Louisiana Music Hall of Fame

John Fred wrote his name on a very short list of Baton Rougeans back in January of 1968 when a song he recorded hit the top of the Billboard chart—replacing The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye” with his “Judy In Disguise.” The number of Baton Rouge talents who have hit No. 1 can be counted on one hand—with fingers left over.

So what does a guy like Fred do? Try for an encore 30 years later. His latest effort is just out on the Club Louisianne Music label, I Miss Ya’ll (The Unreleased Masters). It marks a seven year hiatus from any recording release by Fred and a lot longer since a solo effort.

“I haven’t had a record out since 1977,” he said. In 1992, Fred joined forces with fellow Louisiana music legends Joe Stampley and G.G. Shinn to form the Louisiana Boys. After a sidetrack led him to a vice president’s spot at Cyril Vetter’s Record Company of the South, Fred returned to performing in 1983.

“And I’ve been playing ever since then,” he said.

The road to topping the Billboard chart began for Fred at 16, when he recorded “Shirley,” which became a national hit and sent the young recording star to No. 82 on Billboard. Along the way, Fred recorded “Up and Down,” which held the No. 1 spot in New Orleans for eight weeks. Both were done “with a very small record company,” Paula Records.

“We were just trying to cut hit records,” Fred said. “That’s all we were trying to do.” The next song he released was “Agnes English,” a quirky pop rock tune that broke into the Top 40.

“It was kind of a cult following kind of song,” he said. “I’ll never forget the first time I met Frank Zappa. All he wanted to do was to talk about ‘Agnes English,’ which freaked me out. He loved the song.”

Fred said “Agnes” cleared the way for the success of “Judy.”

“What ‘Agnes English’ did was to set up ‘Judy In Disguise,’ which was our next record,” he said, adding the song got him and his band, The Playboys, lots of airplay in markets they had previously been unable to break into—the East Coast and middle America. “We were riding the recognition of ‘Agnes English’ and I think it really helped ‘Judy’ a whole lot.”

“Although I have to say this: ‘Judy In Disguise’ just took off,” Fred continued. “I don’t think anybody made that song a hit. It was just at the right time. It was what was happening and it just took off.”

He said he knew it was a hit when a Cleveland disc jockey told him he’d been approached by representatives of three major labels—Atlantic, RCA and Capitol—all saying “Man—you gotta buy this record,” Fred recalled. “They (the labels) had nothing to do with it—no involvement. They just said this is a hit record.”

Fred has no misconceptions about what his claim to fame is.

“People will never forget me because of the song, ‘Judy In Disguise,’ I mean, everybody knows ‘Judy In Disguise,’” he said. “They may not know who John Fred is, but they know ‘Judy.’”“I got the name recognition from ‘Judy In Disguise,’ which still gets played every day on the radio.” And that’s just one of the places you can hear the smash hit single which has sold over five million copies in one form or another over the 30 years since its release.

“Judy In Disguise” has been featured in probably 20 movies; it’s included on almost 40 hit record compilations; it’s been in five or six commercials, Fred said. “It’s just been a monster. The song is all over the world. I was very fortunate to have that song.”

The hit single even was performed recently by a well known television personality, although with some slight alterations to the lyrics.

“My mailman stopped me the other day to tell me that Rosie O’Donnell was singing it on her show recently, but she was singing ‘Judy in the sky,’” Fred said, then chuckled. The song was written as a take-off on The Beatles mega-hit “Lucy in the Sky.”

“Yes, that song has been very good to me,” he said.

Fred expects his past success will make promoting his latest project, I Miss Ya’ll (The Unreleased Masters), a little easier.

“I think it helps,” he said. “I think it helps a whole lot compared to being a complete unknown, you know, somebody just starting out…A lot of people want to listen to the new CD just to see what you’re up to—what you’re doing now.”

“Although it’s a lot harder with radio airplay now because there’s so much specializing in the different types of music that people play,” Fred continued. “Back in the 60s, it was pretty much Top 40 and that was it.”

“It’s changed a little since then, I think,” he said. “I think what you’ve really got to do now is to rely more on the print media…just making the people aware that the CD is available because you’re going to get a little bit of airplay but not the kind of airplay you need to get.”

“What I do is to try to get airplay where I can get airplay on stations that are still playing Louisiana music and do as many interviews as I can with TV stations, newspapers, magazines—whatever it takes,” Fred said.

The new album contains material recorded over a 20-year span—from 1971 to 1991—and represents the culmination of a number of producers’ efforts to get Fred to compile some of his never-released material.

“I never took them too seriously,” Fred said. “The offers were never really that good.”

That is, until Johnny Palazzotto, an old friend, approached him about it. Fred took about 25 previously unreleased songs to Palazzotto’s Main Street Studio. “He picked out 15 of them that he really, really liked,” he said.

His favorite tracks on the album are, without a doubt, the two versions of “I Miss Ya’ll,” written by one of Fred’s favorite people, Butch Hornsby. “I always loved the song,” Fred said. “I loved it so much I cut it twice—I’ve got two different versions on the album.”

Some of I Miss Ya’ll was recorded at the old Deep South Recording Studio on Government Street and some at the new studio on Jefferson Highway. “I recorded some of the songs at J.D. Miller’s studio in Crowley and some of the stuff we touched up at Main Street Studio.”

“I’ve had good response to the new album,” he said. “All you can do is go out there and do the best that you can to promote it.” Having done a lot of the promo work for the Louisiana Boys, it’s a role Fred is comfortable with.

Part of the good response, Fred said, is the amount of airplay “I Miss Ya’ll” is getting.“The album is really new, so it’s hard to tell what cut is going to do well, but right now, ‘I Miss Ya’ll’ is getting the most play,” although another track, “Radio,” is also doing well. A disc jockey in Marksville called him recently to say, “I got 35 calls on that song ‘Radio.’ People really like it.”“A lot of disc jockeys are playing ‘Radio,’ and then the rest of them are playing ‘I Miss Ya’ll,’ the first cut of it on the album,” Fred said.Fred said when he was a youth in Baton Rouge, the radio was a constant companion.“I grew up with the radio,” he said. “I mean, the radio was always right there by my side—it was kinda like my best friend. So I sat down one day and wrote a song about the radio.”

A new album, still in the works, lights up Fred’s eyes when he talks about it. He’s been working on the project for about four years and he expects it to be released early next year. The album’s working title is That’s What I Like About The South.

“It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done—but we’ll have to do that interview on another day,” he said, then continued to talk about it. The recording is being done at Barry Hymel’s Bad Monkey Audio Laboratory and “we did a lot of recording out at Harold Cowart’s Bluff Road Recording.”

“It’s by far the best I’ve ever done.”

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