Jimmy’s youth:

P.J. Proby to be

P.J. Proby is born on November 6th 1938 as James Marcus Smith (Jimmy). His father James Snr. is a banker, who runs Crocker’s Bank. He started at the bottom and later worked his way up till he has become Vice-President of the Second National Bank in Houston. He doesn’t have much time for family affairs. Jimmy’s mother Margaret likes to dance. She sees her only child as a trophy, dresses him in white and

has hysterics if he gets dirty.

Jimmy’s mother is a Hardin and his great-great-grandfather is

John Wesley Hardin. The resemblance is quite striking.

His grandmother from his fathers side is an Indian from the

Chac Taw / Chippawah Tribe. So there he is, quarter Indian and

a descendant of John Wesley Hardin, the gun slinger!

When he’s five or six his mother makes him sing for the milkman.

Jimmy is embarrassed and shy and hides in the broom cupboard

while singing through a crack in the door: "Roll Out The Barrels".

When Jimmy is seven he gets hit by a snowball and the eardrum of his right ear breaks. Ever since he’s been deaf in one ear.

Around 1948, when Jim is nine years old, his mother comes home drunk with the family doctor. Daddy gets his rifle, but Uncle Dan is there and jumps on him before he can shoot. That’s the way these things are handled in the Deep South.

Jimmy goes to live with his Uncle Dan and Aunt Linda shortly after that.

Uncle Dan bribes little Jimmy with a stick of gum and takes him down to a recording booth where you have to put a dime in. Jim’s first recording is made: “Roll Out The Barrels”. Around this time Jimmy also wins a talent-singing contest on

Biff Colley’s Crackerbiller Corner radio show at the

Hitching Post on the south side of Mainstreet in Houston.

Jim’s parents finally get an official divorce. Jim has to choose

with whom he wants to live: his father or his mother.

He chooses his mother –as most boys do-, but his father

gets very angry and causes a big scene in court.

The court rules that Jim will be a ward of the State and that

his father has to pay for a military upbringing till Jim is 18

years old. Jimmy attends San Marcos Military Baptist Academy,

in San Marcos, Texas. His father drops him there and says

“Jim, you're nine years old, you are a man now!” and

walks away to his Hudson Hornet.

It breaks Jims heart.

Jim hates it at school at first but he

quickly becomes institutionalised.

Here he will also develop his

knowledge of firearms.

Military life is all about routine and,

having lost the boundaries of family life,

that routine is reassuring. Jim prefers it

if his parents don’t visit him, since it’s

too painful when they leave. Jim learns self-discipline, how to follow

commands and how to be part of a unit. He’s very ambitious.

Jimmy is popular at school, he is a cute kid and the class favourite.

He falls in love easily and often has new girlfriends.  He plays the bugle horn.

In the summer holidays Jim misses the military structure, when he lives with his

mother and spends the weekends with his father. He is used as a go-between

and after two years he has had enough of it. "A carrier pigeon between the two

new families," is how he describes himself in this period, "But I always knew

where I wanted to end up: in the movies."

The next holidays are filled up: Jim studies for three months at the very

prestigious Culver Naval Academy in South Bend, Indiana from 1951-1953.

The next years (1954-1956) Jim spends his free summers hanging out at places

where you can sing. The first place where Jim performs is The Hitching Post,

a cowboy bar at the end of South Main in Houston, where his friend Tommy

Sands is singing. Tommy is slightly older and already has a recording contract

with Capitol Records.

He is known all over the South as Little Tommy Sands. Also George Jones and Elvis Presley (who’s almost four years older than Jim) play here regularly.

Jim is fourteen then and he starts to appreciate drinking alcohol with the guys. It gives you extra courage when you have to perform. These summers he hangs out at the radio road shows with the local stars Tennessee Ernie Ford, Minnie Pearl and Molly Bee and he he sometimes gets a chance to sing with them.

Black Negro musicians and their music influence them all. In spite of the racism that rules heavily in the Southern States, Jim was brought up, listening to all the Baptist Gospel singers around his area and singing along with them in church on Sundays. 

Jim listens to the radio a lot. His favorites are Slim Whitman (country), Tony Bennett, Kay Starr and Frank Sinatra. On the black radio stations they listen to the blues. These “race records” as they call them, influence Jim a lot.

Jim does a television debut on a show called “Rocket to Stardom”, but the rocket fails to take off.

Jim’s two-years-senior step-sister Betty Moehrs (from his mother’s second marriage to the MD Arthur E. Moehrs) dates Tommy Sands and at the same time Elvis Presley. Elvis is already a local celebrity in the South with something like nine records out. Around this time Elvis does: "That's Alright Little Mamma" for his mother. Elvis picks Betty up and drives to the house in an impressive big pink and golden 1953 Cadillac.

Elvis comes from a poor family and is not accustomed to posh table manners. When Elvis comes to dinner in Jim’s mother’s house, she brings out her best Irish table linen with a beautiful tablecloth and napkins and she cooks a big chicken. After the meal Elvis grabs the tablecloth to wipe his mouth and says: “Thank you Mam, that’s the best fried chicken meal I’ve ever had!” Jim’s mother almost faints....

In 1956 Elvis gets his big breakthrough when Colonel Parker

takes him under his wing and gets him in the Ed Sullivan show.

Elvis is the first singer artist ever to appear on television. 

There are problems about Elvis’ hip swivelling and they are only

allow to film him from the waist up. Also he has to wear a tuxedo.

Elvis gets a recording contract with RCA Victor.

Also Tennessee Ernie Ford starts his television shows

and records a Gospel album.

Meanwhile Jim is still committed to finish his military education till he’s 18 years old. That must have been difficult while he’s anxious to sing and get famous and sees people around him making it! Still, he thrives on discipline. And he’s ambitious in his singing as well as in his military upbringing! Whatever Jim does, he wants to do it with perfection. After a short stay at Lamar Highschool in Houston, which he doesn’t like at all, he asks his father to get him into the Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois. He’s then already a full trained cadet.

This is a military academy on university level and the best you can get.

Previous alumni include: General Eisenhower, General McArthur

and commander Tibbets (the pilot that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima).

The Academy happens to be near the place where Jimmy’s girlfriend from high school was sent to.

At Western, Jim learns new things about humility, friendship and ambition. He learns never to give up and always to strive for the seemingly impossible. Jim is very good in sports: he boxes and plays American Football. He’s the

football hero. That’s important to him, because it’s a way

to impress the girls. It’s  certainly a rough game. In the

team photo, taken November 1956 we see Jim among

his battered up friends, after he’s had a car accident that

scalped him.

When there’s a party in the canteen

Jim Boy gives them a show

and they call him their own Elvis!

He finishes in 1957, when he’s

18 years old.

Jim has specialized in history.

Jim has the opportunity to continue to study. He could go to Naval Academy in Indianapolis or Army Academy in Westpoint to continue his military education. Also he has the choice between a football scholarship at the University of Missouri and a drama scholarship at the Helen Hayes Drama School in New-York. He doesn’t pursue any of those. Jim is now almost 18 years old and free to do what he wants. He goes to Hollywood in September 1957, determined to go after his own dream to find Fame, like his old friends have found! His father doesn’t object. He doesn’t believe it will last and says: “I’ll see you in two weeks!” Little did he know Jim would become a

Hollywood Rogue!

Sources:

The P.J. Proby Story     http://home.planet.nl/~pjproby/pjstory.htm

Ron Tennant   The Elvis Connection     Now Dig This 223    October 2001

For sale at: http://e.dominohosting.biz/dca/NDT.nsf/WebCategoryY!OpenView&RestrictToCategory=NDT2001

Spencer Leigh    P.J. Proby Interview    Record Collector 180    August 1994

for sale at: http://www.recordcollectormag.com/site/sections/back_issues/default.asp

Pat Hailey Interview    Select DVD 2004

for sale at this site on the DVD page

Ron Ellis  Go, Jett, Go!    Now Dig This 90    September 1990

for sale at: http://e.dominohosting.biz/dca/NDT.nsf/WebCategoryY!OpenView&RestrictToCategory=NDT2001

Catherine O’Brien    Love etc    Interview Times April 25th 2006