Alva Review-Courier -

While Sheb Wooley was carving out a successful acting career in the 1950s and 1960s, he was also actively working in the music business, writing and recording numerous songs.

His biggest hit was a novelty tune released in 1958 called “The Purple People Eater.” That little ditty went to No. 1 on the Billboard rock charts and stayed there for six weeks!

Wooley also wrote and sang “That’s My Pa,” which became a No. 1 hit on Billboard’s country music charts in 1962. His composition “Are You Satisfied?” made the charts several times by various artists; Rusty Draper’s version was a No. 11 rock-and-roll hit in 1955.

In addition to recording songs under his own name, Wooley created a humorous country singer alter ego named Ben Colder. Wooley, as Colder, made the country and rock charts several times between 1962 and 1971.

Many of the Colder songs were parodies of previous hits by other artists. Wooley would replace the lyrics of serious songs like “Almost Persuaded” and “Detroit City” with silly ones – much in the vein of a comedy duo of bygone years, Homer and Jethro.

Once, back in the late 1980s, I found myself on an airplane going somewhere sitting next to an outgoing and charming elderly lady. Eventually, we struck up a conversation in the course of which she asked me: “Have you ever heard of Sheb Wooley?”

I told her that I had – and that I always liked “The Purple People Eater.” She said: “Well, I’m his ex-wife and that song wrote me a lot of alimony checks!”

In doing some research for this article, I found that Wooley married five women and was divorced from the first four. The ex-wife I met on that airplane was his third, the former Beverly Addington. They were married for about 20 years and adopted a daughter.

Sheb Wooley (as himself and Ben Colder) remained active in the entertainment business until health problems forced him to retire in 1999. He died at the age of 82 in September 2003.