I grew up listening to the music of Bobby Curtola, a Canadian rock ‘n’ roll legend whose hit songs dominated the airwaves in Canada and the United States in the 1960’s and whose concerts in Las Vegas and other major centers around the world, have sold out in the decades which followed. Few artists achieved the star status and the staying power of Bobby Curtola, during a time when the British Invasion swamped North America and in later years, first disco dominated and then heavy metal. My first recollections of the handsome teen idol occurred when I was a child and he appeared on a televised telethon singing, while he was wearing a white cowboy hat. Another early memory was of a relative of mine who told of a date with one of Bobby Curtola’s musicians. Whereas in those days, Paul Anka, another Canadian was considered smooth, it was the charismatic Bobby Curtola who sent the girls hearts a fluttering, much like his good friend Bobby Vinton and another teen idol Bobby Vee. His songs “Fortune Teller,” which was a million seller, “Aladdin,” and “Hitchiker,” were the songs which teens and young adults sang along with, while riding in their cars, spinning their 45’s and LPs and when dancing. It was songs such as “Sandy,” and “Three Rows Over,” which made the girls swoon as they wished for a guy like Bobby who would have a crush on them and who desired to woo them. You can then imagine this editor’s delight when my childhood hero Bobby Curtola graciously accepted our magazine’s invitation for an interview and when I discovered a man who speaks from a place of gratitude about the people who helped him to become a household name in music for so many years, for the friendships he has made, inside and outside the world of entertainment, and most of all for the fans who helped make his dreams come true. The story that will unfold in the following pages is not just about a music icon, it is about someone who young artists today and all of us should look to as a true hero, a role model and a sage. Welcome to the world of Bobby Curtola.

Who could have foreseen that a teenager growing up in an Italian family in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada and who skated on an outdoor skating rink to songs playing from WLOS radio station in Chicago would only a few years later, find himself as the focal point of adoration from loving music fans in Canada and the United States from east coast to west coast? 

 “A girl who remembered me singing at the rink, asked me to sing with a band at a school assembly. She was looking for singers to accompany the band that she had already lined up. I was (on that night) a background singer for a country band. The also let me sing a couple of songs and the kids went crazy at the end of the assembly,” Bobby Curtola recalls, and that marked the beginning of his singing career and briefly fronting a band that later became known as Bobby and the Bobcats.

Today’s artists who are either signed to a music label or have experienced the pitfalls of contracts, which often strip artists of their rights, will salivate at the type of relationship and agreement that Bobby Curtola enjoyed with his managers Basil and Dyer Hurdon who wrote his songs.

“It was the first year of high school and it was September 1959, Basil’s son went to the same school as me and he was in grade twelve. He told his dad about me and before I knew it, I was invited to sing on one side of a record. How this happened I don’t know (he says with gratitude in his voice). So there I was invited up and I got to sing “Hand In Hand With You,” with the Buddy Edwards Trio, They (the Hurdons) pressed it on their own label Tartan Records and they sent it out to all of the deejays. Winnipeg really got on it. Canada was not really well connected in those days and it was all regional areas, regional deejays and regional stations.  Winnipeg played me first and I had the biggest selling record there, up until The Beatles. “Hand In Hand With You,” was the big single from the record. The first record was a shock. The team tore my contract up and they made me a partner in the record company, the publishing company and the touring company. They were kind enough to pay me my royalties too. They were so thrilled that it worked out.”

Bobby Curtola was sixteen years old when he released his debut record, on January 27^th, 1960 and by February of the same year the single “Hand and Hand With You,” and the LP were hot items. In March the soon to be teen idol was asked to appear on stage with Bob Hope in Winnipeg.

“At the end of the song, we had a huge standing ovation and so much so, that Bob (Hope) came to the dressing room, because he wanted to meet this kid. He congratulated me and from that time on, I opened many shows for Bob and he was a great friend,” says Curtola.

The 1962 hit song “Fortune Teller,” changed Bobby Curtola’s life. “Up to that point, people would remember the song and half remember the guy who was singing it. What was different about “Fortune Teller,” was Del-Fi Records and Bob Keane (Ritchie Valens), had seen the action that had happened with us. With “Fortune Teller,” a guy named Red Robinson sent it to some of his pals in Seattle. Red Robinson is one of the famous guys in Canada and he has the profile of a Dick Clark or a “Hound Dog” out of Buffalo. He was fantastic and he still is. He knows more about the music business and he was responsible for bringing Elvis to Canada. He is a wonderful friend and he did so many wonderful things for my career. Red’s friends in Seattle played “Fortune Teller,” and they sent it to Hawaii. It started going up the charts without any records, so we started shipping records from Canada to Hawaii. The distributors started selling them like crazy. As a result of the chart efforts, Del-Fi Records got hold of Bob Keane and before I knew it we signed a deal with Del-Fi Records. “Fortune Teller,” was released in America. It was number one and number two in most major markets in the United States,” he says.  Read more