Thomas Baker Knight Jr. (July 4, 1933 – October 12, 2005) was an American songwriter and musician. His best known compositions were “Lonesome Town“, “The Wonder of You“, and “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time“. His songs have been recorded by Ricky Nelson, Paul McCartney, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Mickey Gilley, Sammy Davis Jr. and Jerry Lee Lewis He was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He learned to play guitar while serving in the Air Force, and after his discharge entered the University of Alabama, where he wrote music in his spare time. In 1956 he founded a rockabilly group, Baker Knight and the Knightmares, with Shuler Brown (bass), A.D. Derby (keyboards), Bill Weinstein (drums), Glenn Lane (sax), and Nat Tortorici (sax).
Perhaps you old Shades Valley folks remember the Knightmares playing after a football game. About 3 numbers into the night, Coach Jerry Oxford, the Vice President, found several of the band members to be intoxicated. Coach Oxford threw the whole group out of the gym. Ricky Nelson followed the lead of other pop stars of his day, particularly Elvis Presley, by recording this four-song, 45-rpm EP of religious material. The only oddity about it was that the songs were all originals. The term “spiritual” is usually thought to mean traditional material, but the songs on Ricky Sings Spirituals were written by his in-house songwriter, Baker Knight -“Glory Train”