What Ever Happened to the Rocky Fellers?

I was checking the tweets of the people I follow when I saw an interesting tweet of  comedian Gabe Mercado about a band named the Rocky Fellers,  an all Filipino Family musical group that hit the US Billboard charts in the 1960’s predating The Jackson 5.  That’s dope man, we were like awesome back in the 60’s, who would have thought. I am not a musicologist so I am not familiar with this piece of musical history, so if you’re like me this is what I got from the ever reliable Wikipedia about them:

The Rocky Fellers were discovered as a pop/rock band in the 1960s by Stanley Kahn and signed to Scepter Records. The group was composed of four Filipino brothers: Tony, Junior, Eddie, and Albert Maligmat, and their father, Doroteo “Moro” Maligmat.^[1] They had ahit single called “Killer Joe“, written by Bert Russell and Bob Elgin in 1963. The song was inspired by famed dance instructor and “King of the Discotheque,” Killer Joe Piro. It has many similarities to the chorus of the Mickey and Sylvia hit, “Love is Strange.”^[2]

“Killer Joe” reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1963. They followed up with another Bob Elgin song called “Like the Big Guys Do”. The Rocky Fellers faded quickly from the music scene in the mid-1960s, due primarily to the arriving British Invasion bands.

They even had a guest appearance on “The Jack Benny Show”

And if you wanna listen to “Killer Joe” which cracked the 16th spot on Billboard Hot 100, here it is:

It is just sad that they disappeared from the pop music scene when the Brits arrived. Hope any of the news magazine shows would feature them and show us what happened to the group after their 15 minutes of fame (paging Rated K, Mel and Joey and Kapuso Mo Jessica Soho).

Till my next rant. Peace. 🙂

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