Vocalist Brenton Wood was born Alfred Jesse Smith in Shreveport, LA, on July 26, 1941, and was raised in San Pedro. In 1956, he transferred from San Pedro to Compton High School and recorded as a teen. “When I started singing, I started with two groups, but I could never get the guys to come to rehearsal when I wanted so I bought two tape recorders and started harmonizing with myself and building and reinforcing the sound and making a bigger sound.” As Little Freddy & the Rockets, he came up with the novelty, “Too Fat” for a local Compton promoter in 1958.
He made the rounds of local recording studios when he met Hal Winn. “Brenton came in the office, he played 20 or 30 songs, making them up as he went along,” said his manager Winn. “When we asked him to do the third song, he couldn’t do it again. He’ll never admit this. He was always there in the office after working in brassiere factory. I had a lot of problems not knowing when he was born, no records in Shreveport, LA, we found out he was older. I took all around the world to concerts.” The name change to Brenton Wood was, according to Winn, while “we were driving through Brentwood, that’s how his name came about.”
Wood had recorded with a trio of one-shot groups before recording under his own new name. Wood confessed that though he was comfortable in a recording studio, he had never performed on stage and had difficulty learning those ropes. Rebounding from at least four stiffs, Wood came up with the right formula. “I was searching for a good hit song to enter the music market, only thing I could think of was write everything that’s around you, then go in and jumble the words, that’s what I did with ‘Oogum Boogum’,” said Wood. “I substituted ‘Oogum Boogum’ for the title, ‘Abra Cadabra. The title was an accident, frustration, sitting down at a piano singing ‘oogum boogum.’ “Someone happened to hear me, said ‘what’s that?’ It dawned on me. It caught his ear. Maybe it would catch somebody else’s ear. It happens like that.”…