BRENTON WOOD,
1941-2025

Brenton Wood, who scored enduring hits with his 1967 singles “The Oogum Boogum Song” and “Gimme Little Sign,” died on 1/3 at his home in Moreno Valley, California. He was 83.

Born Alfred Jesse Smith in Shreveport, Louisiana, the singer moved to San Pedro, California, with his family at age 3. He began pursuing his passion for music as a child and focused on songwriting while a student at East Los Angeles College. His earliest singles failed to make much impact, but after signing with Double Shot Records in 1967, Wood scored three chart hits during that calendar year, with “Gimme Little Sign” cracking the Top 10 in both the U.S. and U.K.

Unlike songwriters who claim their biggest hits took mere minutes to complete, Wood said that the creation of “The Oogum Boogum Song” was complicated. In 2000 he told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “It took me about six weeks, because I had to switch the verses around about a hundred times. That was a song about fashion changes in the '60s with bell-bottom hip-huggers and high-heeled boots and all the different styles of clothes the girls were wearing—hot pants and all that stuff.”

While he never again matched that early chart success, Wood started his own labels, Prophesy Records and Mr. Wood Records, and released a string of singles that earned him a niche in L.A.’s Latin community. He remained popular in that arena through the '90s and early '00s, playing clubs and cruises with such acts as Los Lobos, Ozomatli and Thee Midniters.

“The Oogum Boogum Song” continued to resonate in pop culture for decades after its release, with placement in movies like Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. The tune also became ubiquitous thanks to syncs in ads for Kinder Joy, Apple Watch and Instacart—the last of which ran as recently as Halloween of 2024.

Wood announced his farewell outing and began Catch You on the Rebound: The Last Tour—named for the B-side of his Top 40 hit "Baby You Got It"—in January 2024 but was forced off the road when he was hospitalized after a 5/10 date in Bakersfield, California, at Mechanics Bank Arena.

The singer’s longtime manager, Manny Gallegos, told Variety that Wood's final words were “Catch you on the rebound."