Who was/is Joe Therrien Jr ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Joe Therrien Jr
A country veteran from Springfield, Massachusetts, JOE THERRIEN JR. was entering his late twenties when he converted to the rock'n'roll faith. Appropriating the name of Boyd Bennett's group, Therrien formed the Rockets in 1956 and toured the lowspots of Massachusetts and neighbouring Connecticut.
In 1957, Therrien's manager returned from a trip to New York with the best deal circumstances would allow: a one-shot session with the diminutive Lido label, a subsidiary of Bruce Records.
Cut in a studio above the Satan Club in Times Square, Hey Babe! Let's Go Downtown appeared on the flip of Come Back To Me Darling, a latin-flavoured song which all concerned deemed to be the hot side. Both Lido masters were purchased by Decca then looking for material with which to launch their Brunswick subsidiary. Though not a hit, Come Back To Me Darling was covered by the Silva-Tones who called it Roses Are Blooming and put it on the back of their soon-to-be national hit, That's All I Want From You. This set includes Therrien's follow-up, Wheels, together with its two alternative flipsides, You're Long Gone and Rockabilly Boogie.
When the Rockets disbanded in 1959, Therrien recorded I Ain't Gonna Be Around in his parents' kitchen and issued it on his own vanity label, JAT. Evidently an intense and obsessive character, Therrien was still bursting with rock 'n'roll optimism as late as 1961 when he waxed another rocker, Siam, with a band called the Rhythm Four. He expressed his disgust with the quality of the pressings (on Sentinel) by sitting over a garbage can and personally destroying most of the initial batch.
Therrien died on August 27, 1993 in Pensacola, Florida after a short illness. According to the obituary in 'Goldmine,' he was 63.
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