Larry Bright

Larry Bright entered the world as Julian Ferebee Bright on August 17, 1934, in Norfolk, Virginia. A Navy stepfather gave him the nickname “Little Larry.” The family relocated repeatedly across the South before finally putting down roots in Corpus Christi, Texas, the place where Bright first picked up guitar. Immersed primarily in Southern Texas blues, those sounds shaped every composition and performance that followed. After a short Navy enlistment in Southern California that ended with a Section 8 discharge, he quickly earned notice as a fiery guitarist and an eccentric stage presence. Club gigs around town, among them appearances at the Sea Witch, led producer Joe Saraceno—known for his work with the Ventures and the Marketts—to discover him in 1959 and book time at Western Recorders. Inside the studio Bright fashioned his own “mojo song,” titled “Mojo Workout,” after recalling Muddy Waters’ track whose actual name he could not recall. Once Tide Records, a local Black-owned imprint, acquired the master, the single received saturation airplay on KGFJ, Los Angeles’s leading R&B outlet. Station disc jockey Jim Randolph, assuming Bright was Black, championed the record aggressively. By June 1960 the song had reached number one on the Black music charts and scraped onto the Hot 100 at position 90. When Tide withheld royalty advances intended for a new suit ahead of an American Bandstand slot, Bright inked a fresh deal with Rendezvous Records. Tide promptly sued and reclaimed the tapes for several sides; Rendezvous nevertheless issued the “Twinkie Lee” single under the pseudonym Pete Roberts. Bright stayed with Tide long enough to cut further singles such as “Bloodhound,” “One Ugly Child”—later revived by the Downliners Sect—and a standout reading of Andre Williams’ “Bacon Fat.” Tide then assigned his contract to Del-Fi Records, already managing national distribution. Del-Fi head Bob Keane steered him toward the 1963 surf craze, resulting in surf and hot-rod instrumentals, Johnny Rivers-styled teen rock, and the Goffin-King dance track “When I Did the Mashed Potatoes with You.” Bright stayed visible on the Sunset Strip and joined an otherwise all-Black package tour fronted by Chuck Berry as its sole white blues act. Subsequent collaborations included work with Lou Rawls and Roy Clark, plus an eccentric rapport with Elvis Presley, who considered hiring him as guitarist before the arrangement collapsed over Bright’s drinking. Poor business decisions, legal troubles, and alcohol-driven volatility kept him largely overlooked. In 1995 Del-Fi assembled most of the singles on the anthology Shake That Thing!