Joe Stampley, lead singer and keyboard player, was toting a tape made with his band The Uniques. It was 1964; he and his four partners were hot; three years on the dance and college circuit in Louisiana, and the surrounding states had proven them capable of creating real excitement with teens. Stampley sought out record industry powerhouse Stan “the Record Man” Lewis with the song he had written, one called “Not Too Long Ago.” Lewis, owner of a chain of record stores and a blues label, Jewel Records, told the young performer “I’m really too busy right now”, Stampley remembers. “I kept bugging him until (probably trying to get us off his back) he told us to go and see a guy named Dale Hawkins.”
Hawkins, who had put Shreveport on the rock ‘n roll map in 1957 by co-writing and singing “Suzie Q", loved the song. Within a few months Lewis, too, got behind The Uniques. “Not Too Long Ago” became a national hit for them in 1965 and the first hit for Stan Lewis’s new label, Paula Records. It’s consi