1956 Songs: Ooby Dooby

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No. You don’t have to tell me that’s a silly song title. You don’t have to tell me this is a silly song. And I don’t have to tell you that this is by one of the greatest voices in the history of rock and roll. This is all about the innocence of rock and roll in 1956…and the starting point of a true legend. Ooby Dooby - Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings Dick Penner and Wade Moore were students at North Texas State University (where Don Henley also, a decade or so later, attended college). According to the story, in 1954 they took a six pack and a writing pad onto the roof of their frat house and wrote this song “in a matter of minutes.” Well, that goes without saying. Another NTSU student around 1955 was Roy Orbison, studying history and English after finding his initial major, geology, rather boring. He knew the song, and the guys who wrote it, and they looked into making a record of this song. They released it on a local label in March 1956. Orbison and his band, the “Teen Kings,” were doing shows at drive-ins with other up and coming acts like Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and that Presley fella. They were all on Sun Records out of Memphis, so Orbison went there and got a contract. This was his first national release. The record sold pretty well — about 200,000 copies — but didn’t make much of a dent on the charts. Orbison struggled for a few more years before hitting pay dirt with “Only the Lonely” in 1960. (Funny story: he wanted to pitch the song to Elvis, thinking he’d make some quick money as the songwriter; however, Elvis was asleep when Orbison called on him.) “Somewhere between the time of ‘Ooby Dooby,’” Orbison later said, “and ‘Only the Lonely,’ (his voice) kind of turned into a good voice.” Yeah, I’d say so, too. Ooby Dooby Written by Dick Penner and Wade Moore Recorded by Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings Released as a single, 1956 Wiggle to the left: