In 1959, the year after Billboard launched their Hot 100 chart, Dave “Baby” Cortez scored his only #1 hit with a silly two-minute tune he wrote called "The Happy Organ." He released a handful of moderately-successful songs in the following years but spent the majority of his life as a recluse, so much so that he'd lost touch with his daughter, Taryn Sheffield. Turns out, Cortez died in 2022, and because there was no family available to claim his body, he was buried in an unmarked grave at Hart Island off the Bronx. Sheffield only discovered her father had died when she received a call from BMI looking for his next of kin regarding songwriting royalties.
The strange circumstances surrounding Cortez's death almost align with the strange trajectory of his career: Cortez, a native of Detroit, was working as a pianist and doo-wop singer. In 1959 he had booked studio time to record his original song "The Happy Organ," but he didn't think he was a very good singer, so he struggled to get a vocal take he felt good about. The studio had an electric organ -- an instrument mainly reserved for gospel music at the time -- so on a whim, he decided to play a little riff on it and use that as the song's primary melody instead. "The Happy Organ" became the first instrumental song to top the Hot 100, and was also the first pop/rock hit to feature an organ so prominently. The song is credited for paving the way not only for future instrumental hits like Santo and Johnny’s "Sleep Walk," but also for organ-laden rock hits like "Light My Fire" by the Doors.
But by the 1980s, Cortez had all but formally retired from the music industry, working unrelated day jobs and shutting down interview requests. He faded from most people's memory, except for that of Miriam Linna, co-founder of the archival label Norton Records. Around 2009, determined to reissue Cortez's music, Linna eventually tracked him down and got in contact with him. To her surprise, he agreed to record new music too. In 2011, Norton released Dave "Baby" Cortez With Lonnie Youngblood And His Bloodhounds, his first album in nearly 40 years.
Cortez withdrew again after that, living in the Bronx. Linna discussed working with him on a June 2025 episode of her biweekly doo-wop radio show Crashing The Party. A listener named Liam Waldon, a 15-year-old "doo-wop historian" in Australia, heard that episode, and he, too, became fascinated by Cortez's career. After some internet sleuthing, Waldon found city reports that Cortez had died in his apartment at 83 years old, and that his body went unclaimed. He was the one who told Linna the news.
Revisit Cortez's hits below.
