By : Dale King
We got an email a few weeks ago from Carol Connors, a singer, songwriter and frequent visitor to Boca Raton. She is very good friends of artist-sculptor Yaacov Heller (of Gallery 22 fame) and his wife, Sue, and we have come to count her as one of our friends as well.
Anyway, Carol was notifying us from her home in Beverly Hillsthat Carroll Shelby, the famous auto racer and designer of the Ford Cobra and the Mustang Cobra, had passed away at the age of 89.
I recalled the name of Carroll Shelby from my teen years when his creations of the Ford Cobra racing car and the Mustang Cobra streetvehicle were hailed in story and song.Shelbyhad been a race car driver, even after suffering from heart disease. He had a heart transplant in 1990 and was one of the world’s longest surviving heart transplant patients.
It was only recently that I found out that Carol Connors actually wrote the song, “Little Cobra,” celebrating the accomplishments of the Shelby-designed vehicle. It became a top five hit in the mid-1960s for a group called The Rip Chords.
Regular readers will remember that the era of surf songs and car songs coincided with my teenage years, so I was very familiar with the tune and have checked it out on YouTube since then. Viewers can hear the song and watch a series of slides on the computer screen showing models of the Ford Cobra in black-and-white and color shots.
I didn’t realize the very close connection that existed between Carol Connors and Carroll Shelby. I found this account in her email.
After smashing the front of her then-boyfriend’s AC Bristol car, Connors was sent to find Shelby to see if he could put a Cobra front on an AC back.
“So there I am in his office…I said ‘Mr. Shelby…is there any way you can put a Cobra front on a Bristol back?’ Well, he became hysterical. He just couldn’t stop laughing,” remembers Connors.
“He looked at me and said, ‘You know little girl, if you write a song about my car and it goes to number one, I’ll give you one’…and the rest was history,” she added. (You can find a photo of her and the car Shelby gave her on the Internet.)
The Rip Chords’ 1964 recording of “Little Cobra” peaked in the top five on the Billboard Charts. The famous lyrics “Hey, Little Cobra/Don’t you know You’re gonna shut’em down” became a phrase synonymous with Shelby’s racing wins during his career.
When the song was at the peak of its popularity, Connors remembers a funny meeting with The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, who came up to her and said, “We knew that song was written by a girl.”
“I said, ‘Brian, how did you know that?’ and he said ‘because you can’t take your Cobra out of gear and coast to the line!’” remembers Connors. “I said, ‘if you’re that far in front, you can do that.’”
Connors has had a long career in music, one that includes co-authorship of “Gonna Fly Now,’ the theme from “Rocky.” She was also lead singer of the 1950s group, The Teddy Bears,” best known for its song, “To Know Him is to Love Him.” The tune was written specifically to showcase Connors’ voice by another member of the group. That man – who is still well known today – is Phil Spector.
Caption
Carol Connors with Carroll Shelby
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Carol Connors