From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Wed Jul 10, 2002  1:12 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Gene Simmons
 
GENE SIMMONS

Born 10 July 1933 (?), Tupelo, Mississippi

Rockabilly singer / songwriter.
Tupelo's second most famous native was born on July 10, but the year
is open to question. Gene himself says 1937, but 1933 or 1932 might
be better bets. As early as 1947, the Simmons brothers , Gene and
Carl, had secured a spot on local radio station WELO, playing every
Saturday morning. Elvis was hanging around WELO then and though
he left Tupelo in 1948, he remembered Gene well enough to recommend
him to Sam Phillips in 1955. Gene and his little hillbilly band went to
Memphis to audition for Sun. "Why don't you take your fiddle and
mandolin and wrap 'em around a tree, and come back with a hot guitar",
advised Phillips. So they did. Gene recorded regularly at Sun between
1955 and 1958, but just one single hit the market ("Drinkin' Wine" / "I Done
Told You"). The two tracks had been recorded in January 1957, but were
not released until April 1958, by which time Gene had quit the label.
He moved to Memphis in 1958 and the next year he took his music
across town to Hi Records. His first recordings for that label ("Goin'
Back to Memphis" among them) were leased to Chess. Success
finally came in 1964 with a remake of Johnny Fuller's "Haunted House"
(#11 pop). The follow-up, "The Dodo", reached # 83 on the Billboard
charts, but it would be Gene's chart swansong. To chart statisticians
he is a one-hit wonder.
In the 1980's he moved to Nashville and started writing country songs.
Simmons managed to keep at least a toehold in music even when he
was working in construction. That persistence paid off when his song
"Indian Outlaw" became a million-selling country hit for Tim McGraw
in 1994. He still works in music publishing.

Website: http://www.countrymusicplanet.com/gene.htm
For a 1971 interview with Gene see: http://members.aol.com/Zeeuw1/simmons.htm

His Sun recordings have been reissued, mostly by Charly, on scattered
compilations. (See also Terry Gordon's "Rockin' Country Style" website.)
The year 2001 saw the release of "Haunted House : The Complete
Jumpin' Gene Simmons" on Hi HEXD 53 (2 CD's).