Bob Bobo

Topeka, Kansas restaurateur and disc jockey Bob Bobo's music career started in 1957 as a songwriter and part owner of record label Casino (4). Bobo and co-owner Carl Lewis (9) wrote and recorded two songs for Topeka student Jerry Dyke. Demos were sent to Southern Belle publishing in Nashville, which led to the Casino single (presumably recorded in Nashville). Bobo next worked with Ronnie Pearson of Osage City, Kansas for his first single on the Herald Label in April of 1957 with Bobo’s song “Hot Shot”. Bobo would place other songs in the late ’50s, including “I Close My Eyes” (co-written with Lewis) for the Wilburn Brothers on Decca in August of 1957, “The Answer” and “Warm as Toast” (co-written by Lewis) for Russ Veers on the Trend label, and “Let Me Go to the Hop” (co-written by Russ Veers) by the Sweethearts on Power. Bobo seems to have recorded all the Casino records in the basement of his house on SE Ohio Street in Topeka. By the early 1960s, Bobo stopped pursuing songwriting and running the label. Bobo is probably best known for owning the Bobo’s Drive In in Topeka from 1948 until he passed away sometime in the 1980s.