LYNN — Freddy Cannon, a longtime rock ‘n’ roll musician who gained popularity in the late 1950s and ’60s, died at age 89 on July 17 after a battle with bladder cancer.
Cannon, known for his hit songs “Palisades Park,” written by Chuck Berry, and “Tallahassee Lassie,” originally written by his mother and later recorded by Cannon and his band Freddy Karmon & the Hurricanes, spent his last days in a hospice facility in Oxnard, California, according to Tom Cuddy, a friend and program director from iHeartRadio in New York.
Before his unexpected and nonconsensual name change on the first box of 45s (vinyl records) of “Tallahassee Lassie,” Cannon was known as Frederick Anthony Picariello Jr. He was born in Revere on Dec. 4, 1936, and grew up in neighboring Lynn for most of his life.
He attended Lynn Vocational High School for junior high, where he learned to play guitar to his favorite rhythm and blues tunes on a second-hand guitar, and formed his first band, Freddy Karmon & the Hurricanes.
He followed in the footsteps of his mother, Antoinette (Rosetti) Picariello, whose poem, “She’s My Rock and Roll Baby,” later turned into “Tallahassee Lassie” when she requested her son put the lyrics to music in 1958. She was known for an assortment of talents, including amateur songwriting and fixing eyeglass frames for a local optical company, which resulted in some money.
His father, Frederick Piciariello Sr., drove a laundry truck to support his family while pursuing his love of playing the trumpet in local bands under the stage name “Freddy Karmon.”
Cannon and his band became well known in the Boston teen scene, which later booked them for an on-camera appearance for “Boston Ballroom,” a regional television dance program broadcast on WHDH-TV/AM with host Bob Clayton.
His career skyrocketed with a record deal from Swan Records, where producers Bob Crewe and Frank Slay took it upon themselves in 1958 to scrap a majority of the lyrics to Cannon’s favorite song, “Tallahassee Lassie.”
The song soon reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in 1959, and he grew in popularity from there.
In February, Cannon began renting out a local recording studio close to his home in Oxnard, continuing his passion for producing new music that takes listeners back to the ’60s. For his last song, “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” which was released almost a month before his passing on June 12, he hired a group of musicians to record its rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll sound. The song has now reached No. 15 in the U.K. Heritage Chart.
With a lifelong success story of producing the music that was inherited from his parents, his memory will continue to live on as one of the earliest accomplished rockers who hailed from Lynn.
