A Conversation With ... Robin Luke

Tell us about Missouri State’s marketing department, which is part of the College of Business Administration.
Of the 4,600 students in the College of Business, approximately 750 … are in the marketing department. We have opportunities for students to get (an undergraduate) marketing degree, (with emphasis) in advertising and promotion, sales and sales management, marketing research, retailing and merchandising, marketing management and a separate major in logistics and supply chain management. I have 22 full-time faculty in marketing. I (started) this department in 1984.

What are job prospects like for students in the marketing department?
This is not a good time for any student to be graduating. … What is the area that most businesses start to shrink when things get rough? One, advertising, and two, selling. … This is a time when you should be out there hustling more (because) if there are no sales, there is no business. … The one area that’s still pretty hot is logistics. Every student who has wanted a job in logistics and supply chain management, for the past 10 years, has had one before they graduated. That’s an amazing statistic, and frankly, I don’t know how much longer, in this economy, we’re going to be able to say that.

How does COBA help students find the jobs that are out there?
We have an accounting career day, a (computer information systems) career day and a business career day. Companies come from all over the United States, set up a display and stand out in the hallway … and literally fight for our best students. There’s nothing more exciting than to have a student come jumping into my office with their arms in the air, saying, “I got the job that I always dreamed of.”

A little-known fact is that you once had a music career. Tell us about it.
I wrote the song “Susie Darlin’” when I was 16 on the beach of Waikiki between playing guitar with beach boys – not the Beach Boys but real beach boys. … I was raised in Hawaii. … I was asked to sing it at a variety show at my high school, and a man came backstage afterward and said “Would you like to make a record of that?” We recorded it in a bedroom on a portable tape recorder. … It came out in the summer of 1958 and (was) No. 1 in Hawaii for about six months. A honeymooning couple from Dot Records – a very big label in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s – took (the record) back to the president of Dot, and he liked it, bought the master, put it out and ka-boom! International hit. It sold 2.5 million copies and changed my life. I was active (in music) 1959–64, with 31 songs I recorded. … I graduated in 1964 from Pepperdine University, and I announced in Variety magazine that I was through with show business.

Why did you leave the music business?
The older I get, the more I realize how wonderful my parents really were. We were an average family. … My dad had a regular job and never went to college so he wanted me to go, and so did my mother, so … I was going to go to college. … If you were backstage with me and saw people shooting up on heroin or smoking grass, I was not raised that way. I don’t want to disparage the rock-n-roll community … but they just weren’t my kind of people … and I just couldn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life.

Is the song “Rockin’ Robin” about you?
That is not true. Bobby Day wrote the song, and it came out about the same time “Susie Darlin’” did. My song was always above his, all the way up the charts. And in the old days, the guy who’s got the No. 1 song comes on last, and the guy with the No. 2 song went on next to last at rock-n-roll shows. So, because Bobby was always below me, he’d come on and his last song would always be “Rockin’ Robin,” (and) run off stage. And the emcee would invariably say, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, here he is – rockin’ Robin Luke!”

What does the future hold for you?
My (three kids) are all graduating from colleges in December, and I’m retiring Dec. 31. After 26 years here, I will leave behind a wonderful career and some dear friends.[[In-content Ad]]