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When My Professor Wrote a Hit Song
And he also appeared on American Bandstand
“I haven’t felt so young for years! thought Peter, escaping (only of course for an hour or so) from being precisely what he was…” (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Harcourt Brace 1981, 52).
He told me what it felt like:
“It was strange, like an out-of-body experience. One minute, I was on the stage being interviewed by Dick Clark and singing my song, and then the next minute I was shown the side door and I was back on the streets, wondering if this really happened.”
He was young then, in his early twenties or so, and he had a modest hit record, “Ooby Dooby,” which was a bigger hit, a first hit, for Roy Orbison, who also recorded on the original Sun Records, just as he had. Later, Creedence Clearwater Revival would also record a version of “Ooby Dooby,” and so I suppose he received even more royalty checks, though I have no idea what these were worth or if they could ever outshine that spotlighted experience on American Bandstand.
He had a partner back then, writing and performing this song and another modest hit, “Bop Bop Baby.” Did he consider himself successful, a star in the making? I don’t know the definitive answer to that, but what I do know is that this man, who attended North Texas State University where he…
