Bobby Hebb on Musicmatch.com

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Bobby Hebb made his stage debut on his third birthday, July 26, 1941, when tap dancer Hal Hebb introduced his little brother to show business at The Bijou Theater. This was an appearance on The Jerry Jackson Revue of 1942 even though it was 1941, "that was how Jerry, a big man in vaudeville in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, did things" noted the singer. Harold Hebb was nine years of age at the time and the young brothers worked quite a few nightclubs before Bobby Hebb entered first grade. Nashville establishments like The Hollywood Palm, Eva Thompson Jones Dance Studio, The Paradise Club, and the basement bar in Prentice Alley as well as the aforementioned Bijou Theater found Bobby and Hal dancing and singing tunes like "Lady B. Good," "Let's Do the Boogie Woogie," "Lay That Pistol Down Babe," and other titles that were popular at that time. Hebb's father, William Hebb, played trombone and guitar, his mother, Ovalla Hebb, played piano and guitar, while his grandfather was a chef/cook on the Dixie Flyer, an express train on the L&N -- Louisville & Nashville railroad. Brother Harold Hebb would eventually join Excello recording artists the Marigolds, documented in Jay Warner's biography of singer Johnny Bragg, the book -Just Walkin' in the Rain; while Bobby Hebb, with so much musical influence and inspiration, would go on to pen hundreds upon hundreds of tunes, among them, BMI's number 25 most played song on their website in 2000, the classic "Sunny." Georgie Fame and Cher, charted with the title in England, but it was the Bobby Hebb original which reached the highest on charts in Europe and America. Covers by Frank Sinatra with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Frankie Valli, Nancy Wilson, the Four Tops, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, and so many others, insured the song would reach audiences outside of those who heard and continue to hear it on Top 40 and "oldies" stations. But the song reached out beyond Top 40, climbing the country and R&B charts as well. Kal Rudman calls this a rare industry "hat trick" in the liner notes on the 1966 Phillips' album, but what no one could predict is how the song would find versions by Boney M. and Yambu bringing it to dance clubs, while jazz musicians explored the nuances of this amazing composition in their world. Hebb himself, in 2001, has performed the title with the Kubato Power Jazz Unit and Michael Shea Trio, the latter band featuring Thomas Hebb, Bobby's nephew, on bass. Noted author James Isaacs, whose liner note essays appear in some of the Sinatra boxed sets, provided a list of jazz musicians who have covered Hebb's signature tune: guitarist Pat Martino, singers Ernestine Anderson, Bill Henderson, Anita O'Day, organist Joey DeFrancesco, drummer Don Houge, pianists Joe Bonner and Hampton Hawes, trumpeter/flugelhornist Marvin Stamm, alto saxophonist Sonny Criss, and guitarist Stanley Jordan, among others. Bobby Hebb's influence goes far beyond "Sunny." When he joined Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys around 1952 in Nashville, he was one of the first African American artists to perform on The Grand Ole Opry before Charley Pride. Hebb moved to Chicago in 1954: "I wanted to play some music, and I wanted to advance my career, I didn't find the jazz I was looking for, but I ran into a lot of blues...I worked with Bo Diddley, maybe on an early Ellis McDaniels album." The song was "Diddly Diddly Diddly Daddy" with the Moonglows and Little Walter, recorded at Leonard Chess' studio in the back of his record shop on Cottage Grove Ave, "Leonard was the engineer," Hebb noted while telling this part of his rich history. Hebb joined the navy in 1955, playing the trumpet: "I learned West Coast jazz in the navy." The navy band was the USS Pine Island Pirates and they played "the whole time we were on board," including Hong Kong, performing for Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Sooong Mel-llng) at an event. The band got to meet Chiang Kai-shek as well. Around 1958 Bobby Hebb tracked "Night Train to Memphis," a song written by Owen Bradley for Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys. The tune was re-released in 1998 on a Warner Bros. box set, From Where I Stand, which also included "A Satisfied Mind" from the 1966 Sunny album. After that Hebb worked with Dr. John and left Nashville for New York. Disc jockey John "R" Richbourg, owner of Rich Records, which had released "Night Train to Memphis," got Hebb a gig at Sylvia Robinson's Blue Morocco Club. "I went for two weeks and stayed two years. The first two weeks I opened up with a Bobby Blue Bland song "Farther on Up the Road." The band playing behind me was Jimmy Castor, later on Bernard Purdie had just come to New York from Baltimore with Jewel Page." Hebb eventually replaced Mickey in Sylvia Robinson's group Mickey & Sylvia, who originally hit with "Love Is Strange." The duo became Bobby & Sylvia after Mickey left for Paris. After Bobby & Sylvia, Hebb was represented by Buster Newman, the man who "got "Sunny" happening in a lot of different ways." All the publishers they went to turned the song down! Newman's partner was Lloyd Greenfield, who managed Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, adding to his roster Bobby Hebb. While other groups in 1966 like Remains and the Ronnie Spector-less Ronettes opened for the Beatles, Bobby Hebb was headlining the tour with the Beatles, a fact that seems to have gotten lost in the overwhelming history of the Fab Four. After this, Hebb met comedian/composer Sandy Baron and the two got busy writing a Broadway show that never made it to Broadway. However, two of the songs -- "A Natural Man" and a tune they were writing about Marvin Gaye, "His Song Shall Be Sung" -- were picked up by Lou Rawls and released on MGM. "A Natural Man" the pair had actually rejected from their Broadway play. The original title of the song was "Natural Resource," but they doctored it up and gave it a different groove after Sandy Baron got Rawls interested in what became a huge hit for him. In 2001, the song will be the title track of a best-of Universal released on Lou Rawls. Sadly, Baron passed away in 2001, the year that saw the release of Roof Music's 16-track compilation of artists covering "Sunny," and interest in Europe for the song and the man who wrote and sang the definitive version. On July 28, 2001, two days after Hebb's 63rd birthday, this writer phoned Bernard Purdie at The House of Blues in Cambridge, MA, where Pretty Purdie was performing that night with Masters of Groove and for the first time in over three decades, Bobby Hebb and Bernard Purdie spoke on the phone and got to see each other at the show that evening. Bobby Hebb performed in June of 2001 at the opening of the Martini & Rossi 100 Years photo exhibit in Boston, shortly after graduating mini-med school. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
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Timeline
Born:1938 in Nashville, TN Related Styles
Soul, Pop-Soul


SUNNY album
http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/album.cgi?ALBUMID=741912&AMGLENGTH=full#review

REVIEWS
Produced by Jerry Ross and arranged by Joe Renzetti, "Sunny" emerged from a twelve-song disc released on the Phillips label, a division of Mercury records. Although Bobby Hebb is known as "the song a day man," he only composed three of the dozen titles included on this collection. The title track, of course, which was the song of the summer of 1966, "Yes or No or Maybe Not," and "Crazy Baby." The follow-up, "A Satisfied Mind," was also a Top 40 hit that year, but it wasn't until 1971, when Lou Rawls had a Top 20 hit with "Natural Man," did Hebb get another smash. A pity, and a definite statement about the music industry when a man as prolific and talented as Robert Von Hebb constructs and delivers pop tunes with a voice and feeling that crosses genres and ethnic boundaries. Kal Rudman himself penned the liner notes on the back of the disc (at the time he was R&B Editor of Record World Magazine, a publication still missed by the industry). Rudman reports that "Sunny" hit number one in Detroit and the surrounding area on the R&B, pop, and country & western charts. A monster smash, with covers by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra with Duke Ellington, Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy, there is no doubt this is Hebb's signature tune, but according to Marty Balin of The Jefferson Airplane he has "a pocketful of Miracles," implying the author/singer who gave us "Sunny" has mountains of songs that the world needs to hear. The producer/arranger team of Ross/Renzetti also penned "Bread," the flip side of the first 45, and "Love Love Love" on this album. Ross and Gamble co-authored "You Don't Know What You've Got Until You Lose It," McCoy's "For You," and there's even Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil's "Good Good Lovin'." All in all, this is a very pleasant pop album that remains an important snapshot of an important artist at the peak of his powers. As Rudman notes in the liners, Hebb was hired by Roy Acuff at the age of 12 to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Hearing this album again makes one wonder why it isn't mandatory for major labels to sign artists of Bobby Hebb's stature for a minimum of 200 albums. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide


LOVE GAMES album


http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/album.cgi?ALBUMID=1199740&AMGLENGTH=full#review

Love Games by Bobby Hebb
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Disc 1:
1.
This Bird Has Flown
2.
I've Learned to Care
3.
Good Morning World
4.
Grin and Bear It
5.
S.S. Soul, Pt. 1
6.
S.S. Soul, Pt. 2
7.
I'll Be Anything for You
8.
Flower
9.
She Broke My Heart
10.
A Better Love
11.
The Charms of the Arms of Love
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The voice and pen that crafted the multi-format standard "Sunny" took four years to create as exquisite an album of adult contemporary R&B as you'll find. This was recorded a full year before Lou Rawls would hit with the Bobby Hebb/Sandy Baron composition "A Natural Man," three years before Barry White would begin his reign of chart success, and two years before the O'Jays would help bring the Gamble and Huff sound to the masses. The place in time for Love Games is key to understanding the album's importance as a pioneering classic of original soul music. Stevie Wonder was still singing his pop material before his run as a serious artist, a year before Marvin Gaye would tell, not ask us, "What's Goin' On." Love Games may have been Bobby Hebb's personal outpouring of grief over his divorce, but the resulting pearl from this intense period is an album masterpiece containing stunning adult contemporary R&B. This was prior to similar work by Gamble and Huff -- a full year before Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye would follow this path creating original music concepts beyond the confines of the Top 40 singles that brought them all fame. With the guiding hand of producer James Fleming and gorgeous arrangements by Fleming, Richard Rome, and Dave Roberts, the man who became internationally famous for writing and singing "Sunny" conceptualizes a complex album of loss and personal survival. "The Love Bird Has Flown" would have fit Ray Charles perfectly on his Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, Hebb acknowledging his C&W roots, while "I've Learned to Care" is the tenderness Deneice Williams would breath into the pop charts 12 years hence. This music is far removed from the compact pop created by producer Jerry Ross on the Sunny album, the songwriter exploring different areas of R&B. He wrote "Grin and Bear It" with Dionne Warwick in mind, and her people heard it, but it would be 15 years before her cousin Whitney Houston would issue these innovative type sounds on her debut. When Marvin Gaye released Here My Dear in 1978 the royalties went to his ex-wife. One could hear the restraint in Gaye's songwriting -- the album failed to yield substantial hits for a hot artist. There are no such limitations here as Hebb paints a moving picture of being forced to move on. Two parts of "S.S. Soul" that conclude side one and open side two show a funky side of a man in a funk: "mine's just one of many rigs...as I drag my mental anchor." This was recorded down the hall from Sly & the Family Stone as they were also breaking new ground, recording "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," and it is interesting to note Epic's commitment to these urban sounds nine years before Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album on that label. There is one co-write from the late Sandy Baron, and that composition, "Flower," is Motown flavored with jazz. Hebb said he wrote this after watching a butterfly go to the same flower day after day until a bee invaded the space -- the butterfly never returned to that same flower. Rawls took the team's "A Natural Man" up the charts a year from this point in time, but outside of catching the ear of other musicians and loyal fans, Love Games was hardly as successful as all the music it would inspire. It got no promotion from the label, and the album cover would have better suited the Ray Coniff Singers. "A Better Love" continues exploring the theme of how some people treat love like a sport, but through it all there's a refreshingly upbeat attitude, and a textbook of material which quietly influenced the direction R&B would take through the late '70s and early '80s, music which sounds as fresh today as when it was written. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide