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Penny Smith was the third in a long series of stage names employed by Reba Jeanette Smith, who was born on February 1, 1928, in Corbin, Kentucky. In 1948, using the name Reba Penny Smith, she was Miss Plug Horse Derby in Lexington, Kentucky, then placed second in the Miss Kentucky State Fair contest. Going as Debbie Smith, she moved to Nashville and tried to break in as a singer. While doing a radio show there, she met Jim Lounsbury (1923-2006), who had recently become a DJ on WIND in Chicago. She was headed to Chicago to get publicity photos made, and he was flying back in a rented plane, so she hitched a ride with him. Not long after her arrival in Chicago, they were married. It's a reasonable guess that Lounsbury talked the Chess brothers into recording her, but preferred to keep his role quiet.
Penny Smith continued to perform on the radio and in public while raising two young children, Steve and Debbie, who were born in 1951 and 1952. For a few weeks in 1953, she worked on the air with her husband, who was subbing for another DJ on WGN; he then worked a little longer at WJJD before landing a long-term gig at WGN. In 1954, Jim Lounsbury started his Bandstand Matinee show on WGN-TV. By the time she got another chance to record, with the KaHill label out of Des Plaines, Illinois, it was the summer of 1955, her husband was featuring rock and roll on his shows, and she wanted to try her hand at it. From late August through the end of October 1955, while she waited for her first KaHill to come out, she sang with Joe Daley's jazz trio at Geno's Dance Lounge (formerly Ziggy's Gridiron Lounge, on East 83rd Street). She got two KaHill releases, one in October 1955 and one in December 1956. Both were done with studio bands directed by one Carmen Dello, featuring big-band orchestration along with the guitar soloing, but each had one side that could fairly be described as rock and roll. In November or December 1957, she cut a doo-wop record for Argo (the Chess brothers remembered her), the last time she went as Penny Smith on a record label. Argo 5295, released in January 1958, was credited to "Penny and the Eko's." Berry Gordy wrote both of the songs with Roquel Davis, and was present for the session.She went professionally as Debbie Stevens for the next year and a half. (While making appearances with her husband at local venues, she was still "pretty Penny Smith.") She sang uncredited but widely recognized leads on Roulette 4081, with a white Chicago doowop group called the Deltones; it was released in June 1958, with "Smith" as the fifth composer credited on one side, and Colo Music as the publisher (Jim Lounsbury was born in Colo, Iowa). She then signed with ABC-Paramount, getting one single on the parent label, and one on the APT subsidiary. "If You Can't Rock Me," on APT, was 100% rock and roll. With some rock and roll records to her name and prior experience with a rock and roll package tour in the summer of 1958, she was tapped for the Winter Dance Tour, a package show now mostly remembered because Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper got tired of the long bus rides and took a private plane that crashed in Iowa. "If You Can't Rock Me" was released during the tour. And photos are extant of her with Jim Lounsbury, the Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly in Kenosha, Wisconsin. They were taken on January 24, 1959, not long before the fatal event.In 1960, she signed with Motown, where she would be known (supposedly with Berry Gordy's encouragement) as Debbie Dean. A 33-year-old white woman did not fit the image that Motown soon decided it wanted to project. Her first release, in August 1961, was quickly pulled back in September in favor of her second, an answer record to "Shop Around." This was her best seller for the label, reaching number 92 in the Hot 100. Her third release, in March 1962, went nowhere. Motown cut her from the roster in 1963, after 3 singles and no albums, and that same year she and Jim Lounsbury divorced. She moved to Los Angeles, where, in 1964, possibly after Ike and Tina Turner put in a word, she put a single out on Sue, as Debra Dion. In 1965, she met Dennis Lussier (aka Deke Richards, 1944-2013), whose band was opening for Ike and Tina Turner at the time; he became her boyfriend and her songwriting partner. In late 1966, Motown hired Deke Richards, and rehired her, to write songs; she also got one last Debbie Dean single released on the Berry Gordy's V. I. P. label, produced by Deke Richards, while a followup was planned but scrapped.By 1969, Debbie Dean had sung pop, jazz, doowop, rock and roll, and soul on records, written or cowritten a bunch of songs, gotten bit parts in several movies, and used six different names. But her ability to reinvent herself was failing her. Her health broke down, she experienced episodes of frank psychosis, she was too depressed to write songs, she and Richards broke up, and she was out of money. Returning to Nashville, she wrote a Country song about her life, titled "Cumberland Gap" (Cumberland Falls isn't far from Corbin) or "My Soul Is Free," but the recording she made, for a small indie, was lost when the company folded before it could be released. During one of her stays in Nashville, in 1976, she took a seventh name, Krisha Electra Rigel, and published a book titled New Names for the Age of Aquarius. (The copyright entry for the book states that the name was an alias for Debbie Dean.) She told a reporter that she had been born in Louisville and was 27 years old, which made it imprudent to mention her records—but the movie and songwriting credits that she gave were accurate. "I started looking for a new name when I was about 8 years old." Returning to California, she dropped out of music entirely, becoming a strict vegan, then undergoing several further health crises. The former Penny Smith died in Ojai, California, on February 17, 2001. When she had last visited Corbin, Kentucky, we have no idea, but a memorial service was held for her there in April of that year.We are indebted to the Debbie Dean website at
https://debbdean.wordpress.com/debbie-dean-soul-free/
Quelle:
http://campber.people.clemson.edu/aristocrat.html
