In 1957, the dreamy Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter topped the pop charts with his cover of “Young Love.” The song — written by Ric Cartey and Carole Joyner and originally released by Cartney with his group the Jiva Tones — was also a country hit for Sonny James around the same time. But it was the success of Hunter’s version that led to the launch of one of the largest music companies in the world: Warner Bros. Records.
To some, Hunter is a mere footnote from 1950s pop culture. In an article in The New York Times on the history of rock n’ roll, Chuck Klosterman briefly referenced Hunter, noting how in 1957, “he was bigger than Jerry Lee Lewis or Fats Domino.” But Klosterman adds that Hunter’s music has been largely forgotten by history.
To my generation, or at least the part of it that watched bad movies on HBO in the 1980s, he will forever be remembered as the biology teacher Mr. Stewart in the 1982 camp classic Grease 2. In that film, he sang lead on the awfully catchy, “Reproduction,” perhaps the raunchiest song ever written about plant life. “The flower's insatiable passion turns its life into a circus of debauchery!” The song currently has 313,000 more listens on Spotify than “Young Love.”
Hunter himself is a fascinating figure. He was an actor, singer, sex symbol and pinup idol in the 1950s. Behind the scenes, he had to go to great lengths to conceal the fact that he was gay from the general public. In his 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential (and 2015 documentary of the same name) Hunter talks about his sudden rise to fame as a Warner Bros. contract actor in the Hollywood studio era in the 1950s. He then goes on to detail how he kept his personal life a secret while the company’s publicity machine promoted him as the boy next door and sent him on photo-op dates with young starlets.
According to his memoir, in 1956, during a promotional tour with Natalie Wood for their film The Burning Hills, Chicago-based D.J. Howard Miller asked him “Do you ever think of recording?” Despite Hunter’s insistent replies that he couldn’t sing, Miller introduced him to Randy Wood the head of Dot Records.
In December 1956, he recorded his cover of “Young Love” with a little help from the Jordanaires, Elvis Presley’s backup singers. Though very similar to Sonny James’ version, the song quickly exploded onto the pop charts, hitting the top spot in early 1957. (Billboard Magazine did not actually start its Hot 100 chart until 1958, however, if you look at its various charts in 1957, you’ll see “Young Love” held the number one position on several of them from February 16 through March 23). Billboard would eventually rate it the #4 single for 1957, and Hunter had three other singles on the charts that year. James’ rendition would actually finish the year at #8.
Hunter’s success as a singer started a war between the management of Dot Records and Warner Bros. “Jack Warner may have magnanimously declined to pass judgement on my personal life, but if there was a buck to be made — he owned me,” Hunter wrote. He points out that for years, the studio had fought against starting its own label, but that the success of “Young Love” convinced them otherwise.
When Hunter went into the studio for the newly created Warner Bros. Records, he claims, in sentiments that would be echoed again by major label recording artists: “What had been conjured at Dot Records couldn’t be recaptured. Dot was run by a family of music makers; Warners was full of businessmen,” Hunter wrote. “To cop a jazzman’s term it was a totally different vibe.” He released several singles that charted modestly, but none with the impact of “Young Love.” Though he had a few more modest hits, his career as a pop singer simply faded away.
The Warner Bros. Records story, however, did not end there. The label foundered for a few years, until in 1960 when it signed the Everly Brothers for a million-dollar deal. And the rest is, as they say history, or corporate history anyway. Since then the label has undergone a long string of sales, mergers and acquisitions, and for many years has been the largest American-owned music conglomerate and publishers in the world.
While Hunter’s singing career might have only been a small blip on the music landscape of the 1950s, the success of his one cover song made a lasting footprint on the industry that continues to this day, for better or for worse.
