The Fabulous Wailers: A Journey

University of Washington

The Fabulous Wailers: A Journey

Jasmine Dacones TARTS 225 Kimberly Davenport June 6, 2018

Introduction The Fabulous Wailers were a rock band that was formed in Tacoma, Washington in 1958 by five high school friends: John Greek, Richard Dangel, Kent Morrill, Mark Marush, and Mike Burk. They originally called themselves The Nitecaps. They were an instrumental band featuring the guitar, drums, saxophone, and keyboard. Initially, their music featured no vocals, but as their career progressed, they experimented with lyrical songs.

In 1959, after facing many rejections from local recording companies, they were referred to Golden Crest, a recording company from New York. They recorded their song “Tall Cool One” with the company, which was instantly deemed a hit (Broven).

The Beginning In 1959, The Wailers signed a five-year record deal with Golden Crest record company in New York. At the time, John Greek was the only member in the band old enough to sign the contract. With them, they produced two radio hits: “Tall Cool One” and “Mau Mau” and a selftitled LP, The Fabulous Wailers. “Tall Cool One” reached “No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 during a 13-week stay” (Broven) and “brushed the R&B chart at No. 24” (Broven). The success of their first single garnered them an appearance on “American Bandstand”, a musical performance show hosted by Dick Clark that aired nationally from Pennsylvania (Broven).

After a whirlwind of success, Golden Crest halted their work with the Wailers when the band refused to move to New York to continue their career under the record label. Being that the band members were still all teenagers, their parents had them return to Tacoma to finish high school (Ormsby). While was happening, the band had recruited Lawrence F. “Rockin’ Robin” Roberts, a singer from another Tacoma group called Little Bill and the Bluenotes (Blecha). Roberts was quick to push the band to record his rendition of Richard Berry’s song, “Louie Louie”.

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Everyone agreed to do it but did not know how to do it without breaking the contract with Golden Records, which at the time, their contract still existed but was practically inactive. One idea was to record the song but to credit Roberts as the artist instead of the Wailers (Blecha). John Greek was not interested in this idea and eventually led to him being the first member to leave the Wailers because of the unresolved differences. Buck Ormsby, another member from Little Bill and the Bluenotes who was the bassist, was the replacement after Greek left his band (Ormsby).

Etiquette Records Back in Tacoma, the band held a group meeting at a nightclub called the New Yorker to discuss the future of the Wailers. With their record label no longer promoting them, they had to decide whether to remain together or disband as they were unsure if they could continue finding success as a band without their label. But even without working with Golden Crest anymore, they still believed they could continue with their career as the Wailers. Buck Ormsby threw in the idea of starting their own record label and self-releasing their music (Jive Time Records). Some members were skeptical about the idea and worried what Golden Crest would think about it (Blecha). More so, none of them had the business experience to independently run a record company, let alone, as teenagers (Blecha). Nevertheless, Kent Morrill and Rockin’ Robin agreed to join in on the idea with Ormsby and made it a reality (Ormsby). It was then that Etiquette Recording Company was born.

Lacking the financial resources to produce an album, Ormsby, Morrill, and Robin opted for producing a single, which they decided would be “Louie Louie” (Ormsby). Even after recording the song at a home studio in Seattle, they spent half a year debating on who would be credited on the song: The Wailers or Rockin’ Robin (Blecha). It was not until early 1961 when Ormsby heard a former band member from Bluenotes recording “Louie Louie” with a new band

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at recording company in Seattle. This prompted Ormsby to quickly take action. He gave his band’s recorded copy of “Louie Louie” to a local radio station whom aired it on that same day and instantly became a hit (Blecha). The group finally agreed to release the song under Robin’s name and Ormsby sent a recorded copy to a manufacturer with the label credits. Etiquette Records distributed their new batch of discs containing their first single to be released by them to more local radio stations and stores. It became a No. 1 hit locally but failed to make the charts nationally.

The Fabulous Wailers at The Castle In 1959, a radio DJ booked the Wailers to play at the Spanish Castle, a dance hall in Des Moines, Washington (Blecha3). According to Blecha, this turned out to be “the very first of countless rock ‘n’ roll teen-dances ever held at the Castle”. After two years of drawing in crowds to their performances at the Castle, they decided they could make some more money if they recorded their performance.

The Wailers used Etiquette as the label to produce their next big recording. In 1961, the group performed and recorded a live LP called The Fabulous Wailers at The Castle at the Spanish Castle (Jive Time Records). A few of the songs featured vocals from “Rockin” Robin and Kent Morrill, along with Gail Harris’ rendition of a song. Harris was a young R&B teenage singer who was occasionally featured on songs with the Wailers (Jive Time Records). The album became a local hit as soon as it was released and sold 40,000 copies regionally. In fact, Cuba Koda argues that the album was, “Undoubtedly one of the most influential albums in Seattle rock & roll history.” Altogether, the band recorded four more albums and several singles with Etiquette Records.

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Changes The group wanted to become even more professional with their next work of music. In the fall of 1964, they took trips to San Francisco to record their third LP, Wailers Wailers Everywhere.

Etiquette brought in a publicist, Barrie Jackson and started to change the band in an effort to garner more appeal, which included a change in hair and outfits. This pushed Dangel to leave the group in 1965, stating that “…the Wailers weren’t the Wailers anymore. It seemed to me, we were trying to be the Beatles...” (Blecha). He was replaced by guitarist, Neil Andersson. The group continued on and released two more albums, Out of Our Tree and It’s You Alone. Andersson left a few years after that and was replaced by Denny Weaver. The group tried their hand at psychedelic music and released their final album, Walk Thru the People (Beyond Louie Louie).

All Good Things Come to An End Throughout the career of the Wailers, they cycled through many memberships. Eventually, Kent Morrill was the only original member remaining in the band. They struggled to keep up with changes in music and failed to reach a more national success (Go Go). In 1969, the band finally decided to split up (Broven). Some of them joined other bands while other pursued a solo career.

In the later years, some of the original members temporarily came together as the Wailers for reunion concerts.

In 2009, the remaining members of the Wailers came together with another popular rock ‘n’ roll band in their time, The Ventures to record a joint CD called, Two Car Garage to commemorate their 50 years as groups. Together, they held a performance at Moore Theater in Seattle. The Wailers played some of their popular hits and included a slideshow tribute to their bandmates that had passed away. At the end of the show, they joined with the Ventures to play songs from their joint album.

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Impact The Wailers’ impact was felt beyond their own city of Tacoma, their impact reached out to the whole Pacific Northwest. Blecha acknowledges their influence, stating that: “The Wailers’ direct influence on the Northwest scene can be traced through the Ventures (“Walk – Don’t Run”), the Kingsmen (“Louie Louie”), the Sonics, a young Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. On a wider scale, there was the group’s impact on surf music and garage bands generally.”

They are considered as being “one of the very first, if not the first, of American garage bands” (Unterberger) and were part of the 60’s rock explosion that occurred in the Pacific Northwest.

They inspired many people with their music. Despite the group’s rendition of “Louie Louie” not making the charts nationally, it became a staple in the Pacific Northwest and was expected to be played by all teenage bands at every dance (Blecha2). Its popularity inspired other local Pacific Northwest groups to record their own renditions of “Louie Louie”. The most notable was from two groups from Portland, Oregon: the Kingsmen and Paul Revere & the Raiders (Broven).

Jimi Hendrix was known to be one of the Wailers’ biggest fans. In fact, the first song he learned to play on the guitar was “Tall Cool One” after seeing one of their shows in Tacoma (Minster). He attended every show and would be front row enjoying every moment of it. Etiquette Records discovered the Sonics, a garage rock band, and helped them get their recording career started by releasing their first two albums. The label itself also found success as they made history as “the first successful rock ‘n’ roll company even run by young musicians” (Blecha).

Through all their accomplishments, they were considered inspirations and heroes by The Beatles, Elton John, The Eagles, Ted Nugent, and John Fogerty (Minster). According to Blecha, The Wailers simply had a rock ’n’ roll sound like nothing else around – and bands in the Northwest,

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across the country, and even in England loved them.” They were part of the evolution of what music is today by setting a foundation for rock ‘n’ roll.

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References Broven, J. (n.d.). The Fabulous Wailers. Retrieved from http://www.etiquette-records.com/artists/johnBroven/ Beyond Louie Louie. (n.d.). The Wailers. Retrieved from https://beyondlouielouie.weebly.com/about1.html Blecha, P. (2009). Sonic boom: The history of northwest rock. New York, NY: Backbeat Books.

Blecha, P. (2009, April 10). Etiquette rules! The northwest's reigning '60s garage-rock record company.

Retrieved from http://www.historylink.org/File/8947.

Blecha, P. (2003, February 15). Louie Louie – the saga of a Pacific Northwest hit song. Retrieved from http://www.historylink.org/File/5206.

Gail Harris, The Fabulous Wailers, and Spanish Castle magic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://jivetimerecords.com/northwest/gayle-harris/.

Minster, T. (2009). Coffee with a Legend – Kent Morrill of The Fabulous Wailers. Retrieved from http://www.concertlivewire.com/wailersint.htm Ormsby, B. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from http://www.etiquette-records.com/about/ Stav, S. (2009, April 10). The Fabulous Wailers & The Ventures – 50th anniversary concert. Retrieved from https://ink19.com/2009/05/magazine/event-reviews/the-fabulous-wailers-the-ventures-50thanniversary-concert.

The Fabulous Wailers. (n.d.). The Boys from Tacoma. Retrieved from http://fabw.cybervortex.com/history.html Unterberger, R. (n.d.). The Wailers. Retrieved from https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-wailersmn0000487012/biography

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