4 R&B "Up on the Roof," "Another Night with the Boys"), Burt Bacharach and Hal David ("Let the Music Play," "In the Land of Make Believe"), Otis Blackwell ("I Feel Good All Over"), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil ("I'll Take You Home," the Leiber & Stoller co-writes "On Broadway" and "Only in America"), and Van McCoy ("Rat Race," also co-written with Leiber & Stoller). The first dozen tracks alone encompass tunes from Carole King and Gerry Goffin (the No.
While those earlier songs are absent (though "There Goes My Baby" appears in a live version), that's not to say that there aren't plenty of choice cuts here from the same pool of New York's finest songwriters. Some of the King-led hits include the epochal "There Goes My Baby" as well as "Dance with Me," "This Magic Moment," "I Count the Tears," and the chart-topping "Save the Last Dance for Me." Upon King's departure, Rudy Lewis and Charlie Thomas stepped up to split lead vocal duties, and the hits kept on coming: "Some Kind of Wonderful," "(Don't Go) Please Stay," "Mexican Divorce," "Sweets for My Sweet," and "When My Little Girl Is Smiling" among them. With King on lead, the producers crafted polished uptown soul rooted in the best of both worlds: lush, orchestral pop melodicism with authentic R&B grit. While the McPhatter recordings sonically are from a different era, the King recordings helmed by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are very much of a piece with the "soul years" represented here. It opens with the iteration led by two former second tenors of the group, Rudy Lewis and Charlie Thomas. As it begins in mid-1962, however, this set includes none of the classic Drifters recordings led by Clyde McPhatter (1953-1954) and Ben E.
and the following week in North America.Ĭompiled by the late Bob Fisher who sadly passed away in October at the age of 74, We Gotta Sing! presents a session-by-session chronology of The Drifters' recordings for Atlantic Records between Jand Januplus a bonus track from 1982. Now, Cherry Red's Strawberry Records imprint has chronicled one period of the group's lengthy history on a new 3-CD box set, We Gotta Sing! The Soul Years 1962-71, which is out November 12 in the U.K. Despite an ever-changing lineup, The Drifters remain a beloved cornerstone of American pop and soul. The African-American vocal group's fortunes were even greater on the R&B chart where, of 30 entries between 19, 23 reached the top ten. Between 19, The Drifters notched 32 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, with a thirty-third "bubbling under." Five of those hits reached the top ten.
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