In 1959, the year after Billboard launched their Hot 100 chart, Dave “Baby” Cortez scored his only #1 hit with a silly two-minute tune he wrote called “The Happy Organ.” He released a handful of moderately-successful songs in the following years but spent the majority of his life as a recluse, so much so that he’d lost touch with his daughter, Taryn Sheffield. Turns out, Cortez died in 2022, and because there was no family available to claim his body, he was buried in an unmarked grave at Hart Island off the Bronx. Sheffield only discovered her father had died when she received a call from BMI looking for his next of kin regarding songwriting royalties.
