The short career of Ron Haydock took many different turns, including actor, monster magazine editor, and porn novel writer. But his best known and remembered feat came at the tail end of rock & roll's first golden era. In 1958, he fronted the Boppers as lead singer and guitarist; the group soon changed their name to Ron Haydock & the Boppers. Haydock was a Chicago-born and bred Gene Vincent fanatic. He modeled the Boppers, one of Chicago's very first rock & roll combos, after Vincent's Blue Caps, but the band soon developed its own sound and approach to the big beat. The group recorded two singles on the local Cha Cha label, "99 Chicks" b/w "Be Bop A Jean," and a version of "Maybellene" with Haydock's "Baby Say Bye Bye" on the flip. The band easily left enough material unreleased to make up an album's worth of tunes, which were later released in the '70s on a European reissue, and have recently been released in their entirety on Norton's 99 Chicks retrospective. After Haydock disbanded the Boppers in 1960, he went on to Hollywood, starring in a couple low budget movies, editing Fantastic Monsters of the Films magazine, eventually churning out X-rated novels (Ape Rape, The Sex-A-Reenos, Animal Lust, and Pagan Lesbians among them) under the name"Vin Saxon" until the bottom completely fell out of his life. Wandering lost down an exit ramp trying to head into Los Angeles, a disoriented Ron Haydock was struck and killed by an 18-wheeler on August 13, 1977. ~ Cub Koda