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| The, um, important line-up. |
This chapter aims to reveal the two-step bridge between the Mills Brothers (covered in his chapter) and the doo wop groups of the late 1950s/early 1960s by way of a quick study of two of the most successful groups to carry it forward. I’ve already picked at this in one of the earliest chapters in the One Hit No More series (the chapter on Don & Juan), but this post will go a little deeper. One group came before the other and influenced themr as well. Finally, as if ordained by fate, each band led from the opposite end of the pitch spectrum. To borrow a frame from Marv Goldberg’s exhaustive history of the later band (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3):
“To Bart, the Ravens must have seemed like the anti-Ink Spots. Instead of having a lead singer with an impossibly high voice, the Ravens had a lead singer with an impossibly low one.”
And I’ll get to who “Bart” is eventually. But first...
The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots came up in the Indianapolis, Indiana area in the early 1930s. The two original members, Jerry Daniels and Charlie Fuqua, started performing as a duo called “Jerry and Charlie,” but they soon folded in two more members from a quartet called “The Four Riff Brothers,” Orville Jones and Deek Watson – or at least that’s Wikipedia’s quick summary. A short history in posted for their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction (you have to hit the pdf to see it) has all four members bouncing indiscriminately singing under a succession of names – e.g., the Peanut Boys, the Percolating Puppies, the Swinging Gate Brothers, King, Jack and the Jesters (Wikipedia has that as King, Jack and Jester with only Daniels, Fuqua and Watson present and as a singing/comedy act). Regardless of the name they performed under, they took inspiration from the “big-name jazz bands and old-time vaudeville acts and, with an assist from regular air-play on Cincinnati’s WLW radio station, they built a large enough regional following that they started probing the New York City market by the mid-1940s.
They landed a night at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater in the summer of 1934. They’d already changed their name to the Ink Spots by then thanks to legal notice from attorneys connected to the very famous Paul Whiteman Orchestra (covered in this chapter) had a singing group called “the King’s Jesters.” The Apollo show (with Tiny Bradshaw!) gave them enough juice to land them a tour of England, a path already opened by the Mills Brothers. (Just to note it, and because it’s a good story, the Ink Spots owed some amount of their success to the fact that the outbreak of World War II wound up stranding the Mills Brothers abroad for some a years.). After returning home (circa 1935), they recorded their first sides for Victor Records. Their first singles, “Swingin’ on the Strings” and “Your Feet’s Too Big” (which gives a feel for their comedy stylings), among them, failed to sell well. It took replacing Daniels for them to find full success and their sound.
“To Bart, the Ravens must have seemed like the anti-Ink Spots. Instead of having a lead singer with an impossibly high voice, the Ravens had a lead singer with an impossibly low one.”
And I’ll get to who “Bart” is eventually. But first...
The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots came up in the Indianapolis, Indiana area in the early 1930s. The two original members, Jerry Daniels and Charlie Fuqua, started performing as a duo called “Jerry and Charlie,” but they soon folded in two more members from a quartet called “The Four Riff Brothers,” Orville Jones and Deek Watson – or at least that’s Wikipedia’s quick summary. A short history in posted for their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction (you have to hit the pdf to see it) has all four members bouncing indiscriminately singing under a succession of names – e.g., the Peanut Boys, the Percolating Puppies, the Swinging Gate Brothers, King, Jack and the Jesters (Wikipedia has that as King, Jack and Jester with only Daniels, Fuqua and Watson present and as a singing/comedy act). Regardless of the name they performed under, they took inspiration from the “big-name jazz bands and old-time vaudeville acts and, with an assist from regular air-play on Cincinnati’s WLW radio station, they built a large enough regional following that they started probing the New York City market by the mid-1940s.
They landed a night at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater in the summer of 1934. They’d already changed their name to the Ink Spots by then thanks to legal notice from attorneys connected to the very famous Paul Whiteman Orchestra (covered in this chapter) had a singing group called “the King’s Jesters.” The Apollo show (with Tiny Bradshaw!) gave them enough juice to land them a tour of England, a path already opened by the Mills Brothers. (Just to note it, and because it’s a good story, the Ink Spots owed some amount of their success to the fact that the outbreak of World War II wound up stranding the Mills Brothers abroad for some a years.). After returning home (circa 1935), they recorded their first sides for Victor Records. Their first singles, “Swingin’ on the Strings” and “Your Feet’s Too Big” (which gives a feel for their comedy stylings), among them, failed to sell well. It took replacing Daniels for them to find full success and their sound.
