GCW Wrestling had returned to Peterborough, Ontario, and an enthusiastic crowd of fans filled the place to watch the newest young talent to bawl it out in the squared ring. But I wasn’t there to see one of the fresh new brawlers battling it out in the ring. I was there to see the evening’s special guest and chat about music and I was the only person with vinyl tucked under his arm.
He was easy to spot, because he still looks exactly the same as he did in the 1980’s, albeit it a bit older. Sitting on a stool, dressed in his signature shades and a golden jacket was iconic wrestling manager Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart.
“Hi there,” Jimmy said to me in a slight southern drawl, shaking my hand. Although he was the guest of hoor, his attention wasn’t in demand at the moment, and I luckily had far more time to talk with him than I expected I would. Luckily for me, Jimmy Hart was a very nice and personable guy, and loved to talk. Eyeballing the albums under my arm he said “Hey, what do you have there?”
I handed him my copy of The Gentrys1965 debut album, “Keep on Dancing.: “You know these guys?” I asked, pointing at the seven young teenagers on the album cover.
“Yeah. One of them has passed away, but the other guys and are still friends,” Jimmy said. “Can you pick me out?” I pointed out a fresh faced kid at the front of the photo and Jimmy told me I was wrong and pointed at a kid in the back row. “That’s me right there,” he said.
.What may have been lost on the fans who came to the wrestling event that night was that we had a Billboard recording star amongst us. Jimmy Hart’s first exposure to fame wasn’t in the wrestling industry, but as a member of Memphis based garage band The Gentrys who scored a big hit in 1965 with their rock n’ roll party classic “Keep on Dancing.”
One of American music’s legendary cities, Memphis will always be remembered for Sun Records and Graceland and Beale Street and BB King. But, to wrestling fans its the home of Memphis Championship Wrestling, the Mid-South Coliseum, Jerry Jarret, Jerry “The King” Lawler, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Mick Foley, and The Junkyard Dog. A hub where music and wrestling legends have both gotten their starts in the business, the two traditionally separate industries crossed over for Jimmy Hart who has managed to stay In the public eye to one degree or another for over six decades. Although he may always be recognized for his contributions in wrestling, at heart he’ll always be a music guy.
Jimmy Hart’s journey into entertainment began in 1963 as a student at Treadwell High School when he and six other classmates – Bruce Bowles, Bobby Fisher, Jimmy Johnson, Pat Neal, Larry Raspberry and Larry Wall – formed a band as a way to get out of study hall. Calling themselves The Gentrys, the group was primarily a cover band and became popular playing local teenage clubs and school dances. Despite the amount of musical competition in the city, The Gentrys honed their craft as a group, and became a popular fixture throughout Memphis during the 60’s. Fortune would smile on the grou[p when they won a “battle of the bands” contest which earned them a spot on “The Ted Mack Amature Hour” in 1964.
A predecessor to shows like “American Idol” and “Star Search,” “Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour” was an early new talent showcase that started on radio in the 1940’s and continued on television until the early 1970’s. Broadcast from coast to coast, it was America’s first look at new talent and made stars out of former recording giants as Pat Boone, Gladys Knight, Ann-Margaret, Jose Feliciano and Tanya Tucker. Well, The Gentrys didn’t win the top prize, but it did give them enough national attention to earn them a record contract with Memphis based record company Youngstown Records, who cut their first single, “Sometimes,” in 1965.
But it was their second single, “Keep On Dancing,” which would catapult The Gentrys to fame. First recorded by a group called The Avantis, “Keep on Dancing” was a high energy fast paced romp, and the single became a local hit and started flying off of Memphis area record store shelves. Taking note of the disk’s success, Youngstown Records got a national distribution deal with MGM Records and within weeks “Keep on Dancing” was racing up the Billboard charts, making it to the #4 spot in October 1965.
An unusually large group with seven members, The Gentrys consisted of three singers, and “Keep on Dancing” featured guitarist Larry Raspberry on lead vocals, with Jimmy Hart and the group’s other primary singer, Bruce Bowles, singing backup vocals.
One element that made “Keep On Dancing” notably unique was the “fake ending.” While the song seems to fade and end, it then suddenly starts again going into a second finish. The reason for this wasn’t some sort of clever fake, but the initial record was considered too short for radio play. The false finish was the producer’s attempt to stretch out the song to make it a contender for radio play with a positive result.
The popularity of “Keep on Dancing” was instant, and suddenly The Gentrys was in demand. Appearing on shows such as “Hullabaloo,” “Shindig” and “American Bandstand, they even appeared in the low budget beach film “It’s a Bikini World” with Tommy Kirk and Debroah Walley where they performed their follow up single, “Spread it On Thick.” The Gentrys were also quickly picked up by Dick Clark to be part of his “Caravan of Stars” tour where they appeared alongside The Rascals, The Shangri-Las, Joe Tex and Mitch Ryder. In an interview given in 2013, Jimmy Hart spoke about working with Clark, and how it went on to affect his show business persona for the rest of his career:
“Dick Clark called (everybody) in the room before the show and he said ‘Be on time on this tour, be dependable, make sure your outfits are in mint condition. Remember when you’re on that stage, make sure you give that audience everything you’ve got, especially with your dress, because remember, if you dress like the audience, one day you’re going to end up sitting in the audience, which means be colorful. Be flamboyant if you can.’ That’s why, to this day…. I always wear the Jimmy Hart crazy blue light special jackets. The black ones with the red hearts, or the white ones with the black harts….pr the white ones with the musical notes. I’ll never forget what Dick Clark told me.”
But fame for the Gentrys would be short. Despite releasing a follow up album, “Gentry Time” in 1965 the group were unable to recreate the same success of “Keep on Dancing,” and their lack of hit records paried with the pressures of touring and personal appearances began to wear on the group members who, now in their early 20’s, wanted to do other things. In 1966 The Gentrys broke up and the members went their separate ways.
But Jimmy Hart proved to be the hold out who, having gotten the taste for the rock n’ roll lifestyle, wasn’t ready to let go of it. Returning to Memphis, he puttered around the music industry for a few years before reforming a new version of The Gentrys without any of the original members around 1970. Walking into the legendary Sun Records Studios, Jimmy and the “new” Gentrys cut another album which saw two singles, “Wild World” and a cover of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” barely break into the Billboard top 100. But it wasn’t enough to interest record buyers who had long moved on from “Keep on Dancing.” But Jimmy kept struggling away at the music thing, and his version of The Gentry’s continued being a mainstay of the Memphis music scene, eventually having a running residency at the Memphis Ramada Inn and Lounge.
But at the same time that Jimmy was struggling in Memphis, “Keep On Dancing” was gaining new life in the UK and launching a brand new teenage rock band to International fame. In 1971 Scotland’s The Bay City Rollers released their version of “Keep On Dancing” as their first single, which blasted them to the number 9 spot on the UK Billboard charts. Dressed in their signature tartan, and with their fresh baby faces and mod hairdos, The Bay City Rollers merged retro-rock with elements of glam and, later on, disco, and quickly became one of the hottest bands for teenage record buyers world wide. The Bay City Rollers version of “Keep on Dancing’ saw its LP debut on their second full length album, “Once Upon a Star” (1975) and finally get its American release later that year on their North American self-titled debut. While “Keep On Dancing” did not become a hit in North America, it did become one of The Bay City Rollers’ signature numbers, although future records, such as “Saturday Night,” “Shang-a-lang” and “Bye Bye Baby” definitely eclipsed its popularity. But “Keep On Dancing” marked the beginning of what would be the jumping off point to one of the most endearing pop groups of the 1970’s.
“Keep on Dancing” also got a notable release in 1977 when early J-pop sensations Pink Lady released a Japanese language version of the song on their debut album. However, to be fair, the popularity of “Keep on Dancing” in Japan would have been due to the Bay City Rollers, who had a massive fan following in that country, and not The Gentrys version which never charted in any Asian countries.
For Jimmy Hart, “Keep on Dancing” would be the only time he ever contributed to a song that reached the top of the Billboard charts. However, as time would prove, he would pivot his career into wrestling in the late 1970’s, and while he’d gain bigger fame in that industry, he still continued to be involved in music in interesting and often unusual ways.
As for The Gentrys, their version of “Keep On Dancing’ continues to be a staple of the 1960’s soundscape, and one of the greatest party songs ever recorded. It still has a good beat and is easy to dance too. And in Memphis, The Gentrys are still hometown heroes. On September 27th just as he told me, Jimmy Hart reunited with his original Gentrys bandmates for a special celebration at the Memphis Canon Center. When he had his turn at the podium during the acceptance speeches, Jimmy pulled out a copy of The Gentrys “Greatest Hits” album and quipped “This is our greatest hits album. How can we have greatest hits, when we only had one hit?” Classic “Mouth of the South” to the very end!
