Colonial Album & Singles Discography
Orville Campbell was a journalist by trade. In 1949, he wrote a song about a football star at UNC, Charlie
"Choo Choo" Justice, called "All the Way Choo Choo." It was recorded by Johnny Long and His
Orchestra on King 15030, sold some 30,000 copies according to Campbell, and the royalties allowed
him to establish Colonial Records about a year later. The first single on Colonial [Colonial 1], the
Belltones' "Way Up In North Carolina," also did well regionally, and Campbell sold it to Mercury for
national distribution [Mercury 5692], where it made #30 in September, 1951.
Colonial's next success was a 1953 record [Colonial 3] by a young Andy Griffith, who had graduated with a music degree a few years earlier from UNC and was teaching nearby. Billed as "Deacon Andy Griffith," the record was a monologue describing a backwoods preacher going to his first college football game. "What It Was, Was Football" sold 50,000 copies regionally, but at that time Colonial was in no position to distribute a national hit, so they sold the masters to Capitol, who reissued it as Capitol 2693. Capitol's version charted in January, 1954, and rose to #9 nationally. Shortly thereafter, Campbell recorded former baseball star and then announcer Dizzy Dean on a country single [Colonial 4], but that one stiffed.
Campbell started a new singles series, the 400 series in 1955, which started as a bluegrass series. The
first few singles in the series were by Hack Johnson and the Tennesseeans, with his star banjo player
Allen Shelton also getting his own single. By #408, Campbell was recording what would turn out to be
the "house band" for the label, the Blue Notes with guitarist Joe Tanner. Hack Johnson's "Home Sweet
Home" was probably the label's biggest seller in 1955.
Campbell tried another monologue in the summer of 1956, "Hospitality Blues" by Doug Harrell, which
was released on an EP, but this proved to be far less popular than the Andy Griffith record. But
Campbell found an excellent songwriter in 1956, a local named John D. Loudermilk, a cousin of Ira and
Charlie Loudermilk who performed as the Louvin Brothers. John had written a song called "A Rose and
a Baby Ruth," which Campbell thought would be good for another singer he just signed, a UNC student
named George Hamilton IV. Hamilton didn't like the song, and Loudermilk didn't like the way he sang it,
but Campbell did like the result, and somehow they all got past it when the song began to sell. After
selling about 50,000 copies regionally [Colonial 420], Campbell sold the record and Hamilton's contract
to ABC-Paramount, where after reissuing the song [ABC-Paramount 9765], it shot to #6 nationally selling
close to a million copies. The Hamilton deal also set up a two-year arrangement for Am-Par, the
ABC-Paramount distribution arm, to distribute Colonial Records.
With the success of the George Hamilton IV record, Campbell decided to give Loudermilk his own shot
at recording. The result was "Sittin' in the Balcony" [Colonial 430], released by "Johnny Dee" in
February, 1957. With the new Am-Par distribution, the record reached the national Top-40 at #38. It
would have done even better, but a young Eddie Cochran covered the record and reached #18 with his
own version on Liberty 55056. Loudermilk didn't chart again for Colonial, but after signing with RCA a
few years later, went on to several moderate RCA hits and a huge career as a songwriter, penning
dozens of top hits for others.
With the added success of "Sittin' in the Balcony," Campbell branched out in 1957. He started a gospel series with the Melody Masters Quartet [Colonial 111], and a country series with Hoke Simpson [Colonial 530], but these were abandoned in favor of a new series in November starting with "Bird Doggin'" [Colonial 721], a record by another local singer, Bill Craddock, backed by the Bluenotes (who had shortened their name to one word). Over a dozen years later, this same Billy "Crash" Craddock would start two decades of country chart hits, over 40 altogether.
Also near the end of 1957, Campbell signed a 62-year old grandmother who had been singing since the
1920s, Lucile ('Cile) Barrow Turner. Interestingly, 'Cile Turner didn't sound like a
grandmother. She also didn't sound like the white society lady that she was. Back in her childhood,
Turner became enamored with the sound of black music, and brought those songs to her audiences
over the years in the style that she knew them. She sounded like a black singer singing traditional black
songs. She had a minor hit in late 1959 with "The Golden Rule" [Colonial 7004], which reached #84 on
the Cashbox charts. The flip, "Crap Shootin' Sinner," a gospel-like song about a crap-shooter
trying to get into heaven, is probably her best-known side. It was 'Cile Turner that merited the first
album Colonial put out, but they put it out twice: once in 1958 while still distributed by ABC-Paramount
(unnumbered except for the matrix number), and then again in late 1959 under a different title and cover
when London was distributing.
In 1958, Campbell got really inventive with his numbering system for singles, making a discography difficult. The 721 series went to 723, when it jumped to 731-2, then jumped to 777, then 7777, then 8888, then 9999. This haphazard system came to a halt when his Am-Par distribution agreement came to an end and he signed with London as a distributor in early 1959. The numbering system changed to a normal 7000 series.
Colonial had only two more chart singles. Doug Franklin and the Blue Notes scored a #73 hit with "My
Lucky Love" [Colonial 7777] in September, 1958, and E.C. Beatty made #50 with the story of "Ski King"
[Colonial 7003] in September, 1959.
Campbell released singles in the 7000 series until 1961, when the distribution agreement with London expired, and he began jumping numbers again. He eventually went back to the Colonial 1 series he started with in 1951, with a single as Colonial 18 then starting with 44 when he signed a new distribution deal with Tollie Records in 1964.
The Tollie deal had it's own brand of discographic insanity. Singer Johnny Randell's first single, "You're Gone But Still In My Heart"/"Do Right" [Colonial 44/45], had four different labels, was billed as both Johnny Randell and Johnny Randel, and had the title of the A side shortened to "Still in My Heart" on some labels. The next single was credited to Johnny Randall.
Although Colonial stopped issuing new material around 1965, they didn't go out of business, putting out reissues at least until the late 1970s. Orville B. Campbell died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on June 6, 1989 at the age of 69.
As a side note, one of the reasons it has been so difficult to put together a discography for Colonial Records of North Carolina is that there have been numerous different labels with that same name, some of which with similar numerical series. For example, Colonial Records of Monterey Park, California, a label that specialized in Latin music, had a long series that ran in the 400s and 500s also, and these are often confused with the releases by the North Carolina label. There was a Colonial Records based in Berkeley Springs, WV, and another one that was distributed by Superior Record Distribution Corp. out of Nashville. Moreover, there was a Colonial Records based in Boston in the 1940s, one in Hollywood in the 1940s, and one in New York City in the late 1950s. We have researched Orville Campbell's label extensively enough to present the following discography which we believe to be fairly accurate.
Campbell Records CR-2000 - Laugh a Spell with Doug Harrell - Doug Harrell [1960]
Label is red and black. Logo has the same shadow-box as Colonial. The First Year/The Second
Year/The Hospitality Blues//The Clinical Years/Exsanguination Blues/Nurse's Lament
