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Let’s go to “Young Love.” This was 1957 and this song is at the
top of the charts. How do you go from movie star to singing sensation?
People do that now, but they didn’t do it then.
What happened was that I was on tour with Natalie Wood
in Chicago promoting a motion picture called
The Burning Hills,
and at that time Howard Miller was a big disc jockey [in 1957,
Time
magazine called Miller “probably the nation’s single biggest
influence on record sales”].
Howard Miller said to me after he heard me humming
something that was popular at the time, “You’ve got an interesting
voice. Would you ever consider cutting a record?”
“Well,” I said, “I sound alright in the shower where you’ve
got all that echo, and I used to sing in church.” So he said, “I’d
like to put you in touch with Randy Wood of Dot Records.”
I met Randy and he called me and said he had a song he’d like
me to hear. I came in and sang a few bars of it and he said, “I’d like
to record you.” This was on a Friday. This was “Young Love,” and I
went to a recording session. By Monday, I was driving down Sunset
Boulevard and I heard it on the radio and almost hit a telephone
pole. I couldn’t believe it.
And the B side?
We didn’t even have a song for it and they said, “What’ll we
do?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’ve always liked ‘Red Sails In
The Sunset,’” and that became a pretty good hit also. Randy got the
Jordanaires, who were the backup group for Elvis to back me up.
Elvis was not happy about that. That was
his
group.
Conversations:
38
winter
|
spr ing
Tab gives Natalie Wood a “traditional” spanking on her 18
th
birthday,
1956; lower left: another of Tab’s favorite movies is
Damn Yankees
; he
is seen here on the set with Gwen Verdon