Joe Barry, singer and songwriter, was born on July 13, 1939. He died on August 31, 2004, aged 65.
Born Joseph Barrios in the small Louisiana bayou town of Cut Off, Joe Barry became one of the leading exponents of “swamp pop”, the name given to the blues and cajun-influenced ballads and rock‘n’roll songs that came out of south Louisiana in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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A cousin of cajun musician Vin Bruce, he cut his first record in 1957 for the tiny Houma label and a year later formed his own band, the Dukes of Rhythm, but left them to form another band, the Delphis. Backed by the Delphis he started recording for Floyd Soileau’s highly regarded, and slightly larger, Jin label in Ville Platte, Louisiana.
Writing his own material he came up with a Ray Charles-styled number, I Got a Feeling, which Soileau urged him to record. Backed, for this session, by a group of high school students called the Vikings, he cut the song plus an old Gene Autry ballad called I’m a Fool to Care. It began to sell well on the Jin label and was picked up by the nationally distributed Mercury. By April 1961 the song had reached number 24 and Barry was appearing on Dick Clark’s TV show, American Bandstand. A French language version of the song, Je suis bet pour t’aimer, also sold well in Canada and France.
In a life dogged by drug and alcohol abuse, Barry attempted several comebacks and at one stage became a part-time preacher. He was honoured with a tribute concert in 1993.
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Noble “Thin Man” Watts, rhythm ‘n’ blues saxophonist, was born on February 17, 1926. He died on August 24, 2004, aged 78.
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One of the school of American tenor sax “honkers” whose uninhibited and fiery style became popular during the immediate postwar years, Watts managed to adapt to the rock‘n’roll era and was still making records in the 1980s and 1990s.
Born in DeLand, Florida, he raked leaves as a child to finance music lessons. In 1942 he enrolled at Florida A&M University, where he joined the future jazz luminaries, Cannonball Adderley, and his brother Nat in the college’s marching band. After university he toured with the Griffin Brothers, one of the top R&B acts of the time, and then, in 1952, joined the band led by baritone sax man Paul Williams, then riding high with the hit, The Hucklebuck.
He recorded with Williams for the Jax label and then backed stars such as Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown and Amos Milburn on a nationally syndicated television show, Showtime at the Apollo. A stint with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra followed, before Watts cut his first record, Mashing Potatoes, for the DeLuxe label. Backed by the Williams band he then cut South Shore Drive for the Chicago-based Vee Jay label. He achieved his greatest success with the Baton label in New York with a string of rock‘n’roll instrumentals which included Easy Going, Blast Off, Shakin’ and Hard Times (The Slop), which made it into the US charts and was also released in the UK on the London-American label.
Managed by Sugar Ray Robinson, he led the house band at the former boxer’s Harlem nightspot and continued recording with less success for a variety of labels during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
His career tailed off during the 1970s, but he made a successful comeback in 1987 when his album Return of the Thin Man was released to critical acclaim.