{"id":140515,"date":"2025-11-15T02:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T02:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/140515\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T02:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T02:58:11","slug":"the-champs-dave-burgess-tequila-hit-maker-dead-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/140515\/","title":{"rendered":"The Champs’ Dave Burgess, ‘Tequila’ Hit Maker,’ Dead at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDave Burgess, the guitarist who led the Champs to radio domination with their Latin-tinged, Pee-wee Herman-approved instrumental rocker \u201cTequila<\/a>,\u201d has died. An obituary<\/a> on the website for the Anglin Funeral Home in Dover, Tennessee, reports that Burgess died on Oct. 19. He was 90.<\/p>\n

\n\tNamed after Gene Autry\u2019s horse Champion, the Champs lived up to their name when they knocked Elvis Presley\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t\u201d from the top of the Billboard chart with their hit \u201cTequila\u201d in 1958. The jaunty, saxophone-fueled chant-along was initially a B side \u2014 credited to the band\u2019s saxophonist Danny Flores (though Burgess and later claimed he and guitarist Buddy Bruce also deserved credit) \u2014 to Burgess\u2019 \u201cTrain to Nowhere,\u201d but it took hold on radio and stayed in the top position for five weeks. <\/p>\n

\n\tBurgess once estimated that \u201cTequila\u201d sold between 1.5 and 2 million copies in its first run and that the album that followed it, Go, Champs, Go!, sold 100,000 copies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen \u2018Tequila\u2019 started to happen, it was so quick,\u201d Burgess said in author John Broven\u2019s Record Beakers and Makers<\/a>. \u201cIt sold so many records so fast. All the different booking agencies called me. \u2026 I said, \u2018I tell you what. You\u2019re all good, but I want the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night followed by Dick Clark, the Saturday night show. And I want a gold record on each.\u2019 \u2026 Rock & roll was just starting and Ed Sullivan didn\u2019t quite know how to handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey kept the momentum going with the hits \u201cEl Rancho Rock,\u201d \u201cMidnighter,\u201d and \u201cChariot Rock,\u201d which reinterpret \u201cSwing Low, Sweet Chariot\u201d as a beach-rock song. In 1959, Glen Campbell joined the band, and a year later, Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts (later of \u201cSummer Breeze\u201d fame) joined. After a few nonstarters, they got back on the radio charts with \u201cToo Much Tequila\u201d (1960) and \u201cTequila Twist\u201d (1962), latching onto the limbo craze that year with \u201cLimbo Rock\u201d and \u201cLimbo Dance.\u201d Their popularity did not survive Beatlemania, and the group called it quits in 1965.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTequila\u201d got a second life in 1987, when Pee-wee Herman danced to it in Pee-wee\u2019s Big Adventure<\/a> in a scene where the character was trying to entertain rowdy, bloodthirsty bikers by pointing at his private parts and shouting \u201cTequila!\u201d The non-sequitur scene was such a hit that in 2010, Herman actor Paul Reubens attended a motorcycle rally in an attempt to secure a Guinness World Record of the most people doing the \u201cTequila\u201d dance.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral jazz musicians, including Wes Montgomery, David Sanborn, and Larry Carlton recorded versions of the song. Flores, who sold the U.S. rights to the song, claimed in 2000<\/a> that he was making $70,000 a year from royalties in Europe.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in Los Angeles to Sigmund and Mariet Eck on Dec. 3, 1934, Dave later adopted the last name of his stepfather, Austin \u201cTex\u201d Burges, who had come into his life when he was four years old, as his stage name. Before forming the Champs, he released a handful of singles including \u201cDon\u2019t Put a Dent in My Heart\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Turn Your Back on Love.\u201d By the time the Champs took off in his mid-20s, he added an extra \u201cs\u201d to the surname and legally changed it to Burgess in 1959. That year, he married dancer and actress Deon Adair Raab.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThe obituary reports that the couple, who had a son David and daughter Charmaine, ran a Montana art gallery in between Burgess\u2019 stints in the music business. They resettled outside of Nashville. His website claims he had registered more than 700 copyrights to songs and that Dean Martin, Marty Robbins, Gene Vincent, and others had recorded his songs. He reportedly also produced music for Darlene Love, Marty Balin, and Don McLean.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back on the Champs\u2019 rise in Record Breakers and Makers, Burgess said the best part of success was performing live. \u201cThe youngsters loved it, and the parents hated us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were the bad guys. We were gonna corrupt their kids with rock & roll.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dave Burgess, the guitarist who led the Champs to radio domination with their Latin-tinged, Pee-wee Herman-approved instrumental rocker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278,21676,3208,72671],"class_list":{"0":"post-140515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-obit","13":"tag-obituary","14":"tag-tequila"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}