Wayne Cochran

Blue-eyed soul singer Wayne Cochran was born in 1939 in Thomaston, Georgia. He started his first band in 1955 and was kicked out of high school for refusing to cut his flamboyant pompadour hairstyle. Cochran recorded his debut single, "My Little Girl", for the Scottie label in 1959. He went on to record a slew of singles throughout the '60s for such labels as Gala ("Funny Feeling," "Liza Jane"), Confederate ("Linda Lu"), Aire ("Cindy Marie"), King ("Little Orphan Annie") and Mercury ("Goin' Back to Miami," which rates as one of his single most incendiary R&B songs and was later covered by The Blues Brothers). In the early '60s he wrote and recorded the morbid teen death item "Last Kiss," which became a huge #2 Billboard pop chart hit for 'J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers' in 1964. In 1963 he formed his own group called Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Ryders ("Cochran's Circuit Riders"). The band amassed an enormous following in the South and Midwest by extensively touring and performing at