Atlanta, Georgia, was the birthplace of Thomas David Roe, in May of 1942. It was his father, Thomas, who really introduced him to music when he bought him a guitar and taught him how to play three chords.
“Tommy”, Mike Clark and Bobby West formed a group, The Satins, when the trio was still in high school. The Satins would perform songs by blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker.
When Tommy composed his first hit, “Sheila”, it originally bore the title, “Freida”. The song was recorded in Nashville, in September of 1961, but was not released, on ABC-Paramount Records, until May of the following year. “Sheila” spent two weeks atop both the American and Australian charts and reached No.3 in Britain.
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“The Folk Singer” followed. However, while it barely entered the chart in the United States, towards the middle of 1963, it climbed to No.4 in Britain. In Australia, it ascended to No.20.
http://youtu.be/dkE8PFbO_Jo
“Everybody” became Tommy’s second self-penned hit. Recorded in the studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in July of 1963, it rose to No.3 in the United States and No.9 in Britain. Six years were to pass before Tommy Roe would re-enter the British charts.
The Australian public, on the other hand, had taken a distinct liking to Tommy’s recordings and while “Everybody” did not chart there, “Susie Darlin’ ” (No.4, in 1962) and “Carol” (No.9, in 1964) had performed well. “Susie Darlin’ ” had been a hit for its composer, Robin Luke, in 1958; as had “Carol” for its composer, Chuck Berry, in that same year. “Party Girl”, while it barely entered the Hot 100 in the United States, in 1964-’65, reached its apex at No.7 in Australia.
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Eighteen months passed before Tommy Roe took firstly “Sweet Pea” and then “Hooray For Hazel” into the American Top 10, in the latter half of 1966. “It’s Almost Winter’s Day” performed moderately, in America, at the start of the new year. All three songs were Tommy’s compositions. Nevertheless, a further two years would pass before the ditty he was destined to co-write would become his biggest hit of all.
“Dizzy” topped Billboard’s Hot 100 for four weeks from the middle of March in 1969. Tommy’s re-emergence on the British chart could also be celebrated for the recording also reached No.1 there, in June of that year, after it had climbed to as high as No.3 in Australia.
http://youtu.be/qH3i7KaQ26w
“Heather Honey” met with more tempered success and, just as 1969 drew to a close, “Jam Up And Jelly Tight” was just about to mark Tommy Roe’s final visit to the Top 10.
Although Tommy continued to enter the American charts for a further three years, the recordings that had worked so well for him before were really no longer in vogue. In America there had been a leaning towards mellow country rock while, in Britain, glam rock had come to the fore.
Nevertheless, Tommy Roe continued to find audiences to attend his concerts and, in 1991, in that most retrospective of decades, he would have received royalties when the British outfit, Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff, again took “Dizzy” to the top of the charts.