The Sparkletones

The Sparkletones' story should have been a movie. For a lot of listeners, they were and are what rockabilly music was really all about-four kids from the south, none older than 16 and one as young as 13 when they started, getting together and making fast, sometimes raunchy sounds, literally the soundtrack to their own teen years, and having a lot of fun and getting an adventure out of it. Their music at its best sounded as freewheeling as their approach to it really was, and they were rewarded in October of 1957 with a No. 17 placement on the Billboard charts for the only record they ever did chart, "Black Slacks." The No. 17 spot tells only part of the story, however. "Black Slacks" stayed on the charts for more than four months, selling a lot of copies in that time, well enough to keep the band going for three years while they vainly searched for another hit. It was one of the earliest successes for ABC-Paramount Records, a label that had been formed only two years earlier, just as rock 'n roll was breaking out and, along with "At The Hop" by Danny & The Juniors, helped the label succeed when no one thought that was possible. Joe Bennett (vocals, lead guitar), Wayne Arthur (upright bass), Howard "Sparky" Childress (guitar), and Jimmy "Sticks" Denton (drums) ranged in ages from 13 to 16 when they first got together, and all had been raised in Spartanburg, S.C. All four attended Cowpens High School in Spartanburg, and came from respectable, middle-class families. Indeed, in contrast to a lot of kids who wanted to play music for a living, all four members of the Sparkletones were regular churchgoers, and Joe Bennett, the singer and lead guitarist, was one of the leaders of the Church Youth Movement in South Carolina. They'd all been friends and had gotten together in...