbage Town to Tinseltown, Tinseltown being LA?

TR:  Yeah, I grew up in the section of Atlanta called, Cabbage Town.  It was a working class section where mostly European’s lived there.  There was a Cotton Mill there and everybody worked in the mill.  Any afternoon you’d come walking home from work you would smell the scent of cabbage in the air because all the kitchens were cooking cabbage so they called the area CabbageTown.  I lived there until I was about 6 or 7 years old and then we moved uptown about 3 blocks.  We left there and we moved on up about 3 blocks over.

[Laughter]

TDB:  Right.

TR:  I start the book with my birth and bring it right on up to today. This book is not just another rock and roll memoir. I tried to take it to another level.  I parallel the influence of the music of the 1960’s with that culture and politics.  I tried to parallel that influence that it had on our culture.

We went from a blind society of radio to the very visual society of television during that decade.  The war in Vietnam and the music of the 1960’s had a lot to do with all those cultural changes.

Your book sounds really interesting. Thank you so much Tommy Roe for talking to The Daily Banner.  Be sure to check out Tommy Roe’s music on iTunes. You can order Tommy’s book from Amazon and make sure to like him on Facebook.

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