Eddie Cooley, famous for co-writing 'Fever', with a CD of his Fifties recordings.1.Studio talk 2.Priscilla 3.Got a little woman 4.Driftwood 5.A spark met a flame 6.Hey you 7.Pull mon pull 8.Juicy fruit (unreleased) 9.The wildest time (unreleased) 10.Betty Lou (unreleased) 11.Let's carve our names (unreleased) 12.Harry and Carry (unreleased) 13.Be my steady (Clementine) 14.Leona 15.Priscilla (unrel. alt. take) 16.Fever 17.Lay it on
18. All shook up - Otis Blackwell
19. Tweedle dee - Scott Winfield
20. Send for me - Ollie Jones
21. Jim Dandy - Lincoln Chase
22. The angels listened in - Billy Dawn
23. When I saw you - Billy Dawn
24. Hot biscuits and sweet Marie - Lincoln Chase
25. Come on, come on - Ollie Jones
26. Music and fire - Otis Blackwell
27. Some cold night now - Winfield Scott
Eddie Cooley
"Eddie Cooley was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and later relocated to New York. His lasting claim to fame is that he wrote the smash hit (and subsequent standard) 'Fever' that has been successfully recorded by many artists including Little Willie John, The McCoys, Terry Dene, Elvis Presley and, of course, Peggy Lee. The song was co-written with the legendary composer and singer Otis Blackwell who, for this piece, adopted the nom de plume of John Davenport. This happened to be the real name of Blackwell's stepfather. As Otis explained: 'Eddie Cooley was a friend of mine from New York and he called me up and said 'Man, I got an idea for a song called 'Fever', but I can't finish it. I had to write it under another name because, at that time, I was still under contract to Joe Davis.'Eddie Cooley and Blackwell went on to write other songs for King Record artists such as The Lamplighters, The 5 Royales and Joe Tex. When Boyd Bennett of 'Seventeen' fame rejected the song 'Priscilla', a demo version was played to Teddy Reig, the A&R man for Royal Roost Records. The label was launched, initially as Roost Records, in 1950 in New York by Arthur and Bill Fadden along with Monty Kay and Ralph Watkins and was nominally owned by Jack Hooke, manager of Alan Freed. However, in August 1958, Roulette Records bought out the company. Reig liked the demo by Cooley and arranged for Eddie to re-cut 'Priscilla' as a master. This time, it was with a trio of girls who were under the collective name of The Dimples. Otis Blackwell recalled: 'Well, Eddie was not really a singer, understand, so what I did was I found three girls that were living in the projects over there, and I put them together. Cause at that time there was no girls backing up any singer, one particular singer. There were all girl groups, all boy groups, there were duets. But, there was no group where the lead was a male and the backup singers were girls. So that's how that got over. Eddie went on the road singing that song for three months. When he came back, he decided he didn't want to do it anymore himself.' It is difficult to ascertain exactly how much influence Otis Blackwell really had on these recordings. Eddie Cooley recorded several more sides for the Royal Roost label and then started to label hop...." Klaus Kettner