The Cocoas - Flip Your Daddy / Ooooo! Ooooo! (Chesterfield 45-364)
For grizzled old excavators of America's vinyl underground, it sometimes feels as if everything has by now been discovered, documented, filed away, enumerated, and locked up. There are no surprises left, we grumble to ourselves, no lost treasure to be mined, no "great unknowns" still lurking in the shadows anymore.
Thus, it comes as a shock to discover that Rusty McDonald had a second release on Chesterfield. His first release, the great "Dirty Pool" (which we explored in this previous post), is rare and obscure enough, but at least it was issued under his real name. I've never heard or found any indication that he had another release from the same late 1954 session with Maxwell Davis in Los Angeles, but indeed he did. What kept it buried from the view of Rusty's fans was the label's decision to release the single credited to a non-existent group, "The Cocoas" -- probably in late 1955, while McDonald was hosting a country music TV show in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The Cocoas record has been known to serious collectors, it just has never been associated with Rusty McDonald, a name that means nothing to rock and roll enthusiasts. Why the fake band name? We can only speculate. Chesterfield may have thought that a group name would increase sales potential. Rusty may not have wanted his country fans to know that he had made a rock record. But if that's the case, it's hard to explain his first release.
The lyrics to "Flip Your Daddy" and "Ooooo! Ooooo!" are silly and trivial enough, and I'm sure if Rusty had ever been interviewed, he would have dismissed this record with an embarrassed laugh.
Grab a-your lid
Put it on tight
We're gonna rock
With pressure tonight
"Faded Love" this is not. Rusty altered his voice in imitation of Big Joe Turner, but not enough to fool those intimately familiar with his style. The record is saved by a couple of intensely rocking tenor sax solos from Davis. McDonald may not have thought much of the songs, but he surely enjoyed working with such great musicians.