The 1960s File Feature
Like The Big Guys Do
Like The Big Guys Do: The Rocky Fellers and the Joy of AmbitionThere is something genuinely charming about a group of young performers singing about wanting …
01 The Story
Like The Big Guys Do: The Rocky Fellers and the Joy of Ambition
There is something genuinely charming about a group of young performers singing about wanting to be taken seriously. It courts a kind of irony that the song itself refuses to acknowledge, and that obliviousness is part of its appeal. In the summer of 1963, the Rocky Fellers arrived on the Billboard Hot 100 with exactly that kind of record: ebullient, unpretentious, and completely in earnest.
Who Were the Rocky Fellers?
The Rocky Fellers were a family vocal group of Filipino-American brothers who had grown up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their energy was infectious and their presentation youthful in a way that matched the prevailing pop culture mood of 1963, when teen-oriented acts dominated the charts and audiences rewarded enthusiasm as much as polish. The group had a kind of natural charisma that translated well to the stage and, importantly, to the radio format that still dictated what records got heard.
The Sound and the Sentiment
The record had a bouncy, propulsive quality. The production leaned into the group's youthful energy rather than trying to sand it down into something more sophisticated, which was the right call: the song's whole appeal lay in its unabashed aspiration, its cheerful declaration that the singers intended to do things the way the successful and experienced people do them. It was a song about wanting to grow up, and it sounded exactly like the people who were singing it.
The Chart Performance
The record debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 29, 1963, at position 78. It climbed to a peak of number 55 on July 13, then began a gradual slide. In total it spent five weeks on the chart. That run was modest, but in a season when the competition for chart space was fierce, any weeks on the Hot 100 represented real airplay and real audiences. The record reached its peak and then receded, as most do, but it left a mark on anyone who heard it during those particular weeks.
The Rocky Fellers in Context
The group's moment on the charts was brief, but their story carries a particular resonance. Filipino-American performers were genuinely rare on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963; the charts were dominated by white and Black American artists, with very little representation from other communities. The Rocky Fellers' presence there, however briefly, was a small but meaningful breach in a highly segregated commercial landscape. Their ambition, stated so clearly in their biggest hit, was being demonstrated as much as sung.
Looking Back
The song's 549,000 YouTube views place it among the quieter entries in the 1963 pop canon, but there is genuine pleasure in going back to it. The record has the loose, joyful energy of a group that was happy to be making music and confident that the future was going to be good to them. Press play and spend three minutes inside that particular variety of optimism; it is a specific feeling, and the Rocky Fellers caught it perfectly.
"Like The Big Guys Do" — The Rocky Fellers' singular moment on the 1960s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Like The Big Guys Do: Aspiration as Pop Energy
The desire to be taken seriously, to be treated as capable and grown-up, is one of the most universal feelings in human experience. Like The Big Guys Do by the Rocky Fellers took that feeling and transformed it into something breezy and celebratory rather than anxious or defensive. The song's emotional intelligence lies in that transformation.
The Aspiration at the Center
The song's central premise is straightforward: the narrator wants to do things the way the experienced, successful, established people do them. This is the language of ambition before it has been tempered by failure or compromise. There is no cynicism in it, no acknowledgment that the big guys are sometimes wrong or that growing up involves losses as well as gains. The song operates in a state of pure forward momentum.
Youth Culture and the Early 1960s
In 1963, American youth culture was in the process of becoming a distinct and commercially powerful force. Teenagers had disposable income, they had transistor radios, and they had an appetite for music that reflected their specific experience. A song about wanting to be taken seriously, delivered by a group of young men who were themselves working to be taken seriously, spoke directly to that audience's self-image. The Rocky Fellers were not performing aspiration from the outside; they were living it.
The Innocence of the Appeal
What gives the song its particular warmth is its innocence. The narrator is not trying to usurp anyone or prove a superiority; he simply wants to participate in the adult world on adult terms. That modesty, combined with the record's enthusiastic delivery, keeps the song from ever feeling threatening or aggressive. It is aspiration in its most benign and charming form, the kind that you root for rather than resent.
A Small Document of Its Moment
Pop records at the lower and middle reaches of the charts often capture the texture of their era more accurately than the blockbuster hits do. The biggest songs of any year tend to be exceptional; the mid-chart entries tend to be representative. Like The Big Guys Do is representative of a particular strain of 1963 pop: energetic, unpretentious, genuinely felt, and built for the three-minute radio format that ruled the airwaves. As a document of what young Americans were feeling and hoping that summer, it has real historical value.
→ More from the 1960s File
View all 1960s hits →
Keep digging