Clint Miller At A Teenage Dance

Clint Miller

In our complete Johnny Burnette box ('The Train Kept A Rollin' 1955-1964' BCD 16438-IL), we tried to unravel the Bertha Lou saga. It seems as though Johnny wrote or cowrote the song about Dorsey's wife, Bertha, and brought it to Little Richard's songwriter, John Marascalco. According to Marascalco, he released Dorsey's version of Bertha Lou on Kenny Babcock's tiny Surf Records under Dorsey's name in November 1957.

Somewhere along the way, Marascalco acquired the composer credit. The Surf record violated Dorsey's Abbott or Imperial contract, so Babcock and Marascalco took a young singer, Johnny Faircloth (aka Donnie Brooks), and overdubbed his vocals onto Dorsey's tape. ABC tried to buy the Brooks master, and, upon being rebuffed, covered it with Clint Miller.

Asked about the session, Miller remembered Don Costa playing him the record, and telling him to emulate it as closely as possible. Donnie Brooks says that Dick Clark killed both records because he thought lines like "I wanna conjugate with you" were dirty, which they probably were.

Miller's record rose to #79 in early 1958, and more information about him can be found below. Dorsey's original version of Bertha Lou can be found on the Johnny Burnette box.

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