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Cecil McNabb Jr. / Cecil Mack


Middletown/Franklin , late 1950s-early 1960s

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March 7, 1958 story, Dave was not very good about predicting the future....

Cecil McNabb was an early rocker from Middletown. He graduated Middletwon high school in 1957 and was already performing locally. 

Early in 1958 he recorded his first record at King. The A side was the pounding rocker "Clock Tickin' Rhythm" and the flip side "Nothing Like This" is nearly as good. Cecil wrote both songs. The backing band was probably members of Boyd Bennett's band. The Benett band was known for playing backup on King recordings of the time. The previous release on the King label was a Boyd Bennett 45, on which the B side "Move" was written by Cecil. There are some general online postings that McNabb was playing piano in Bennett's band. That could be true, but none of the comtemporart storys/ads mention anything about this. More likely, McNabb was demoing songs at King and Bennett heard one he liked and recorded it during the same time frame as Cecil's 45.

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August 1958...maybe Dave was right as Cecil was now leading an 'orchestra'. Also, the Middletown paper really liked the bobbysoxer clip art, they used it for several other ads from the time.

After the record was out, Cecil played many gigs in SW Ohio. Ads from 1958 and 1960 mentions him with a band called the Sonics. 

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October 1959 ad

Cecil made his second and last 45 in the summer of 1961 for Fraternity records. He recorded a rocked up version of the Stephen Foster song "Old Black Joe", with some nice studio production behind it. Jerry Lee Lewis had his version out a couple years earlier and there is a little similarity between the two, but Cecil's version stands alone for the arrangement and vocal style. He had moved to Franklin by the time of the record's release.

The Fraternity 45 was released under the name of Cecil Mack, a name he started using a year earlier. The 45 wasn't a hit and that was the end of Cecil's recording career. He doesn't seem to have made many local apperances after 1962, either, so it's a bit of a mystery what happened.

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Jule 30 1961 article. Patty was a lot more optimistic than Dave....

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August 1958 ad with two of SW Ohio's best in action..and another bobbysoxer pose....

Discography
Clock Tickin' Rhyhtm / Nothing Like This - King 5116, Feb 1958
Old Black Joe / These Tender Years - Fraternity 881, Aug 1961