I returned to DJing for the first time in 18 months, spinning records for patrons at an East Village tiki bar. The novelty of playing vinyl is compounded by its restrictions: there’s only so much music you can fit onto a physical disc. So, when you DJ for a time, you gotta go digging for records.

That’s why I ended up at the Norton Record Shop in Prospect Heights in 2017, sifting through their $1 bin. It was there that I scooped up a bunch of oddball 45s (aka singles or “7-inches”) in plain white sleeves, one of which was “Red Devil” by a group called Gene Carroll and the Shades.

Without the picture sleeve, I had no way of knowing that I had bought a record by “Mean” Gene Okerlund.

Long before his nightly reign as kingpin behind the WCW microphone or his recent entry into the fast-food battle royale of THE MEAN GENE’S burger chain, Okerlund defended his teen king title on the South Dakota/Minnesota hop circuit under the guise of ‘Gene Carroll,’ piano whalloper supreme.Norton Records)

Eugene Okerlund was born on Dec. 19, 1942, in Brookings, South Dakota and grew up 100 miles north in Sisseton, smack dab in the middle of the Lake Traverse Reservation. As a teen, Okerlund gravitated to music because what else are you going to do in a town with a population of 2,412?

According to the South Dakota Rock & Rollers Hall of Fame, “Mean” Gene began playing with Gaylen Johnson and Bob Syverseon in the Harold Johnson Orchestra. With that newfangled “rock and roll” poppin’ off, the three teens bailed on the orchestra, recruited Odean Anderson and Larry Wattier, and formed The Shades.

This choice will wreak havoc on future Discogs sales; they’re the 48th band listed under that moniker.

From there, The Shades took off! Sorta. According to the South Dakota Rock & Rollers Hall of Fame—which inducted Gene Caroll and the Shades in 2009—the band “developed a unique sound that caught the attention of Midwestern teenagers as well as older fans.”

Eventually, the group recorded a 45 on the M&L label out of Sioux Falls. The A-side is “Do You Remember Last September,” a typical teenage rock and roll love affair. Okerlund, as Gene Carroll, does his best as an Elvis crooner, delivering that kind of “I’m still true to you” kind of love song.

“Do you remember / Last September / When I went back to school? / Darling, do you remember / Last September / How I fell in love with you?”

“Mean” Gene’s voice is so distinctive that I can’t imagine someone doing a proper impression, unlike the way “Macho Man” Randy Savage or The Ultimate Warrior’s voices have become easily replicable. If you told me that “Mean” Gene recorded a song back when he had hair, this is not the voice I would have imagined.

The B-side to the 1959 single is “Red Devil,” a piano-driven instrumental that is a prime cut of 1950s rock and roll. If I were to tell you to make up a song for the prom scene in Back to the Future—before Marvin Berry picked up the phone—you probably would have thought up a song close to “Red Devil.” This isn’t to say it’s bad, but it’s just woefully generic.

The Shades split up in the early 1960s, but Gene Carroll made one more go at fame. In 1962, Gene Carroll had one more 45, this time on the Wausau record label (named for Wausau, Wisconsin). On one side, “Holly,” a song written with Duane Christianson. The other half, “Is It Ever Gonna Happen,” is a rockabilly romp, a suggestive stomp about what I can only presume is Gene wondering, are we gonna do it or what?

It’s here where you can really hear the “Mean” Gene voice on the lyrics, especially the way he draws out “haaaaapen” on the first line. And honestly, I’m surprised that this hasn’t become a rockabilly revival staple. It’s energetic and lively—Gene even wails on it!

At first, I thought that releasing a rockabilly song in 1962 was a choice, but a look at the Hot 100 year-end singles shows that ‘50s music was still kickin’ well into the sixties. Flower power hadn’t sprouted yet, but it was on its way.

Norton’s reissue, In This Corner… doesn’t contain “Holly,” presumably because they couldn’t track down Duane Christianson to get the rights to it.

If you want to hear “Holly,” you need to track down an old 45 of it. As I write this column, there’s one copy for sale on Discogs.

The seller writes:

“Record has a crack going completely through from edge to deadwax. I’ve taped the trail-in to help keep it together. Both sides play through without skipping but with consistent light clicks. The crack is fairly clean until the last 10 or so grooves, where it gets a little sketchy, but still plays through. I tried different weights from 1 gram to 3 grams, and it played through at all weights. Other than the crack clicks, it plays at a staticy WEAK VG. Labels are dirty with xol.”

They’re asking $100 for it. Woof.

I assume, from the Wausau label, “Mean” Gene put out “Holly/Is It Ever Gonna Happen” during his time working in the Minneapolis radio scene, where he seemingly wound up after The Shades fizzled out. From what I can find, he worked as an on-air talent going by “Gene Leader” before becoming a station programming director.

It was around that time in the 1960s that Gene began working for Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association, both as an announcer and an on-air interviewer. During his fourteen-year tenure with the AWA, Okerlund would pick up the “Mean” Gene moniker and cross paths with a rising star by the name of Hulk Hogan.

Gene, Hogan, and a group of AWA talent eventually defected to the WWF in the early 1980s as part of Vince McMahon’s national expansion. Thus, the Rock & Wrestling era was born.

“Mean” Gene would go on a lengthy Hall of Fame run as an on-air talent, both for the WWF and WCW. However, Gene Carroll was never truly gone. Sure, Gene would sing the National Anthem at the first WrestleMania, but he really returned to his roots when he covered “Tuti Frutti” for 1985’s The Wrestling Album. 

He’d also sing a version of “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” alongside Rick Derringer for Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II. And yes, they made a music video. But that’s a nightmare for another day.