Jerry Fuller, songwriter whose hit Young Girl was accused of celebrating paedophilia – obituary

Sung by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Young Girl was a UK No 1 and even outsold Hey Jude, but some US radio stations refused to play it

Jerry Fuller, who has died aged 85, was an American singer turned music producer and prolific songwriter who penned more than 1,100 songs for various artists ranging from pop rock to country; in Britain, however, he was best known for a couple of chart-topping hits of the 1960s which would not pass muster in the #MeToo era.
It was his work with teen idol Ricky Nelson that first made Fuller’s reputation as a songsmith. Nelson recorded some 20 Fuller songs, most notably Travelin’ Man (1961), a celebration of the amorous adventures of what might now be described as a “sex tourist” as he flits between his “pretty señorita” in Mexico, his “cute little Eskimo” in Alaska, his “sweet fräulein” in Berlin, his “china doll” in Hong Kong and his “pretty Polynesian baby”.
Described by Fuller as a “girl-in-every-port” song, Travelin’ Man sold six million copies worldwide, reaching No 1 in the US and No 2 in the UK charts.
But Fuller became better known for his association with Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, the Civil War-era Union Army uniform-clad group, whom he signed to Columbia Records.
He wrote several hits for the band including Young Girl (1968), in which a man discovers that the object of his affections is under the age of consent: “Young girl, get out of my mind/ My love for you is way out of line/ Better run, girl/ You’re much too young, girl…”
The song, delivered by Puckett in an anguished tenor and with a memorable strings and brass accompaniment, was controversial even at the time, some US radio stations refusing to give it airtime and Ed Sullivan insisting that the line “I’m afraid we’ll go too far” be changed to “How can this love of ours go on” before he would allow it on his television show.
But sex sells: Young Girl reached No 1 in the UK charts and by the end of 1968 was the fifth biggest selling song of the year in Britain – ahead of The Beatles’ Hey Jude. In the US it had a three-week run at No 2 behind Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.
Re-released in 1974, it enjoyed a second outing in the UK Top 10, reaching No 6. Union Gap even performed at a White House reception for the then Prince of Wales, though history does not relate whether Young Girl featured on the playlist.
Puckett spent much time over subsequent decades rebutting charges that the song celebrated paedophilia. “He’s telling her to go away because she can’t give him the love he wants to have before it’s too late! It’s an upstanding song,” he insisted in an interview earlier this year.
But in 2020 it featured in a New Musical Express list of “10 songs that just aren’t OK any more”, NME’s reviewer describing it, post-Yewtree, as sounding “apocalyptically bad”.
One of four children, Jerry Fuller was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 19 1938. His parents, Clarence and Lola, were singers, and as a young boy Jerry formed a duo with his brother Bill, singing a capella at local minstrel shows and jamborees, before branching out on his own.
In 1959 he moved to Los Angeles and won a recording contract with Four Star Music and Challenge Records. Although he continued to perform, touring as a singer with the Champs, it was as a songwriter for other artists that he became best known.
After he had served in the US Army, in 1963 his record label sent him to run its operation in New York, then in 1967 he moved as a producer to Columbia Records.
He signed Gary Puckett and the Union Gap after seeing the band perform at a San Diego bowling alley. His first production for the band, Woman, Woman (1967, composed by Jim Glaser and Jimmy Payne), reached No 3 in the US.
He wrote and produced their next three hits, Young Girl, Lady Willpower and Over You, the second reaching No 5 in the UK, before his relationship with the band soured over the group’s musical direction. When Puckett refused to record a Fuller song called Heaven Down Below, their partnership came to an end.
In the 1970s Fuller formed various production companies and moved into country music, writing numerous hits for Ray Price, among others, though his greatest success in the decade was Al Wilson’s Show and Tell, which made it to No 1 in the US.
In 1982 he produced Glen Campbell’s Old Home Town album, including the Fuller composition A Woman’s Touch, which also became a hit for Tom Jones.
In later life Fuller returned to his roots as a singer, recording his own versions of many of the songs he had composed for others, releasing them in a three-album series between 2016 and 2018.
Fuller is survived by his wife Annette and by their son and daughter.
Jerry Fuller, born November 19 1938, died July 18 2024