Who was Vern Pullens?
The Story of the Pearl River Country Rocker
For decades, a sketchy biography of Vern Pullens has been floating around - but do we really know his story? I guess not. His claim to fame was the rockabilly double sider "Bop Crazy Baby" b/w "It's My Life" that he recorded for the Spade label, which began his decades spanning recording career. Pullens was a country singer first and rock'n'roll only second, though he occasionally recorded rockabilly throughout the years.
Right from the start, there is some sketchiness. Adam Komorowski sums it up in his biographical sketch on Pulles for the "Classic Rockabilly" CD box: "No exact date of birth is recorded for Vern Pullens but it is likely that it was in the late '20s. Also in doubt is his place of birth, variously cited as Bogalusa, Louisiana, and Picayne, Mississippi, but it is probable that it was Picayne." The place Komorowski mentions as "Picayne" is actually Picayune, which is less than half an hour away from Bogalusa. My intense research regarding this issue hailed no evidence to proof either assumption. I found a man named Monroe Paul Pullen, who turned out not to be Vern Pullens, however. It was my fellow researcher Volker Houghton who got me on the right track. He pointed me towards the grave of I.V. Pullens, which turned out to be the man I was looking for.
It is clear that Pullens hailed from the rural region known as the Pearl River Valley, Mississippi, which is also the border region to Louisiana. He was born there on March 9, 1931. His parents, Thomas Floyd Pullens, Sr., and Sarah Jane (Henley) Pullens were children of this rural and isolated region as well. Pullens came from a large family with at least ten siblings. By 1940, when he attended the local elementary school, the family was living in rural Pearl River County. Pullens' father earned a living as a farm hand but was also known to have been a reverend and therefore, the family was likely opposed to sacred music. Growing up in a rural area, Pullens was also likely influenced by the country sounds of the day.
It is possible that Pullens served his country during the late 1940s or early 1950s but no documents that would indicate a military service could be traced down so far. By the mid 1950s, Pullens was working as a bricklayer and a performer with a local country outfit on weekends. In 1956, label owner Bennie Hess was traveling the eastern Louisiana/southwestern Mississippi regions in search of local talent to record on his new label, Spade Records. Hess, a Texas born singer, producer and promoter (mostly a self-promoter, though), had started his musical career in the late 1920s and started recording in the 1940s. Following his contract with Mercury Records (which had ended abruptly as Mercury had found out Hess bootlegged his recordings for the company on his own small label), Hess started a string of labels to produce his own records. He went into partnership with Doyle Jones to form Spade Records in the latter part of 1956 and embraced the new rockabilly sounds on the label.
Pullens and Hess possibly came in touch through B.J. Johnson, a Picayune based singer, songwriter, and DJ. Hess was impressed enough with Pullens to arrange a recording session for him in September that year at radio KTRH in Houston. Pullens traveled the approximately 200 miles from Pearl River Valley to Houston to cut not only what was his first session but also Spade's debut release. He was backed by local session men, of which only bassist Lou Fresley's name has survived. Four tracks were recorded that day: "Bop Crazy Baby", "It's My Life", "Would You Be Happy", and a raved up rockabilly version of the old standard "Mama Don't Allow No Boppin'". The first two were chosen by Hess for single release on Spade #1927 around October. It was pressed on both 45rpm and 78rpm formats.
Hess released another single on Pullens, though they headed into another direction and tried out with a traditional country style that Pullens was used to. Spade #1930 featured Pullens' "Would You Be Happy", a rockaballad from the previous session with echo, slap bass, and spicy lead guitar, and a stone-hard country weeper "It Took One Moment". Released in late 1956 or early 1957, it shared the fate of its precursor and went nowhere. A third and last single was released on Spade around May 1957, featuring two country duets with B.J. Johnson, "What Am I to Do" and "Country Boys Dream" (#1935). It also showed that Pullens was a bit of a songwriter, too, as both songs were his originals. BMI lists a total of 38 compositions by him.
 |
| Billboard January 5, 1957 |
Apart from the rural stamp these recordings had, the biggest problem was the missing distribution network of Spade. Hess' only distributor was Pappy Daily of Starday, who nevertheless used his connections to rather promote his own biggest star at the time, George Jones. Speaking of Pappy Daily, he re-released "What Am I to Do" and "Country Boys Dream" on his own D record label (#1107 in the fall of 1959). This deal probably came into existence through B.J. Johnson again, who recorded for D during 1958-1959 as Byron Johnson.
However, the single failed to stimulate any greater success and it remained their only effort for the label. Pullens kept on performing in the Mississippi-Louisiana border region and in 1957, became a cast member of a local Saturday night live stage show, the Pearl River Valley Jamboree, which aired over WHXY from Bogalusa. He was lead guitarist for the show's house band and remained with the cast until 1959.
Pullens then began working with Hack Kennedy, who had founded Big Howdy Records in Bogalusa two years earlier. Two country singles appeared in the second half of 1960, including an answer song to Hank Locklin's big 1958 hit "Send Me the Pillow (That You Dream On)", written by Pullens "I Sent You the Pillow (That I Dreamed On)". Answer songs were popular in those days and at the same time, the Browns turned their version of the original into a moderate hit, so Hack Kennedy possibly took the chance to cash in on the success.
Though, a hit was not in sight for Pullens and he spent some time in Nashville, Tennessee, possibly hoping to get a better deal while being at the center of country music. He recorded a single for the independent Voice of Country label in 1968, "How Long Now" / "Just at Sundown" (Voice of Country #117) but was back at Big Howdy the next year, recording and working with both Hack Kennedy and B.J. Johnson again.
By the early 1970s, Bennie Hess had moved his operations to Nashville, too, and rockabilly music was gaining popularity among young British music lovers. This did not remained unnoticed by Hess and he reactivated his Spade label. Hess' first move was to lease "Mama Don't Allow No Boppin'", "Would You Be Happy", and "Bop Crazy Baby" to the British Injun label for release in 1972. In 1975, Pullens cut a new session for Hess that included the songs "Long Gone", "Rock On Mabel" and the first version of "You Don't Mean to Make Me Cry", all of which were issued by Spade in the UK.
Rockabilly remained popular and in the summer of 1979, Bill Kilgore approached Pullens to make more recordings. Kilgore had a small record label in Deer Park, Texas, Rock-It Records, which specialized in rockabilly music and he arranged a session for Pullens at the birthplace of rock'n'roll, in Memphis, Tennessee. The session took place at American Sound Studio, engineered by Stan Kesler, and featured a line-up of legendary Memphis rockabilly musicians: Al Hopson on lead guitar, Jerry Lee "Smoochie" Smith on piano, Marcus Van Story on bass, and Jimmy Van Eaton on drums. It was a split-session with Memphis music stalwart Eddie Bond, who recorded a slew of tracks with the same band. From Pullens' songs, a new version of "You Don't Mean to Make Me Cry" and "Jitterbuggin' Baby" were released on single (Rock-It #105). These and more tracks from the session were released in Europe through Rockhouse Records in the mid 1980s.
In the early 1970s, Pullens had returned to rural Mississippi and settled in Carriere, a small town outside of Picayune. There, he set up his own record label Sun Down Records, on which he released country music by local artists throughout the 1970s and also had two releases under his own name on the label. Though he had returned to Mississippi, he retained his connections to Nashville and produced most of the Sun Down releases there. The label's most successful release became Roger Rainy's "Breaker, Breaker" from 1975, which became a Top 20 country hit.
On the performing side, Pullens continued to play locally in Mississippi but had given up recording after his 1979 Memphis session. He spent his last years in Mississippi and passed away on July 19, 2000, at the age of 69 years (although his death date is usually given as 2001). He is buried at Henleyfield Cemetery in Pearl River County. His 1950s and 1970s rockabilly recordings have been reissued over and over again since the 1970s but a quality re-release of his complete recordings is still missing. The Cramps, British psychobilly band, cited "Bop Crazy Baby" as one of their influences.
See also
• The Pearl River Valley Jamboree
• Spade Records story
• Penny Records
Recommended reading
• Bear Family Records
Sources
• Find a Grave entry
• Rockin' Country Style entry
• Various entries at 45cat and 45worlds: 45cat, 45worlds/CD albums, 45worlds/Vinyl albums
• Discogs
• Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies entries (Beware of some wrong and inconsistent information)
• Bennie Hess at the Texas State Historical Association
• Adam Komowski: "Classic Rockabilly" (liner notes), Proper Records (2006)
• Official census records accessed through Ancestry.com
