The “Golden Hits Of The 60s”
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RON HOLDEN
“LOVE YOU SO“
(RON HOLDEN)
Donna 1315
No. 7 June 13, 1960
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When Ron Holden (b. August 7, 1939, Seattle) was 18 years old and en route to a stay in jail, he met the
man who saved him from musical oblivion. Officer Larry Nelson had just finished fingerprinting Ron when
he heard Holden’s doo-wop echoing off the jailhouse walls. Nelson told Ron that he was about to quit the
force, that he was thinking of doing something in the music field, and that Ron should look him up when he
got out.
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Holden and his Thunderbirds had been playing a teen sock hop that night. During a break, the guys in the
band had taken a ride with a half-pint of I.W Harper and what Holden described to Goldmine writer Steve
Propes as “one of them funny little cigarettes.” When the police pulled them over, Ron was the only one
over 18.
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Once free as a bird, Holden made plans to stop over at Officer Nelson’s house. Nelson had decided to cut
some tracks on Ron, and when Ron arrived at Nelson’s home, there were microphones, a tape recorder, and
a marching band waiting in the living room. For 20 hours, Holden and the kids in the band struggled to
nail down what was to become Ron’s big moment, “Love You So.” To complicate matters, there was a
barking dog in the house.
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With the “perfect” take in the can, Nelson set up Nite Owl Records and pressed some copies. The disk
started to take off locally, and Ron and Larry met with Ritchie Valens’ discoverer, Bob Keane of Donna/
Dei-Fi Records. Keane, as Holden told Goldmine, “had a brief-case full of contracts, a big green cigar, and
a pocketful of money. He said, ‘We’re gonna make this record a hit–now.’ We said, ‘Hey, now you’re
talkin’, that’s what we want.”
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Unfortunately, Holden’s subsequent recordings for the Donna label made use of studio pros like key-
boardist Rene Hall, sax-sensation Plas Johnson, drum legend Earl Palmer, and Darlene Love & her
Blossoms–musicians who could never play, as Holden put it, “a little bit out of tune,” like that marching
band had done on “Love You So.” Ron moved about cutting singles for Eldo, Rampart, Challenge, VMC,
and Now. It’s alleged that he even got the opportunity to record a one-off single (as half of Rosie & Ron)
with Rosalie Hamlin of ROSIE & THE ORIGINALS, but nothing further charted.
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For some years in the ’70s, Ron emceed at Art Loboe’s Oldies but Goodies club in L.A.
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