Biography
In 1963 the Deuce Coupes placed two albums on the market, Shut Downs via Crown Records and Hotrodder's Choice via Del-Fi Records. Although both collections traded in the hot-rod songs and instrumentals then in vogue, they originated with entirely separate ensembles that happened to share the same moniker. The Del-Fi edition evolved directly from the Avantis, the band launched by siblings Lolly Vegas and Pat Vegas, who later achieved renown in the 1970s fronting Redbone. Recording Hotrodder's Choice under the Deuce Coupes banner, the pair enlisted an elite circle of Los Angeles studio musicians that included Glen Campbell, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, and Leon Russell. Once the hot-rod craze collapsed by 1965, the Vegas brothers abandoned the Deuce Coupes identity and pursued fresh projects. The Crown edition, by contrast, consisted of anonymous session musicians hastily assembled to ride the drag-strip wave. Because Crown functioned as the cut-rate subsidiary of the Bihari brothers—Saul and Jules, who also operated the Modern and RPM imprints—Shut Downs was conceived merely as an opportunistic cash grab, yet the disc still contains passages of genuine merit. Overlap between the two acts rarely caused problems, given that neither achieved substantial commercial traction. Selections from the Vegas-led incarnation continue to surface on surf and hot-rod anthologies, most notably “Nite Prowler,” which later appeared on the Home Alone 3 soundtrack.
Albums