Record #0185: Three Stars / I’ll Never Change– TOMMY DEE with CAROL KAY & THE TEEN-AIRES

Crest 1057 (original) USA, Mar. 1959
Words & Music by:  Side A – Tommy Dee; Side B – Dale Fitzsimmons, Dorothea Hahn
Musicians:  Tommy Dee (spoken vocals on side A), Carol Kaye (vocals and bass or guitar), others unknown
Recording sessions: Hollywood, CA, Feb. 1959
Highest chart positions:  US #11

This was recorded just days after Feb. 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Iowa.

Carol Kay(e) is the star musician of this record. She’s had an outstanding career. She had also played guitar on Richie Valens’ “La Bamba”.

This was Tommy “Dee” Donaldson’s only hit record as an artist. He later became a producer, promoter and a record company executive in Nashville, TN. In 1964 he made an uncretited appearance as a singer in a B horror film “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?”. Carol Kaye appears in the same movie as an entertainer.

Eddie Cochran made the first recording of “Three Stars” on Feb. 5, 1959, but it wasn’t released until 1966 (Liberty 10249, UK).

Don McLean also remembered the day of the plane crash in his song “American Pie” in 1971.

List price:  Very Good + is $12.50, Near Mint $25; stereo release is NM $50.