In terms of appearances on Billboard’s Hot 100, Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez was Michigan’s most successful instrumental recording artist. Starting in 1959 with his # 1 hit, “The Happy Organ,” Cortez placed a total of eight songs on the chart. But that is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. According to the Artist Discographies section of the Soulful Kinda Music website, Cortez recorded on 18 different labels from 1954 to 1974. Then, after nearly four decades away from the music business, he recorded one final album before disappearing from the public once again.
He was born David Cortez Clowney on Aug. 13, 1938, in Detroit, one of two sons of David and Lillian Mae Clowney. His father played piano and encouraged David to follow suit. His musical abilities flourished while he was a student at Northwestern High School in the Motor City.
When he was about 16, he was encouraged by his cousin, Howard Guyton, to join him in a local doo-wop vocal group called The Five Pearls as second tenor and pianist. The quintet recorded an excellent doo wop ballad called “Please Let Me Know” backed with “Real Humdinger” for their debut on Aladdin Records in 1954. It is uncertain if the single made him a star among his classmates, but has been reported that young David sometimes wore the tuxedo that he performed in to school.
Later in 1954, Clowney and three other members of the Five Pearls recorded the single, “Walk That Walk” / “The Kissing Song,” as The Sheiks on the Cat label. 
The Five Pearls. David Cortez Clowney at lower right.
After shortening their name to ‘The Pearls’ the group relocated to New York and signed with Atco, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. They released two singles for the label in 1956, “Shadows of Love” / “Yum Yummy” and then “Bells Of Love” / “Come On Home,” but neither record charted.
1956 was also the year that Clowney recorded his first instrumentals as the David Clowney Band. “Soft Lights,” a rolling piano blues, and the upbeat “Movin’ and Groovin’” were released on the Ember label, but neither song saw any chart action.
Following the breakup of the Pearls, Clowney joined The Valentines, one of New York’s most respected doo wop groups. Although they had not charted nationally, the Valentines had scored big regional hits with “Lily Maebelle” in late 1955 and “The Woo Woo Train” in 1956, both on George Goldner’s Rama label.
By the time Clowney joined the group, however, the Valentines were nearing their end. Group leader Richard Barrett, who had been instrumental in the careers of Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers and The Chantels, wanted to get into record production and management. 
Clowney was part of what turned out to be the group’s final session. The “Don’t Say Goodnight” / “I Cried Oh Oh” single was released in late 1957 but had little success. Disillusioned, the group decided to disband in 1958 after one final appearance at the Apollo Theater in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan.
Due to his connection with Richard Barrett, Clowney was employed as a session musician and was later hired to be pianist and music director for Little Anthony and The Imperials who were riding high with their smash hit, “Tears On My Pillow.”
At the same time, Clowney continued to release instrumental singles. “Shakin’” / “Hoot,” both featuring King Curtis on sax, was released as Dave Clowney & His Band on the Paris label in 1958. That same year he released “You Give Me Heebie Jeebies” / “Honey Baby” as Baby Cortez on the Okeh label. It was the first time that he used his famous stage name on a recording. No one seems to remember how Cortez got his ‘Baby’ nickname, but it most likely came from his youthful features that even a mustache couldn’t hide. 
Later that year he signed with Clock Records, an independent label based in New York City. His first release as Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, “You’re The Girl” / “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo,” featured his vocals on both songs. The record made no impact on the charts when it was released in 1958, but that same year he stumbled across the song that would define his career.
At the outset, the recording session for “The Happy Organ,” held in a basement studio at 1650 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan in the fall of 1958, seemed anything but promising. “I made the track first,” Cortez said in a rare interview, with the National Association of Music Merchants. Then he saw a hulking shape under a plastic cover in the corner of the studio. “Usually in the studio, they have the Hammond organ covered up,” he recalled. “People weren’t using it then, except in gospel. I said, ‘Can I try that over there?”
“They played the track back a couple of times, and I started playing with this melody,” he said. “I guess God gave me this melody. A lot of people called it ‘Shortnin’ Bread,’ other people called it this or that,” he added. “But it worked. It was supposed to be a vocal, but I didn’t like the vocal, ‘cause I’m not a great singer,” Cortez said. 
"The Happy Organ" was an exuberant, if not exactly polished, tune with circus calliope overtones. It also contained a great solo by top session guitarist Wild Jimmy Spruill. “The end of the take was rough,” Mr. Cortez was quoted as saying in his brief biography on the European music site, Tim’s This Is My Story. “It went on and on and was full of wrong notes. It was one reason why it was faded out on the record after 1:58.”
Despite its modest prospects, “The Happy Organ” took off, and it eventually became the first instrumental by a Michigan-born artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 when it reached # 1 on May 11, 1959. It also peaked at # 5 on Billboard’s R&B chart while spending a total of 17 weeks on the Hot 100 and selling over one million copies. “The Happy Organ” instrumental also has the distinction of being the first # 1 hit to use a Hammond B-C3 electric organ as the lead instrument. 
The follow-up single, “The Whistling Organ,” was released in the summer of 1959. Although interesting, it did not possess the charm of its predecessor and only reached # 61 on the Hot 100. The song was also included on the “The Happy Organ” album, released in 1959 to take advantage of his chart-topping hit. The LP was released on the RCA label, the result of a financial arrangement with Clock Records.
Cortez could not keep the momentum going, however, and his third single on Clock, “Piano Shuffle,” failed to reach the Hot 100 in the fall of 1959. Clock would go on to release seven more instrumental records by Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez through 1961, but none made the Billboard charts.
He went on to sign with Mercury Records in 1961 and released three non-charting instrumentals for the label. Record releases on both the Emit and Winley labels followed in 1962, but nothing caught the ear of the record-buying public.
In 1962, Cortez recorded “Rinky Dink,” an organ driven instrumental he had written with Paul Winley. Originally released on the small Julia label in New York, it was leased to Chess Records in Chicago for national distribution. The arrangement paid off as “Rinky Dink” reached # 10 on the Hot 100 and # 9 on Billboard’s R&B chart in the summer of 1962.
During the next two years Cortez recorded four minor hits for the Chess label. “Happy Weekend,” the follow-up to “Rinky Dink,” was the most successful when it peaked at # 67. “Fiesta,” reached # 97 in late '62, “Hot Cakes – 1st Serving,” peaked at # 91 in the spring of 1963, and “Organ Shout,” which hit # 76 in the summer of 1963, were his other charting records on the Chess label.
Cortez also enjoyed a minor hit in 1964 when “Popping Popcorn,” issued on Okeh Records, managed to reach # 132 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under chart.
He then signed with Roulette Records, and it was there that he placed his final two instrumentals on the Billboard charts with “Tweetie Pie” - # 135 in the fall of 1965, and “Count Down” - # 91 in the summer of 1966. The relative success of the “Count Down” single led to the release of his “In Orbit” album that same year. Roulette released four more Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez singles through 1967, but nothing charted. 
He moved on to the T-Neck label where he released two singles in 1969 as Baby Cortez. He also recorded a single on the Speed label that year, “Happy Soul (With A Hook” / “Fishin’ With Sid,” by Dave Cortez & The Moon People.
In 1971, Cortez recorded two singles for the Sound Pak label under the moniker Dave Cortez & We The People, but neither charted.
His final label of the 1970s was All Platinum Records. The company was started by Sylvia Robinson and Joe Robinson and based in Englewood, New Jersey. The label specialized in soul and R&B music, and it released his "Soul Vibration" album in 1972 along with five Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez singles over the next three years. The only one to chart was 1973’s “Someone Has Taken Your Place,” a ballad featuring Cortez’s soulful lead vocal that reached # 45 on Billboard’s R&B chart during the summer of 1973. 
Following his 1974 All Platinum single, “Soul Walkin,’” Cortez apparently became disillusioned with the music business. For the next few decades he became a recluse, living invisibly in the Bronx, working straight jobs and declining interview requests. It was also reported that he occasionally played the organ in a Cincinnati church.
Things changed when Miriam Linna of Norton Records tracked him down in 2009, hoping to reissue some of his recordings. Linna, who formed the Norton label with her husband Billy Miller in 1986, recalled in an interview with Billboard that she became a fan of Cortez after she purchased an old Apollo Theater poster of the artist at a rock and roll auction. 
She began collecting various Cortez items, and when the internet became available, she googled David Clowney, the former New York Jets/Buffalo Bills receiver. She managed to contact him through the NFL office to let him know that she was interested in getting in touch with his father. The message got through because a few months later, Linna got a phone call from Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez. “I hear you’re looking for me,” he said. “I flipped out,” Linna recalled, “he was very, very nice and fun.”
Much to her surprise, Cortez was willing to take another stab at recording. Two years later, Norton released the album “Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez with Lonnie Youngblood and His Bloodhounds.” Youngblood, a renowned saxophonist, had recorded with Jimi Hendrix. That same year, Cortez performed a joyous set at the Norton Records’ 25th anniversary concert in Brooklyn.
Linna said that Cortez had “one of the top five dynamic stage presences ever,” while describing his wild style at the label’s anniversary show in 2011. “He was standing up playing the organ, spinning around while he was playing, and he was just a gorgeous looking man in complete control of the situation and beaming!”
Lonnie Youngblood and Dave 'Baby' Cortez
She also recalled that some English admirers were in the crowd that night, and he was later asked to do a European tour, but that he declined because he was focused on being a “church guy.” Linna lost track of Cortez after the show, and they never spoke again.
Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez became a news story again in 2025 after Miriam Linna mentioned him on her biweekly music radio show, Crashing the Party. After hearing that June episode, Liam Waldon, a 15-year-old doo wop historian in Australia, decided to try to find Cortez himself - “for an interview, or just to talk to him,” he wrote in an email to the New York Times. “He seemed like a cool guy.”
After a bit of online digging, Waldon discovered that Cortez had died and that his body remained unclaimed. He then alerted Miriam Linna. According to city records, David Cortez Clowney died on May 31, 2022, at his home on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. He was 83. His body lies in Plot 434 on Hart Island, the potter’s field off the Bronx shoreline, where some one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves.
Taryn Sheffield, his daughter, said in an interview that she had not heard from him since 2009. “He’s been a recluse for many, many years,” she said. “The music business wasn’t very kind to him, and he was bitter.” She had learned of his death in 2022 only after BMI, the music rights organization, contacted the family while looking for his next of kin.
Dave 'Baby' Cortez
Sheffield said that efforts to locate his body were fruitless. As for her lack of communication with her father, she said that there was no bad blood between them, and that life just got in the way. “I’m 60 years-old, and I’ve got 10 grandchildren,” she said. “I really don’t have the time to move back.”
It was a very strange ending for one of Michigan's legendary artists, and one whose name was known around the world for his hit recordings. As a result, Dave 'Baby' Cortez's lengthy obituary appeared in the New York Times three years after his passing. Because of his Michigan roots and the unusual circumstances surrounding his life and death, he was also featured in an interesting article in the Detroit Free Press in 2025.
Dave ‘Bay Cortez was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame in 2025. “The Happy Organ” was inducted as a Legendary Michigan Song in 2018.
Sources:
Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez discography – Soulful Kinda Music website
Top Pop Singles 1955 – 2002 by Joel Whitburn
Neal Rubin – Detroit Free Press
Alex Williams – New York Times
Published interviews with Miriam Linna and Taryn Sheffield
Wikipedia pages for the various record labels that issued recordings by Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez
