From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Mon Jun 24, 2002  1:06 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Joey Castle
 
JOEY CASTLE

Born Joseph Fohn Castaldo, 24 June 1942, The Bronx, New York City
Died 15 December 1978, New York City

Joey Castle was like a lot of the kids who came up in the wake of Elvis
Presley, trying to sound like him and not making it, but with a difference -
Castle left behind a dozen or so records that are well worth hearing.
Among the ranks of Elvis Presley sound-alikes, there are the imitators who
came along in the wake of his death in 1977 and then there are those who
came to the sound a little more honestly, back in the formative days of rock
& roll. Joey Castle, aka Cliff Rivers, fits into the latter category - he was
even signed to RCA. And he never had the chance to cash in on Elvis' death
as a sound-alike artist, succumbing to brain cancer less than 16 months
after the demise of his onetime idol.
Joey was 13 years old when rock & roll broke nationally - the family was a
musical one, his uncle Lee Castle having become famous as a bandleader
in the 1940s, but Joey took to the new music. By the end of 1957, at 15,
he was ready to take the plunge, and a year later his demo tapes landed
him a contract with RCA. His first and only RCA release, "That Ain't Nothing
But Right" b/w "Come a Little Bit Closer Baby", failed to chart, and he was
dropped from the label at the end of the year. He next turned up on the
Headline label with a rockabilly screamer, "Rock And Roll Daddy-O," backed
with the brooding "Wild Love," both extraordinarily effective rockabilly tunes
to
come out of New York City - it didn't sell, but it did become a highly prized
collector's item.
Castle kept performing locally but didn't record again until 1963, when he
hooked up with entrepreneur Sid Prosen, who had previously recorded the
teenaged Simon & Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry. Castle cut a series of sessions
that yielded one single, "True Lips" b/w "Marsha", on Prosen's Thanks label,
credited to "Cliff Rivers" - intentional or not, it was an Elvis homage,
recalling the latter's performance as "Deke Rivers" in "Loving You", as well
as alluding to English rock & roller Cliff Richard. "Marsha" sounded like
Elvis Presley crossed with Del Shannon, while "True Lips" recalled the
Elvis of 1956 in a softer moment. Ironically, it was his best-selling record,
although it never moved more than a few thousand copies, and most of those
in England (where it was released on London American) - too far away to do
Joey Castle/Cliff Rivers any good.
Apart from a handful of unreleased tracks that year and the demos that got
him signed to RCA in the first place, much of Castle's work consisted of
cutting demos for publisher Hill & Range. He made his last single in the
late '60s, still true to his rock & roll roots even amid the changing tastes
of the era. During the 1970s, he re-emerged in a rock & roll/variety act
featuring music and comedy, and put out an album of his own - Castle
evidently had enough of a following locally to perform at least part-time and
sell the album after his shows. He died of cancer at the age of 36.

CD: Joey Castle, Rock & Roll Daddy-O (Bear Family 15560).