Post by Rob Durkee on Jan 8, 2013 22:43:53 GMT -5
By ROCKIN' ROBIN
Sammy Johns, who was best known for the 1975 Top 5 hit "Chevy Van," died Friday (January 4, 2013) at a Gastonia, North Carolina, Hospital. He was 66. Early news reports did not include the cause of death. If your memory needs refreshing, here's how "Chevy Van" sounded…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=imN48YKDHsQ
Sadly and eerily, Sammy Johns was born the exact same day as this writer on February 7, 1946, in Charlotte. According to writer Wayne Jancik, Sammy fell in love with the sound of Elvis and was plucking a guitar by the age of 10. He formed a local group called the Devilles in his teens but couldn't muster any hit song success.
Johns' career started to take off when he wrote "Chevy Van" in 1973 but it took a while. The recording stayed on his label's shelf for a year and a half to two years. It was something Johns described as "part of the business."
According to the Charlotte Observer, "Chevy Van" would sell over three million copies and would be dubbed "The Song Of The Seventies" by Rolling Stone magazine. "Chevy Van" would reach #5 on the Cash Box Magazine pop chart and was ranked #72 for 1975. At the height of the song's success in the spring of 1975, "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem noted how Sammy had called at least 100 radio stations thanking them for playing "Chevy Van."
The next year, 1976, Johns was asked to contribute songs to the soundtrack of a Danny DeVito movie, "The Van." However, the LP and the movie both bombed.
Essentially, the song was a fictional story about a man making a cross country trip in his Chevy van that included a chance meeting with a young woman. Eventually, things happened as "we made love in my Chevy van" but it was pretty much a one-night stand. After all, the lyrics mention how "I put her out in a town that was so small, you could throw a rock from end to end…A dirt road main street, she walked off in bare feet."
As Johns told WBT radio personality Keith Larson last May (2012), "This was the era of hippies, of free love and all that. I was sort of a hippie, a conservative hippie."
According to CMT News, Waylon Jennings and Sammy Kershaw also recorded "Chevy Van." Johns, in turn, wrote one of Jennings' hits, "America" and two #1 country hits--"Common Man" (John Conlee) and "Desperado Love" (Conway Twitty).
Johns remained active in the music business, putting out an LP in the early 2000's and singing at the Grand Ole Opry in recent years. He battled drugs and alcohol in his life plus was divorced at least twice. Nevertheless, he told the Charlotte Observer in 2000 that the music business "was painful at times but never boring."
Sammy Johns, who was best known for the 1975 Top 5 hit "Chevy Van," died Friday (January 4, 2013) at a Gastonia, North Carolina, Hospital. He was 66. Early news reports did not include the cause of death. If your memory needs refreshing, here's how "Chevy Van" sounded…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=imN48YKDHsQ
Sadly and eerily, Sammy Johns was born the exact same day as this writer on February 7, 1946, in Charlotte. According to writer Wayne Jancik, Sammy fell in love with the sound of Elvis and was plucking a guitar by the age of 10. He formed a local group called the Devilles in his teens but couldn't muster any hit song success.
Johns' career started to take off when he wrote "Chevy Van" in 1973 but it took a while. The recording stayed on his label's shelf for a year and a half to two years. It was something Johns described as "part of the business."
According to the Charlotte Observer, "Chevy Van" would sell over three million copies and would be dubbed "The Song Of The Seventies" by Rolling Stone magazine. "Chevy Van" would reach #5 on the Cash Box Magazine pop chart and was ranked #72 for 1975. At the height of the song's success in the spring of 1975, "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem noted how Sammy had called at least 100 radio stations thanking them for playing "Chevy Van."
The next year, 1976, Johns was asked to contribute songs to the soundtrack of a Danny DeVito movie, "The Van." However, the LP and the movie both bombed.
Essentially, the song was a fictional story about a man making a cross country trip in his Chevy van that included a chance meeting with a young woman. Eventually, things happened as "we made love in my Chevy van" but it was pretty much a one-night stand. After all, the lyrics mention how "I put her out in a town that was so small, you could throw a rock from end to end…A dirt road main street, she walked off in bare feet."
As Johns told WBT radio personality Keith Larson last May (2012), "This was the era of hippies, of free love and all that. I was sort of a hippie, a conservative hippie."
According to CMT News, Waylon Jennings and Sammy Kershaw also recorded "Chevy Van." Johns, in turn, wrote one of Jennings' hits, "America" and two #1 country hits--"Common Man" (John Conlee) and "Desperado Love" (Conway Twitty).
Johns remained active in the music business, putting out an LP in the early 2000's and singing at the Grand Ole Opry in recent years. He battled drugs and alcohol in his life plus was divorced at least twice. Nevertheless, he told the Charlotte Observer in 2000 that the music business "was painful at times but never boring."
