- Dick Penner
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Dick Penner (b. Allen Richard Penner, 1936, Chicago, Illinois) is a retired professor of English, who, while in college in 1955, co-composed, with Wade Lee Moore (b. 15 Nov 1934 Amarillo, Texas), Ooby Dooby, Roy Orbison's rockabilly classic.[1] Penner also had been a singer, guitar player, and recording artist.
In 1957, Penner switched from country music to rock & roll. That same year, he and Wade Moore formed a duo and recorded for Sun Records. The duo was known either as "Wade & Dick" or "The College Kids." Wade & Dick recorded six songs, and Penner recorded a few on his own, all of which exhibited a hard, youthful edge that was targeted towards the then new teen market. None of the songs that Wade and Dick recorded were commercially successful. Penner's three singles (of which at least one he shared guitar duties with Don Gilliland): (i) Move Baby Move, (ii) Fine Little Baby, and (iii) Someday Baby, all shared a common theme. The songs did not rise to the popularity of Ooby Dooby; however, the songs reached a formidable level on the national charts in Orbison's hands and, eventually, became regarded as a classic of the genre. Moore continued working in music with Orbison, but Penner decided on a career in academia and became an English professor.[2]
Contents
Compositions
By Dick Penner & Wade Moore
- Ooby-Dooby, Allen Richard Penner & Wade Lee Moore (BMI) (written February 1955)
- Bop Bop Baby, Allen Richard Penner & Wade Lee Moore (BMI)
By Dick Penner
- Cindy Lou, Allen Richard Penner (BMI) (1957)
- Your Honey Love, Allen Richard Penner (BMI) (1957)
- Someday Baby, Allen Richard Penner
- Don't Need Your Lovin' Baby, Allen Richard Penner (BMI)
- Move Baby Move, Allen Richard Penner (BMI)
- Fine Little Baby, Allen Richard Penner (BMI)
- When Will You Love Me? (BMI)
- Wild Woman (BMI)
Ooby Dooby
In 1954, Penner had enrolled at the University of North Texas where he met Wade Moore. They composed Ooby Dooby in February 1955. Penner and Wade had taken a six-pack of beer onto the flat roof of their Lambda Chi fraternity house and wrote Ooby Dooby in a matter of minutes.
Roy Orbison, then a student at North Texas and friend, became aware of the song and recorded a demo of it with his band, the Wink Westerners, and sent it to Columbia Records. Columbia was not interested in Orbison, but pitched the song to Sid King and the Five Strings, a band from Denton, Texas, who recorded it on March 5, 1956, in Dallas.[3]
On 27 March 1956, a Roy Orbison session was set at 706 Union Avenue. But Sam Phillips as was unimpressed with the result and phoned Weldon Rogers to purchase the JE-WEL master. Rogers asked for a high price so Phillips released the Orbison session on Sun 242. By June 1956, "Ooby Dooby" had climbed to 59 on Billboard's Hot 100 and soon thereafter, sold over 500,000 copies.
Penner, now retired, was a professor of English literature at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Wink Westerners
Members of the Wink Westerners — Roy Orbison, Richard Roy "Head" West (piano), and Billy Pat "Spider" Ellis (drummer) — graduated from Wink High School in June 1954. Orbison, Ellis, and Joe Ray Hammer enrolled at the University of North Texas in the Fall of 1954. Fellow North Texas classmates included Pat Boone, Dick Penner, and Wade Moore. Orbison, Ellis, Hammer, Penner, and Moore were in the same fraternity – Lambda Chi.[4]
Selected discography
Wade & Dick – The College Kids
- 1) Sun Records No. 269 (released May 27, 1957)
- 2) Sun Records (released 1956)
- Be Bop Baby (alternate version) (BMI U-250)
- backed with ("bw") Wild Woman
Dick Penner
- 1) Sun Records No. 615 (1957)
- 2) Sun Records No. 282
- Your Honey Love (BMI U-278)
Recordings of Ooby-Dooby
- Album – Roy Orbison at the Rock House, Sun Records (1961)
- Track list includes Ooby Dooby
- The Teen Kings (1956)
- Janis Martin (1956)
- Creedence Clearwater Revival (July 25, 1970)
- Charlie Feathers (1977)
- Los Super Ratones (1993)
- Elizabeth Mitchell (December 2002)
Audio samples
Education
Penner graduated from Sunset High School (1954) in the North Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas. Penner earned a Bachelor of Arts in English (1958) and a masters degree in English (1967) from the University of North Texas. In 1957, while working on his undergraduate degree, Penner was inducted into Blue Key, a national honor fraternity.[5] After earning his masters degree, Penner taught English at North Texas. In the fall of 1961, Penner began teaching English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1965, whereupon, he became an instructor of English at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.[6]
Family
First marriage
- On June 10, 1961, Penner married Janice Carolyn Gilley in Denton, Texas.[7] Janice was born 2 Jan 1937 in Dallas, Texas and died 26 Oct 2004 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Janice had married once before on March 17, 1956, in Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Jay Larry Milholland (b. 14 Mar 1934 Dallas, Texas).[8] Janice held a Bachelor of Arts in History (1958) and a Bachelor of Music from the University of North Texas. Their marriage ended in divorce.[9]
- Dick and Jan have two sons Richard Lee Penner of Charlotte, NC and Gregory Joseph Penner of Knoxville, TN.
Academic publications
- Allen Richar Penner, PhD, Fielding and Cervantes: The Contribution of "Don Quixote" to "Joseph Andrews" and "Tom Jones" (dissertation) University of Colorado at Boulder (1965)
- Allen Richard Penner, Alan Sillitoe, Twayne Publishers (1972)
- Allen Richard Penner, Fiction of the Absurd; Pratfalls in the Void – a critical anthology, New American Library (1980)
- Allen Richard Penner, Countries of the mind: the fiction of J.M. Coetzee, Greenwood Press (1989)
- Allen Richard Penner, Illuminations Knoxville, Tennessee (2001)
External links
References
- ^ Directory of American Scholars, Eighth edition, Vol 2, English, Speech, & Drama, R.R. Bowker, New York (1982)
- ^ Bruce L. Eder (1955– ), Biography: Dick Penner, allmusic
- ^ Billy Poore, Rockabilly: A Forty-Year Journey, pg. 120, Hal Leonard Corporation (June 1, 1998)
- ^ Mike Perry, Roy Orbison; The Teen Kings, January 1995
- ^ Blue Key Member, The Dallas Morning News, May 4, 1957
- ^ Sunset Grad Gets Ph.D. at Boulder, The Dallas Morning News, Sept 15, 1965
- ^ Mr. Penner, Bride Go to New Boulder Home, The Dallas Morning News, June 11, 1961
- ^ Jay L. Milholland, Miss Janice Gilley Exchange Vows, The Dallas Morning News, April 12, 1956
- ^ North Carolina Death Collection, 1908–2004
Categories:- 1936 births
- Living people
- Songwriters from Illinois
- People from Chicago, Illinois
- University of North Texas alumni
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