... how that manifested itself in your singing style?

I would imagine that my musical influence was like, like most coming out of the South was the Baptist church really. Ah, from what my mother was telling me, I was in church singing at the age of ten and my father decided to go in the restaurant business and he'd moved to New York when I was about twelve. And in New York, ah, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz. Great singers like Billie Eckstein and Nat King Cole, my mother would just go buy thousands of records by them and things like that. So when I got to New York I found all this other music outside of hillbilly and gospel that really just started my whole brain into a whole musical thing.

I read somewhere that you talked about street corner harmonizing, you'd walk by a group of kids singing.

Doing street, they called it do wop op, doing do wop op came about when I was in my teen years like between maybe thirteen or fourteen until I was about eighteen years-old. That, and that started when I was in school. I met a couple of school pals that were singing and they found that I could sing a bit and I joined the group. And we start singing on the corners. See the whole thing about do wop op wasn't just singing it was to get girls. You see if you sound good, see it's like - don't frown - if you sound good, girls follow. Nothing to do with you personally. But that's how it happened then. If you sound really nice and from each block, like I was with a bunch of guys out of 118 Street and Eight Avenue. So we would challenge guys all up and down that avenue. And girls found out that we were like good. And they would follow. And of course, whatever neighborhood we'd go to the girls in that neighborhood will become impressed because we're bringing girls with us. Girls are amazing I think.

In some ways. Now can you tell us how you first came to be a Drifter.

Oh, ah, I was working with my dad in the restaurant, had a restaurant 119th Street and Eight Avenue, there was a fellow across the street that was managing a lot of local groups and his name was Lubber Patterson. He had a group called The Five Crowns which made some nice records, just local hits, and he was looking for a baritone singer. And he heard that I could sing. So he came across the street. And I wasn't interested so he tried to influence some of my friends to join the group and tuff like that so he left then came back a week later and finally I accepted the fact that, Okay, I'll, I'll join your group. And my father said, OK, as long as I do my share of work in the store. I went over and rehearsed with the group, ah, and we found ourselves at the Apollo Theater as an opening act, I think Ray Charles was headlining the bill and of course the Drifters was on the bill. And during that week while we were there with the Drifters, ah, they were breaking up. They was having management trou… pro… problems. And their manager approached, ah, Mr. Patterson and asked him would we, who were the Five Crowns like to become the new set of Drifters. So a lot of people were under the impression that I actually joined the Drifters and I didn't. All the guys that I was with as the Five Crowns became the new set of Drifters, you know. Although I loved the Drifters, they're a great group. Of course before, even being involved with the name Drifters, I used to go to the Apollo 'cause I could afford a ticket in the balcony. I used to go all the way up in the balcony and watch them perform. So, for me to really be a Drifter was like completely out of my, I, I just didn't ever believe I'd become a Drifter.

It must have been an awesome step.

Yeah, it was really, it was a great responsibility. The thing that happened that we weren't aware of in becoming the Drifters that we took on the responsibility of having to record under their name, do all their personal appearances and all that. And that was the hard part.

The first song that you recorded with the new Drifters was - "There Goes My Baby" is that right?

The first, yeah, The first, ah, recording we made as the Drifters was "There Goes My Baby" and, ah, from what I was told Jerry Wechsler hated the record a lot. Ah, it was new, it was something that Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had came up with a new concept of black music and black singers and it took off and it never turned back. It was the first time that strings was used successfully in a, in a recording such as that. And I, I wrote the song but it had nothing to do from the time that I wrote it with anything that I had planned for the record. I mean their whole arrangement and concept of the song - "There Goes My Baby" has nothing to do with what I actually heard when I first wrote it. They just took it and only thing I owned about the song is the lyrics 'cause the, their arrangement was completely left field. It has nothing to do with gospel at all the way they arranged it, you know.

How did you first hear it?

Ahm, of course we was in the studio when I first heard it and it was so much going on and you have to try to imagine during those times in the studio it wasn't as it is today where you have one synthesizer and maybe three musicians. Everybody was there from the string players to the kettle drums to the background singers and, and of course myself along with the group. So we were all there at one time performing. And ah, there was just so much going on that I, I knew something strange was happening but I just could not complain because it, it went, it was going well and, and it felt right, although it, it sounded strange but it felt right. So I went along with it because, ah, I didn't know that the Drifters before us wasn't doing this. And I was all new to the recording so when I got into the studio and all this was there and all that was going on and the arrangers were there and the producers were there and, and the company owners were there, I just say, well, this s probably what the other Drifters must have been doing so I just had to go with it.

So what were you first impressions of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller producers on their ______.

I would believe that my first impression with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, I was so young then, as we all were I guess, they were very positive about what they wanted. I think that's what impressed me the most. And being a kid out of the South and being put in a position where there are extremely talented musicians, I've never learned to read music or anything like that, and ah, to be in their company where everything you can watch them doing makes sense, you know. And as I was telling you earlier about "There Goes My Baby" for instance, the, the way I really have wrote "There Goes My Baby" was with a song, similar to a song that was recorded by a singer by the name of Dee Clark. He had a song - "I don't Want Nobody Else But You and No One Thrills Me the Way You do." And I said - "There goes my baby moving on down the line." I was there but when I got to Jerry, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller they went to the kettle drums, doom, doom, da da da, I said, oh my God, what do I do with this thing here? But they, they said, OK, it's a four bar intro. And I didn't know nothing about counting bars and they showed me they said, count one, so they taught me how to count bars and they says, it's a four bar intro and then start singing. And to, and all that's going in my mind at the same time I have all these strings getting ready to do bits and pieces and the kettle drum is going. So I, I was a bit off but I knew once I started singing, it was their problem to fix, it wasn't mine. All I have to do is, he say, count four bars and start singing. So I say, OK. Then I had to do that I shouldn't learn any more. Surely enough, I counted four bars and start singing and it was like I imagine a mother feels when she's rocking her baby. Everything was so comfortable and easy and sweet and there was no problems. The song went straight down, no problems. See and I was not scheduled to be the lead singer and I guess I was nervous. I had wrote the song but the lead singer was Charlie Thomas and because he was having trouble with the lyrics that's how I became a lead singer anyway. I was never supposed to be a lead singer, ever. There was never should have been a Ben E. King in life because I was a baritone singer. I was the one that did the steps and watched the girls while the other guys had the responsibility of making the song happen. I was not that guy. I had no intentions of being that guy but as luck would have it or not, Charlie Thomas couldn't do the song. Jerry Wechsler got upset about it and said, who wrote the song. And they pointed at me. And he said, well, if he wrote it let him sing it. And that's when I started getting all these instructions from Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller of how to get into the song. And they were brilliant. I mean, ah, Jerry and Mike as people they were, they were warm, they knew how to handle a singer, they knew how to make you feel comfortable. And as well, I knew something was happening with the music because of them. They were certain of what they wanted to do with what, what, this new sound that they were making. No one was screaming, it's horrible, it's -- I think the thing came about with Jerry Wechsler was after, after the thing was done, after "There Goes My Baby" was done. It was just so new and he said this was wrong and that was wrong he found all the negative things about it but it just came out of the, of the box and went straight up without anybody having to pump it or push it at all.

Did you know that something really new was going on?

I think the thing about this business is that you take a chance to do something and you realize in your heart it's either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. It won't be an in between, I almost made a hit. It will be an instant flop or an instant success. And that's what Jerry Leiber is about. They've always been, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, they've always been like that, it's either going to be an instant success or an instant flop. There's no in between with them, very few things have been in between.

I'm going to move on to "Save the Last Dance For Me". Jerry told us the story about Doc Thomas writing that song, are you familiar with that?

Let me see which one he knows and I'll tell you which one I know.

That Doc had written it, he used to go to the dance floor and watch his wife dancing with other men. He was, of course, wheelchair bound. How did you feel about that song when you first hear it? What kind of feeling did you bring to singing that song.

I think, ah, when I worked with Doc Thomas and Mort Shuman, and especially on "Save The Last Dance For me" the thing that impressed me most about Doc Thomas is that although you knew he couldn't walk, you just, you, I felt he could. He had a lot of energy and a lot of sincerity about his writing and a lot of positive, positiveness about show business and, and he just felt great about all the music that had been created before he was in the business and after and during. And when I did "Save The Last Dance" I thought too of the story that the reason he wrote the song which was because his wife was dancing and he, he would take her out and he couldn't dance with her. And when I performed the song, ah, at the studio to record, there are very few songs that I've recorded that I knew all, or even would allow myself to say, I know this is a hit, "Save The Last Dance" was one of them that once I finished a song, I knew it was a hit. How long it would remain a hit is another story but I knew it would be a hit, yeah.

What was it that made you know it was a hit?

Because he, he gave me more than lyrics. He gave me a reason why the song was born. Ah, when you go into a studio and you get a song from a writer and you don't have anything other than what he wrote, he could have done that not even from his experience, from anybody's experience but because I knew this was actually from the experience that Doc himself had felt and this is very personal, I just closed my eyes in front of the microphone and I could see him watching his wife as she was dancing and I could sing the song because now the whole complete picture of the song and the reason it was written was all in my head.

Tell me more technically about "Save The Last Dance," there is a distinctive Latin rhythm with a lot of orchestra and a trademark of that era, ______ production. Was it a challenge or an adjustment for you to sing with all that stuff going on in the background?

I think that the reason why I was comfortable with, with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller doing the Latin arrangements and things like that, ah, like I was telling you before, I was, I was raised 116th Street and Eight Avenue, only five blocks to the East was the East Side which a lot of Hispanics were there. And that's where I used to go a lot to pick up things for my dad. So the music of that, I was very familiar with. And, and not only being familiar with, I enjoyed the music rhythmically. So when Jerry and, and Mike was doing those arrangements I wasn't uncomfortable because I was familiar with the sound and the feel of that rhythm. My only problem with that was to make sure that I could sing that. See, again, like I said, it was a far cry from good gospel to singing, you know, - You can dance every dance with the guy who will give you the eye… but don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're going to be. That's a lot, see, in church you don't do all that movement with the mouth, you just get, you go from the heart and you slow yourself down and you get involved with people. But here, I, my, my my mouth became an instrument, I'm doing, you now, - So darling save the last chance for me. I'm all, I'm all, my mouth is completely going crazy here. And it was new to me because of that and it was very hard as a black singer to actually get a good feeling out for the lyrics because they were moving so fast. Most black singers like to slow the word down and, and go directly to your heart. They're not interested in your ears, we just want to go directly to your heart. So once Jerry and, and Mike got a hold of me they changed my whole attitude about the feeling of music and that I can not only get into people's heads and hearts with the words, but I can also deliver it and make them feel well, what I'm saying, which I thought I'd never be able to do really. But it was because of them and their faith in me and the way they was instructing me of how to do this I was able to more or less do the both things rhythmically and, and feeling.

Do you remember their instruction at all?

Yeah, we would sit down, Jerry Leiber and myself would sit down at the piano for hours and hours and hours and we would go through this song. And I would explain to him, I said, I hear what you're doing, I said, but I would like to do it this way. He said, won't fit. I said, but if we do it slower. He' say, it won't fit. I'm always trying to get him to slow things, he said, it won't fit. We get into the studio, after fighting with him and losing, we get into the studio and he'll he'll get the band together and have a what, what we call a run through of all the things that we want to do with this particular song. And after I get there and, and I hear the run through and again I have to say, he's right. So after about the third of fourth time of him and I fighting each other, not really loudly just, what's your opinion, kind of thing, I, I learned that in most cases he was right because he was using my voice as, as an instrument. It was up to me to find the feeling in what I was doing, ah, and that's one of the things I, I've always credited him for my learning how to approach different songs yet not losing the feeling of the song and yet putting my own feelings in it to deliver to the people. One of the hardest things in the world is to perform on record and get someone to enjoy and feel what you're doing. It's unlike, like TV you can, you can fake it with the face and the crying and the bits. Recording is completely different. We have to make sure you like everything we're doing and saying between Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and myself and the studios we use to convince you to buy this product and it's not an easy task. But he taught me one great lesson, if you just concentrate on what you're doing and allow yourself to actually enjoy and let your feelings come out, whatever the tempos, whatever the rhythms, whatever the songs, 9 out of 10 times it will work. And I've taken that lesson to me, oh, to thousands of studios with me.