Tommy roe where is he now

He also looks back on a lifetime of being a hit artist and performing his music to fans worldwide. Can you talk about your early years growing up and becoming a musician? Tommy Roe : I grew up in Cabbagetown, which is a section of Atlanta.

It was a real working class neighborhood, just on the edge of Atlanta. When I was around 14, I started writing poems, and I wrote a poem for a girl named Frida that I had a crush on laughs. And around the same time, my dad taught me three chords on the guitar. So I thought…if I could put some music to these poems, I could become a songwriter. When I was 20, I had an opportunity to audition for a record producer. It became my first number one hit, and it launched my career.

How did the term Bubblegum come into music? Those songs were considered rockabilly, and I was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame during that period. Then in , I joined the Army Reserve, and for a whole year I was kind of out of the loop.

I noticed a lot of American artists were being pushed off the Billboard charts, and were being replaced by these British acts. Is that why you reinvented yourself to a degree? After the Beatles, so many British acts came to America and just pushed the American acts off the Billboard charts. How am I going to survive all these British acts? The bubblegum thing was fresh and new and fit right in with everything because no one else was doing it at the time. Did you find it a problem being called that?

I did at the time. I was in my mids, and my ego was on my sleeve and a little derogatory remark about my music back then would really set me off. So, in the beginning, I resented it, but the interesting thing was that the Beatles were really the first bubblegum artists. If you think about it, look at their audience in Washington and so on. We were all playing to the same audience, but my sound was so different that the DJs just had tag it with something, and bubblegum was what they tagged me with.

I agree. It does. Not really. I was in the Army, and I was trying to come up with something different. Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now. View all similar artists. View all trending tracks. Loading player…. Scrobble from Spotify? Connect to Spotify Dismiss. Search Search.