Paul & Paula

Getting a number-one pop hit was easy for West Texans Ray Hildebrand (Joshua, TX) and Jill Jackson (Camry, TX). Mission accomplished with their first single. But the old saying, "you don't appreciate what you don't work hard for," applies here. "Hey Paula" aced Billboard's pop survey and made the Top Ten on most R&B charts, prompting Motown Records to team Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells to cash in on the fad. After pairing Gaye with Kim Weston, Motown processed the Paul & Paula paradigm successfully by pairing Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Hildebrand and Jackson were students at Howard Payne College when a Brownwood, TX, DJ called for entertainers to volunteer to benefit the American Cancer Society. They volunteered and sang "Hey Paula," a song Hildebrand wrote. It went over so well that everybody encouraged them to make a record. Major Bill Smith's LeCam label in Fort Worth, TX, had just scored a major hit with Bruce Channel, so they drove there late in 1962 hoping for an unscheduled audition. Wrong day. Smith was busy recording that Saturday, but they hung around anyway. Opportunity knocked when Amos Milburn Jr. didn't show and Smith had five musicians sitting around exchanging snaps at five dollars each. Not wanting to blow the money, he asked Hildebrand and Jackson to sing their song. After a brief audition, Smith took them in the studio. The rest is history. Smith offered "Hey Paula" to Vee Jay Records but Ewart Abner turned it down. So he released it on LeCam, as by Jill & Ray. (Abner realized his error and paired Jerry Butler and Betty Everett after "Hey Paula" exploded.) The hot seller caught the attention of Mercury Records' Shelby Singleton. Mercury reissued it on its Phillips subsidiary. But not before Singleton renamed them Paul & Paula, pointing out that...