July 18, 1966: The Death of Bobby Fuller

Left to right: DeWayne Quirico, Bobby Fuller, Randy Fuller, Jim Reese

July 18, 1966: With his 1st big hit still on the charts, and another one coming up, Bobby Fuller is found dead in his car in Los Angeles. He was only 23, just a little older than his fellow West Texan, Buddy Holly, whom he tried hard to copy, was.

Robert Gaston Fuller was born on October 22, 1942 outside Houston in Baytown, Texas. Along with his family, including his brother Randy, he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and then, in 1956, to El Paso, Texas. In high school, he began forming bands, with Randy on bass guitar as the only constant. Basically, they copied Holly's style, down to Bobby playing the Fender Stratocaster, which Holly had made famous, and even going to Norman Petty's recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico, where Holly had recorded with The Crickets.

In 1964, the Fuller brothers moved to Los Angeles, and formed The Bobby Fuller Four, with rhythm guitarist Jim Reese and drummer DeWayne Quirico. They signed with Mustang Records, and were produced by Bob Keane, who had produced Ritchie Valens, who had died in the same 1959 plane crash as Holly.

Their first album was released in November 1965: KRLA King of the Wheels, with a title track about a hot rod that became a mascot for a Los Angeles radio station, at 1110 AM. (It was a Top 40 station from 1959 to 1977, and is now a Christian talk station with the call letters KWVE.) KRLA played the single "Let Her Dance" enough to make it a regional hit, but that's as far as they got.

In 1958, Sonny Curtis wrote "I Fought the Law," and he recorded it in 1959 when he joined the Crickets, after Buddy Holly left them. The song was included on their 1960 album In Style with the Crickets, but received very little airplay. The Fuller Four recorded it in 1964, but their original version didn't get very far, either. But they recorded it again with Keane, releasing it in October 1965, and it reached Number 9 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in February 1966.

The group subsequently recorded an album titled I Fought the Law, which included the title track and "Let Her Dance," releasing it in February. Quirico left the group shortly thereafter, and was replaced by Dalton Powell.

They recorded another Crickets song, this one written and sung by Holly, "Love's Made a Fool of You." Like a lot of acts in the 1960s, they copied the formula that made them hits: It had a sound very similar to "I Fought the Law." As The Four Tops had recently put it, "It's the Same Old Song." Sometimes, as with that Tops song, the formula worked; others, it didn't: "Love's Made a Fool of You" only reached Number 26. They released one more single, "The Magic Touch," but it wasn't a hit at all.

They played both hits on Hollywood a Go Go, a local TV show on independent Los Angeles station KHJ-Channel 9. (That channel became KCAL in 1989, and has been a CBS affiliate since 2002.) They also backed Nancy Sinatra on 2 songs in the film The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, a comedy that was an attempt to combine several film trends of the era: Beach, horror, and biker movies. It was released on April 6, and, despite starring Tommy Kirk and Deborah Whalley, and also having horror icon Boris Karloff and, in one of his last films, former Sherlock Holmes Basil Rathbone, it flopped.

Things went from bad to worse for the band: In July, Reese received a draft notice. Knowing he wouldn't need it, he decided to sell his sports car, a Jaguar XKE, to Bobby at the band's next meeting, on July 18. And Powell had decided that, at that meeting, to announce that he was leaving the band, to return home and support his family.

That meeting took place, but Bobby didn't show up for it. His body was found beaten inside his car parked just outside of his Hollywood home. Evidence suggests that he had ingested gasoline. Initially, these details were not released to the public.

The Los Angeles medical examiner could not reach a conclusion, checking the boxes for "accident" and "suicide," but putting question marks next to each. The police officially ruled it a suicide. Randy and Powell went on record as saying they didn't believe that. Powell, in particular, believed Bobby was incapable of suicide. Speculation arose that he was killed by the Mob, because he'd taken a hitman's girlfriend.

We may never know the truth. Those who have tried, well, in a way, they, too, have fought the law, and the law has, thus far, won. The name of the alleged hitman and the girlfriend have been lost to history.

Bobby Fuller's name is remembered. And "I Fought the Law" remains one of the all-time rock and roll classics. The Clash had a hit with it in their native Britain, although it didn't make the U.S. charts. It's also been recorded by, among others, Hank Williams Jr., the Dead Kennedys, Status Quo and Green Day.

Randy Fuller was convinced by DeWayne Quirico to continue his musical career. He formed a new band, naming it The Randy Fuller Four, but had no hits. He occasionally reunited with other members of the band. In 2015, Fuller collaborated with Miriam Linna, drummer for the punk band The Cramps, and later a rock historian, to write I Fought the Law: The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller, the first authorized biography of Bobby and his band. Quirico also remained active as a session drummer, and sometimes toured with Randy.

Jim Reese and Dalton Powell went back to Texas, and formed a band named Murphy's Law -- perhaps appropriate, given what had happened to their previous band: "Murphy's Law" is a cliché that says, "Anything that can go wrong, will." After a few years, that band broke up, and Powell played in a series of bands. Reese stayed out of the spotlight.

On October 26, 1991, after playing a round of golf, Jim Reese suffered a heart attack, and died at the age of 54. As of July 18, 2022, Randy Fuller, DeWayne Quirico and Dalton Powell are still alive.

UPDATE: Randy Fuller died on May 16, 2024. He was 80.

*

July 18, 1966 was a Monday. Dan O'Brien, winner of the Gold Medal in the decathlon at the 1996 Olympics, was born.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-4 at Metropolitan Stadium Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Al Downing and Jim "Mudcat" Grant started, but the Yankees scored 3 runs each in the 7th and the 8th, so the winning pitcher was Hal Reniff, and the losing pitcher was Pete Cimino. Héctor López hit a home run. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris each appeared as a pinch-hitter, and had RBI hits. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run for the Twins.

* The New York Mets swept a doubleheader from the Houston Astros, 4-1 and 6-3 at Shea Stadium. 

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Larry Jackson pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Sandy Koufax.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-8 at Atlanta Stadium (later renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron went 1-for-4. Pete Rose went 1-for-5.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Willie Mays went 1-for-4. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the California Angels, 6-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Frank Robinson and Boog Powell hit home runs. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Tim McCarver and Mike Shannon hit home runs. Byron Browne hit 2 homers and had 5 RBIs for the Cubs. Ernie Banks went 2-for-3.

* And the Boston Red Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Athletics and the Washington Senators were not scheduled.