In 1959, Earl Palmer, René Hall, and Plas Johnson, all African American musicians from Louisiana, were the house band at Rendezvous Records.
Because the session musicians all had other studio commitments, a teen band from Ada, Oklahoma, who had played no part in the recording, was recruited to handle promotion and public appearances.
[4][5] Follow-up records "Boogie Woogie", with Freeman's tack piano double tracked, and "Caravan", were less successful, and Rendezvous seemed to lose interest in B. Bumble and the Stingers.
Fowley then secured the copyright to an arrangement of the march from Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, and took this to local entrepreneur and pianist H. B. Barnum, who recorded it under the name "Jack B. Nimble and the Quicks" on the small Del Rio label.
In his place, guitarist and arranger René Hall rushed pianist Al Hazan into the Rendezvous office, which was rigged up as an improvised studio.
[1] Del Rio struck a deal with Randy Wood of Dot Records and re-released what they were now calling "(The Original) Nut Rocker" by Jack B. Nimble and the Quicks, but it was not a hit.
[3] Such was "Nut Rocker"'s popularity in Britain that a touring group, with Hazan and R. C. Gamble, was flown over in October 1962 to promote the follow-up, "Apple Knocker", based on Rossini's William Tell Overture.