MatR: Roy Orbison, Bruce Springsteen and Friends: Ooby Dooby

In 1955, two North Texas State College students named Wade Moore and Dick Penner downed a six-pack of beer and dashed off a song in a fifteen-minute burst of songwriting on the roof of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity house.

It wasn’t the deepest of songs. In fact, it sounded exactly like something you’d expect from a fifteen-minute, six-pack-powered burst of songwriting. But another North Texas State student heard Moore and Penner performing it and was captivated by it. The young geology major’s name was Roy Orbison.

Orbison was already in a band of his own: the Wink Westerners, later known as the Teen Kings. The band added “Ooby Dooby” to their sets, where it soon became a band and crowd favorite.

Determined to get a record contract, Orbison and the Teen Kings auditioned for Columbia, (after unsuccessfully trying to get an audition with Sun Records), and “Ooby Dooby” is one of the demos they recorded in the process.

Columbia took a pass on The Teen Kings, but they kept the song and handed it to Sid King and the Five Strings, who recorded and released it in 1956. It went nowhere.

In the meantime, still determined to make it in the record business, The Teen Kings signed with a local independent record label called Je-Wel and recorded another attempt at “Ooby Dooby.”

Orbison’s version of “Ooby Dooby” came out concurrently with Sid King’s version, and when Sam Phillips of Sun Records heard it, he changed his mind about Orbison.

Roy’s original aspiration was to be a Sun recording artist, so he was more than happy to let Phillips figure out a way to steal him away from Je-Wel (as a minor, Roy’s contract with Je-Wel wasn’t enforceable). The Teen Kings soon went into the studio and recorded yet another version of “Ooby Dooby”–this time for Sun.

Whew! That’s a lot of backstory and a lot of attempts for a pop trifle that never even cracked the Top 40.  But while it may not have set the charts aflame, “Ooby Dooby” sold about 200,000 copies–enough to earn Orbison and the boys another bite at the apple. It would be a few years still before Orbison landed a Top 40 single, but “Ooby Dooby” kept him in the game.

Today, “Ooby Dooby” is considered to be Orbison’s earliest hit (even though it’s a bit of a stretch to categorize it as a hit), and Orbison performed it frequently right up until his untimely death in 1988.

One of Orbison’s final “Ooby Dooby” performances was at his famous, star-studded Black & White Night concert in 1987.  Bruce Springsteen joined Roy on stage that night, as did Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, Bonnie Raitt, and a host of other musical legends in what was by any standard undeniably an all-star band.

Like all of the assembled talent, Bruce was happy to linger in the background for most of the night, supplying rhythm guitar, backing vocals, and an occasional duet lead–but most of the time gazing star-struck at his musical idol, looking for all the world like he was having the time of his life.

“Ooby Dooby” wasn’t one of the songs that featured a Springsteen vocal, but we do get treated to a very nice guitar solo from Bruce during the second half of the song.

Bruce had never played “Ooby Dooby” before, and he hasn’t played it since. But when your one and only performance is as the sideman for one of rock’s all-time legends, once is all you need.

Ooby Dooby
First performed: September 30, 1987 (Los Angeles, CA)
Last performed: September 30, 1987 (Los Angeles, CA)