The song that made Ray Hildebrand’s name, Hey Paula, was written to help out Russell Berry, a teammate on his university basketball squad. Berry wanted to impress his girlfriend of that name, and it worked – she married him. But if Hildebrand, who has died aged 82, had simply handed it over and carried on with his education, he would have missed out on an era-defining single and a career lasting nearly 60 years.
Luckily, both for him and a generation of smooching teenagers, he decided to record the song with his college friend Jill Jackson. The track alternated between creamy harmonies and sunny individual vocals. It was a melodic shot of pure adolescent desire – “I’ve waited so long for school to be through / Paula, I can’t wait no more for you” – that spoke to seemingly every moonstruck young lover in the US.
