At the Music Box yesterday, we featured some Motown. Today, we move north about two hours to the Saginaw/Bay City area to pick up Question Mark & The Mysterians. Question Mark or ? is Rudy Martinez, from Saginaw. In 1964, he joined up with Bobby Balderrama, Robert Martinez, and Larry Borjas, and became Question Mark & The Mysterians, in Bay City. The Mysterians name came from a 1957 Japanese Sci-Fi film, The Mysterians. Robert & Larry then left for military duty, they were replaced by Eddie Serrato, Frank Lugo & Frank Rodriquez. Working out of the Rodriquez basement, the group built 96 Tears, renaming the unsavory 69 Tears and the other working title, Too Many Teardrops, to 96 Tears because, it flowed so well. The group was ready ... on March 13th, 1966 at Art Shields studio at 405 Raymond Street in Bay City, Michigan, 96 Tears and the flip Midnight Hour were recorded and soon released on the tiny Pa-Go-Go label. 96 Tears immediately went into the rotation at WKNX in Saginaw and WTAC in Flint. It was soon picked up by WKNR in Detroit and CKLW in Windsor. With the popularity of the song, a number of major labels came clamoring to pick up the song for national distribution. Question Mark chose Cameo-Parkway Records because of the color of the label, it was orange and, Question Marks favorite color is orange. 96 Tears was released on Cameo, debuting nationally September 3rd, 1966 ... the week of October 29th, it was the number one song in the country. That November, it was Certified Gold for sales of a million copies.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 12:11:17 +0000
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