In June 1982, El Paso Times reporter Edna Gundersen examined the life and death of Bobby Fuller, the El Paso rock-'n'-roller who rose to national fame with "I Fought the Law" and then died under mysterious circumstances in 1966.
We reprinted the series over several Sundays. July 18 marked the 60th anniversary of Fuller's death.
Here is the last installment Part 4:
- It’s almost impossible to find a rock anthology that doesn’t include the Bobby Fuller Four’s only smash single, “I Fought the Law.”
- The infectious tune Bobby made famous has been adopted as covers for contemporary supergroups The Clash and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as Hank Williams Jr.
- Bobby’s first album, “KRLA King of the Wheels,” is being traded among collectors for $100 and up. The “I Fought the Law” album, released a few months before Bobby Fuller died in 1966, has been out of print nearly 16 years. It sells for a king’s ransom.
- Rising star Phil Seymour released a version of Bobby’s bubbly “Let Her Dance.”
- No oldie band is worth its salt without a Bobby Fuller composition in its repertoire.
- At KRTH, a big Los Angeles radio station, “I Fought the Law” and “Let Her Dance” are permanent items on the list of top oldies.
- And nationwide, the kinky Drink to the Death club toasts Bobby’s memory with an elaborate gala every July 18, the anniversary of the rock-‘n’-roller’s untimely death.
Even in the El Paso area, where audiences sometimes snubbed the musician, Bobby Fuller is revered. Among the local performers who include Bobby’s music in their acts are Bill Welsh, the Sixth Column and Moonpie Daince Band, which includes former Bobby Fuller Four drummer Dalton Powell.
Steve Crosno, a longtime El Paso disc
jockey now spinning platters at KSET, said Bobby is a hot potato on the oldie charts. “'I Fought the Law' is consistently on our Top 13 of oldies. Lately, I’ve noticed a resurgence of interest in Bobby Fuller. It doesn’t surprise me. He was really original. He sounded unique.”
An epidemic of Bobby Fuller fever seems imminent.
Last October, Rhino Records in Los Angeles released an album of Bobby Fuller hits. Another record company, Bomp, is preparing a package of mostly unreleased material to go public this fall.
Gary Stewart, head marketing at Rhino Records, said the album project began in January 1979. “I wanted to let people know Bobby Fuller had more than one good song,” he said. The LP, which includes “I’m a Lucky Guy,” an unreleased track and one of Bobby’s last recorded efforts, has sold briskly in New York and Texas. Nearly 10,000 copies have been sold, impressive statistics for an oldie compilation. In El Paso, the album is available at Nostalgia Place, 4665-A Montana.
The record itself fueled the Bobby Fuller revival, spurring many California bands to add the El Pasoan’s material to their playlist, Stewart said. “His music is very interesting,” he added. “He tried to blend Buddy Holly with the British Invasion sound. The result is a new hybrid which even today sounds very contemporary.”
Perhaps more significant than record sales are the critical notices the album has garnered. Traditionally music reviewers give passing yawns to repackaged oldies or ignore them completely. The Bobby Fuller LP is drawing raves. One magazine termed it “14 exhilarating rock ‘n’ roll vignettes from El Paso’s ill-fated answer to the British Invasion.”
A critic wrote: “This collection is culled from the semi-precious LP the group made, various singles and even a few unreleased tunes. Since the original LP is expensive and the Japanese reissue 13 or 14 bucks, this is a steal, because Fuller combined the grace and expertise of Buddy Holly with rambunctious Tex-Mex (a la Eddie Cochran) rhythms, the strength of R&B, the loneliness and soul of country, and his own careful and meticulous sense of song structure and embellishment. ‘Let Her Dance’ is an absolute tour de force.”
Another claimed the songs “show that this quartet was on the brink of making it big” and that The Bobby Fuller Four “succeeded in creating a distinct signature sound that features a surprisingly progressive (for the time) rock feel.”
One critic described the sound as “advanced melodic garage band rock” and added, “the music on this album sounds technologically advanced for 1981, much less 1965. … It’s a boisterous bunch of music that has maintained its freshness.”
A New York music writer, reviewing the Bobby Fuller Four LP along with a Ritchie Valens disc on the same label, noted, “Rhino Records has just done the world an incredible service by releasing from the vaults of Del-Fi Records the works of two of the greatest rock-‘n’-rollers that ever lived, both of whom had the potential to be twice as great – had they lived.”
Bomp's plans
An upcoming Bomp Records collection promises to be an ambitious undertaking. Greg Shaw, a former rock history writer who packaged 50 LPs of vintage material for other labels before founding Bomp, was first challenged by the idea of a definitive Bobby Fuller tribute album when a local journalist introduced him to a woman who possessed copies of original, unreleased works by the Bobby Fuller Four.
“Some of the songs were not too exciting, but others were amazing,” Shaw said. Intrigued, Shaw researched the Bobby Fuller story and, through coincidence, was contacted by Rick Stone, Bobby’s former road manager, who told him dozens of original tapes of unreleased songs were available.
“The tapes overwhelm Bobby Fullers’ two or three hits,” Shaw said. “Only the tip of the iceberg was ever released."
Shaw envisions a double LP released in four to six months, possibly followed by other records, including perhaps a live album. He hopes to compile a biographical booklet to accompany the record and maybe inspire a full-length book or television movie based on the musician’s life. By using Bomp’s distribution agreement with Elektra/Asylum Records, Shaw believes the package can find a broader audience than the cult market, which probably will account for sales of 10,000 copies.
“Maybe we’ll get a hit single, too,” he said. “That might be unlikely, but you never know. It could happen.”
Shaw also predicts the album will sell briskly in England, where music consumers are mesmerized by early U.S. rockers and tend to be more accepting than Americans of off-the-beaten-path releases.
In preparing for the Bomp project, Rick Stone and Ron Evans, manager and chief engineer, at El Adobe Recording, spent about 40 hours listening to reels of Bobby Fuller’s music.
Evans, who was hired by Bomp to polish the rough tracks, culled about four hours of tunes from the batch, including the earliest version of hits, some live performances and even an El Paso radio spot Bobby taped to promote a weekend dance at Eastwood High School.
“I enjoyed the Fuller music so much. I just wanted to get involved,” Evans said. “Listening to those tapes blew me away completely. He sang so well. Bobby’s voice always sounded like a million bucks, always on pitch, very expressive. He was so accomplished for his time. This music floored me.
“Bobby used some revolutionary techniques in his studio, a garage studio. He had a greater insight for what would be popular. He was always innovative. Bobby liked to experiment, and the results were usually tasteful.”
The cuts being proposed to Bomp feature strong vocals, crisp instrumentation, and spunky uncluttered melodies. The batch is extremely diverse touting such seemingly incongruous songs as “Greensleeves,” “Nervous Breakdown” and a peculiar medley of “Miserlou,” “”Havah Nagilah” and “Pipeline.” Some rock numbers flaunt decidedly atypical arrangements that rely on subtle use of tambourine, piano, acoustic guitar and clinking beer bottles. Finger cymbals were used in “Don’t Ever Let Me Know.”
If the resurrected tunes reveal anything, it is Bobby Fuller’s immense untapped potential.
“If Bobby Fuller had lived,” Rick Stone said, “he would have been a big star, a cross between Neil Diamond and Kenny Rogers. He was doing something original, something creative, something worthwhile. … Some people never got the chance to find out what a great talent he was.”
Rod Crosby, a longtime E Paso musician whose band once rivaled the Bobby Fuller Four, said Bobby’s death disrupted a skyward climb.
“I believed he might have been the next Neil Diamond or B.J. Thomas, some kind of a popular stand-up act in Las Vegas. I don’t think he was a genius by any measure, but he was dedicated and determined and he always overshadowed everyone around him.”
Bobby’s death not only was a tragic loss for his friends and family, but was a dismal turning point in musical history.
“Bobby was the typical all-American boy, attractive, talented, wholesome and bright,” Rod said. “When he started, rock was a healthy entity, and he had it whipped with everything from rowdy rock songs to love ballads. In some ways, his death started a decline. Rock became more and more ugly. It lost its positive direction. Today, a lot of popular bands are rooted in hopelessness and desperation.”
Epilogue: The survivors
Almost 16 years have passed since the afternoon Bobby Fuller's body was found next to a gas can in the front seat of his car in a Hollywood parking lot. If Bobby Fuller had lived, he would turn 40 this October.
His friends and relatives have trouble imagining Bobby as a middle-aged man. They vividly remember a vibrant, talented, charmingly boyish 23-year-old motivated by Buddy Holly's music and obsessed with perfection.
Bobby's loved ones were slow to recover from the tragedy of that scorching July afternoon in 1966.
His parents, Lawson and Loraine Fuller, gradually pieced their happiness back together. Loraine had lost two sons, both of whom died abruptly and violently. To her, life seemed torturous.
"For years, his fans wrote me, some of them came to see me," she said haltingly. "But I couldn't bear it. I didn't want anybody to mention the subject. When reporters called, my husband got rid of them. I tried to keep my mind on other things."
In their garage on Album Street, a huge plastic tub holds sympathy letters the Lawsons received after Bobby's death. None were opened.
"I doubt that I'll ever open them," Loraine said. "It's too painful."
The day Bobby died, the Bobby Fuller Four obviously dissolved. Bass player Dalton Powell and guitarist Jim Reese immediately left Los Angeles and returned to El Paso.
"I wasn't only out of a job, but I had just lost my best friend," Dalton said. "I was bitter."
Dalton found work as a carpenter in El Paso and later joined the popular local band Rod Crosby and the Intruders. Today, the 40-year-old plays drums for the Anthony-based Moonpie Daince Band. He prefers not to mull over the past.
"If I get in a really nostalgic mood, I'll play some of our old records," he said.
Jim Reese continued performing and today is a commercial pilot and guitarist for Murphy's Law in Lufkin, Texas.
Rick Stone, the band's road manager, moved out of Bobby's apartment the day after the funeral and stayed in Los Angeles another two years before returning to El Paso. He owns an impressive collection of Bobby Fuller photographs and memorabilia and hopes to write a screenplay, titled "Bittersweet," based on the singer's brief life.
Randy Fuller, Bobby's younger brother and the bass player for the Bobby Fuller Four, probably encountered the most problems in coping. After Bobby's death, Randy returned to El Paso for three months. Bob Keene called and encouraged him to reunite the band.
"I said no," Randy recalled. "I wanted a new band. To me, Jim and Dalton were Bobby's thing. I had to do something else, something to separate myself from the past. So, I went back to California. It was too depressing staying in El Paso."
El Paso musicians Doug Neal, Jimmy Wagnon and Johnny Daniels joined Randy in Los Angeles, and the quartet became the Randy Fuller Four, a moderately popular house band at PJs. They disbanded about a year later.
"I coped well at first," Randy said. "It was later that I couldn't handle it."
Randy was plagued by self-doubt. Bobby so overwhelmed and impressed everyone around him that Randy often felt second-rate. His self-esteem took a beating in Bobby's limelight. With Bobby gone, Randy suddenly was expected to make it on his own. And he found it impossible to maintain Bobby's pace.
"Bobby was always the focus," Randy said. "I worried, am I good, too? Or was all our success solely due to Bobby?"
After seven years in psychoanalysis, Randy finally discarded the albatross of jealously and inferiority.
"I overcame it," he said. "My problem was that I assumed success was measured by stardom. Well, that's not true. Bobby had the kind of drive it takes to make it big. Some people, deep in their hearts, really don't want fame. I think that was me. The music business requires too much. I didn't want to prostitute myself. I enjoy being a sideman, a studio musician. I'm not going to let someone run my life just so I can have a hit record.
"Really, the best thing about making it is hearing your record on the radio," Randy said. "It's a thrill the first couple times, after that, it's just like any job. The most fun I had playing music was with Bobby back in the Rendezvous days. I miss that more than any of the times I shared with Bobby."
Today, Randy lives with his wife, Dale, and two daughters in Colton, Calif., where he plays with a band in the San Bernardino area. When time permits, he tinkers with a Corvette he's owned since he was 17. Occasionally, he stares at the guitars Bobby left behind, two old Stratocasters, a Hummingbird acoustic and an Epiphone acoustic.
Trish Long may be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: 'I Fought the Law' El Paso's Bobby Fuller's loved ones slow to recover
