Thomas David "Tommy" Roe is an American rock and pop singer-songwriter. Best-remembered for his hits "Sheila" and "Dizzy", Roe was "widely perceived as one of the archetypal bubblegum artists of the late 1960s, but cut some pretty decent rockers along the way, especially early in his career,” wrote the AllMusic journalist Bill Dahl.
Biography
Roe was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, where he attended Brown High School. After graduating, he landed a job at General Electric soldering wires. He had a Billboardnumber 1hit in the U.S. and Australia in 1962 with the track "Sheila". A buildup of global sales of "Sheila" meant that the Recording Industry Association of America did not present the gold record until 1969. When "Sheila" became a hit in 1962, ABC-Paramount Records asked him to go on tour to promote the hit. He was reluctant to give up his secure job at GE until ABC-Paramount advanced him $5,000. However, in March 1963, the UK music magazine NME reported that he and Chris Montez had both been upstaged by the Beatles and their fans on a 21-day UK tour. Late that year, Roe scored a Top 10 hit with "Everybody", which reached US number 3 and UK number 9, and "The Folk Singer" written by Merle Kilgore was also popular. Following a more successful tour of the United Kingdom by his friend Roy Orbison, Roe toured there and then moved to England where he lived for several years. In 1964, Roe recorded a song written by Buzz Cason entitled, "Diane From Manchester Square" about a girl who worked at EMI House, when it was based in London's Manchester Square. Sales of this single in the UK were poor, and it failed to chart. During the 1960s, he had several more Top 40 hits, including 1966's number 8 "Sweet Pea" and number 6 "Hooray for Hazel". In 1969, his song "Dizzy" went to number 1 on the UK Singles Chart, number 1 in Canada, as well as number 1 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. This chart-topper sold two million copies by mid-April 1969, giving him his third gold disc award. Roe guest-starred in an episode of the American sitcom Green Acres, titled "The Four of Spades", airing on November 8, 1969. His final Top 10 single, a track co-written with Freddy Weller, titled "Jam Up and Jelly Tight", became his fourth gold record, peaking at number 8 in the U.S. and number 5 in Canada. Although his style of music declined in popularity with the 1970s mass market, Roe maintained a following and continued to perform at a variety of concert venues, sometimes with 1960s nostalgia rock and rollers such as Freddy Cannon and Bobby Vee. He recorded numerous singles in the late 1970s and 1980s aimed at the country music market. In 1986, Roe was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Roe's autobiography, originally published in 2016, named From Cabbagetown to Tinseltown and places in between, was co-written with Michael Robert Krikorian. On February 7, 2018, Roe officially announced his retirement on his Facebook page with this statement: On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Tommy Roe among hundreds of artists whose material reportedly was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
The Beatles' bootleg album Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962, which was recorded in Hamburg in 1962, shortly before they became an international phenomenon, included a version of "Sheila".
"Sweet Pea" is sampled in the song "Lyte As A Rock", appearing on the 1988 album Lyte As A Rock by American rapper MC Lyte.
