Aint No Pity In Pseudonym City

Moonlighting on a rival label was therefore considered a legitimate opinion for those who were determinedly seeking their just desserts. After all, there was little to lose if some industry type whispered "Do your label-hopping now, and explain your actions later." The fact that the labels themselves could just as easily be responsible for the chicanery, would explain where some of the more outlandish monikers came from. We should be thankful for small mercies, otherwise we might never have known that Webb Pierce once recorded as Shady Wall; that jazz-legend Shorty Rogers had a brief pop career as Boots Brown & The Blockbusters; and that Frantic Johnny Rogers was a lopsided handle for a young Duane Eddy. On the odd occasion, the subterfuge could pay off handsomely. At a time when their own hit trail was tapering off, Bill Haley's Comets went Top 40 as The Kingsmen with the instrumental Weekend. A few weeks later, in the fall of '58, the singing deejay from Beaumont, Texas, JP Richardson, made the #1 slot under the name of The Big Bopper. Then in 1959, after barely getting by as plain David Clowney, Dave Baby Cortez topped the US charts as the uncrowned king of the Hammond B3 organ. Such was the impact of rock & roll on the sales of country music, both George Jones and Buck Owens made some of their earliest recordings in the rockabilly style using assumed names. Vanity also played a part, in that Phil Spector once set out to become the next Duane Eddy when he picked guitar on Bumbershoot. The bare-faced award for front, though, went to the rotund John D Loudermilk who recorded Sittin' In The Balcony on the pretext that he was a teenage idol. Stuart Colman, who compiled and annotated "Ain't No Pity In Pseudonym City", states that the masquerade isn't over. It seems there's plenty more where these earnest expedients came from.