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An Interview With Bob Kelly From Blue Suede News

By Prof. Fred Hopkins

“I am rockabilly, but I’m really Rhythm’n’Blues-abilly!  So says Bob “Git It” Kelly, a singer/songwriter/musician who’s been playing Rock’n’Roll, pop, R&B, country, and all stops in between for almost 50 years.  Now that’s entertainment!
Bob was born on October 2, 1935, in Fort Worth, Texas.  His parents were acrobatic dancers and Kelly’s home always resonated with the sound of jumpy home-made music.  He learned to play saxaphone before he was in first grade, and took up guitar while still in elementary school.   By the time he reached his teens, Bob was going to makeshift parties where he and his friends would park their cars in a circle and play Rhythm’n’Blues (from WLAC in Nashville) all night long.
“I grew up listening to Joe Turner and The Flamingos and they were my influences, not so much the blues,” Bob states.  “ We’d listen to R&B in our cars from midnight to early in the morning out near the oil fields. Where I lived they had so many oil pumps they sold something called “drip gas.”  It clinked like crazy in your car and you had to change your oil & air filter every 100 miles, but it was free!”
Unlike many of his Rockabilly contemporaries from the mid-1950’s, Bob didn’t originally sight in on music as a potential lifetime avocation.  “I was programmed by my father to go to college,” Kelly continues.  “I was getting a business degree from North Texas State (in Denton, Texas).  While I was in college, I was writing songs.  I’d play college dances on week-ends so I’d have enough money to record and make demos of my songs. My big break was winning a Horace Heidt Original Amateur Hour contest in 1955.

That put me in front of a huge crowd and I was instantly enthralled by the feeling.  Then I started playing the “Big D Jamboree,” where I made less money than at the college dances, but I got exposure for my songs.  Soon, Ed McLemore, who managed Sonny James, Buddy Knox, Jimmie Bowen and Gene Vincent, offered me a management contract, but I turned him down.  I wanted something guaranteed.  If I didn’t get signed to a record deal in six months, the management contract should have been void, but he wanted the contract to last for seven years no matter what.  There were too many provisions and they were all in the manager’s favor.”    Despite not representing Bob, McLemore did play some of  Kelly’s tunes for Gene Vincent, who recorded “Git It” and “Somebody Help Me.”  Capitol Records wanted to go all out to promote “Git It,” which they released as a single in America and Overseas, so they gave Gene Vincent thousands of dollars to promote “Git It” and to go to Philadelphia to appear on Dick Clark’s Caravan of the Stars. Dick Clark’s shows were very popular, so this would have given nationwide exposure to “Git It.”
          Bob remembers, “What happened was that Gene Vincent never went to Philadelphia to meet with Dick Clark.  He took the money and went down to Mexico and drank.  “Git It’” was never played on Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars and I missed a tremendous opportunity.  Without that needed exposure, the single did not do very well in America, although sales were very high in Europe, where “Git It’” was a big hit. Then the promotion people at Capital started to move on to other projects.  Songs need to be promoted and money needs to be spent to run ads to make people aware of them.  Back then, your songs weren’t going to go anywhere without promotion. Soon, it was the early ‘60s and Gene Vincent was out.  He had always been a difficult guy to get along with.  Basically, people couldn’t deal with him.  Gene was a small man and he had that “little guy” attitude.  Plus he was taking pain pills (for his leg) and drinking.  In America, Vincent’s record contracts were all over, but he hadn’t done much playing in Europe.  He went back to Europe and had hits and a second career all over again.”
“After I graduated from college, in ’57, my dad wrote a letter to Art Linkletter, who had a popular TV show called Springboard To Stardom.  I hitchhiked to L.A., with just $100 in my pocket and they scheduled me for the September 9th show.  Unfortunately, the show got cancelled before that, so I never got the job!”
Undaunted, Bob put together a folder with his picture on the front and began making the rounds of the Hollywood record labels.  “I had acetates of all my tunes and I took them around to the companies,” he continues.  “The difference between back then (mid-1950’s) and now is that back then if you sat in the waiting room of a record company long enough, you actually got to see the president of the label!  Now of course, you’d never get inside the door.
“The only bite I got from any of the labels was from Lee Hazelwood (“Some Velvet Morning” - “Jackson”), who worked for Imperial at the time.  He liked my stuff but he couldn’t get anyone to listen, so he offered to let me record demos for him in order to get the money to make my own demos.  He paid $8 per song.  People would send in songs and I’d record ‘em.  Lee would give me four songs per day and he’d say “If you want to change anything, words or tune, go right ahead.  But you don’t get writing credits!”
              At this time, Bob Kelly’s tunes were very catchy, rhythm and blues songs, very much in the tense, vibrant, funky  style of  Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters or The Clovers, rather than in the more general “Elvis-style” blues-based 1-4-5 mode of “That’s Alright, Mama” or “Mystery Train.”  Many of the demos Bob recorded during this period sound eerily similar to the early L.A. black vocal groups and/or crooners, which was a far cry from the prevailing Rockabilly melodies.   During this “demo” period (1957), Kelly met Eddie Cochran and Jesse “Goodnight, My Love” Belvin, as well as bandleader Rene Hall and Original Sound label owner, Art LaBoe.  “It seemed weird that both Eddie Cochran and Jesse Belvin died in car crashes shortly after I met them,” states Kelly.
       “The next thing I knew, I had secured a gig through Rene Hall at the El Monte Legion Hall.  I was opening the show for Jackie Wilson; Big Jay McNeely, Bobby Day and The Satellites; and Johnny & Joe.  I was billed as ‘Robert Kelly---Direct from Dallas, with Bonie Maronie!’  I performed that tune and an original called “Beaba” (that’s the way people in Texas say “Baby”), with a full orchestra backing me.  I was the only white act on the show.”  “After that, Rene Hall wanted to sign me to a management contract but I turned it down, as well.  His contract also had too many percentages in it and, again, there were no guarantees.  My problem was that I was too educated.  I was a college graduate and I could see that these managers weren’t going to do anything for their money.”
So, Bob decided to keep managing himself.  To earn income, he took a job at Disneyland, where he was a pirate on the Caribbean Ride from late afternoon to early morning.
This allowed Kelly to make the rounds of the record labels in the mornings and to sit in waiting rooms until it was time for work, but when nothing came of his efforts after a year, he decided to head back to Dallas.
After attempting to work at a few straight 9-to-5 type jobs, Bob soon gravitated back to the music business.  “I was a disc jockey at WRR in Dallas,” Kelly states.  “It was a middle-of-the-road station, but every night we had the “Cat’s Caravan,” where we played Rhythm’n’Blues.  WRR was a clear station after dusk, so we could be heard all the way up to Chicago at night.”  As a disc jockey Bob interviewed such singers as Robert Goulet, Buddy Greco, and Wayne Newton, when they passed through Dallas, working small clubs just to pay the bills.
Bob continues: “I was also appearing on the early, early set at the Big D Jamboree.  Jimmie Bowen and Sonny James were usually on the bill, but they didn’t pick up on my original songs, since they were big stars already.  Johnny “Wild, Wild Women” Carroll was a regular on the Jamboree.  He was only about 14-15 years old and he was very difficult, always wanting to sit in with everyone.  At the time, Carroll wasn’t good enough to justify his attitude, but he mellowed at about 19 years old and his music was much better then.
Ronnie Dawson was also appearing on the Jamboree, and a very young Kenny Rogers was playing bass in a group called The Bobby Doyle Three, doing Hi-Lo- type modern vocal jazz.  He was a horrible stand-up bass player, but when the band went electric, Kenny became an excellent electric bassist.  They used to play the old Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, and Kenny and the band would often outdraw the starring attraction.”
        Dispelling the popular rumor that all Rockabilly bands have to have a stand-up bass, Kelly comments: “Very few of the early rockabilly bands used stand-up bass.  They all went to electric bass as soon as they could.  The reason being that in the mid-50’s there was nothing to amplify the sound of the stand-up bass in concert.  They hadn’t developed that technology yet.  So, if you used a stand-up bass, no one could hear it when you played live!”
Bob’s experience in radio studios soon led him to open his own recording studio where he could make acetates of his original material.  “When I opened my studio, I discovered that I was a pretty decent producer,” Kelly recalls.  “I recorded Gene Summers (“Dance, Dance Dance”) and The Bobby Doyle Three (featuring Kenny Rogers).  My biggest hit as a producer was recording The Nitecaps version of “Wine, Wine, Wine,” which was a major hit in many regional markets.”
Soon Bob had put together another group, and they were heavily booked into local airforce bases.  The lead singer was Scotty McKay, who had scored a regional hit with “Stick Of Rollin’ Dynamite.”  Unfortunately, McKay was extremely unreliable.
“I decided to put together another group,” Kelly explains.  “I called it “Expression,” and it featured Kirby St. Romain who’d scored with a tune called ‘Summer’s Really Comin’ and had done the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars for three years.  By this time (1964), Kirby was a has-been.  At the same time, I quit my job at WRR and we all went out on the road, playing supper clubs.
We’d do a quiet set for dinner; then a second show for dancing; then we’d close with a loud and rocking third set for the drunks who held on until closing time.  We played up as far as Kansas City and Chicago.”
              Soon Bob Kelly and Expression had also appeared in and performed  two songs for a 1960 horror movie entitled “The Demon From Devil’s Lake.”  The first cut is a Four Freshman/Beach Boys-esque harmony; while the second selection is a jaunty Bobby Goldsboro/Ray Stevens type ballad/rocker (“Better Luck Next Time, Girl”).  The film does not seem to have ever been released, though the two above-mentioned tunes are available on the Bob Kelly “1954/1958 Rockabilly” CD.
Bob also had an acting role in the 1963  sci-fi thriller, The Yesterday Machine, starring 1940’s leading man and 1950’s cowboy star Tim “Treasure Of Sierra Madre” Holt.  The Yesterday Machine is one of many “Golden Turkey” films—movies that are so bad they’re good and is highly sought after by video collectors.  “I had heard that Tim Holt was terrible to work with and was a heavy drinker, but he was a complete professional and very respectful and nice to everyone.  I also did dinner theater.  I starred in a version of “Bus Stop” with Sal Mineo (Rebel Without A Cause and the 1957  hit single,  “Start Movin’”).
          By the late 1960’s, Bob Kelly and Expression discovered that the Nevada casinos offered far more money than the group could make on the road.  As Bob states, “We worked at the Sahara Tahoe, then The Mint for 16 weeks each. We were playing Credence Clearwater and Eagles-type material.
We got a recording contract with Mediarts, owned by Nick Venet who had been with Capital (and had been involved in many of the early Beach Boys recordings).  We recorded a song called “California Is Just Mississippi (With A Lot More Cars & Bars),” and everyone loved it.  It got good airplay in several markets and was on the way up, then Don McClean came out with ‘American Pie’.  The promoters all went to him, so Don started making a bigger dent in just one market (as opposed to us being in many markets), which caused a stir and made more promoters start pushing his record.  Without anyone to promote us, “California Is Just Mississippi” got lost.”
Kelly remembers Expression being hired to play at a Banquet where they backed up an unknown singer, with a crew cut and a skinny tie, who had a small hit called “Half A Man.”  The guy was very nice, but had no stage demeanor, and didn’t speak a word to the crowd. The man sang such classics as “Crazy” and “Nightlife,” but it wasn’t until later that Bob realized that the singer had actually written those songs.  The man was Willie Nelson.

        As Bob recalls: “Expression stayed together for 16 years, from 1964 through 1980.  We weren’t having hit recordings, but we were making better than average money and we were making a living from music.  When we worked downtown Las Vegas, we were alternating with Barbara Mandrell, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson in the Lounge.  But by the early 1980’s, it was too tough to keep a group together.
I had a duo, “Kelly & The Kid” (featuring Bob and Kirby St. Romaine’s sister, Laura) from 1980-1983.  We did Kenny Rogers-type material, but by that time, computers were coming in and it was tough times for musicians.”
Oddly, Bob, who was playing music almost every night, was oblivious to the original Rockabilly revival of the late 1970’s (caused by The Stray Cats, Robert Gordon and many others).   “I didn’t know the rockabilly revival had even happened,” says Kelly.  “I was in charge of 5 guys who had five wives.  I was the daddy of the group.  I did notice that my BMI checks had gotten a bit bigger. I got into the second rockabilly revival of the early ‘90s. I noticed that there were many singers, like Gene Summers and Johnny Carroll, who became much more popular in the rockabilly revivals than they were in the ‘50s.”   With the revived popularity of Rockabilly music, “Git It’” started getting recorded once again, by such notables as Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Dave Edmunds, and many others. Bob was offered a chance to tour Europe, but the promoters wanted him to put a band together, obtain the visas, and everything else, so it never worked out.
Since 1984, Bob Kelly has been a one man band, doing a mixture of old rock (“Rockin’ Robin” “Summertime Blues”), pop (“Jump, Jive And Wail”), and country (“Amarillo By Morning”), along with his trademark tune, “Git It.”
As he states: “I write a lot of songs, mostly in the R&B category,  but I don’t try to send them to publishers.  I make a little money by placing the tunes on the internet.  Messing with hit songs is too much work nowadays.  You’re better off to put your original songs on MP3 or Ampcast.”
      Bob has a wealth of recorded material, including A CD of his early demos and soundtrack tunes (1954/1958 Rockabilly) as well as a CD of his current stage act (Kelly’s Stage Songs).  He still plays two nights per week in Las Vegas.  He is a true Rock’n’Roller who has made a living by playing music for half a century.
Bob sums up his musical philosophy this way:  “I have friends who started when I did and they have a bad attitude.  They think the music business owed them more than they got.  I never looked at it that way. I’ve got food and clothes, and at the end of the year, I don’t have any more money that I had at the beginning of the year. But I visit my son and my grandchild and I’ve got a great life. I was able to make a living playing music.  I had lots of friends who supported themselves by doing things they hated.  They may have made more money than me, but I had a hell of a lot better time!”


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