September 10, 1920 (or 1925) – May 25, 1981
Roy James Brown was born in Kinder, Louisiana into a churchgoing family. His mother played piano and sang and he sang too. He grew up in Louisiana and Texas, and moved to California in 1942 after his mother died. There he did some boxing, but won a singing contest.
He returned to Texas in 1946 and was singing with the Joe Coleman Group at Club Granada in Galveston. Though they mostly did top 40, they did perform one of his songs, “Good Rockin’ Tonight”. In 1947, he tried to get his idol, Wynonie Harries, to listen to it with no success. But Cecil Grant listened and made Roy sing it on the phone to the President of Deluxe Records at 4:00 AM! He got a recording contract immediately!
“Good Rockin’ Tonight” was later covered by Wynonie Harris, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ricky Nelson and Bruce Springsteen. According to the Paul McCartney Project, “the song has also been credited with being the most successful record to that point to use the word ‘rock’ not as a euphemism for sex, but as a descriptive for the musical style.”
Roy and his band The Mighty Men were pretty successful in the late 40s and early 50s; he had more than a dozen top 10 hits, including Hard Luck Blues, Miss Fanny Brown, and Cadillac Baby, but got blacklisted in 1952 after successfully suing King Records for royalties from Wynonie Harris’ recording.
He then sold encyclopedias door to door for 20 or so years. He had a brief comeback in the late 1970s, toured Scandinavia, performed at Whiskey-A-Go-Go in 1980, and headlined the New Orleans Jazz Festival a month before his death.
Thank you Roy! You Rocked Us Good!