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Buddy
Wayne Knox
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| Buddy Wayne Knox, born July 20, 1933 in Happy Texas;
was the first artist of the rock era to write and perform his own number one hit song,
"Party Doll". The song earned Knox a gold record in 1957 as well as a BMI
million performance award. Knox was the very first Texas rockabilly artist to be awarded a
gold record and he was one of the innovators of the southwestern style of rockabilly that
became known as "Tex-Mex" music. |
| Buddy
attended Happy High School, graduating in 1950 with a class consisting of 15 boys and 9
girls. The population of Happy in 1956 was only 690 people. After high school, Knox
attended West Texas State College (WTSC), in Canyon. While at WTSC, Knox was involved in
the ROTC (graduating as a Lieutenant), the Buffalo Bills (a campus service organization),
a member of Alpha Psi Omega (a drama fraternity), a WTSC |
| cheerleader, a member of the Buffalo Masquers (a club
for people interested in drama), a rodeo clown, and a member of a group called the
Serenaders (this was a group with two of Buddy’s classmates that went around to the
girls dorms to serenade them). In 1956 Knox graduated WTSC with a bachelor of business
administration degree. While a WTSC, Knox met two other students,
Jimmy Bowen and Don Lanier. The three formed a band called the Rhythm Orchids, named after
their orchid colored shirts they wore. They played in local clubs for beer and food,
singing songs until they were thrown out for being under age, but Buddy Knox and the
Rhythm Orchids had developed a following. They became the hottest local band around.
Backstage
after a show at WTSC with Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings, Knox began talking
with the band. Orbison told him about a recording |
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studio in Clovis, New Mexico where he had recorded some
of his earlier songs. A few days later Knox, Bowen and Lanier found themselves at Norman
Petty’s studio in Clovis, New Mexico. For the $60 they had in their pockets, they
spent three days recording three songs that would change their lives forever. Knox
recalls, "I don’t think Norman really spotted the potential at the time. I
don’t think he was really alert to what was happening in the music business as far as
our type of music was concerned." |
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| Buddy rehashes the three days at Norman
Petty’s studio, "Looking back it’s just something that happened 40 years
ago. You try to remember a moment that was so great but in time you forget some of the
small details because you didn’t know that would be the one moment in time that would
change your life. You have to remember a recording session was a lot different in 1956
than it is today, you had to do everything in one take. The recordings were done on only
one track, none of this 24 track studio stuff." Knox laughs, "Boy an artist
today sure does have it made. I can remember having Jimmy |
| Bowen on stand up bass, Don Lanier on lead guitar, and I was on
rhythm guitar and lead vocals. We didn’t have a drummer, but a boy by the name of
David Alldred, who joined the band later, was a session player for Norman Petty, so we
used him. I can remember looking at him and all he had was two drumsticks and a box with
cotton pushed up in it. I still think that makes a heck of a drum sound." Continuing
to laugh, "Then we discovered that Jimmy couldn’t play bass well enough for
Petty to record him, so we found this other guy hanging around the studio to do the
honors. We had a girl from the Clovis High School to play the cymbals and my sister and
two of her friends sang background vocals." |
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Set up and ready to record, the only thing the Rhythm Orchids had to
wait on was midnight. Norman Petty’s studio was located on a main street and every
five seconds a truck would drive past the building. This was a problem because the sound
of the trucks would be heard on the recording tape. Sound proof rooms were rare in the
50’s recording days. With a midnight to dawn recording schedule, Knox and the band
would sleep all day and record all night. This went on for three days. When it was all
over, Knox and the band got the master tapes and a copy of what they had done on acetate,
packed up the car and went back to WTSC.
From
that one session Buddy Knox would receive two gold records in 1957, one for "Party
Doll" written and |
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| sang by Knox and the other for
a song that Jimmy Bowen sang and co-wrote with Knox called "I’m Sticking With
You". "We didn’t know what we had just done," Knox recalls, " All
we wanted to do was record our music and sell it around the college. This was just a fun
trip for us." |
| Chester
Oliver, owner of Blue Moon Records and Seminole Publishing in Texas, heard the recordings
and asked Knox if he could press 1,500 copies of "Party Doll" and "I’m
Sticking With You" on a 45rpm record. Then they formed a small label called Triple-D,
named after a Dumas, Texas radio station KDDD where Bowen had worked. A DJ in Amarillo
named Dean Kelly played "Party Doll" and it became a local hit. Over 200 copies
of the |
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| Triple-D record were sold and
Knox was on his way. When asked who owned the master tapes and the publishing of the
Norman Petty recordings, Knox said, "We paid for the session and gave Chester Oliver
the master tapes to press the Triple-D records and never saw the stuff again."
The Rhythm Orchids
big break came from Don Lanier’s sister who worked in New York City as a model. She
heard that Roulette Records, a new record label in town operated by Morris Levy, was
looking for some new talent. Back in the 50’s getting your music heard was a little
bit easier that it is today, so she called Morris Levy and dropped a copy of "Party
Doll" off for him to hear. Morris liked what he heard and made arrangements for the
band to come to New York. So the Rhythm Orchids, Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, Don Lanier and
new member David Alldred, went to meet Morris Levy at Roulette Records in New York City. |
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The
first release was "Party Doll", and then at almost the same time Roulette
released "I’m Sticking With You". With "Party Doll" going number
one and selling well over a million singles and "I’m Sticking With You"
being a top 40 hit and single sales over one million, the band was on top of the world.
That same year Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids released "Rock Your Little Baby To
Sleep", a top 20 hit, and "Hula Love", a top 10 hit. Both singles sold over
one million copies. The
year of 1957 was over and Buddy Knox and the Rhythm Orchids had 4 million selling singles
to their credit. To this day "Party Doll" is still one of the most played songs
from the 50’s rock ‘n roll craze, and single sales to date are well over 10
million copies. That’s not bad for a guy from Happy Texas, population 690. |
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| Over the next
few decades, Buddy Knox had other top 40 chart successes but nothing like the success of
1957. Living on the road almost all his life, he toured nearly eleven months out of the
year and appeared in several movies. If you saw a Winnebago going down the road it was
probably Buddy Knox. Always admired for his kindness and desire to help someone out, Knox
was known as one of the "nice guys of rock ’n roll". A happy man from
Happy, Texas. |
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On
February 14th, 1999, Rockabilly Hall of Fame member and Rock ‘n Roll
legend Buddy Knox, 65, died in Bremerton, Washington, after a battle with cancer. This web
site is a memorial from his five children, Wendy, Michael, Jesse, Ginger and Buddy Wayne
Knox Jr. Buddy had a lot of friends over the years and his kids would like to share those
times with you in some rare photographs. We hope you enjoy the Buddy Knox web site as much
as we do. |
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| We love you Dad. |
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Sources of information:
Billboard Book of #1's, Rockin' 50's Magazine, and The Prarie (newspaper of West
Texas A&M University).
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