For Buster--"Keep a Knockin'"--Rufus Brown (Gateway Top Tune 1230; 1957)

Little Bobby/Boobie's excellent, energetic Keep a Knockin' (fake version of Little Richard's hit) is credited here to Rufus Brown with Billie Driscoll's Orch., and the echo gives it more more energy than the Promenade versions (credited to the two "Little"s).  Gateway Top Tune was a Cincinnati OH label owned by Carl Burkhardt, and I read someplace that Ohioans, as a rule, know how to spell Cincinnati, but I keep misspelling it.  And I'm a lifetime Ohioan.  What can I say?  Three n's, one t.  Come on, dude, it's not that hard.  I'll try it again:

Cincinnati.  There, I did it.  I had it burned into my brain that there are two t's.  Wrong.  An important turning point in my life here.

I read something, somewhere (or thought I did), about where Gateway Top Hits were mainly sold.  Hm.  Discogs doesn't tell me, but the great site otherwise gives us the usual excellent info.  Elsewhere, I see that Burkhardt also owned the Hep and Variety labels!  I did not know that.  Somehow, I thought that Variety was in the Hollywood family of labels.  I get confused quickly with the details of cheap label history, because 1) there were umpteen labels in any given group family, typically featuring the same material and 2) by this point in cheap label history (late '50s), tracks were hopping between label groups like crazy.  Just like in this case--same side on Promenade and Gateway Top Tune.  On which label did it originate?  Or... were both labels leasing the same master?  In which case, who produced the master?

Label groups were getting bought up, too, to add to the confusion.  Cheap labels historians are nuts to even consider getting into these things.  Problem is, we're hooked before we know what we're in for.  Then it's... too late.

Click here to hear: Keep a Knockin'--Rufus Brown w. Billie Driscoll's Orch., 1957.


Lee