Bobby Freeman

Robert Thomas Freeman (June 13, 1940 – January 23, 2017) was an American rock, soul and R&B singer, songwriter and record producer from San Francisco, best known for his two top ten hits, the first in 1958 on Josie Records called "Do You Want to Dance" and the second in 1964 for Autumn Records, "C'mon and Swim".

Biography Freeman was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent much of his youth in San Francisco, California. He started singing in a doo-wop group, the Romancers, in his early teens, and first recorded with them for Dootone Records in 1956. Their recordings included "House Cat", included on several later rock and roll compilations. However, the group soon fell apart, and Freeman started a new group, the Vocaleers (not to be confused with an earlier group of the same name who recorded "Is It a Dream").

When asked by a local DJ if he had written any songs, he wrote several and recorded them as solo demos. These included "Do You Want to Dance", which were heard by a visiting record label executive, Mortimer Palitz of Jubilee Records. He signed Freeman to the label and had the original recording overdubbed in New York by session musicians including guitarist Billy Mure. Released on the Jubilee subsidiary label Josie, "Do You Want to Dance" quickly rose to number 5 on the pop chart and number 2 on the R&B chart in early 1958, when Freeman was still only 17. ) by Del Shannon, the Beach Boys, Johnny Rivers, Bette Midler, John Lennon, Cliff Richard with The Shadows, Marc Bolan & T.Rex, the Mamas & The Papas, Bobby Vee and the Ramones.

However, several of Freeman's later recordings for King in the early 1960s went unreleased, for unexplained reasons. He did not return to the charts again until 1964, after signing for the Autumn label, when he had his second top ten hit with "C'mon and Swim". The song was co-written by label owner and radio DJ Tom Donahue (credited under his birth name, Thomas Coman) and 20-year-old Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly Stone, and was produced by Stewart. Freeman's final hit was "S-W-I-M", later in 1964. Mainly supporting himself as a singer in clubs by the late 1960s, Freeman continued to release singles on various small local labels through to the mid-1970s but met with little commercial success. Freeman performed at the Bay Area Music ("Bammy") Awards in later years. He was remembered by SFGate as "the man who became known as San Francisco's first rock 'n' roll star after his song 'Do You Want to Dance' climbed the pop charts in 1958."

5 2 1

37 20 27

54 29 –

90 – –

93 – – 1960

37 – – 1961

89 – –

5 3

56 – 1965

131 – – 1969

122 – –

Note: * Billboard did not publish an R&B chart during this period.