Sylvia Mobley has been present on the Memphis, Arkansas, and Nashville country music scenes steadily during the 1960s and 1970s, though she never found the acclaim she deserved. She worked with some of the most infamous figures of these scenes, though never achieving much commercial success. Some of her early recordings are now favorites in rock'n'roll record collectors circles and original copies can fetch up some money.
Born Sylvia Mae Robinson on April 28, 1941, in Marshall, Searcy County, Arkansas, she was one of four children of Charles Herman and Lois Marie Robinson. At the time of her birth, her mother was only sixteen years old. Supposedly in the late 1950s, she married Billy Sigman, with whom she had a son, Carson Vail. Her marriage with Billy Sigman obviously did not last long, as she had remarried by the early 1960s. Her new husband was Justin Lee "Bud" Mobley, who stayed with her the rest of her life.
In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Mobley once was managed by DJ, singer, and band leader Jimmy Haggett, who enjoyed some popularity in Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas. Haggett had ties to Memphis as he had recorded for Sun and Meteor during the 1950s and it is possible that he connected Mobley with the Memphis music scene. To start her career as a recording artist, Mobley made the trip to Memphis across the Mississippi River and got the chance to record for one of the smaller labels in the city, Wayne McGinnis' Santo Records. McGinnis had been an artist in his own right, cutting a superb rockabilly disc in 1956 for Meteor, and had created his own Santo label shortly before Mobley arrived on the scene.
In March 1962, her first single appeared with a romping country rocker entitled "All My Myself", backed by "If I Had You Again" on Santo #502. Judging from the publishing and songwriting credits on the record, her debut for Santo was recorded at Slim Wallace's Fernwood studio and leased to Santo afterwards. Signs of success are not reported for this record but soon, Mobley made herself a name in the local country music scene. Her searing vocals seemed to be perfect for country music.
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| Sylvia Mobley and the Cotton Town Jubilee band live on stage, ca. mid 1960s From left to right: poss. Bill Medlock, Jake Tullock, Mobley, Ken Burge, Johnny Duncan |
By 1964, she had been discovered by Gene Williams, a local DJ, record label owner, and stage show host. He put Mobley on his Country Junction TV show that was broadcast from Jonesboro, Arkansas, and also gave her the chance to lay down some more recordings. Williams' right hand, Style Wooten, who later went on to become the "king of custom recording" in Memphis, produced another fine country rocker with her, "Every Time I See You", and the country weeper "Tell Me Clouds". Also involved in this production were DJ and singer Chuck Comer plus an unknown, Bozy Moore. The results were released on Wooten's Big Style label and distributed by Williams' Cotton Town Jubilee enterprise.
More or less simultaneously, Williams released "Are You Sorry b/w "Worried Over You" on his own Cotton Town Jubilee label (#113) in 1964 and followed up with a re-release of "Every Time I See You", backed with "I'm Not Alone Anymore" (Cotton Town Jubilee #115) in early spring of 1965. That same year, Williams paired Mobley with Memphis music stalwart Eddie Bond, who released a single on her on his Millionaire label, "Hearts Have a Language" b/w "In and Out of Love" (Millionaire #660S-0885). During this time, Mobley recorded songs from the pen of more or less familiar names. "Worried Over You" was written by Marlon Grisham (known in rockabilly circles for "Ain't That a Dilly" on Cover), "I'm Not Alone Anymore" by Chuck Comer, and "In and Out of Love" by Melvin Endsley, who also wrote the big hit "Singing the Blues" and was affiliated with Gene Williams at that time.
None of her singles so far had stimulated any success, which was probably due to the fact that promotion and distribution of the discs were limited on all labels. Around the mid 1960s, Mobley was still performing on the Country Junction TV show and recorded two more records for the Lake City, Arkansas, based Jeopardy label, which comprised songs penned by Leland Davis, an Arkansas based musician, and Glenn Honeycutt, a 1950s Sun Records artist.
By the late 1960s, she had made the move to Nashville, probably in order to give her career a boost in the capitol of country music. In 1969, she recorded a single for the once glorious Starday label, which had passed its heyday at that time already. In 1974, two more singles followed for the Villa label. In the mid 1970s, Mobley teamed up with famous guitarist turned producer Scotty Moore, lead guitarist for Elvis Presley and producer in his own right, and recorded a whole album for the Belle Meade label, "My Needs are You", which resulted also in a few more singles.
By 1976, after recording unsuccessfully for 14 years, it became clear that Mobley's chance of becoming a star had passed. However, she remained her ties with the entertainment industry, in a different sense though, and drove whirlwind bus tours across Nashville. She had one last album out on the Rays Gold label in 1984, entitled "Songs for Ma Ma".
In 2009, her husband died at the age of 76 years. Mobley, who had remained in the Nashville area, spent her last years at Elmcroft Assisted Living Facility and passed away July 10, 2017, at the age of 76 years in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
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