Maryland’s “Age of Rock ‘n Roll”

Richard D. L. Fulton

During the days of televised dance programs, such as Baltimore’s The Buddy Deane Show (precursor of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand), Maryland turned out several rock and roll bands in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, some of whom achieved stardom.
Below are a few of the more-renowned individuals from Maryland or who became associated with Maryland:

Ronald Eugene Dove
Ronald Eugene Dove, better known as simply Ronnie Dove, was born on September 7, 1935, in Herndon, Virginia, to parents Paul Sylvester Dove and Catherine Pearl Smith Dove.
Although Dove was born in Virginia, he established his road to success in Baltimore, in the wake of serving in the United States Coast Guard, where he served as a buoy-tender off the coast of Baltimore.
During his four-year stint in the Coast Guard, Dove began performing in local Baltimore clubs, wherein, according to the Bear Family Records website (bear-family.com), “he would visit the local clubs and request to get up and sing for the audience.” A performance at a club known as Elmer’s Musical Bar, located at Pratt and Light Streets, landed Dove his first Baltimore gig, earning $5.00 a night singing Elvis Presley’s songs.

After being honorably discharged from the Coast Guard in 1959, Dove formed a band, Ronnie Dove & The Bell Tones. Bear Family Records noted, “The group devoted the next four years to playing the club circuit as often as seven nights a week, becoming one of the hottest acts in the Baltimore area.”
In 1962, Ronnie Dove & The Bell Tones recorded demo sessions at the Edgewood Recording Studio, located in Washington, D.C., recording “Right or Wrong,” “Long Tall Sally,” and “Lonely Man,” according to countrydiscography2.blogspot.com, before leaving the Bell Tones in 1963.
Dove then moved from Maryland, making a return to Baltimore in 1991 by opening a nightclub known as The Dove’s Nest.

Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr.
Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr., better remembered as Link Wray, was born on May 2, 1929, to parents Frederick Lincoln and Lillian “Lillie” Mae Wray, and had two brothers, Vernon Aubrey and Douglas Leon, and one (stillborn) sister, Opal Coats.
Not much can be found regarding Wray’s schooling, and he may have had little formal education, although he did mention having attended school in a March 16, 1994, interview (available on YouTube), while discussing his childhood, in which he described his early childhood’s living conditions as having been “very harsh conditions, e.g. (living) in mud huts without electricity or heating, going to school barefoot, barely clothed.”

Wray served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 and, subsequently, established Link & His Ray Men, which recorded his first hit song, “Rumble,” in spite of the record having been banned in New York and Boston, out of fear it would encourage gang wars, which made it the only instrumental record ever banned in the United States, according to pophistorydig.com.
In the mid-1960s, Wray moved to a farm in Accokeek in Prince George’s County, turning a chicken coop located there on the property into a recording studio, while also performing in local Southern Maryland and Washington, D.C. bars, and he began recording numerous, predominantly instrumental recordings.
Wray passed away on November 5, 2005, at his Copenhagen, Denmark home, and his ashes were interred in a crypt at the Copenhagen Christian Church. Wray was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

Ellen Naomi Cohen
Ellen Naomi Cohen, better known as “Momma Cass,” a name she reportedly was never fond of, was born on September 19, 1941, in Baltimore, to parents Philip and Bess (Bessie) Cohen, and had one brother, Joseph, and one sister, Leah.

Cohen attended, but did not graduate from, Forest Park High School, located in Northwest Baltimore. According to an article published on August 7, 1974, in the St. Louis Jewish Light newspaper, Cohen, for a period of about six months, had served as a copy editor and obituary writer for the Baltimore Jewish Times, and then (reportedly) had served on the staff of the Baltimore Morning Sun.
Although Cohen performed with several groups over the years, as well as going solo, she is most known and recognized for having been a vocalist with the Mamas and the Papas from 1965 to 1968.
Cohen died on July 29, 1974, from a heart attack while in London, and was buried in Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

Joan Marie Larkin
Joan Marie Larkin, who performed under the name of Joan Jett, was born on September 22, 1958, to James Francis and Dorothy Mae in Wynnewood (a suburb of Philadelphia in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania), and was the oldest of their three children.
Larkin was included in the Maryland’s Age of Rock ‘n Roll by the author, not because of her hit song “I love Rock and Roll,” which wasn’t released until 1981, but rather, because she became an established musician by 1975, which was about the time that rock and roll had pretty much petered out (there are those who say rock and roll did not make it out of the 1960s).
Additionally, Larkin has been referred to as the “Queen of Rock and Roll.” If so, she would have been one of the last ones.

Larkin’s family moved to the Randolph Hills area of Rockville in 1967, and she attended Randolph Junior High and Wheaton High School, dropping out of high school in the early 1970s. She subsequently acquired a General Educational Development (GED) diploma.
At the age of 13, Larkin and her family moved to West Covina, California, in Los Angeles County. It was there that Larkin created the name “Joan Jett.”

In 1975, Larkin co-founded the all-female rock band, The Runaways, which included Larkin, Sandy West, Micki Steele, Lita Ford, and Cherie Currie.
The Runaways disbanded in 1979, at which point Larken had founded the Blackhearts, thereby launching a career that ultimately led to “Joan Jett and the Blackhearts” being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

Montage: Ronnie Dove (upper left), Link Wray (with guitar), Momma Cass (lower left), and Joan Jett. Source: Wikimedia