You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful... or are you actually 22?

[luisam]

Johnny Burnette lived in a public housing project in the Lauderdale Courts area of Memphis, which from 1948 until 1954 was also the home of Gladys and Vernon Presley and their son, Elvis. Early press reports, dating back to 1956, stated erroneously that Johnny attended Humes High School with Presley though actually he went to Catholic High School, in Memphis but certainly they knew each other.

 

Burnette told once an interview "My brother Dorsey and I first got to know Elvis Presley when he went to Humes High and we went to the Catholic High... Elvis would tote his guitar on his back when he rode past on his motor-cycle on his way to school. He would see us and always wave."

 

After leaving high school, Burnette tried his hand at becoming a professional boxer, but after one fight with a sixty-dollar purse and a broken nose he decided to quit boxing. He went to work on barges traversing the Mississippi River, where Dorsey also worked. Johnny worked mainly as a deck hand; Dorsey worked as an oiler. They worked for the same company that employed a Elvis Presley as a truckers' helper.

 

He always had an interest in music, which eventually led to his forming a musical trio consisting of his brother Dorsey on bass guitar and a friend of his, Paul Burlison, on electric guitar. They became known as the Johnny Burnette Trio.

 

In 1956 they moved to New York and under the name Johnny Burnette and The Rock and Roll Trio, had promotional appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Steve Allen's Tonight Show, Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, made a summer tour with Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent and appeared as finalists in the Original Amateur Hour at Madison Square Garden but failed to chart any success so finally, they disbanded the group.

 

Unemployed, Burnette decided to try his luck in California. He and a friend, Joe Campbell, hitchhiked to the West Coast, On arriving in Los Angeles, Joe Campbell bought a copy of "A Map to the Stars", which showed the location of house of the teen idol Ricky Nelson. In an effort to get their songs to him, the Burnettes and Campbell decided to sit on the steps of his house until they could get a meeting with him. This persistence worked, and Nelson was sufficiently impressed with their work that he eventually recorded several of their songs.

 

 

They have been doing songs and recording albums with little luck until at last his song "Dreamin'" provided his first gold record reaching in May 1960 Nº 11 on Billboard Hot 100 and number 5 in the UK, selling more than one million copies. His next single "You're Sixteen", a song written by the Sherman Brothers, did it even better, reaching number 8 on Hot 100 and number 3 in Britain, earning his second gold record.  Burnette's last major American hit. was "God, Country and My Baby" in September 1961.

 

In August 1964 Johnny died in a fishing accident in Clear Lake California in 1964. His boat was struck by an unaware cabin cruiser; the impact threw him off the boat and he drowned.

 

A curiosity of this video performing Johnny Burnette is that the bandleader is Bobby Vinton.

 

 

 

Burnette gained prominence in 1973 both for the inclusion of "You're Sixteen" on the American Graffiti soundtrack and for Ringo Starr's Nº 1 hit version of the same song. The latter performance reunited Ringo Starr with Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney. McCartney is credited on the liner notes of the album Ringo as having played the solo on a kazoo. But reviewer Michael Verity has quoted the song's producer, Richard Perry, as revealing it wasn't actually a kazoo. “In fact, the solo on ‘You’re Sixteen,’ which sounds like a kazoo or something, was Paul singing very spontaneously as we played that track back, so he’s singing the solo on that.” In any case, Starr's version remains one of the few #1 singles to feature a 'kazoo-sound' solo.

 

FYI, the kazoo is a musical instrument that adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. It is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, one of a class of instruments which modifies its player's voice by way of a vibrating membrane.

 

Harry Nilsson sang backing vocals on Starr's version. Also, the Ringo Starr version was in 6/8 time, compared to the original, which was in 2/4 time. In addition, in Ringo's version, the melody and the chords were different,

 

Ringo released a video in 1978 video which features Carrie Fisher as Starr's love interest but uuups...

Carrie Fisher was already 22 at that time!

 

 

 

In addition, Burnette's original song was recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. One of his songs, "Train Kept A-Rollin'" by Tiny Bradshaw, would later be recorded by The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Motörhead and Aerosmith.

[funkyy]

Back in 1973/74 I remember sitting on the sofa with a girl in her parents' house listening to this song on the radio. We were a couple of years older than 16 at that time...now we've been married for 23 years...let's hear a big "Aaaaaaawwwww" lol.

[scarabou]

26 minutes ago, funkyy said:

Back in 1973/74 I remember sitting on the sofa with a girl in her parents' house listening to this song on the radio. We were a couple of years older than 16 at that time...now we've been married for 23 years...let's hear a big "Aaaaaaawwwww" lol.

 

Aaaaaaawwwww

Congrats!