I have always wondered if the appeal of this song was because it was a good song (it was) or because the lead singer choose to be anonymous. In 1966, no one knew who ? (Question Mark) was. It was sort of like a superhero. Everybody knows Spiderman, but not many know that he is really Peter Parker. It is known today that ? was really a chap named Rudy Martinez. Rudy always wore sunglasses to enhance the mystique. He was born in Mexico, but raised in Michigan.

The guys in the band all come from the Bay City and Saginaw, Michigan area. They were (at the time of the recording) Robert Balderrama (guitar,) Frank Rodriguez (keyboards,) Frank Lugo (bass guitar,) and Eddie Serrato (drums.) The band was named after the 1957 sci fi movie The Mysterians. Today they are called a garage band and it is acknowledged that they were one of the beginning bands of the punk movement that later was popular in the Seventies and Eighties. Bands like the Sex Pistols took their inspiration from ? and the Mysterians.

Rudy Martinez wrote “96 Tears” back in 1962, but it took four years to get it on vinyl. The original name of the song was “Too Many Tearsdrops.” The band Rudy was playing with in 1962 was called XYZ, so another weird name for a group. They played the song at their live concerts and it became a favorite of the fans. The group’s manager Lilly Gonzales, formed a record label, called Pa-Go-Go and they decided to record “96 Tears” on that label. It was promoted around Michigan and began to be played on the radio. CKLW, which is a Canadian radio station right across the river from Detroit, picked up the song and since CKLW is a major radio station, the song was heard far and wide and became a hit. It was picked up by Cameo Records which had national distribution and rose to the top of the charts.

Rudy Martinez was a strange person. He was fond of telling people that his soul had originated on Mars and that he had walked the earth with the dinosaurs. This kind of talk just cemented him as the unknown that he was. ? and the Mysterians were only together about three years, from 1966 until 1969, when they broke up. The group only had one other Top 40 hit, “I Need Somebody” which hit number 22 later in 1966. But the Mysterians along with ? made quite an impact on music over the next twenty years or so.

“96 Tears” entered the pop charts on September 17, 1966 and spent just one week at number one.