Robert Hover
“Tobacco Road“—The Nashville Teens (1964)
Not one of these underrated artifacts from the mid-1960s British Invasion had even set foot in Nashville, Tenn. The group “Nashville” Teens were from Weybridge, Surrey in England, and interestingly, no one was a “teen” at the time, and in no way were these root-rockers playing country and western music. They were darn good, though, at their special blend of good old rhythm and blues.
The Nashville Teens story started in 1962 when Ray Phillips and Arthur Sharp, members of two local rival groups decided to team up. Guitarist Michael Dumford, Roger Groom, John Hawkes and Pete Shannon completed the original line-up. This unit spent most of its time in Hamburg, Germany—at the now legendary Star Club—backing up Jerry Lee Lewis for several months. When they returned to England, Bo Diddley recruited them for his European tour. Mickey Most, a singer with Diddley’s opening act, the Minutemen, convinced the Teens that he was something of a producer and that he could get them a recording deal with a record company.
Mickey Most took the Teens into the recording studio as part of a one-off deal to record ace songwriter John D. Loudermilk’s “Tobacco Road,” a tune that Sharp had heard while working in a record shop. By this point, Dumford and Groom had left, so the group now consisted of Ray Phillips, Tiger Bay, Arthur Sharp, John Hawkes, and Pete Shannon, plus two new members, John Allen and Barry Jenkins.
“Tobacco Road” was a major chart invader on both sides of the Atlantic that was released on the London label, reaching #14 on the U.S. charts. Unfortunately, for their follow-up, the group chose to cover another, and much less appealing, John D. Loudermilk tune, “Google Eye,” a folkie tale about an unfortunate fish. This disk went nowhere in the States. The group made a few minor movie appearances, Be My Guest (1965), Gonks Go Beat (1965), and Pop Gear (1965), but visa restrictions limited the Teens to a tour of only New York State. Further singles, and there were some strange ones over the next year or so, failed to capitalize on the group’s talent. At this point, the Teens’ tale becomes somewhat fuzzy to both fans and music historians.
By 1966, members started their flight. Jenkins joined the Animals. Hawkins left to work with the group Spooky Tooth, the Strawbs and Renaissance. Sharp left in 1972 for a desk job alongside Don Arden at Jet Records. By the early 1970s, only Ray Phillips remained from the original line-up. When last spotted in the mid-1980s, he was fronting a new edition of the Nashville Teens.