Blue-eyed soul singer Wayne Cochran was born in 1939 in Thomaston,
Georgia. He started his first band in 1955 and was kicked out of high
school for refusing to cut his flamboyant pompadour hairstyle. Cochran
recorded his debut single, "My Little Girl", for the Scottie label in
1959. He went on to record a slew of singles throughout the '60s for
such labels as Gala ("Funny Feeling," "Liza Jane"), Confederate ("Linda
Lu"), Aire ("Cindy Marie"), King ("Little Orphan Annie") and Mercury
("Goin' Back to Miami," which rates as one of his single most
incendiary R&B songs and was later covered by The Blues Brothers).
In the early '60s he wrote and recorded the morbid teen death item
"Last Kiss," which became a huge #2 Billboard pop chart hit for
'J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers'
in 1964. In 1963 he formed his own group called
Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Ryders
("Cochran's Circuit Riders"). The band amassed an enormous following in
the South and Midwest by extensively touring and performing at clubs,
lounges and seedy dives all over the region. Cochran was famous for his
massive white pompadour, outrageous outfits and full-throttle,
raw-throated hoarse-'n'-ragged vocals. The band was the immensely
popular house band at the Miami (FL) club the Barn. 'Jackie Gleason' in
particular was a big fan of Cochran's music and wrote the liner notes
for his 1967 debut album. Cochran and the C.C. Riders appear as
themselves in the biker exploitation flick
Höllenengel und Company (1970). Moreover,
Wayne not only made guest appearances on such TV programs as
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962),
The Merv Griffin Show (1962),
The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956),
The Jackie Gleason Show (1961),
[error],
The Tomorrow Show (1973)
and
The Mike Douglas Show (1961)
but also had straight acting roles on episodes of the TV series
Verrückter wilder Westen (1965)
and The Duke (1979).
Cochran eventually became a born-again Christian and started his own
ministry in 1981. He and the C.C. Riders performed at two reunion shows
in 2001: they did a gig on July 26 in Miami, Florida, and did a second
reunion show on August 1 in Hollywood, Florida. Wayne lived
in Miami, Florida with his wife Monica (who died in February, 2017). Cochran died at age 78 from cancer on November 21, 2017.
