Return To 60’s Main Menu Recording Artists Of The 60s
ERNIE MARESCA
“SHOUT! SHOUT! (KNOCK YOURSELF OUT)”
(ERNIE MARESCA, Thomas F. Bogdany)
Seville 117
No. 6 May 19, 1962
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Ernie Maresca (b. Apr. 21, 1939, Bronx, NY) wrote or co-wrote God knows how many hits. He gave
“Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer,” “Lovers Who Wonder,” and “Donna The Prima Donna” to Dion;
“No One Knows, “A Lover’s Prayer,” and “Come On Little Angel” to the Belmonts; “Runaround” to the
Regents; “Whenever A Teenager Cries” to Reparata & The Delrons; “Hey Jean, Hey Dean” to Dean &
Jean,” “Child Of Clay” to Jimmie Rodgers; and piles of other enjoyables for the Del-Satins, the Five
Discs, and Nino & The Ebbtides.
I’m originally from the Bronx,” Maresca told Goldmine‘s Wayne Jones. “Dion lived on the next
block. The Regents lived up the street. My block was Garden Street and 182nd Street. I grew up
with guys like Guy Vallari of the Regents, so we used to all sing and start groups. I had cut a demo
record on ‘No One Knows’… Dion heard the demo and liked it, so he brought it down to Gene Schwartz
at Laurie Records. That’s how I got into it. That became the next record [for Dion & The Belmonts]
after their ‘I Wonder Why.”
Ernie’s chance to step out front and do his own thing happened as a direct result of the phenomenal
success of “Runaround Sue,” which Maresca co-wrote with Dion. Ernie admitted to Goldmine that
he never liked the song, and never thought it would be a smash.
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“In all honesty, we wrote ‘Runaround Sue’ around [Gary U.S. Bonds’] ‘A Quarter To Three,” which
was a big hit then. Laurie, at the time, was handling the distribution of the record. It’s incredible:
‘Sue’ was more like a riff song, you know, with ‘hep hep, bum de diddle it’… and it’s not really a story”
Ernie wrote “Shout! Shout!” with a friend named Tom Bedagny. “I went around trying to get people to
hear [“Shout! Shout!”] because I wasn’t working exclusively for Laurie at the time–I took it to Seville,
which was just a tiny outfi… they had me re-record it.”
It takes not a critic’s ear to hear echoes of “Runaround Sue” or “Quarter To Three” in Maresca’s
“Shout! Shout!” Released on Seville and distributed by London Records, the disk sold well and went
top 10. Follow-ups were something else altogether. “Mary Jane (You’re A Pain In The Brain)”
bombed, as did successive disks issued under names like Artie Chicago, the Desires, Foreign Intrigue,
and the Hubcaps.
Ernie Maresca remained active with Robert Schwartz and the rest of the staff at Laurie Records,
packaging seemingly endless compilations of that golden stuff from long ago.