Bobby Day: Fort Worth’s Rockin’ Robin

Today is the birthday of Bobby Day. He is 98.

You know the song. It starts with a two-note guitar figure and a sharp little percussion break. Then a voice climbs straight into the sky. “Rockin’ Robin” came out of Fort Worth, Texas — and Bobby Day built it.

Born Robert James Byrd on July 1, 1928, Day grew up in Fort Worth. By his late teens, he had decided music was his ticket out. He moved to Los Angeles around 1947 and landed at Johnny Otis’s Barrelhouse Club. It was one of the great proving grounds of West Coast R&B. By 1950, he had helped form the Hollywood Flames. By 1957, he had also launched a second group, the Satellites. That same year, he wrote “Little Bitty Pretty One” for Thurston Harris — a top-10 Billboard hit.

The Bird That Wouldn’t Quit

But “Rockin’ Robin” in 1958 put Day on the map for good. The single hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the R&B chart. It sold over a million copies and earned a gold disc. Day’s voice had Fort Worth grit underneath. It was warm and deep, with real swagger. It made a novelty bird song feel like genuine rock and roll history.

Then the Dave Clark Five took Day’s “Over and Over” to No. 1 in 1965. And in 1972, the Jackson 5 rerecorded “Rockin’ Robin,” bringing that Fort Worth sound to a whole new generation. He died on July 27, 1990, in Los Angeles. But the bird song never stopped flying.

The Texas State Historical Association calls Day a “rhythm-and-blues pioneer and hitmaker.” That fits. But the real trick Day pulled off was writing songs sturdy enough to outlast him by decades. Only the best songwriters manage that. Fort Worth keeps making them.