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Previously Unpublished 

CREATED 1988 FOR THE BILLBOARD BOOK OF ONE-HIT WONDERS.   DUE TO BOOK LENGTH RESTRICTIONS; NEVER PUBLISHED

 

DADDY-O’s

“Got a Match”

Cabot 122

(Mure-Wolf)

No. 39    July 7, 1958

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The Daddy-O·s was a non de plume for Billy Mure and a mess of studio cats he enlisted to dash-off a

“Tequila” take-off tune.   Much as in the chart-topping “Tequiia” where Bobby Rio had stopped his

fellow Champs to sporactically and mennacingly mouth-off the tunes title, Bill repeatedly called a

halt to his bunchs’ bashing to ask in his best bass voice that socially significant question “Got a

Match?”    The whole scam worked well enough that over the next few years Bill and an aggregate

of his hand-picked music makers charted under atleast two other pen names.   As  the “Wild-Cats”,

Bill and the boys, this time Dennis Gorgas (guitar), Pat Piccininno (drums) and Frank Rainey (organ)

charted with “Gazachstahagen” (#57).   Months later in the spring of 1959, as the “Trumpeters,” Bill

and a big band bunch led by Joseph Johnson graced the third quadrant of the Billboard‘s Hot 100

with “A String of Trumpets” (#64).

Billy Mure was born in the early ’20s in New York City.   At the age of 5, Bill began his violin lessons.

In his teen years he turned to plucking guitar.   After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Mure joined

the U.S. Army and was assigned the task of arranging, conducting and writing tunes for an Air Corp.

band.   With the war’s closure, Bill became a staff guitarist with his hometown radio station WNEW.

Concurrent with the dawning of rock’n’roll,  Mure acquired the opportunity to record things under

his own name and under various pseudo-group guises.   Strangely enough, Billy Mure never was to

see his god-given name on the Billboard charts.

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Despite the efforts of near a dozen record companies and the issuance of scads of singles and albums

with the Billy Mure name on them, not one dusty disk brushed even the bottom rungs of pop stardom.