Little Bob and the Lollipops - I Got Loaded

Re-posting this got me to listen to it again - Wow these guys were good and Bob was a really good singer! Can you imagine what it was like in Lafayette when these guys played 6 nights a week!

"Little Bob and the Lollipops
It Was Beautiful
By Gene Tomko

"Ask any musician from the 1960s Southwest Louisiana blues and R&B scene to name the best band that has ever come out of the area and one name gets repeated over and over—Little Bob & the Lollipops. In a land where so many extremely talented musicians emerged, to be remembered so enthusiastically by so many is quite an amazing feat.
At the height of his popularity in the mid-1960s, singer, songwriter, drummer and bandleader Little Bob was Lafayette’s reigning superstar, performing six nights a week and even hosting his own local television show. With a top-notch nine-piece band consisting of some of the area’s finest musicians such as ace saxophonist John Hart and former Excello guitarist Guitar Gable, Little Bob absolutely dominated the area music scene for more than a decade. He also happened to record some of the finest soul music to ever come out of Louisiana, most notably for La Louisianne and Jin Records.

Camille Bob was born on November 7, 1937 in Arnaudville, Louisiana, and was raised just southeast of Opelousas in rural Prairie Laurent. Bob grew up working on the farm but took an early interest in music and started singing in talent shows at school, inspired by Guitar Slim, B.B. King and Count Basie. He acquired his first set of drums by trading a horse for a drum kit and by 1955 was performing with Good Rockin’ Bob [Ed Thomas]. Music provided a good excuse to avoid working in the fields, as childhood friend Roscoe Chenier explains, “He was playing with Good Rockin’ Bob and if the dance was at three, he would tell his mom that it would start at eleven so he wouldn’t have to pick cotton!”

While working with Good Rockin’ Bob at the Moonlight Inn in Opelousas, he left his drums on the bandstand one night and returned to find the bass drum professionally hand-lettered with the words ‘Good Rockin’ Bob featuring Little Bob on drums.’ It was from then on he would be known as Little Bob.

In 1958, Little Bob formed his own group and made his recording debut for Goldband Records. Throughout the next several years he and his top-notch band the Lollipops developed a following that was unrivaled. Singer Bobby Allen recalls, “[Little Bob] came down to the Peppermint Club every Monday night and would play there. It was awesome. [He had] a big band. You had to be there early—I mean early like five or six o’clock in the evening in order to get a seat!”

Lafayette record label La Louisianne signed Little Bob in 1964 and he recorded a string of soul and R&B classics for the label throughout the next several years including Nobody But You, Look Out Mr. Heartache and the b-side party anthem, I Got Loaded, which still remains one of the most requested songs on Southwest Louisiana bandstands to this day.

Little Bob and the Lollipops were continuously hailed as the region’s top band, crisscrossing from New Orleans to Houston, but at the very heart of their success was Little Bob’s magnificent voice. Allen remembers one of the best compliments he’s ever received, which also reveals Little Bob’s confidence in his own talents. “[Bob and I] were talking and he said, ’Well, you know, you can get any musician you want.’ I said, ‘You think so?’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can. You can and I can. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only three singers in Southwest Louisiana.’ I said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah. And I’m one of them.’ I said, ‘Well, who are the other two?’ He said, “Why, you of course—and Johnny Truitt.’”

Little Bob retained his unprecedented popularity through the 1970s but the huge zydeco resurgence of the 1980s made work as an R&B artist increasingly difficult. He made a brief comeback in the 1990s with Back Again for Vidrine Records, reuniting with Gable, Hart and drummer Jockey Etienne, and performed sporadically through the early 2000s.

But due to increasing health issues, Bob retired from performing in 2005 and is currently residing in a nursing home in Opelousas, where he still receives visits from old friends like Jude Taylor and Guitar Gable. Although he recorded many soul and R&B classics during his prime, one in particular remains extra special, as Bob fondly recalls the good old days, “It was beautiful, man. It was beautiful. [We had] three or four [records] you couldn’t beat. But I Got Loaded did it all and we got movin’. We got movin’!” [smiles]
From Living Blues