ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME The Ink Spots By Dan J\[ooger O n e OF THE YEAR’S most heralded events in record-coUecting fandom swing, jazz and jive styles. W hile none o f the six recordings the group was the discovery o f the legendary first acetate recordings, made in made for R C A sold w ell, they did manage to get the group its first tour 1953, by the very first inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall o f Fame, o f England and Europe. Elvis Presley. The songs, “M y Happiness” and “That’s W hen Your In 1936 the Ink Spots signed w ith Decca Records, and Jerry Daniels Heartaches Begin,” were both popularized earlier by the Ink Spots. was replaced by Bill Kenny. The swinging styles o f their early days The Presley sides offer proof o f the Ink Spots’ profound influence on continued, w ith Deek W atson singing lead, but as Bill Kenny once re­ rock 6? roll. They are, to this day, considered the forerunners o f R6?B- called, “This style wasn’t getting the group anywhere.” Indeed, by g rou p sin gin g style. 1939 the Ink Spots were on the verge o f disbanding when songwriter In contrast to their contemporaries, such as the M ills Brothers, who Jack Lawrence brought them a ballad entitled “If I Didn’t Care.” vocally imitated the instruments o f a jazz band, the Ink Spots’ patterns For the first time, the tenor of Bill Kenny was paired off with o f vocal harmony “established, if not introduced, what was to become Hoppy Jones’s “talking” bass. A million seller, “If I Didn’t Care” inau­ a standard pattern for the majority o f black vocal quartets,” wrote Bill gurated a stream o f hit ballads in a similar vein, including “M y Prayer” M illar in his book T he Drifters. ‘T he baritone, bass and second tenor (successfully revived by the Platters in 1956), “Maybe,” “W e Three,” would harmonize an accompaniment to the primary vocal line, which “W hispering Grass,” ‘T he Gypsy,” ‘T o Each His Own” and “I Don’t relied chiefly upon a tenor lead ------ It was but one o f the elements in W ant to Set the ^Vorld on Fire.” ’W orldwide touring, appearances black group singing which became known as rhythm & blues in the w ith artists ranging from Lucky M illinder to Glenn M iller and roles in 1950s, and, more so than any other black group of the tiW [the Ink such movies as The Great American Broadcast kept the Ink Spots on Spots] initiated a stream o f development w hich led in turn to the Raw top w ith both black and white audiences right up through the postwar ens, the Orioles, the Dominoes and the Drifters.” years and the dawn o f the 1950s. Clyde M cPhatter, former lead singer o f both the Dominoes and the During the Forties, the group pioneered the breaking down o f racial Drifters, was no doubt speaking for many o f his contemporaries when barriers by appearing in previously all-white Southern venues. W hen he told author Charlie Gillett in 1969, “W e patterned ourselves after the Ink Spots appeared in 1948 at Miami’s M onte Carlo club, headlin­ the Ink Spots.” ing over several white acts, B illboa rd reported: “Format is a radical de­ The Ink Spots’ story begins in Indianapolis in the late 1920s, where parture for this territory, for even if Jim C row laws are largely unwrit­ Orville “Hoppy” Jones, Ivory “Deek” W atson, Charlie Fuqua and Jer- ten and there is no law prohibiting Negro entertainers from working in ry Daniels gained early experience w ith such amateur and semipro white places or with white acts, no operator in the Deep South has groups as the Peanut Boys, the Percolating Puppies, the Four R iff ever had the nerve to try it.” Brother^ the Swingin’ Gate Brothers and King, Jack and the Jesters. By the late 1940s, however, the Ink Spots were beset by both musi­ During this time, Bill Kenny - who was to become the most famous cal and personal problems. The style that had once seemed so fresh had Ink Spot o f all - was gaining similar experience in his home town of hardened into a rigid formula. Newer groups such as the Ravens and Baltimore, Maryland. The music o f these early groups was inspired by the Orioles had taken their inspiration from the Ink Spots and were big-name jazz bands and old-time vaudeville acts. The members impro­ now moving the music forward. Even B illboa rd , while still recognizing vised harmony vocals, often simulating wind instruments with their the quartet’s success, had begun to call its style “old-fashioned.’^ ;? voices, and played guitars, tipples and string basses (or cellos retuned The Ink Spots’ lineup had begun to change due to illness (beginning to play as basses). with the sudden death o f Hoppy Jones in October 1944) and internal After Midwestern exposure via live radio appearances on W KBF conflicts until it seemed that, except for Bill Kenny, the group changed (Indianapolis), W H K (Cleveland) and WL^A^ (Cincinnati), the origi­ personnel as often as it changed shirts. nal Ink Spots lineup - Jones, W atson, Fuqua and Daniels - came to There began a series o f legal proceedings in which Charlie Fuqua N ew York in the early Thirties. A legal conflict w ith bandleader Paul w on the right to establish his own rival Ink Spots group. (Charlie Fu­ W hiteman, who already had a vocal group called the King’s Jesters, qua’s cousin Harvey Fuqua fronted the M oonglows during the 1950s; led to a name change from King, Jack and the Jesters to the Ink Spots. he later became a top executive and producer at M otow n Records.) By The group won a regular radio spot on W JZ (New York City), made 1953 these upheavals had caused the original Ink Spots to disband, al­ appearances at the A pollo, the Savoy Ballroom and the Roxy and even though scores o f groups have continued to perform and record under appeared in a movie short (W hat a Business) before signing with RCA the name. But the Ink Spots’ tradition o f romantic, bluesy ballads sung in 1935. in perfect harmony continues to exert its timeless appeal, A t this time, the Ink Spots’ music was still heavily based on 29 right up to the present day. R□ C K AND RDLL HALL DF FAME ROCKIN’ IN RHYTHM 1 9 4 2 ^ 1 9 5 4 By J^ic\ Tosches T h e STUFF OF HISTORY is n o t as neat and orderly as historians would meant that no union musicians would be able to make records after July, have us believe. The big and the small o f it lie in darkness, beginnings and companies rushed to lay in enough to last them through the strike. ends interwoven in shadows. W e seek to discover exactly the moment The ban went on for more than a year, but it didn’t affect the industry and manner o f the world’s origin, but at the same time w e do not even the way most feared it would. Nineteen forty-three turned out to be the know for sure when or where, for example, the first baseball game was industry’s most prosperous year in more than a decade. The problems of played. A s it is w ith baseball and that older game o f creation, so it is with the shellac shortage, erratic distribution and the A F .M . ban were more rock 6? roll. Studying the various elements that comprise this century’s than offset by a record-buying public that wanted dearly to be distracted music, it is no easier to discern die moment where rock 6? roll begins than from the grim reality o f war and had the money to pay for that distrac­ it is to discern where blue be' tion. The style and spirit o f popu­ comes indigo in the spectrum. lar music were changing too; and The term itself, roc\ & roll, is change creates excitement. Big- little help in solving the mystery. band swing was still the rage. The phrase, as an erotic metaphor, Benny Goodman, Glenn M iller, was augured in J. Bemi Barbour’s the Dorseys, Harry James - these song “M y Man Rocks M e (with were the men whom music be­ One Steady R oll),” which the longed to in the early 1940s. blues singer Trixie Smith recorded Goodman and James recorded for in the fall o f 1922. But ro c\ w a s Colum bia; M illef and Tommy also used in a like fashion b?p Dorsey for V ictor; Jimmy Dorsey Shakespeare, in Venus and Adan' for Decca. These three labels dom­ is, back in the days before Vari­ inated the industry at the time o f ety. In the fall o f 1934 - Gladys theAF.M . ban. Presley of Tupelo, M ississippi, In 1938, Decca, the least con­ was pregnant that autumn — the servative of the three major com­ Boswell Sisters, a pop act, had a panies, had signed a thirty-year- hit with “Rock and Roll.” But it old singer and sax player named didn’t rock and it didn’t roll.