oldpaint

You've probably done this but I used Amazon's search into their LOOK INSIDE! feature and only got the following results for KFMK: I'm particularly interested in information about Archie Bell and the Drells but an Amazon search of this book only brought back a few mentions, and that was in lists of bands. I don't want to criticize the book because I haven't read it, but its scope may be narrower than I hoped.

It seems P.J. Proby has read too many Elvis bios and fantasized what his teenage years might have been like if he hadn't been shipped off to military school. He's complained in various interviews that he was in the military school system from the age of 9 to 18 except for holiday breaks. He even said that during the summers of 1953-55 he was enrolled in 3-month long programs at a military school in Indiana. By my calculation not much time was left to hang around non-existent Houston bars drinking and learning how to dress like black folk. I have a bunch of old British music magazines from the 1960's and 70's and I started looking through them when I saw this topic. Lo and behold, there are lots of Proby pictures and interviews beginning in the summer of 1964 and running through the first half of 1966. I didn't spot anything after that so his popularity must have fizzled out. From the very beginning he talked about his association with Elvis in Houston, doing demos of songs used in the Elvis movies, and even mentioned doing a Country-Western tour with Andy Williams. This P.J. Proby character had the Brits so snowed they believed Andy Williams did C&W tours in the 50's and 60's! P.J. Proby is produced and promoted by a company called Dutchbrand. From another forum I learned that the owners of Dutchbrand have a dog named Tinker. Unless the "tinker" here is a dog, perhaps he or she would like to return to this topic and explain why they are posting on a public forum without clarifying their ties to Proby. Saying only that they are "in contact with" him isn't ethical business practice. Perhaps Tinker could also offer some insight into why anyone in Britain is interested in Proby's crock stories. It's obvious from the interviews in old magazines and continuing up until the recent ones discussed here, Proby's version of American entertainment history is taken at face value by British "journalists". Proby clearly enjoys spewing racist slurs while hiding behind the guise of the way things "were" and quoting (misquoting that is) American celebrities. The Dutchbrand Facebook page touts the Kevin Cooper interview as "another great interview". It seems they endorse that piece of garbage about Sonny West calling somebody named Joyce Bezetto a wop. Who? If Sonny reads that he won't know whether to laugh or sue. Of particular interest though is the part about Sonny picking "Joyce" up by the collar and holding him against the wall. Proby told a similar story in a BBC interview last year but in that interview he said Elvis was holding Johnny Rivers up by the collar against the side of a house. I guess Proby assumes audiences don't have access to his earlier interviews so why not recycle a story and change the cast of characters. I heard Proby sells a booklet of his Elvis stories at his shows in Britain. P.T. Barnum got it right!