Earlier today I was talking with some friends about the old Route 66, which lead, of course, to the snippet of the classic song ("Get your kicks on Route 66") running through my head all day long. I couldn't get it out of my head...and then at some point in the day, the words magically morphed in my head from "Get your kicks on Route 66" to "You'll be fine on Highway 99"! Oh my STARS! How could I have forgotten? That was the wonderful parody version by the great Bobby Volare!

I don't know if he's still around or not (I live under a rock and have for years...), but Bobby Volare had blipped off of my radar YEARS ago. Volare was a character from Dean & Don's Breakfast Club back in the 1980s on KKDJ. Dean & Don were sort of the local equivalent of the Bob & Tom Show back then, complete with all sorts of outrageous characters (Like...what was her name? Was it Aunt Penny who owned The Chat & Chew Diner?), one of which was ultra suave lounge lizard BOBBY VOLARE!

Volare actually recorded several albums back in the day and most, if not all, of the songs (usually parodies of other songs) had these great Fresno/Valley references---such as the "Route 66" knock off, "You'll Do Fine on Highway 99"). One of his biggest hits was "Valley Guy", a brilliant Fresno-fied version of Frank Zappas San Fernando satire "Valley Girl".

Anyway, as I was sitting here thinking about Volare, I looked him up online. Apparently he HAD a Website---that is sadly no longer functioning. But, I DID find this cool site that had samplings of a lot of his songs:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bobbyvolare

I couldn't explore the site/page all that much. It had trouble loading on my computer, but it looks like a site from which you can order his music on CD (I'll have to check it out later and hope it loads better for me).

I hadn't thought of Bobby Volare in years and if he has been mentioned here on FF, I've completely missed it. But finding this site with samplings of his Fresno-ized songs was great!