Phil Spector. Soon, Johnston began backing people such as Ritchie Valens, the Everly Brothers, and Eddie Cochran. In 1959, while still in high school, Johnston arranged and played on his first hit record, "Teen Beat" by Sandy Nelson. The single reached the Billboard Top Ten. The same year, Johnston made his first single under his own name, "Take This Pearl" on Arwin Records (a record label owned by Doris Day) as part of the Bruce & Jerry duo (Jerry Cooper was a high school friend of Bruce's). The teenage Hot Rod film entitled “Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow” (1959), features the song “I Promise You” by Bruce Johnston and Judy Harriet . In 1960, Johnston started his record production career at Del-Fi Records, producing five singles and an album – Love You So – by Ron Holden (many of the album's eleven tracks were written or co-written by Johnston). In 1962 and 1963, Johnston continued his recording career with a series of surfin' singles (vocal & instrumental) and an album, Surfin' 'Round the World, credited to Bruce Johnston, and another "live" album, the Bruce Johnston Surfin' Band's Surfer's Pajama Party. In 1963 came the first collaboration with his friend Terry Melcher (Doris Day's son), a mostly instrumental covers album credited to the Hot Doggers. The first artist that Johnston and Melcher produced was a group called the Rip Chords. The pair were then working as staff producers at Columbia Records, Hollywood, and by the time they were producing the million-selling "Hey Little Cobra", a knock-off of the Beach Boys car song vocal style, they also wound up singing every layered vocal part for the recording. The two of them made a few recordings as Bruce & Terry and the Rogues, but Melcher began to focus more on his production career (with the Byrds, Paul Revere & the Raiders). Original tenure with the Beach Boys On April 9, 1965, Johnston joined the Beach Boys in New Orleans, replacing Glen Campbell, who briefly filled in as a touring member for Brian Wilson, and had declined an offer to officially join the band. Johnston did not start playing bass until his first tenure with the Beach Boys, and the first contributions Johnston made as one of the Beach Boys was on Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). For contractual reasons, however, he was not credited or photographed on a Beach Boys album cover until Wild