Bobby Lewis

Bobby Lewis stands among those gifted entertainers whose fame rests almost entirely on one colossal success, the 1961 smash “Tossin’ and Turnin’.” Issued in the first months of that year, the track dominated the listings for twenty-three weeks and reached the summit of both the pop and R&B rankings. Although Lewis scored additional successes, most notably a Top Ten sequel titled “One Track Mind,” and had already logged years in the business, that single composition ultimately defined his public identity.

Orphaned early, Lewis fled his foster placement at fourteen and found work on the carnival circuit before settling into a vocalist’s chair with the Leo Hines Orchestra in Indianapolis. Throughout the 1950s he performed in modest clubs and theaters, waxed “Mumbles Blues” for Spotlight at the decade’s outset, spent time on Mercury’s roster, and formed a brief association with Nat Tarnopol, the same manager who guided Jackie Wilson.

While playing the Apollo Theater in New York during the closing months of 1960, Lewis visited the Manhattan headquarters of the modest independent Beltone Records and was persuaded to cut a number written by fellow Apollo performer Ritchie Adams. Released as “Tossin’ and Turnin’” at year’s end, the record detonated commercially in 1961; Beltone responded by issuing Lewis’s first album—the only occasion the label ever extended that courtesy. No later single approached the three-million-copy mark of the original hit, and by late 1962 Lewis’s momentum had evaporated. Beltone itself collapsed the following year. A modest later entry, “Stark Raving Mad,” appeared on ABC-Paramount, after which Lewis was relegated, perhaps unjustly, to the ranks of rock-and-roll’s one-hit wonders.