One Hit Wonders: The Teddy Bears & Rosie & the Originals

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  Throughout the 50's and 60's, there were numerous Rock and Roll bands, vocal groups and solo artists. Many went on to have successful music careers, but unfortunately for others, lasting popularity did not always materialize. Some groups managed to achieve brief recognition, sometimes with just one hit, only to vanish from the music scene. A few managed to achieve some success, but only regionally, never quite gaining significant national attention. Those artists have come to be known as One Hit Wonders.
During the 1950's and 1960's several attained that label. In 1958 an unknown group from Southern California, achieved a number one hit with “To Know Him Is to Love Him”. In 1960 another southern California band had a number five hit with “Angel Baby”. In this edition of one hit wonders I’ll feature the story of two groups, The Teddy Bears and Rosie and The Originals.

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
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Transcript

Through out the 50's and 60's, there were numerous Rock and Roll bands, vocal groups
and solo artists. Many went on to have successful music careers, but unfortunately for
others, lasting popularity did not always materialize. Some groups managed to achieve
brief recognition, sometimes with just one hit, only to vanish from the music scene. A
few managed to achieve some success, but only regionally, never quite gaining
significant national attention. Those artists have come to be known as One Hit Wonders.

During the 1950's and 1960's several attained that label. In 1958 an unknown group from Southern California, achieved a number one hit with “To Know Him Is to Love Him”. In 1960 another southern California band had a number five hit with “Angel Baby”. In this edition of one hit wonders I’ll feature the story of two groups, The Teddy Bears and Rosie and The Originals.

After the suicide of Phil Spector’s father in 1949, his mother, Bertha moved Phil and his
sister from the Bronx in New York to California, settling in West Hollywood. While
attending Fairfax High, Phil Spector had written a song originally titled “Wonderful
Lovable You”. However, The song’s title was changed to “To Know Him Is to Love
Him”. The inspiration for the change came from his father’s gravestone, which read
“Ben Spector: To Know Him was To Love Him”.

After graduating from Fairfax High School in 1958, Phil went to Gold Star Studios in
Hollywood to book studio time. He had chosen Gold Star because he had heard that one
of the studio owners was an alumnus of Fairfax High School. The studio’s session fee
was fifteen dollars an hour plus six dollars for the recording tape. Phil had estimated that about forty dollars would be enough to cover the expenses. He initially borrowed a
portion of the forty dollars from his mother. Then he had to assemble a group to record
the song. Phil approached Harvey Goldstein a student at Los Angeles City College, who
contributed ten dollars after being promised he could sing bass in the group. Another City College student Marshall Leib was also recruited for the group. Annette Klienbard was a sixteen-year-old student at Fairfax High School who sang in the school’s glee club. She agreed to help pay for the recording session if she could join the group. Phil finally had the funds to pay for the recording session and a group with which to begin recording.

In the first session at Gold Star, the first song recorded was Spector’s “Don’t You Worry”
with Phil playing all the instruments. He then took the demo recording to Lew Bell at Era Records. Bell and Herb Newsome had also started Dore Records, with the intent of
focusing on recording Rock and Roll. After hearing the demo, Spector was offered a four
record deal. The group was then named The Teddy Bears after Elvis Presley’s hit “I Just
Want to be Your Teddy Bear”.

At the next recording session Goldstein was absent, so a drummer was employed to
augment the instrumental backing. That drummer was Sandy Nelson, who would have
top forty hits with “Teen Beat”, “Let There Be Drums” and “Drums Are My Beat”.
Towards the end of the recording session, Phil persuaded Annette and Marshall to
attempt an other song. That song was “To Know Him Is to Love Him”.

In August 1958, Dore Records sent five hundred copies to radio stations. The A side was “Don’t You Worry My Little Pet” and the B side “To Know Him Is to Love Him”. In
September, a DJ in Fargo, North Dakota started to play the B-side. As a result, a record
distributor in Minneapolis ordered eighteen thousand copies.  In less than a week the record was on the national charts. On October 29, The Teddy Bears appeared on American Bandstand with out Harvey Goldstein. Harvey had been dropped from the group because Phil insisted that he could not sing the song’s bass part. As a result, Goldstein filed a lawsuit against Dore Records and The Teddy Bears, which was settled out of court.

"To Know Him Is to Love Him" became a number one hit in the US and number two in
the UK, with more than a million copies sold before the end of 1958. On January 3rd
1959, they performed on The Perry Como television show. Later that month the group
left Dore Records following a disagreement over royalties, and signed with Imperial
Records. However, this change in record labels would not last. Spector became aware of
restrictions that Imperial imposed on the group. This led to yet another change in record labels to Trey Records. Again due to legal issues, they were prohibited from even using the Teddy Bears name. Two singles were released under the name of The Spectors Three. Neither single managed to generate any sales, as result Spector disbanded the group. 

In September 1959 Annette was involved in an automobile accident, and subsequently recovered from her injuries. Later, she legally changed her name to Carol Conners. Apparently she did not want the name Annette to be associated with Annette Funicello the Disney Mouseketeer. Under the new name, an attempt at starting a solo singing career was unsuccessful. However, she would go onto enjoy a career as a songwriter. She co-wrote several songs including” The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia”, earning a gold record for Vicki Lawrence in 1973, and “Hey Little Cobra” for the Ripchords. Carol also wrote "Gonna Fly Now", the theme for the first Rocky film. Later she was nominated twice for Academy Awards and for four Emmys.

After his dismissal from The Teddy Bears, Harvey Goldstein went on to become a
certified public accountant. Marshall Leib later joined The Hollywood Argyles who had a number one hit in 1960 with “Alley Oop”. He also played guitar on a few of Duane
Eddy’s records.

After The Teddy Bears disbanded, Spector returned to New York to focus on music
production. Later he went back to California and Gold Star studios to embark on a
successful career in music production.

Rosie and the Originals were a musical group also from Southern California, who had a
number five hit with “Angel Baby”. Rosalie "Rosie" Méndez Hamlin was born on July
21,1945 in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The family then moved to Anchorage, Alaska and
later relocated in National City in Southern California. As a pre teenager, she learned to
play the piano and write songs. By the age of thirteen she began singing with a local
band, which included David Ponce, Alfred Barrett, Tony Gomez, Noah Tafolla and Carl
Goodat. They would eventually become the Originals.

The next year she wrote the lyrics to “Angel Baby” as a poem for her first boyfriend.
The following year Rosie and some of her friends went to the nearest recording studio
they could find with in one hundred miles of San Diego to record the song. The studio
located in San Marcos, was actually in an airplane hanger. The owner had converted part of the hanger into a recording studio. With the recording completed, it was offered to a store’s music department in Los Angeles. The store’s manager agreed to allow the
recording to be played in the music listening booth.

Soon, the effort paid off when the song received positive response from teenage listeners. Then the group got the attention of a scout with Highland Records, which offered them a recording contract under the condition that the record label would take possession of the recording and that the eldest member of the group David Ponce would be credited as the song’s writer.

Even before the group received the contract, “Angel Baby” was already being played on
the radio by November 1960, eventually peaking at number five. Alan Freed by this time
was living in Los Angeles and was instrumental in playing the song locally. After the group received the contract, Rosie discovered that she could not receive any of
the record’s royalties, because she had not been listed as the song’s writer. As a result,
this led to the group disbanding. In 1961 she managed to secure the copyright to her
music, but disputes over royalties continued for decades.

After the departure from Highland Records, she recorded an album on Brunswick
Records with guitarist Noah Tafolla, whom she later married. She briefly toured with
other Brunswick artists. By 1963 Rosie had retired from singing in order to spend time
with her family. She recorded some singles in 1969 and 1973, with occasional
performances in the 1970s, the 80s, the 90s and 2000s. In 2002, she performed at the
Madison Square Garden in New York. In 1996, Linda Ronstadt recorded a cover of
“Angel Baby”, which appeared on the album “Dedicated to the One I Love”. In 1999
Ace Records issued “The Best of Rosie & the Originals”, which included all of the
Highland and Brunswick tracks. The following year Ace released the album “Angel Baby
Revisited” which contained unreleased material.

Interestingly, John Lennon cited Rosie as being one of his favorite singers. In 1975 he
recorded a cover of “Angel Baby”, which appeared on the “Menlove Avenue” album in
1986.

On March 30th 2017, Rosie Hamlin died in Belen, New Mexico at the age of 71.

This has been a look back at Phil Spector’s Teddy Bears and Rosie & the Originals, two
groups that became one hit wonders.