From: "Dik de Heer" 
Date: Fri Jul 22, 2005  1:34 am 
Subject: This Is My Story : Jamie Coe  

JAMIE COE

Born George Colovas, 1935, Dearborn, Michigan

A top draw in Detroit rock 'n' roll circles during the Elvis era, Jamie Coe
drew the interest of several record companies over the years without ever
quite achieving the big breakthrough his talents merited.

Born to Greek parents in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Coe got his first
break when Marilyn Bond*, a young music promoter from Garden City,
spotted him performing at a teen dance in Dearborn in late 1958. She took
him into a local studio and cut some demos and also got him a spot on a
local TV show in Flint, Michigan. He was then going by the name of George
Cole and the Marquis. When "A Cavalcade of Stars", a package tour
featuring Bobby Darin and other chart acts came through Detroit in early
1959, Bond inveigled local boy Cole an opening spot. Suitably impressed,
Darin invited Cole and his young manager to his hotel after the show and
offered him a recording contract, changing his name to the snappier sounding
Jamie Coe during the course of the discussions.

Darin was dabbling in record production as a hedge against future career
failure (he had already recorded "Mack the Knife", but it had not yet been
released at that time). Together with a New York song publisher, Joe Csida
of Trinity Music, Darin decided to launch his own label, Addison Records,
with Coe as its principal artist. The Bobby Darin composition "Summertime
Symphony" (which sounds almost as much like "Sweet Little Sixteen" as
"Surfin' USA") was the first of Coe's two 45s for the new label. The second
was "Schoolday Blues" (Addison 15003), released in October 1959. Both
of Jamie's Addison singles were issued in the UK on Parlophone. By late
1959. Darin's career was red-hot with "Mack the Knife", and he told Coe
regretfully that he was too busy to give him enough attention as a manager.
Addison Records turned out to be a short-lived affair, with only six releases.

Marilyn Bond resumed her activities as Coe's manager and got him signed
to ABC-Paramount. Four ABC singles were released in 1960-61, the last
one of which, "How Low Is Low"/"Little Dear, Little Darling" got a British
release on HMV POP 991. Jamie's next stop was at Bigtop Records in
New York City, where his records were produced by Del Shannon's manager,
Harry Balk. In 1963, Coe's revival of Sanford Clark's 1956 hit "The Fool",
stalled just outside the US Hot 100 in the Bubbling Under section. It was
his last UK release, on London HLX 9713. There were further releases on
the Detroit label Enterprise in 1964-65, but by then the Beatles had come
along and spoiled it for Jamie and a lot of his contemporaries.
But no matter, they still loved him in Detroit. Nowadays, Coe owns two
clubs, Jamie's (in Garden City, Michigan) and Jammers (in Livonia, MI) and
performs each Wednesday night at the latter, with his group the Gigolos.

In my opinion, his best records are the two rocking A-sides of the Addison
singles, both produced by Bobby Darin. "Summertime Symphony" was
reissued in 2004 on the Ace comp "Rockin' From Coast to Coast, Vol. 3"
(Ace 985) and most of the information here has been adapted from Rob
Finnis' excellent liner notes for that CD.

For a partial discography see Terry Gordon's website:
http://rcs.law.emory.edu/rcs/artists/c/coe-0700.htm

The CD "A Long Time Ago" (Legends of Music, 29 tracks) is an almost
complete overview of Jamie's recorded output.

* Marilyn Bond is the co-author of the book "The Birth of the Detroit Sound,
1940-1964" (Arcadia Publishing, Chicago, 2002).

Dik