Bobby Hebb, 'Sunny' songwriter
and revered singer, dies at 72Published by Peter Cooper on August 3, 2010
Bobby Hebb, the Nashville native whose 1966 smash “Sunny” inspired covers from Frank Sinatra,
Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and hundreds of others, died Tuesday at 10:50 a.m.
at Centennial Medical Center. He was 72.
Mr. Hebb’s legacy crosses lines of genre and race, and leaps across borders both societal
and geographical. He danced and sang, and played guitar, trumpet, percussion and piano.
He worked Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry with Roy Acuff and San Francisco’s Candlestick Park
with the Beatles.
He integrated Acuff’s band and toured through the segregated South. He was prominently
featured in a Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit devoted to Nashville rhythm & blues.
He was a prime contributor to the Grammy-winning Night Train To Nashville compilation album,
and he wrote Lou Rawls’ Grammy–winning “A Natural Man.” His popularity extended
throughout America, to Europe and Asia.
“We’re in the University of Life and last time I checked, no one is in a hurry to graduate,”
Hebb told The Tennessean’s Tim Ghianni in 2004.
Tuesday morning, Mr. Hebb graduated. And not without honors.
“‘Sunny’ is one of the mammoth songs in pop music history,” said Country Music Hall of Fame
Museum editor Michael Gray, a curator of the Night Train exhibit. “But beyond that, Bobby’s is
one of the most interesting musical stories I’ve ever heard. He represented the multi-racial
musical milieu of 1960s Nashville better than anyone else.”
Roots of ‘Sunny’
Born to a mother and father who were blind musicians, Robert Von Hebb spent his childhood
singing, tap dancing and playing the spoons on Nashville streets as a member of his dad’s
washboard band, called “Hebb’s Kitchen Cabinet Orchestra.” Of his family, he told The
Tennessean, “They were always my inspirations.”
An appearance on famed producer Owen Bradley’s local television show led to Mr. Hebb’s entry
into Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys band in the early 1950s. Working with Acuff, he became the
only African-American presence on the Opry stage (early Opry star DeFord Bailey was by then
no longer with the show).
When not performing with Acuff, he could often be found in the recording studio, playing on
R&B records for the Excello label with artists including Jimmy Church and Earl Gaines. He also
made his own records for disc jockey John Richbourg’s Rich Records.
Mr. Hebb internalized songwriting advice from Hank Williams, who told him backstage at the
Ryman Auditorium, “You just sit down as if you were writing a letter. But Mr. Hebb preferred
the advice of his mother, who said, “You must have a story to tell when you write.”
The story of “Sunny” was rooted in sadness, and the song’s subject was the transcendence
of sadness. On Nov. 23, 1963 — the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination — Mr. Hebb’s
brother and musical partner, Harold Hebb, was knifed to death outside Jefferson Street’s
Club Baron. Mr. Hebb was living in New York, looking for solace in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s
whiskey, when he began writing “Sunny.” The composition diverted his attention from the
drinking, and within about 45 minutes he was sober, and sitting on a gold mine.
“I needed to pick myself up,” Mr. Hebb told The Tennessean, and “Sunny” became that pick-me-up.
It was, and is, an ode to disposition and a melodic plea for peace.
“A few years ago, a young man was feeling a little disturbed, down and out,” James Brown told
a Paris audience in 1971, as he introduced his version of “Sunny.” “So he decided to write a tune
he thought would make things a little more beautiful around the world. He thought about writing
a tune that would kind of inspire people, to give them an uplift, to want to do their thing,
the way they feel. . . . The title of the tune was ‘Sunny.’”
“The dark days are gone, and the bright days are here,” Hebb sang, on a record that has
been broadcast more than seven million times. If all the radio plays of “Sunny” were
linked consecutively, the joyful sound would last more than 34 years.
The Beatles, and ‘Night Train’
“Sunny” was a No. 2 pop hit that behaved like a No. 1 pop classic, making waves in R&B and
country charts. In 2000, a German record company released a compilation of 16 interpretations
of “Sunny,” including takes from Dusty Springfield, Marvin Gaye, Cher, Booker T. & the MG’s
and Robert Mitchum. European pianist Eugene Cicero recorded Mr. Hebb’s own favorite
version, referencing Beethoven and Chopin in his recording.
When performing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) compiled its list of the top 100
songs of the just-passed century, “Sunny” came in at No. 25, just ahead of Roy Orbison’s “
Oh, Pretty Woman” and well ahead of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,”
Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The song’s success led the Beatles
to ask Mr. Hebb to perform on what would be the British band’s final U.S. tour. Recordings from
the tour offer proof that Mr. Hebb’s “Sunny” often earned ovations equal to the Beatles’ hits.
Mr. Hebb followed “Sunny” with a soulful version of country standard “A Satisfied Mind.”
Five years later, Rawls scored a hit with “A Natural Man,” co-written by Mr. Hebb and
Sandy Baron. But while “Sunny” remained a radio staple, Mr. Hebb largely disappeared from
the spotlight for decades following his 1970 Epic Records album, Love Games.
He moved back to Nashville, in time to be celebrated as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s
Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945–1970 exhibit in 2004. In the fall of 2004,
he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in 49 years. Mr. Hebb recorded a solo album,
That’s All I Wanna Know, for the Tuition label in 2005.
In recent years he toured in the United States, Europe and Asia, never tiring of delivering
his signature composition and never singing “Sunny” the same way twice.
Funeral service information is incomplete, though Terrell Broady Funeral Home, 3855 Clarksville
Pike, will handle the arrangements. Mr. Hebb is survived by his daughter, Kitoto Von Hebb ;
four sisters, Helen Hebb-McCray, Ednaearle Burney, Shirley Trotter and Cleevette Davidson;
and a host of other family members.
Reach Peter Cooper at 615–259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com
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Sujet: Bobby Hebb, 'Sunny' songwriter and revered singer, dies at 72 
