It's pretty hard to find out anything about John Sudetta, aka Johnny Fortune, who recorded "Soul Surfer" in 1963, except that he was 16 years old when he recorded it.
Jim O’Keefe played the sax, and Johnny's ten year old brother Joey Sudetta played the drums, and Johnny overdubbed the bass part.
But something ain't right here. Discogs claims that Johnny was born in 1943 which would have made him twenty in 1963, so I don't know what part of this you can really believe.
He's one of the few musicians I've researched who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Supposedly this song never made the top 100, but Johnny told people that it was "number one on the radio in Bakersfield for 16 weeks."
Maybe that's true, because I sure remember it playing on the radio a lot.
Whatever the truth is, the song is definitely a classic!
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