Tommy Roe

Thomas David Roe (born May 9, 1942) is an American rock and pop singer-songwriter.

Best-remembered for his hits "Sheila" (1962), "Sweet Pea" (1966) and "Dizzy" (1969), Roe was "widely perceived as one of the archetypal bubblegum artists of the late 1960s, but cut some pretty decent rockers along the way, especially early in his career," wrote the AllMusic journalist Bill Dahl.

Roe was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, where he attended Brown High School. After graduating, he landed a job at General Electric soldering wires.

Tommy Roe first recorded his original song "Sheila" in 1960 for Jud Phillips's Judd label. "I wrote this poem for a girl I had a crush on in high school, and her name was Freda," recalled Roe in 2015. " 'Son, I like that song but we gotta do somethin' about that title.' So he sent me home and Aunt Sheila was visiting that weekend. The rest is history!" The Judd single, misspelled "Shelia" and credited to "Tommy Roe and the Satins," is simpler than the more famous hit, with a standard lead vocal, rhythm combo, and backing chorus. It was a regional hit but did not chart nationally.

Roe re-recorded the song for ABC-Paramount in 1962, with a new hook: an insistent drum paradiddle modeled on the 1957 hit "Peggy Sue". Roe's slight Southern accent and his interpolation of a hiccup in the vocal invited comparisons with Buddy Holly.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.