Posted by robertwrightakabrooks on 8/8/2005, 6:30 am
168.253.133.48
Hello Mike! Even though we have not met I feel rather obligated to add further substance and additional information regarding the IMPERIAL WONDERS, the group that was originated by me in Cleveland,Ohio along with a gentleman by the name of Clarence Covington. We originally started with just the two of us, playing the blues and the Motown sounds. I was the neighborhood paperboy and Al Boyds' family was one of the recepients of the Cleveland Press, an evening paper. One day, while delivering the paper I met Eloise, Al Boyds' youngest sister, and we were immediately attracted to each other, puppy love, that sort of thing. That is how I first met Al. He was trying to learn how to play the guitar, one his father had around the house from previous years. After spending some time with Al and taking him on my paper route with me I soon learned that he had an ear for music and could, in fact, sing, just needing a little coaching. I talked with his mother, Mrs. Ida Boyd and asked permission to recruit Al into my group, THE IMPERIAL WONDERS. Because he was so young, about 12 years of age I guess, he had to be home BEFORE the street lights came on. Mrs Boyd insisted upon that and we complied, finising our music sessions on his front porch. Clarence wasn't too interested in changing the format and resigned to continue on with his unique and well cultured style of music. He is, to this date, an accomplished guitarist, as I am. Al and I developed a lot of techniques together and both of us played the guitar and sang. We achieved some noterity in our neighborhood and surrounding areas. Both Al andd I are Virgos and we are particular with our social lives. What I mean by that is we often met people who claimed they could sing, or could sing, and often had lots of raw talent, but becaus of our strict adherance to preserving a quality group we passed many by who wanted to be in the group. We often went to visit with Fred Butler who was a practicing pianoist and singer, song writer at the time. During this particular era, the 60's, Fred was a dear friend but we felt we could not use him because his instrument could not be taken with him. We loved to walk and sing and please the crowds that would gather around to hear us. One day, we met Kennedy Holman and his brother Montana Holman (deceased), and we found out that they could really sing and they were not afraid to do it. After a while we became a foursome and Mrs Boyd became a bit more lenient and allowed Al a bit more freedom regarding his curfew because she saw that I took real good care of him. This became the IMPERIAL WONDERS that I still remember to this date, the beginning. We later had some changes and Walter Chaney was recruited to join the group. Now we were semi-professional, doing choreographies, buying uniforms and we started doing real show. My own mother became our manger at first because we were all minors and she protected our interests and made sure that we were not financially violated. Our group was a drug/alcohol free group and I frowned upon anyone of us who even looked at a drink when we were working the night clubs. One of the original members of the IMPERIAL WONDERS was JOYCE KIRKLAND, who later became my wife. Joyce was replaced with Kenny Stover and that made us five members. Kenny had knee problems and did not feel comfortable with the many choreograpies that Walter, Kennedy (AKA Sonny T), and Al presented. By this time I was the only offical guitar player in the band. Originally, when the BEATLES were hot, we briefly changed our name to the BROWN BEATLES
and sang mostly BEATLE hits. Al, Sonny, and I played the guitars and Montana played what drums he coud find. Later Walter Chaney and his brother Robert Chaney would play drums for the band, Robert on special occaisions. We sometimes had a very fine percussionist from the
S.O.U.L. band, Larry, sit in on some of our sessions we often did in the open air-open air concerts you might say today. We became very popular in the Cleveland area and one of the local DJs', Ken Hawkins did lots of excellent commentaries about our group. Of course we did have, as Al mentioned, lots of good competion but we were solid-real solid and it showed. It showed so much in fact that we won our very first recording contract with JOHNNY NASH, who had a big hit out at the time, I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW. This was a far cry from the very first time that Al and I first recorded a record (of sorts) in the recording booth of F.W. Woolworths, a novelty store at the corner of Hough and Crawford Avenues. It was a simple plastic disk but Al and I treasured it like it was gold. JOHNNY NASH was scheduled to record us and wanted us to get together some material and so I came up with a tune I wrote called YOUR'E A LUCKY GUY and WALTER CHANEY was given the lead. However, much to our surpris, JOHNNY NASH sold our contract to a group of businessmen associated with RCA VICTOR RECORDS. This created a problem because of several reasons. We were all under age and did not have proper representation and above everything else the producers did not especially like the way that
Message Thread:
« Back to thread