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KRIS JENSEN
“TORTURE”
(JOHN D. LOUDERMILK)
Hickory 1173
No. 20 November 3, 1962
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Kris Jensen was on his way to perform on Buddy Dean’s TV program in Baltimore. He had what he felt
was the hottest record of his career in his hands-“Big As I Can Dream,” a song penned by BobMontgomery,
one-time singing and recording partner of Buddy Holly. “En route to the TV studio, we heard a bulletin on
the radio that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas,” Jenson told Goldmine. “By the time we got to the
station, the Buddy Dean show was cancelled for the day in order to cover the assassination. That was the
lastanyone heard of the record.”
Kris was born Peter Jensen on April 4, 1942, in New Haven. As a little shaver, Pete was wild about the
singing cowboys, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. At age 16, he met Denise Norwood, a songwriter who had
made good a couple of years earlier with JOE VALINO’s rendition of her tune, “The Garden Of Eden.” For
three years, they worked together, with Jensen recording Norwood’s compositions in her home studio.
Colpix Records released his “Bonnie Baby” in 1959, and Leader, then Kapp, issued a few singles each–but
nothing much happened.
When Nashville music publisher Wesley Rose heard a demo album that Norwood was shopping around to
various labels, he hooked Kris up with Hickory Records. Kris’ first release on Hickory, “Torture,” was a
smash. The hypnotic tune had a slow, humping rhythm and a pleading Presleyesque vocal. For some
reason, DJ Alan Freed was supposed to choose which cut would be the follow-up; Jensen insisted, to no
avail, on his favorite disk, “Big As I Can Dream.”