THE O'KAYSIONS
Girl Watcher
Kenly, a small town of little more than a thousand residents located in the western part of North Carolina about 40 miles east of state capital Raleigh, was where a quartet of high school students started a band in 1959. They called themselves The Ks (for Kenly), getting their feet wet that spring playing at Kenly High's Junior-Senior Prom. The local paper mistakenly referred to them as The Kays and they went along with it. Remaining in the immediate area, they endured name variations (The Four Kays was one) and got a little too comfortable (playing regularly at one location for eight years!) before overcoming a dubious situation surrounding their one big hit. By the time "Girl Watcher" achieved gold record status in '68, they were known as The O'Kaysions.
Jimmy Hinnant, who played bass, started the band with guitarist Wayne Pittman. Other original members were lead singer/trumpeter Joe Snipes and drummer Steve Watson. At some point they landed a gig about 15 miles away in Wilson at a nightclub called Silver Lake; for the next 400-or-so weeks, through high school and beyond, they performed there on weekends, holidays and special occasions, regularly packing in large crowds (the place held close to 500 patrons). But changes were made as the lineup expanded. Snipes was popular with the girls, partied nonstop and let booze affect his ability to perform or even show up. So the others kicked him out, replacing him with keyboardist and new lead singer Donnie Weaver from the nearby town of Rocky Mount.
Watson left the band and was replaced by Bruce Joyner, then two more were added as a mini-horn section: trumpeter Ron Turner and saxophonist Jim Spiedel. The Kays recorded their first single in Wilson in '63 and it was released on Choice, a Charlotte-based labed owned by country musican Arthur Smith (whose credits included his own million-selling 1948 hit "Guitar Boogie" and the 1972 smash from the film Deliverance, "Dueling Banjos," which he'd composed in the mid-'50s as "Feudin' Banjos"). "To Be With You," with Weaver's lead vocal, elicited little to no reaction. The band's association with Smith was their first, but not their last, connection to someone with a background in country music. The following year they cut two covers as The Kays Combo (The Isley Brothers' "Shout" and Freddie Scott's "Hey Girl") for a larger regional label, JCP.
As of early 1968 the six stalwarts could still be found at Silver Lake, though they wouldn't be there much longer. They began getting booked in larger northeastern cities, but the name didn't set well with leading New York deejay Murray the K and suddenly there was pressure to change it, so they kept the "Kay" as part of The O'Kaysions, figuring there wouldn't be any more confusion with competing bands or self-centered radio personalities...and there wasn't. They became regulars on the Carolina beaches, a girl-watcher's paradise, which inspired their next single and greatest hit...or did it? "Girl Watcher," recorded in February '68 in just two takes at Pitt Sound Studios in Greenville, North Carolina, was issued on another small label, North State. Pittman repeatedly bragged about having written the song ('Watchin' girls go by...my, my, my...here comes one now!')...but Buck Trail (who was present at the recording session and whose name is listed, along with Pittman's, as co-composer) told a different story.
Buck (real name: Ronald Killette) claimed to have written and recorded "Girl Watcher" in 1958 with his band The Dead Enders for his own Trail label. He was also involved in the making of a female version ("Boy Watcher") by Pat Parker and the Way Mates for Skyland Records in 1962. But outside of the titles, these recordings bore no resemblance to the O'Kaysions' later song. According to Killette, he ran across the group (possibly at Smith's studio in Charlotte) and gave them the idea for the song, allowing all the members of the band to make adjustments to the melody and lyrics, with Pittman being chosen to receive writer credit, the agreement being he would split his 50 percent share of any profits six ways. The record started getting airplay at scattered eastern U.S. stations late in the spring, with WTOB in Winston-Salem, North Carolina the first to rank it top ten in June. ABC Records noticed what was happening and made a deal, not just for distribution, but for the master tape and rights thereof.
"Girl Watcher" started climbing the national charts in August, reached the top 40 in September, top ten in October, and made the R&B top ten as well, due to the song's soulful horn-based sound (or perhaps a sight-unseen assumption the act was black). The band spent all this time traveling to promote the song without any set plans to record a follow-up. They finally made a stop in Chicago to cut an entire album (eight more songs!) with producer Johnny Pate in about three days. The album was rushed out, its liner notes by Dick Rues of Richmond, Virginia's WLEE calling girl watching "man's favorite sport" (I think he was right on that one) and the O'Kaysions were back on the road for the rest of the year with little say in what was going to happen next. Only at some point Turner, Spiedel and Joyner, upset about Pittman's refusal to share royalties (after all, it was his name on the label!), left in a huff and were replaced by trumpeter Eddie Dement and sax man Gerald Toler, while drummer Steve Watson returned.
As soon as the rising single approached its top ten peak, a soulful "Boy Watcher" cover appeared by Ginger Thompson on the 1-2-3 label (with only Buck Trail credited as songwriter). The O'Kaysions' follow-up disc, "Love Machine" (from the LP sessions), suggesting a more hands-on approach ('I'm designed to keep our love uptight...'), punched the soul-ticket to little avail, spending several weeks near the bottom of the charts in November and December. Several months later another "Boy Watcher" disc hit the street by Maggie Griffin on Tiki (Trail's name again designated as the only composer). The writing was on the wall; "Girl Watcher" would be the band's only real hit. ABC released a non-album remake by the group of Gene Pitney's "Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa" in the spring of '69, then promptly dropped them; then they dropped the apostrophe from their name for the first of two singles on Cotillion, 1970's "Watch Out Girl," an over-the-top, un-O'K-style production with Weaver's signature vocals missing. The band split up and it was left to Pittman to keep it going...but did he? Not right away!
Meanwhile, Ronald "Buck" Killette made several attempts at cashing in further on what had been his main money song. As Buck Jones, he waxed a version on Tiki in '71 (that gave composer credit to Trail and Pittman), then four years later his daughter Karen Killette did "Boy Watcher" (she took composer credit) and in 1985, Karen and her brother Ronald Killette III duetted on "Girl Watcher, Boy Watcher" (each claiming writer credit on the track), featured in the lower-than-low-budget Ocean Drive Weekend, just in time for the film's sparse closing credits. Buck was there too, keeping his hand in as producer. In the early '90s, the elder Killette decided to sue Pittman for the rights to the song he considered his own. A couple of shady dudes duked it out in court...and Buck won, depriving whatever share Pittman deserved (if any) from that point onward.
With some of the other members still disgruntled and all of them long out of the music biz, Wayne Pittman started up again in the 1990s fronting a completely different band using the The O'Kaysions' name (singer Donnie Weaver wasn't part of it...so much for trying to match the group's signature vocal sound). For the better part of two decades they made regular appearances at Carolina "beach music" shows and other North American locations. Meanwhile, coast-to-coast connoisseurs of the female form continue to use "(I'm a) Girl Watcher" as a personal theme song...or do they?
