Carl Mann
b. 24 August 1942, Huntingdon, Tennessee, USA. Mann was a rockabilly artist who recorded his only two chart singles for the Phillips International label, owned by Sam Phillips, proprietor of the legendary Sun Records. Mann was a singer and pianist whose group, the Kool Kats, was based in Jackson, Tennessee, when they recorded their first tracks for the small Jaxon label, owned by Jim Stewart (who later founded Stax Records). Those songs were published by Knox Music, owned by Phillips, who had started Sun and launched the careers of artists including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis,and Johnny Cash. Phillips signed Mann and had him record the standard Mona Lisa, which had been a hit for Nat King Cole in the early '50s. It reached number 25 in the US in 1959 and became Mann's biggest record. Mann recorded a total of seven singles and an album for Phillips International before leaving in 1962, but only one other single, Pretend, another Cole song, charted, also in 1959. He toured with fellow rockabilly artist Carl Perkins from 1962-64 and left music between 1967-74, after which he returned on the ABC/ Dot Records label, placing a remake of the Platters’ Twilight Time at number 100 on the US country charts.