Ivor Fisher With The Satellites - Lookie, Lookie, Lookie (1960)

(Ronnie Smith - Carl Bunch - Norman Petty )
 New Zealand

Single on Viking February 1960 by Paul “Ivor” Fisher, founding member of popular rock’n’roll band The Satellites, based in Hamilton in New Zealand’s Waikato region, location of a thriving late-50s to early-60s rockn’roll scene.

From the mid-60s Fisher worked in Australia for four years, reverting to Paul Fisher for appearances at clubs and on TV. After returning to New Zealand in 1968 he was signed to HMV and had his own TV show Just Paul.

See also The Reataz With The Satellites – Daddy Cool (1960)

Sources, further reading: 1. Paul ‘Ivor’ Fisher at Bruce Sergent’s NZ music site. 2. Andrew Schmidt, Early Waikato and Hamilton rock and roll at AudioCulture | Iwi Waiata.

Ronnie Smith - Lookie, Lookie, Lookie (1959)

(Ronnie Smith - Carl Bunch - Norman Petty )
 USA

B-side on Brunswick June 1959 with A Tiny Kiss on the A-side. Recorded at Norman Petty’s studios in Clovis NM with vocal backing group The Roses.

Ronnie Smith (c.1938-1962) was a singer and disc jockey in Odessa, Texas where he was in local band The Poor Boys.

---

Ronnie Smith and the Winter Dance Party tour
In February 1959 Smith was called in to appear on the last leg of the ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour. Headliner Buddy Holly’s plane had crashed en route to Fargo ND, killing Holly and the pilot along with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. A fourth star of the tour, Dion DiMucci, had decided to travel by road.

As promoters scrambled to keep the tour going, unknown singer Bobby Vee, aged 15, put together a band billed as The Shadows and famously stepped up to fill out the lineup in Moorhead MN, adjacent to Fargo.

By the time of the West Des Moines IO show two days later, Ronnie Smith had flown in to sing with Buddy Holly’s touring band of Tommy Allsup, Waylon Jennings and Carl Bunch for the rest of the tour.*

Carl Bunch was the drummer from Smith’s Odessa band The Poor Boys and a co-writer of Lookie, Lookie, Lookie. When Buddy Holly’s plane went down, Bunch had been temporarily out of action, hospitalised with frostbite.

---

… Smith was a charismatic presence onstage. “Ronnie Smith and the Poor Boys were bigger than Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings in West Texas,” [Carl] Bunch says. “That’s because of Ronnie.” Smith’s arrival was a shot in the arm for a shattered band.

Dion remembers Smith’s debut performance at the Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines. “He did this Presley imitation. He was such a good-looking kid. He was terrific.”

Ronnie Smith joins the Winter Dance Party Tour, from Larry Lehmer, The day the music died (2004) p. 124

The third co-writer of Lookie, Lookie, Lookie is Norman Petty, the legendary producer-songwriter-studio owner who had been a crucial figure in Buddy Holly’s success.

* The touring band was billed as The Crickets, but constant members of the original Crickets, Jerry Allison and Joe B. Mauldin, were by this time independent of Buddy Holly. They were recording as The Crickets in their own right with vocalist Earl Sinks, joined by Sonny Curtis who had recorded with Holly before The Crickets (he wrote Rock Around With Ollie Vee).

---

Selected sources, further reading:
1. Philip Norman, Buddy: the biography (1997 edition), pp. 362 and 368. (digitised at Internet Archive; free registration needed).
2. Dave Laing, Buddy Holly (2010), p.75 (Internet Archive, free registration needed).
3. Alan Mann, Ronnie Smith in The A-Z of Buddy Holly (1996), p. 177, (Internet Archive)
4. Carl Bunch: detailed article at Drummer Cafe.
5. The Carl Bunch article at Wikipedia is detailed and properly footnoted.
6. Ronnie Smith at Rockin’ Country Style.

Essential reading: For more context and details about Ronnie Smith and the other members of Winter Dance Party touring band, see Larry Lehmer, The day the music died: the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens (2004).