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The history of rhythm and blues is filled with vocal groups whose names -- the
Orioles, the Cadillacs, the Crows, the Flamingos, the Moonglows, the Coasters,
the Penguins -- are held in reverence by fanatics and devotees. The Drifters are
part of an even more exclusive fraternity, as a group that managed to carve out
a place for themselves in the R& B firmament and also define that music, not
only at its inception as a national chart phenomenon in the early '50s but also
in the decade that followed. Their place in history is as complex as their role
in it, by virtue of the fact that there are two distinct phases to their music
and the continuity of their membership, and their extraordinary longevity --
only the Platters could claim as great a span of years as an active recording
unit, though the latter group, due to major differences in the way they were
organized, were far more stable in their membership and output. The Drifters can
also claim a unique place in popular music history, as a major R& B group
founded at the instigation of a record-label chief.
Their story began in
early 1953, when Clyde McPhatter, the soaring high-tenor lead singer in the
Dominoes, a vocal quintet formed by Billy Ward three years earlier, quit that
group. The Dominoes were playing a scheduled gig at the New York club Birdland,
one of their first performances without McPhatter, when one of the audience
members present asked after the singer backstage. That fan was Ahmet Ertegun, a
one-time record collector who had started Atlantic Records in the late '40s as
soon as he learned of McPhatter's having left the Dominoes, he contacted the
singer and signed him to Atlantic.
It was Ertegun who gave McPhatter the
impetus, as part of his contract, to start a group of his own, which came to be
called the Drifters. The origins of the name and credit for thinking of it are
obscure, although no one at Atlantic liked " the Drifters" at first, thinking it
sounded too country & western -- the explanation sometimes offered by those
present was that the members simply drifted in from other groups.
The
main source for McPhatter's backing singers was among the ranks of former
members of the Mount Lebanon Singers, the gospel group with which McPhatter had
sung in the '40s. He went through several attempts at assembling a group that
would be acceptable to Ertegun and producer Jerry Wexler, going through as many
as a dozen friends and acquaintances, a handful of whom actually made it to
formal recording sessions. The initial, unsuccessful lineup, featuring William
Anderson, David Baughn, Dave Baldwin (the brother of author James Baldwin), and
James Johnson, recorded four songs on June 28, 1953, of which only " Lucille," a
McPhatter-authored song, was ever released. In August, a second Drifters lineup
was put together, with Gerhart Thrasher, Andrew Thrasher, two very experienced
gospel singers on tenor and baritone, respectively, bass singer Willie Ferbee,
and  Walter Adams on the guitar. From the beginning, the group was unusual among
R&
B vocal ensembles in that a guitarist was part of their core lineup and
the electric guitar central to their arrangements Jimmy Oliver, who would soon
take that spot as his own, also proved to be an important songwriter for the
Drifters, especially for tenor Gerhart Thrasher. The new edition of the group
cut five numbers on August 9, 1953, one of which was " Money Honey," written by
arranger/pianist Jesse Stone. Released within a few weeks, it hit the number one
spot on the R& B chart by mid-fall of that year, and it was occasionally
cited in later years as the first rock & roll record, and later entered the
repertory of Elvis Presley and dozens of lesser talents. The group's career was
made after that, at least as long as Clyde McPhatter was singing lead with them.
This success didn't stop the regular lineup changes that would
characterize the Drifters' history. By the time the Drifters were enjoying their
breakthrough hit, a reconstituted lineup, with bass player Bill Pinkney and
guitarist Jimmy Oliver joining Gerhart Thrasher and Andrew Thrasher, cut their
first session. This was the lineup that lasted for the year that followed, and
cut " Such a Night," a number two R& B hit, and a second R& B chart-topper
with " Honey Love" in early 1954. By that time, the charts and radio play, along
with audience sensibilities, had opened up and " Honey Love" also made number 21
on the pop charts late that spring. Not for the last time, it seemed as though
the Drifters were headed for big things together, but a key member had developed
other ideas by the fall of 1954.
Although he'd been assured of a
considerable amount of musical control, McPhatter found that Ertegun and Wexler
were, as the producers, always trying to push the group into directions of their
own choosing. McPhatter didn't begrudge them their efforts at finding new sounds
that might sell records to white as well as black audiences, but he didn't feel
like participating. His goal was to cross over to pop audiences as a balladeer,
and saw himself as having the potential to become another Nat " King" Cole, or
perhaps a black answer to Frank Sinatra or Perry Como. By October of 1954, he
had parted company with the group in favor of a solo career that would make him
a success for the rest of the 1950s.
Rather than see the group in which
they'd invested 18 months of their time go out of existence, Ertegun and Wexler
were still interested in recording the Drifters, but that group's internal
circumstances were vastly different once McPhatter was gone.
McPhatter
had organized the Drifters under the auspices of his own business entity,
Drifters Incorporated, so that he would have a share of their earnings,
something that he'd been denied in the Dominoes his own willingness to share
those earnings with the other members has never been broached or questioned. He
was half-owner of the group with his manager, George Treadwell, a former jazz
musician who had masterminded the solo career of his first wife, Sarah Vaughan
when McPhatter left the group, rather than making a provision for the other
members and his eventual successor to get his share, he sold out his interest in
Drifters Incorporated to Treadwell.
This basically doomed the group to a
permanent revolving-door lineup. From that day forward, all of the members of
the Drifters were salaried employees, earning as little as $100 a week even into
the early '60s, and getting no share of royalties from record sales, no benefits
from the concert fees they commanded, nor any claim to the use of the name " the
Drifters"
if they left, no matter how successful the group became through their
efforts. It thus became impossible for the group to hold on to anyone with
serious talent or aspirations for a long-term career in music. This made the
Drifters, for those present after McPhatter's exit, little more inviting than
McPhatter's own tenure with the Dominoes, and he later regretted making the
decision, recognizing not only what he had cheated himself of out by not hanging
on to his share of the ownership but also what he had done to his fellow
musicians.
The immediate problem facing all concerned in 1954, however,
was finding a replacement for Clyde McPhatter, and some would argue that they
never did. David Baughn, who had sung with a very early version of the Drifters,
came in as a temporary replacement, singing at one recording session and serving
as lead vocalist for six months' worth of live engagements (which was how the
group generated most of its income). Baughn's singing was good enough, but the
group sounded like an imitation of the McPhatter-era Drifters, and Atlantic
declined to release any of these sides at the time, possibly due to their
potential to interfere with McPhatter's solo releases, which were selling well.
The label didn't know whether to shoot for an entirely new sound or to try to
find a replacement who sounded like the former lead singer who, by 1956, was a
major R& B star in his own right. Additionally, Baughn soon demonstrated an
erratic personality, sufficiently unnerving to force Treadwell to recruit a
second lead vocalist in Bobby Hendricks, who had previously sung with the Five
Crowns and the Swallows. Attempts were made to record this lineup, and even bass
singer Bill Pinkney was cut doing a lead vocal, but none of it was considered
acceptable.
The lineup itself began to shift as Baughn quit, but the
group soldiered on, drawing good crowds at their shows based on the quality of
their earlier recordings. In 1955, however, they auditioned a young man who
approached the group after a show in Cleveland. Johnny Moore had been a member
of a group called the Hornets, who had done a little bit of recording without
making any more than a local reputation for themselves. He sounded enough like
McPhatter, however, with his pleasing high tenor, and was offered a spot in the
Drifters the next day. Moore would prove to be a mainstay of the group in two
different decades.
The Drifters resumed recording in September of 1955,
with Nesuhi Ertegun and songwriter Jerry Leiber producing and with Moore singing
lead. The result was a number one R& B chart single, " Adorable," which went a
long way toward establishing their post-Clyde McPhatter reputation. This proved
to be one of the very few major chart records they would enjoy during this era,
however -- the Drifters were still absent from the top of the pop charts, where
the real money and huge sales figures lay. Their records during the late '50s
were overlooked by most young white listeners, despite the presence of future
rock & roll standards such as " Ruby Baby" in their output.
Dion
would enjoy a much bigger hit with the latter song in the early '60s, but it was
an important recording for the Drifters, marking their introduction to the
talents of songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who would later take over
the job of producing the group. The Drifters' lineup was also stabilized for the
first time in over a year. The original Drifters now entered their " silver age"
behind Moore's cool high tenor, ably supported by the bass singing (and
occasional lead spot) from Bill Pinkney and Bobby Hendricks' tenor. " I Gotta Get
Myself a Woman," written by Jesse Stone and cut during the summer of 1956,
brought the group a number 11 R& B hit and the group's fortunes once again
seemed to be on a consistent upswing.
As it turned out, the black
record-buying public wasn't prepared to fully accept a new Drifters, without
McPhatter -- black audiences practically worshipped the singer, who commanded a
passionate loyalty that anticipated the future success of Sam Cooke.
Additionally, the music was changing -- white teenagers were now a much bigger
part of the market than they had been in 1953-54, and Atlantic set its sights on
that potentially much richer vein of listeners.
The end of 1956 saw the
release of the first album by group, entitled Clyde McPhatter & the
Drifters. Such was the popularity of McPhatter at the time, and the tracks that
he'd done with the Drifters, versus their recent work, that those 14 songs rated
inclusion on an LP well over a year after his exit from the lineup in an effort
to sell the music once more to his fans -- in that regard, Atlantic was very
forward-looking
very few labels in 1956 were releasing LPs aimed at black
R&
B listeners (apart from Elvis Presley's albums, very little white rock
&
roll made an impression on the album charts).
Late 1956 was also
the point when the consequences of the Drifters' business organization caught up
with the group. Their recent hits had led to more bookings than at any time
since 1954, which was good for Treadwell and his partners, but difficult for the
members, who were still working on straight salary and, by Bill Pinkney's
estimation, very low salaries. He approached Treadwell for a new arrangement, or
at least more money for the group members, and he was fired. His dismissal drove
fellow founding member Andrew Thrasher out of the lineup as well, and out of
music altogether. Pinkney and ex-Drifter Bobby Hendricks became the core of a
new Atlantic group called the Flyers, who released one single that failed to
attract much attention.
The new Drifters lineup was filled by bass
singer Jimmy Ricks and then, more permanently, by Tom Evans, late of the
Dominoes, and baritone Charlie Hughes. The group's fortunes now took a new turn
as Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller began producing their sessions in late 1956 --
unfortunately, their arrival on the scene coincided with Johnny Moore's
receiving his draft notice in early 1957. The group was (no joke intended)
adrift once again, in terms of its sound and lineup. Bobby Hendricks was brought
back in, and Jimmy Millender took over the baritone chores, but there wasn't a
lot of good material that came from those sessions. For a time, in the absence
of an ability to create a successful Drifters sound, it seemed as though
Atlantic was trying to turn them into another version of the Coasters, doing
light-hearted versions of pop standards. In a way, this was understandable --
black listeners held this era's Drifters at arm's length, while white teenagers
were dominating the pop charts and they seemed, at least potentially, open to
new records by anyone, so Atlantic decided to cater to them, hoping for a
breakthrough.
By late 1958, Hendricks had announced his exit, and even
guitarist Jimmy Oliver, who had managed to get several of his songs recorded
during his four-year tenure with the group and was an unheralded mainstay of
their sound, finally quit. The remaining members, such as they were, were
working as hard as ever and wanted more money and, when Treadwell refused their
request, they all walked out (or were fired en masse).
Treadwell
was about to find himself without a group and faced with upcoming engagements to
fulfill at the Apollo Theater in New York. He spotted his way out of this
impasse at the Apollo, way down on a bill on May 30, 1958 on which the
about-to-be-fired Drifters were headlining. The Five Crowns, or the Crowns, as
they were then known, had been a fixture in Harlem for most of the 1950s,
predating the Drifters without ever making a mark as a recording act, and
enjoying precious little reputation as performers.
Treadwell approached
their manager, Lover Patterson, explaining that he was dumping the existing
Drifters and needed a new group to fulfill their performing obligations.
Patterson agreed and the group followed suit, and all of the individual members'
contracts, except for that of one of the group's two baritones, were sold to
Treadwell. In later years, this kind of arrangement would become a little more
familiar in the business -- the Grass Roots essentially evolved this way, as did
the performing version of the group Steam -- but it was unusual in those days,
and difficult to pull off, and mostly served to keep Treadwell from ending up in
court.
The new Drifters lineup consisted of Charlie Thomas on lead,
baritone Benjamin Earl Nelson, later known as Ben E. King, Dock Green (who had
held the Crowns together) (baritone), and Elsbeary Hobbs singing bass. They did
as they were required under the agreement and, for ten months, worked in the
shadow of the old group, playing live gigs characterized by the awkwardness of
performing the old songs as though they were their own, to mostly black
audiences who knew that these weren't the Drifters. Atlantic still hoped to
profit from the group, however, and a second Drifters LP, Rockin' &
Driftin', was released in late 1958, comprised entirely of single tracks
recorded by the 1955-58 lineup. Ironically, in all of their 19-year history with
Atlantic Records, the Drifters, in any incarnation, never recorded an actual
"
album"
session every one of their LPs was compiled from existing single tracks
and B-sides and, except for the first album, all have a mix-and-match element to
the memberships and, especially, the singers represented.
The group
still had a recording contract with Atlantic Records and, despite the fact that
the old Drifters' recent releases had done little business, the label decided to
try once more with the new lineup and get a record out. On March 6, 1959, they
went into the studio with Leiber & Stoller producing, to cut four songs.
Charlie Thomas was supposed to sing lead but he developed mic-fright in the
studio, and so Nelson was deputized for " There Goes My Baby," which he had
co-written, along with " Hey Senorita," and " Oh My Love." " There Goes My Baby,"
co-written by Nelson and orchestrated by Stan Applebaum, was as much a landmark
in the history of R& B and soul as " Money Honey" had been six years earlier.
At the time, nobody present was sure of what they had because it sounded so
chaotic, strange, and complicated -- no one had ever used a string section, much
less one recorded as prominently as this one was, on an R& B record, and no
R&
B record up until that time had ever dared sound so complex, overlaying
Latin percussion, violins, and a fiercely passionate performance by the singer.
It not only didn't sound anything like the old Drifters, but it didn't sound
like anything else that had ever been heard on a commercial recording before.
And it was a complete mess in the eyes of some observers, including Jerry
Wexler, who said the song sounded like a radio picking up two different stations
at once.
" There Goes My Baby" peaked at number two, their biggest hit to
that date on the pop charts and their biggest seller up to that time, winning
over both R& B and pop audiences and transforming the group and its image.
Moreover, it marked the group's first impact on audiences overseas -- the
earlier Drifters, for all of their impact on rock & roll, never got a record
released in Europe, but this new group and their sound would soon find a very
important mass audience in England. The group seemed headed for a huge future
when the problem of their business set-up came into play again. They'd cut other
songs at that same session, including " Baltimore," which sounded like an update
of the Cadillacs' " Speedo," but the strings-percussion-echo timbres of " There
Goes My Baby," hung around long melodic lines, became the Drifters' trademark
sound for the ten years that followed.
This seemed to be a new lease on
life to the group, and then more troubles arose from within, owing to the way
the Drifters were organized as a business. Ben Nelson wasn't happy working for
$100 a week not with the hundreds of miles of travel between some shows, and as
many as six days of shows each week. He was so poor working for the group that
he felt compelled to sell off his share of the songwriting on " There Goes My
Baby,"
Accounts differ as to precisely what happened on this issue -- some say
that he sold the share off to Treadwell and his accountant, while Jerry Wexler
claims that he accepted a document from the singer assigning him the copyright,
in exchange for $200 Wexler held on to the document, and gave it back to the
singer once the song was a hit so he could tear it up.
After approaching
Treadwell for more money and being turned down, Nelson saw that there was no
future as a member of the Drifters and announced his exit almost as soon as it
came time to cut a follow-up. At the same moment, Lover Patterson played his
trump card, a separate contract that he'd signed with the singer, as a solo
artist, dated before Treadwell's offer. It all could have ended up in court but
luckily for the singer and fans of the Drifters, cooler heads prevailed. He
remained with Atlantic Records on their Atco subsidiary as a solo artist, and
agreed to record with the group until a suitable replacement could be found,
singing on " Dance With Me," " This Magic Moment," " I Count the Tears," and " Save
the Last Dance for Me," the latter their only number one hit, among other songs,
through the spring of 1960. By the time his exit had been arranged, Nelson had
changed his name to the more memorable Ben E. King, which was how he emerged in
his own right.
The post-1959 Drifters (which also included guitarist
Billy Davis) are usually thought of as the " Ben E. King Drifters," but the
reality was that King had left the group by the end of that same year. King's
first successor was Johnny Williams, who exited suddenly in late 1960, but the
Drifters quickly found a replacement in Rudy Lewis. An ex-member of the Clara
Ward Singers, Lewis was the singer on " Some Kind of Wonderful," " Up on the Roof"
(a Top Five hit), " Please Stay," " What to Do," and " On Broadway" (a Top Ten
hit), among numerous other classic tracks by the group. Lewis, tragically,
wasn't the longest lasting of the group's lead vocalists but his tenure with the
group, following King's, arguably constituted the second half of a second golden
age in their history.
Whoever was involved on a particular record, this
lineup of the group was once again at a peak of influence in those years. " There
Goes My Baby" anticipated the shift to a more pop-oriented brand of soul music,
embraced by Sam Cooke and, even more so, by Berry Gordy at his fledgling Motown
label. Indeed, the sound of " There Goes My Baby" was practically the prototype
for Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' landmark single " Way Over There." Others
also learned from them, most notably a young producer named Phil Spector, who
was working at Atlantic as a session guitarist in the early '60s and ran with
the sound he heard in Stan Applebaum's arrangements, expanding it into something
new and turning it into his own trademark, imprinted on the work of a dozen top
recording acts. And it was during the recording of his own " Please Stay" by the
group that Burt Bacharach first encountered a vocalist named Dionne Warwick, who
was part of the backing trio for the Drifters.
Between 1960 and 1964,
the Drifters achieved a level of stability that was unprecedented in their
history, and it was matched by their success. Not that they didn't make mistakes
-- they turned down " This Diamond Ring," and Atlantic never released their
version of " Only in America," both of which became huge hits, in the hands of
Gary Lewis & the Playboys and Jay & the Americans, respectively. Still,
luck was with them even as essential personnel around them moved on -- in late
1963, as Leiber & Stoller shifted their attention to their own record label,
Red Bird, the Drifters got a new producer in Bert Berns, a songwriter with a
feel for commercial soul music. " Vaya Con Dios," from their first session with
the new producer (and which reflected his love of Latin themes), was a moderate
pop chart hit. And in the spring of 1964, with Leiber & Stoller no longer
writing the way they had been, the group was offered a new song by composers Art
Resnick and Kenny Young, called " Under the Boardwalk."
It was scheduled
for recording on May 21 of 1964. Then, on the night of May 20, just hours before
the recording session, Rudy Lewis was found dead in his apartment under
circumstances that are still in dispute -- the police suspected a drug overdose,
but people who knew Lewis insisted that his only vice was binge-eating, and that
he had choked to death. Without any time to reschedule the session, Johnny
Moore, who had rejoined the group as second tenor in early 1963, stepped into
the breach. Moore, who had previously held the thankless task of leading the
late-'50s Drifters, achieved a special magnificence at that session singing
"
Under the Boardwalk," which became the group's last Top Ten hit in 1964,
peaking at number four. He became the longest lasting of the Drifters' various
lead singers, lasting into the 1970s and beyond their time as a serious
recording act.
By late 1964, Berns was moving on to other projects
including the early releases of his new independent label, Bang Records, and the
group found itself working with producer Tom Dowd in what were very unproductive
sessions. They still had lots of bookings, and enough hits behind them to remain
a thoroughly established act, but by that time the whole notion of soul music
was changing around them, due in some measure to a vast array of other acts
associated with Atlantic Records, including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Sam
&
Dave, and Don Covay. The Drifters were never able to make the jump
comfortably to this harder brand of soul music, and the loss of Berns as a
producer after 1965 seemed to seal their fate. Their own sessions began to show
a lack of urgency and organization, exemplified by the fact that one of the very
best tracks of Moore's era, " In the Park," was left unfinished (without the
group recorded behind him) and in the can for years. The death of George
Treadwell in 1967 removed another layer of impetus behind the Drifters'
continuation as a going concern.
They continued recording for Atlantic
with a succession of producers until 1972. By that time, the company itself was
part of a huge corporate conglomerate, far removed from its origins -- Led
Zeppelin, Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were the stars of the Atlantic
roster then, and scarcely anyone at the company except Ertegun and Wexler likely
even remembered who the Drifters were or how they'd started. Johnny Moore still
sang lead, but there were no more hits after the mid-'60s. They tried altering
their sound to mainstream adult pop, cutting old-style standards in an effort to
capture older listeners. As the hits faded away and the bookings dried up, the
group broke up yet again -- in the end, Johnny Moore was the only recognizable
Drifter and he did most of the singing on the records as well.
The 1970s
saw a proliferation of acts trading on the Drifters name as the rock & roll
revival suddenly made the group's classic repertory profitable again. Founding
member Bill Pinkney led a group sometimes called " the Original Drifters" while
Charlie Thomas led another version and Johnny Moore kept the fully authorized
group under the auspices of Treadwell's widow Faye.
The result was a
series of lawsuits that ultimately saw the various claimants divide different
territories within the United States between them, while the Faye
Treadwell-authorized group, led by Johnny Moore, moved to England, where they
enjoyed a Top Ten hit in 1972 (" Come on Over to My Place" ), falling under the
influence of the Roger Cook/Roger Greenaway songwriting team. This incarnation
of the group, no longer signed to Atlantic after 1972, was signed to Bell
Records. The British-based version of the Drifters became a dance-disco outfit
for a time in the late '70s, virtually irrelevant to the group's history, while
Pinkney and Thomas maintained contact with the Drifters' roots, and even Jimmy
Ricks, who was only in the group for a few months, turned up at some point
leading a combo using the name. Ben E. King even returned to the lineup for a
tour in the late '80s.
In the 1990s, after decades of conflicting and
contradictory claims, a new court ruling determined that Faye Treadwell owned
the trademark of the Drifters' name. The death of Johnny Moore in the 1990s
brought the end of the era in the group's history, though Bill Pinkney -- the
last active original member from the early '50s -- continued to front a group of
Drifters at the end of the decade. The late '80s and early '90s also saw a full
revival of the group's entire catalog for decades, from the 1960s through the
1980s, fans and collectors in America had to content themselves with a single
LP, the 1968 Golden Hits album, consisting of a selection of the group's
early-'60s hits -- none of the McPhatter-era cuts were around, nor were any
other tracks from the '60s era. A pair of Rhino Records-inspired double-CD/LP
sets helped break this log-jam in the late '80s, and Rhino's 1996 triple-CD set
Rockin' & Driftin': The Drifters Box opened the floodgates of their history.
That same year, Sequel Records in England issued seven CDs devoted to the
group's history, and more recently Collectables Records has been busy
re-releasing the group's classic albums on CD. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Source:
http://www.mp3.com/the-drifters/artists/3503/biography.htmll
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