They All Had Their Own Story

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It should’ve happened… multiple hits, a massive career, world recognition and all the rest.

 

The Phantom

 Word’s leaked out—among fevered 45 fans, at

the least–that fifty-plus years ago, a 20 year

old  masked man from Leaksville, Mississippi

created “the greatest rock and roll single of all

creation”…and drove his car off a cliff…never

to have returned to lay down another sound;

despite the help of Pat Boone.

THE PHANTOM, aka Matt Lott, aka Jerry Lott wrote his minute-thirty-two second testosterone thruster in a

ten minute, pressured freakout, at the Gulf Coast Studio, in Mobile, Alabama.; in the summer heat. 1958.

“Love Me” was intended as a filler, as a flip side, a throwaway, to what a shakin’ Lott hoped would be his

big-time record, his breakthrough, for his studied three-month creation, “Whisper You Love.”

 

His guys—H.H. Brooks (drums), Billy Yates (piano), Pete McCord (bass), Frankie Holmes (guitar)–roamed

the room throwin’ back liquid; awaiting Lott to let lose with something. Why hadn’t the boy thought up a

second tune? “’Somebody said what you gonna put on the flip-side?’ Lott told New Commotion magazine. “I

hadn’t even thought about it. Somebody suggested that I write something like Elvis ‘cause he was just a

little on the wane and everybody was beginning to turn against rock’n’roll. They said, ‘See if you can spark

rock’n’roll a little bit…so that’s when I put all the fire and fury into it I could utter in to it.”

“I was runnin’ around, clappin’ my hands, screamin’. The drummer lost one of his sticks, the guitar

player’s glasses were a hangin’ sideways over his eyes.”

It’s banshee madness. It’s a manic, tremblin’, pleadin’, gaspin’, rock’n’roll altered-state seldom visited and

one seldom a soul is able to escape once visited.