Born on 28 October 1929 in Houston, Texas, Mitchell Torok took up the guitar at twelve and later pursued a career as a singer-songwriter. While still enrolled in college during 1953, he witnessed Jim Reeves deliver a chart-topping rendition on the Abbott label of his composition “Mexican Joe,” which ascended to number one across every survey; unaware of Reeves at the time, Torok had envisioned the number going instead to Hank Snow, a hope realized the following year when his “My Arabian Baby” appeared as the flipside of Snow’s hit “I Don’t Hurt Anymore.” The same year Torok himself joined the Abbott roster and scored simultaneous number-one placements on Billboard’s country and jukebox tallies with “Caribbean,” a track that logged twenty-four weeks on the country list and reached the top five of both the Best Sellers and Jockey charts. He soon became a regular on KWKH Shreveport’s Louisiana Hayride.
In 1954 Torok notched a number-nine country entry with the novelty “Hootchy Kootchy Henry (From Hawaii),” and between 1956 and 1957 he cracked the British pop listings with “When Mexico Gave Up The Rhumba” and “Red Light, Green Light,” prompting a 1957 UK tour. Additional sides appeared on Mercury, RCA, and Starday, yet his final American chart appearance came in 1967 when Reprise released “Instant Love.”
Torok persisted as a writer, most often collaborating with his wife—credited variously as Gayle Jones or Ramona Redd—whose joint efforts found their way to Skeeter Davis, Kitty Wells, Glen Campbell, and Dean Martin. Hank Snow included “The Mysterious Lady From Martinique” on one of his final RCA albums, while Vernon Oxford took “Redneck” into the top twenty in 1976. Joining Cedarwood Music in the late 1970s, Torok contributed to a recorded chronicle spanning Nashville’s history from 1780 to 1980. An accomplished visual artist as well, he created a mural that remains on view at the Elvis Presley Museum in Nashville.
