Long before he was screaming into a microphone at ringside, Jimmy Hart was screaming into one on a stage. Now, 56 years later, some of those recordings are finally seeing daylight.
The Announcement
Hart broke the news himself on X, revealing that Sun Records had been digging through its archives and turned up a stash of songs he cut when he was 26 years old, decades before he became WWE‘s “Mouth of the South.”
“Hey, baby! I recorded a lot of these songs 56 years ago, when I was only 26 (just look at those spaghetti-arm muscles in that picture!) The folks at Sun Records were digging through their archives, found these recordings, and now they’re releasing them this September. How awesome is that, baby?!”
Meet It’s Been a Long Time
The album is called It’s Been a Long Time, and it’s being released by Hart‘s old band, The Gentrys, the Memphis rock and roll outfit he sang backup for well before he ever managed a wrestler. Sun Records describes the 12-track LP as a collection that “captures the band’s unmistakable blend of rock, soul, rhythm and blues, and Memphis swagger,” and it’s already available for pre-order ahead of its September release.
The Gentrys were active from 1963 to 1972 and are best remembered for their 1965 hit Keep On Dancing, a song that made the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and turned the Memphis teenagers into bona fide pop stars years before Hart ever picked up a wrestling microphone.
“I Got Into Wrestling to Get Out of Music”
Hart first confirmed the project back in June on the DukeLovesRasslin podcast, and he couldn’t help but laugh at the full-circle nature of it. According to Hart, the label found eight new songs to go with older favorites the band never got to release at the time.
“Can you believe that? I got into wrestling to get out of music, and now all of a sudden, I’m back into music and wrestling. So I’ve been blessed. I really have.”
It’s a funny thing for a guy who wrote some of wrestling’s most memorable entrance themes to say out loud, but it tracks. Hart spent the first act of his career chasing a music career, only to find his real fame writing hooks for Hulk Hogan, The Honky Tonk Man, and a roster of Superstars he managed through the 1980s and 90s. Now, at 83, both careers are colliding again at once.
Why Now
Hart was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005 alongside Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, and The Iron Sheik, and he’s also a member of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, a rare double honor that says a lot about how seriously Memphis takes both of its favorite exports. A find like this, half a century of shelved recordings suddenly getting a release date, is the kind of thing that only happens once. For a guy who has spent decades introducing other people’s entrances, it’s a nice change of pace to have people hyped for his own.
