Senator Bobby

Senator Bobby was a studio concoction of writer/producer of Chip Taylor (b. James Wesley Voight, 1940, Yonkers, New York, USA). Using voice impersonator Bill Minkin and a demo of the Troggs’ garage-band classic, ‘Wild Thing’, he created in 1967 a comedic take-off of Senator Robert Kennedy and his Massachusetts accent. With the single going to number 20 pop, a follow-up album was produced, seeing Minkin in a comedy troupe called the Hardly Worthit Players with Dennis Wholey, Steve Baron, and Carol Morley. Typical of most novelty acts, the group could not follow up, scraping the bottom of the chart at 99 with a take-off on Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’ in 1967, which was a dual take-off of senators Kennedy and Everett McKinley Dirksen. Whorley went on to become a highly successful television talk-show host. Taylor, prior to his Senator Bobby project, was a one-hit-wonder in a duo called Just Us. He became a moderately successful country and western singer in the 70s.