In the 1950s, as the unstable racial climate and the hostility toward rock & roll started to merge, rock & roll shows were forced from the City of Los Angeles by police pressure. The El Monte Legion Stadium, outside the city limits, became the site of a series for rock and roll concerts by Johnny Otis and other performers. During the fifties, teenagers from all over Southern California flocked to El Monte Legion Stadium every Friday and Saturday night to see their favorite performers.... Disc jockeys Art Laboe and Huggy Boy enhanced the stadium's popularity with their highly publicized Friday Night Dances with many popular record artists of the late 1950s and 1960s. "El Monte Legion Stadium", as it was often called, was the "Happening" place to be for the teenagers of that era.
El Monte is known for the long-time rock & roll hit "Memories of El Monte", co-written by Frank Zappa and originally recorded by The Penguins, one of the local Doo-wop groups from the 1950s that became famous nationwide. The song is in remembrance of The El Monte Legion Stadium and can be heard on many albums including Art Laboe's Memories of El Monte. Although the stadium closed their doors nearly 50 years ago, the music continues to live on.
Many people have heard this classic performance by Delbert McClinton from his 1980 album The Jealous Kind:
Many sources, including the Secondhand Songs website, cite this as the original version of "Going Back To Louisiana". But the song had previously been released in 1964 by Delbert's old crony Bruce Channel, Mr. "Hey! Baby" himself:
Whether Channel's version is the original I don't know.
The composer credit is generally given to "Bobby Osborne" ("Bob Osborne" on the Channel release). Can anyone confirm or deny if this is the same Bobby Osborne of the Osborne Brother bluegrass group ("Rocky Top"?). McClinton is not mentioned in the bio on Osborne's web page, so I presume he isn't the composer, but I'd just like some confirmation.
I'm interested in all sorts of music: Americana, '60s Nuggets, garage rock, Rockabilly, Cowpunk, Bluegrass, Soul, Roots Music, Freakbeat... So anything and everything may turn up here. The uploads are available for a limited time only, so get them while you can and be sure to support the artists.
