Back in the late 1950s, Jiles Perry Richardson was a former Army radar instructor, a disc jockey, an announcer and a program director at radio station KTRM in Beaumont, Texas. In 1957, Richardson accepted an offer to host a new slot at the station, assuming a boisterous on-air personality going by the name The Big Bopper.
In addition to hosting the show, Richardson also wrote and recorded his own “joke songs” and played them on the air for laughs; those songs often took playful (even mocking) jabs at the youthful Rock-n-Roll craze of the day.
Richardson’s “joke songs” surprisingly became so popular with his listeners that a couple of the tunes were released as a single by Pappy Daily’s recording studio for local distribution in southeast Texas.
Side A was Purple People Eater Meets The Witchdoctor. Side B was That’s What I Like…
^^^ Originally called “That’s What I Like,” the song was retitled “Chantilly Lace” when it went national.
In the summer of 1958, Richardson’s “joke song” single was picked up and re-released by Mercury Records, and Chantilly Lace (now Side A) became a national hit, launching the disc jockey on a meteoric rise to stardom…but only briefly.
Richardson died about seven months later in the early-February 1959 plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.