The “Golden Hits Of The 50s” 

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ROBIN LUKE   

“SUSIE DARLIN“

(ROBIN LUKE)

Dot 15781

No. 5    October 13, 1958

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Robin (b. March 19, 1942, Los Angeles, CA) started playing guitar when he was only eight years old; within

just as many years, he had written a sackful of songs, including a nifty number about his sister Susie.

 Starting in 1957, Robin co-starred on a local TV program with Kimo McKay.  Not long after, someone

in the biz brought the boy to the attention of Bobby Bertram, owner of Bertram International Records.

Bertram  did not care much for “Susie Darlin,”  but was impressed instead with the  16-year-old’s “Living’s

Loving You.”   Both tunes were  recorded in Honolulu,  Robin’s  hometown at the time, in a bedroom with

the nearby bathroom functioning as an echo chamber.  Percussion was created by Bertram wacking a box

 with a fountain pen.  The crude disk received a lot of Hawaiian airplay. Luckily for Luke, Art and Dorothy

 Freeman, Cleveland distributors for the stateside Dot label, were honeymooning in Waikiki when they

happened to hear Robins’ record on the radio.

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Dot Records then acquired the distribution righs to “Susie Darlin'” from Bertram International, and Robin

 Luke had a hit.  “I bought it without ever hearing it,” said Ron Wood, owner of the Dot label, on the CD liner

notes to The History of Dot, Volume 1.   “I had great faith in Art and would occasionally pick up on a record

solely on the basis of the enthusiasm of the parties who brought it to me.”

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Although Luke, Bertram, and Dot didn’t give up for some years, the follow-up efforts issued in the US

remanded unpublicized.   His “A” sides included “Chicka, Chlcka Honey,” “Strollin’ Blues,” “Five Minutes

More,” “Make Me a Dreamer,” “Bad Boy,” “Everlovin’.” “Poor Little Rich Boy,” and a duet with Roberta

Shore, “Foggin’ Up the Windows.”

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Luke quietly left the biz in 1962, eventually receiving his PhD, from the University of Missouri.  When most

recently spotted, Robin Luke was a college professor in Norfolk, Virginia.