In 1959, however, army conscription and arguments over money led their manager, George Treadwell, to fire the group and look for replacements, exercising the rights he had secured when buying McPhatter’s share of the name several years earlier. Founded in 1953, the Drifters had already enjoyed hits with Money Honey, Ruby Baby and other songs, featuring the lead vocals of Clyde McPhatter and Johnny Moore. His parents had tried to talk him out of a career in show business, but in their second year of existence the group had a sudden and unexpected stroke of luck when they inherited the name and high reputation of an already successful group, the Drifters. His unusual vocal flexibility, spanning the range from bass to tenor, enabled him to sing virtually all the lead and harmony parts.Īt 20, he joined a group called the Five Crowns, singing baritone and bass. As a teenager in Harlem, where he helped out in his father’s three restaurants, he sang in church choirs but also joined his school friends in a street-corner vocal group, the Four Bs, imitating the harmonies they heard in recordings by such doo-wop heroes as the Cadillacs, the Five Satins, the Charms, the Moonglows, and Little Anthony and the Imperials. He was born Benjamin Earl Nelson in Henderson, North Carolina, and moved to New York with his family at the age of nine, part of the migration of black workers from the southern states to the more prosperous cities of the industrialised north. They were followed almost a decade and a half later by Supernatural Thing, a disco favourite which gave him his last top 10 entry until 1986, when the appearance of Stand By Me in a successful film of the same name prompted a reissue that took the song back to the top of the UK charts, allowing a new generation to enjoy his polished but heartfelt delivery. Spanish Harlem and Stand By Me were the fruit of his subsequent solo career, along with Don’t Play That Song and I (Who Have Nothing). The last of those, along with the Shirelles’ Will You Love Me Tomorrow, can be seen as representing the artistic peak of the Brill Building style. Along with his near-contemporaries Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, James Brown and Solomon Burke, King had a good claim to be considered a member of the first wave of genuine soul singers.ĭuring the next year, his other hits with the Drifters included This Magic Moment, I Count the Tears and Save the Last Dance For Me. His run of hits with the Drifters started in the summer of 1959 with There Goes My Baby, his own composition, which is generally thought of as the first R&B single to feature strings, thereby paving the way for the often elaborate, pop-slanted stylings of soul music.

Lyrics this magic moment ben e. king