that was just a step into rock ’n’ roll. That was all back in 1956.” Sammy: “It was rockabilly. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is more rockabilly than it is rock ’n’ roll.”
After playing some gigs and appearing on radio, the next step for any aspiring musician was to cut a record. Sammy: “We wanted to do ‘One Little Baby’ as a rockabilly song. That was the first one. We cut that in Joe Rumore’s basement. He had a studio in his basement. There was recording equipment in Joe Rumore’s basement as nice as RCA’s studios.” George: “Joe Rumore was nice enough to do it. I had hired a studio, out in Irondale [suburb of Birmingham]. This guy really screwed it up. His name was Homer Milam. He had a little old studio at the time — it is out on Highway 78 … This is when I went back up to Nashville with a master tape. RCA would press for other people. I was going into my own distribution.” George had decided to start his own record label. He had the support of Joe Rumore and the example of Sun Records: “I started thinking: what is there to a record company? Just looking at that piece of plastic, I knew it wasn’t worth much. With some machinations behind me, I figured out how to start a company. Up to that time I had never heard anyone doing that … I figured: Well, hell, I’ll start my own company … The name on the label was Mark V Records. I went from Birmingham to Dallas, Texas. I came back through Dallas and went through Little Rock, Memphis, then back to Birmingham. In between here and there I hit every radio station I could see. I used to hand out these small lighters. They looked like miniature Zippos. They said ‘Sammy Salvo’ on the side, with a musical note. They were really cheap. I got about five hundred made. They were really pretty … In 1956 I was only twenty-one years old. I only needed about four hours of sleep and I was driving and talking all of the time. I was on the road for about two weeks. I was using whatever I could to get them to play it and pass it on to everybody. I never told them he was my brother. I was out there selling records and getting them hot. I really learned a lot then.”
George Anselmo was doing such a good job of pushing Sammy’s record that RCA began to take notice: “Steve Poncio [a record distributor in Houston] heard the record and made me order some more. I called RCA and they shipped ten thousand more. They assumed Sammy had a hit, since he was selling so many records. It was breaking in Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I stayed in Houston for about a week. That darned thing just took off. Within three days it was number 8 on the Top Ten [local radio chart]. When I got back to Birmingham, Steve had called me. They wanted to buy my rights [to Sammy and his record] for ten thousand dollars. They wanted to give Sammy 5 percent and they wanted to give me 10 percent of the sales. They wanted to know where Sammy was. I told them that he had gone to Nashville, because Chet Atkins wanted to sign him up. He signed for RCA that day. I caught him at the Biltmore. He said, ‘Yeah, I signed.’ I said, ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ I was driving up to Nashville. I was looking at the contract. It was so thick. I knew that there was no way of breaking it.”
A recording contract with RCA! One of the biggest record companies in the world — the label that had made “Heartbreak Hotel” a global hit and Elvis Presley a star! Sammy Salvo was over the moon: “I was so excited to be signed on RCA. I got 3 ½ percent. It was the kind of deal they gave brand-new artists. That was of the retail sale price. They gave me a three-year deal.” George: “I wasn’t excited because I had the thing sold for $10,000. I knew that we would be getting more from the other day [working with Poncio and selling their own records]. I was very humble. I told Chet Atkins that he didn’t need my brother, because of all the big names that he had. I told him I would like the contract back. He said he was sorry, but it had already been worked.”
When he got to Nashville, Sammy was given four songs (enough for two double-sided 45 rpm singles) and spent a week rehearsing them before going into the studio. During a lunch break a deejay brought in a demo of a song called “Oh Julie.” This song had been written by singer Ken Moffet and released by Ernie Young of Ernie’s Record Shop on his Nasco label. A local group in Nashville called the Crescendos performed it. Chet liked the song and told Sammy to rehearse it: “We cut it. It only took us three takes. It was a really easy song. We did that, then we did the other three songs.” On the B side of the RCA single, he recorded Wayne Handy’s “Say Yeah,” which had been released on the Renown label. “Oh Julie” is a ballad done in rock ’n’ roll style, but many stations played “Say Yeah” because it was an up-tempo dance tune. The Crescendos’ version of “Oh Julie” beat Sammy Salvo’s record into the Billboard Top Five in December 1958. Sammy made it to number 23.
The outlook for Birmingham rock musicians in the late 1950s was promising. Baker Knight and Sammy Salvo had achieved the rock ’n’ roll dream of a contract with a major record company. Jerry Woodard, a young singer who got his musical training in his father’s Church of God ministry, was the next budding star to record in Birmingham. Jerry could sing both church music and country. His friend Jerry Grammer noted the similarities with Elvis Presley, who could sing gospel songs with the best of them. Charlie Colvin had no doubt: “Jerry Woodard was wonderful, probably one of the most multitalented singers of the guys who came out of here. Jerry is dead now. He cut ‘I’m Just a Housewife’ for RCA, and he cut a lot of demos for me.” Pianist Bobby Mizzell: “I met Jerry at WHTB in Talladega, Alabama. He had a radio program there, like I did. I just remember we both liked rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll boogie and all that stuff, so we got together because of that … We cut songs at WHTB … and the people there made little 45 demos for us … Jerry Woodard and I both left Talladega because of Country Boy Eddie, he had a show on WBRC-TV and WAPI-TV … This is how we first got recognition in Alabama, through the medium of television there.” Country Boy Eddie: “I always wanted to be what I called a ‘radio star.’ I met Happy Hal Burns and he kindly helped me along … I was on in the morning from about five to seven, and at night from seven to ten. That was during the time when rock ’n’ roll came along. Even though rock was hot, I still had the number 1 show in Birmingham … At that point I wanted to get on television … So I went to this fellow named ‘Big Hearted’ Eddie Right. He had a used car lot … so I got him to sponsor me on Saturday night on Channel 13 … From there I went to Channel 6 TV … That was in 1957, and I stayed on there from 5 a.m. until 7 a.m. through 1993 … I think it was the longest-running country music show with one host in America.” Bobby: “When Jerry and me came to Birmingham, the first club we played was the Starlighter, then we played Pappy’s Club and the Escape Lounge too.” In 1957 Woodard recorded his first singles in Birmingham: “Six Long Weeks” / “Blue Broken Heart,” backed by Jerry Reed on guitar and Charles Matthews on piano, followed by “Downbeat” / “Our Love and Romance.” In 1958 he recorded “Who’s Gonna Rock My Baby” for Reed Records, which became his best-known release. This song was the lament of a young rock ’n’ roller conscripted into the army (and the fate of Elvis that year). “She’s a Housewife, That’s All” was a slower country song about the way many teenage love affairs ended up in tedious domesticity. These two tracks were good enough to be picked up by RCA, and Chet Atkins re-recorded them in 1959.
Jerry Woodard and Sammy Salvo’s hot records propelled them into larger markets, and they were soon performing outside Alabama. Both were asked to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, the most popular music show on television, with a huge audience of teenagers who watched it every afternoon after school. “Oh Julie” propelled Sammy Salvo’s career, and he now lived the life of a teen idol: “There were a bunch of screaming girls. It was fantastic … The first car I ever bought with any money that I made was a 1950 pink Mercury. That was what I used to travel around in. After that I bought a T-Bird. It was special. I didn’t ask the salesman how much it was, I just told him ‘I want that car there.’ There wasn’t all that much money in the business at the time. The companies made a lot of money. They would spend all the artist’s money before he even got a check. For instance, the check that I was supposed to get for ‘Oh Julie’ had been mostly spent when I got it. They spent all the money on promotion pictures and album covers.” George: “The artists paid for their own sessions. The money came out of their advance. Back in the 1950s it cost you forty-two dollars a minute to record.” Sammy: “I had a three-year contract. I had to live with it. I couldn’t have
