Roy Orbison - Ooby Dooby - when the cowboy sings

Ooby Dooby

Roy Orbison performs "Ooby Dooby",live video.

Allen Richard "Dick" Penner (born 1936 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American retired professor of English, who, while in college in 1955, co-composed, with Wade Lee Moore "Ooby Dooby," which became a rockabilly hit for Roy Orbison.Penner also had been a singer, guitar player, and recording artist.

In 1956, Penner switched from country music to rock & roll. That same year, he and Wade Moore (born November 15, 1934 in Amarillo, Texas) formed a duo and recorded for Sun Records. The duo was known as "Wade & Dick—The College Kids." Wade & Dick recorded three songs (with guitarist Don Gililland), "Wild Woman," "Don't Need Your Lovin'," and "Bop Bop Baby," which was included on the album Walk the Line, the soundtrack of the eponymous film biography of Johnny Cash. Penner recorded four on his own (with guitarist "Gypsy" Bob Izer). All four songs exhibited a hard, youthful edge that was targeted towards the then new teen market. Penner's four singles — (i) "Move Baby Move," (ii) "Fine Little Baby," Sun 615a, and (iii) "Cindy Lou," and (iv) "Honey Love" Sun 282 consisted of both Rockabilly and ballads. The songs did not rise to the popularity of "Ooby Dooby;" which reached a formidable level on the national charts in Orbison's hands and, eventually, became regarded as a classic of the genre. Moore was in business following his college graduation. After receiving his M.A. from North Texas State, Penner earned a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee for thirty-two years until his retirement in 1990. Penner authored three academic books, his favorite being Fiction of the Absurd.