Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

The songs remain the same: one generation passes and another generation comes, but the Top 40 abides. For these eight Texas acts, a few hours in a recording studio was all it took to secure an everlasting place in history as that most singular of creatures: the one-hit wonder.

Article Excerpt
One-hit wonders are held in the public's esteem somewhere above child stars, game-show hosts, and losers from American Idol. They're not real stars, not as talented as those who have really made it, who have had more than one hit, like, say, Britney Spears. They were in the right place at the right time. They were lucky. Indeed, one-hit wonders are the poster boys and girls of the axiom "It's better to be lucky than good." Take the story of how Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson, better known as Paul and Psula, chanced into recording their tune "Hey Paula": A friend knew Fort Worth record label owner Major Bill Smith, so the two drove to his studio unannounced. Blues pianist Amos Milburn Jr. hadn't shown up for the scheduled session that day, so Smith put them in front of the mikes. The result was one of the signature hits of the sixties.

But it wasn't all chance. Anyone who's watched Barbara Lynn play guitar, seen Roy Head twist and shout, or heard Sunny Ozuna croon knows that the folks pictured here weren't just lucky. They were good, sometimes great. In truth, most of them had more than one hit, though none so big as the song they are most known for, the sound of which can be heard on some radio in some place on the planet every day of the year. Everywhere they go, they hear requests for that song. Its melody clings to them like their own skin; its title will be in the first sentence of their obituaries. It has made them immortal.

A note on methodology before we begin. For our purposes, to be a hit a song had to have appeared in the top forty of Billboard's pop charts. To be a one-hit wonder, an artist had to have had at least one song in the top forty but could not have had more than one in the top five, which, much to our chagrin, disqualified both Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (two number two hits) and Vanilla Ice (a number one and a number four). Further, we gave the benefit of the doubt to artists (Edie Brickell, the Geto Boys, Fastball) who fit our criteria but who might still, God bless them, score again.

ARCHIE BELL AND THE DRELLS, "TightenUp," NO. 1, 1968

The song had everything: a great beat, cool guitar and horn riffs, and a peculiar introduction, with Archie Bell (above, at the Continental Club in Houston) lazily saying, "Hi, everybody....

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!