Dee Dee Phelps - Career - Dick and Dee Dee

Dick and Dee Dee

While attending college and working at a See's Candy store in Westwood, California, Sperling re-encountered Dick St. John, an old junior high classmate. Both realized they were singer songwriters, and together they began writing songs and harmonizing.

The first Dick and Dee Dee 45 RPM release was on Lama Records, a small company started by their record producers, The Wilder Brothers. Without telling her, the record producers changed her name to Dee Dee, something she didn't discover until the record was released. "The Mountain's High" became a smash hit in the Bay Area, eventually becoming number two on the Billboard Top 100 in the United States. Sperling took time off from college so they could tour Texas. The Mountain's High was re-issued on Liberty Records for national distribution.

Sperling and St. John soon garnered other hits in the early 1960s, including "Tell Me", (also on Liberty Records) and "Young and In Love", "Turn Around" (co-written with Harry Belafonte) and "Thou Shalt Not Steal" (on Warner Bros. Records). They toured with the Beach Boys, and were the opening act for the Rolling Stones when the band came to California for the first time in 1964. They later recorded various versions of officially sanctioned Stones songs, largely at the behest of Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham. Their last hit, "Thou Shalt Not Steal," was in 1965. They remained regulars on Jack Good's television show Shindig!.

Dee Dee married the duo's manager (later executive television producer for Dick Clark Productions), Bill Lee, and had one son. Sperling and St. John parted ways in 1969. After her divorce in the early seventies, Dee Dee married Kane Phelps. They raised two other children and are still married today. Dick performed with his wife, Sandy, in the 1980s as Dick and Dee Dee. He died in 2003.