Without the Fleetwoods, Nirvana Wouldn't Have Been Possible

...and prove it by heading for the lights of town, hurting me through and through

I’ve always been a sucker for a good song about brokenheartedness, and as a pre-teen slightly before the dawn of the 1960s, I adored the Fleetwoods’ “Mr. Blue”, though it couldn’t have been less rock and roll, and in fact sounded as though it had been recorded in 1941. Young Gary Troxel didn’t sing so much as sigh, and when Gretchen Christopher and Barbara Ellis whoa-oh-oh’ed behind him, I nearly swooned, as I wouldn’t swoon again at a comparable provocation until the Beatles’ ”I’m Only Sleeping”.

Clockwise from top: The Fleetwoods, with Kurt Cobain, whose appeal, try as I might, I was never able to perceive.

The three had met as high school students in Olympia, Washington, which later produced Nirvana. In the beginning, there were only Gretchen Christopher and Barbara Ellis, but then they invited Gary to accompany them on trumpet. After he put his horn away and unleashed his gorgeous gentle tenor, the trio christened themselves "Two Girls and a Guy”, but cooler head later prevailed, as they renamed themselves the Fleetwoods, not after the popular Cadillac model, which wouldn’t be introduced until 1977, but after a local telephone exchange.. There was later a blues band called Fleetwood Mac.

In 1959, they wrote and recorded "Come Softly to Me," a #1 Billboard hit, a few months before “Mr. Blue”, composed by Dewayne L. Blackwell, who was not related in any way, shapre, or form to Elvis enabler Otis Blackwell, and whose later hits included David Frizzell’s "I'm Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home" and, rather less notably, Garth Brooks’ "Friends in Low Places".

One of “Mr. Blue’s principal attractions was the gorgeous little horn phrase Si Zentner, later voted Best Trombonist in Playboy's Jazz Poll, but not in the year that the magazine’s readers voted Karen Carpenter a better drummer than John Bonham. Some musicologists speculate that Si’s horn bit influenced Burt Bacharach, many of whose hits contained very similar adornment. It may be that such giants as Merle Travis and Chet Atkins greatly admired Roy Lanham, but his jazzy noodling in the song’s intro never did a thing for me, except maybe make me bristle with pre-adolescent impatience. Ray was best known for his work with the Sons of the Pioneers, whom I’m not sure I’ve ever heard, but whom Garth Brooks surely did.

The bad news for the Fleetwoods was that Gary had joined the Naval Reserve in 1956. When the Navy summoned him for active duty, the Fleetwoods were effectively kaput. Years later, he was Troxel was spotted working in a plywood plant in Washington, while Ellis managed a trailer park in California and Christopher housewifed and taught modern jazz dance in Washington. I much preferred the Fleetwoods to both Fleetwood Mac and Nirvana.

(That the Fleetwoods were one of my own big influences is evident at the 2:40 mark of my 2001 smash Love Lumbered In, among many others.)