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ROD BERNARD
“THIS SHOULD GO ON FOREVER”
(Sernard Jolivette, Jay Miller)
Argo 5327
No. 20 April 13, 1959
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In the mid-’50s, Rod Bernard (b. Aug. 12, 1940, Opelousas, LA) was a DJ on KSLO in Opelousas Louisiana.
“Hot Rod” as his station called him used to catch local bluesman Guitar Gable and his singer King Carl
(Bernard Jolivette) playing a number they called “This Should Go on Forever at their club dates. Carl
had been announcing for a long spell that the swamp-pop song was set to be Gable’s very next disk.
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“It really hit me as being one helluva song,” Bernard told Goldmine’s Bill Milner,” and whenever I saw King
Carl, I’d ask him when it was coming out. He kept saying, ‘Well, it’s comin” but it never did. Eventually, I
went to his home and asked him if I could record it, and he taught me how to sing it.”
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Rod had started on radio one warm Saturday morn in 1950, when Dezauche’s Red Bird Sweet Potatoes
sponsored a talent search. Thereafter, Rod and his guitar would show up every Saturday to pick a quarter·
hour’s worth of Hank Williams songs and Cajun items. During his high school days” in Winnie, Texas, he
fronted a band that played tunes by local legends Bobby Charles, Johnnie Allan, and T. K. Hulin. In 1957,
Jake Graffagnino owner of Winnies music store, recorded a couple of sides on Bernard (“Set Me Free” and
“Linda Gail”) for his tiny Carl label. All this was a preamble to “Hot Rod’s” pop peak.
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With King Karl’s blessings, a promise from Floyd Soileau that he would Issue “This Should Go on Forever”
track on his newly-formed JIN label, and his band in tow, Rod went into the studio. Legend has it that it
took so many efforts to got an acceptable take on the tune that Bernard developed a nose bleed, and that for
the last few takes (including the one eventually etched in vinyl). he was singing through a towel.
“Maybe that was the key,” quipped Bernard to John Browen in South to Louisiana. “Maybe I should have
kept singing with a towel around my face.” Maybe–though Rod claims the offer was a good one–he should
not have switched to the big-time Mercury label and started recording in Nashville. “Mercury had so may
people like Brook Benton, Dinah Washington, and the Platters doing exceptionally well; they didn’t need to
spend money on me,” Bernard explained to Goldmine’s Bill Milner.