Who was/is The Del Rios ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
The Del-Rios
The Del-Rios
There's A Love
Memphis was by no means a vocal group hotbed, but The Del-Rios called it home. Lead singer William Bell, born July 16, 1939 in the Bluff City, joined two more Booker T. Washington High School students, tenor Louis Williams (born February 24, 1941 in Memphis) and Harrison Austin, and bass David Brown when they formed in 1956. From the start, Bell brought extraordinarily varied influences to the table. "In Memphis, you heard the blues, you heard gospel, and you heard what we called country music,"he says."Everybody around Memphis was singing in clubs, or trying to record." The Del Rios (no hyphen) paired the bluesy Alone On A Rainy Nite and a wild rocker, Lizzie, in late '56 on a single for Les Bihari's Modern-affiliated Meteor label with bluesman Rufus Thomas' Bearcats accompanying (Bell wrote both sides).
The Del-Rios gigged for several years with drummer Phineas Newborn, Sr.'s showband, performing for black and white audiences in still-segregated Memphis. They also worked with trumpeter Gene 'Bowlegs' Miller's combo. "I was working singing in a local club on the weekends in Memphis called the Flamingo Room,"says Bell."A lot of the musicians there were in their 20s and 30s, and they taught me quite a bit about chord structure, melody structure, and all that stuff. I got good tutoring." Chips Moman at pre-Stax Satellite Records saw The Del-Rios at the Flamingo in the late summer of 1960 and brought them aboard.
"We were doing some things, background work, more or less, as a vocal group for Stax. Well, it was Satellite Records then,"says Bell."Chips Moman, who was a producer and musician at Satellite at that time, was asking me about recording some. So I just put it off, put it off, until finally a couple of the guys in the group were older, and they were drafted into the military. So at that time, the group kind of fell apart. And then I decided to try my luck solo." During three months with Newborn's outfit in New York, Bell wrote the yearning You Don't Miss Your Water. It was his Stax solo debut and a #95 pop hit in the spring of 1962.
After an obscure Del Rios 45 for Bettye Berger's Bet..T label pairing Heavenly Angel and Dangerous Love(Berger and her hubby owned the Plantation Inn in West Memphis, where the group played on weekends), they released a Stax platter in 1962, Bell, Williams, and Austin still on board. Bell scribed the smooth ballad Just Across The Street (Louis likely led), but Williams joined him to pen the rousing other side, There's A Love. Issued in June of '62, it didn't keep Bell from pursuing a solo career. The Del-Rios brought in tenor Nathan 'Pedro' Lewis and future Soul Children mainstay Norman West to augment Williams, Austin, and Robert Huntley. "William Bell had just left the group,"says Nathan. "I wind up inheriting Bell's uniform!"The Gentrys, the Memphis rockers best known for their hit cover of The Avantis' Keep On Dancing, revived There's A Love in 1967 for M-G-M.
Bell would endure as a Stax mainstay as both artist (his '68 release I Forgot To Be Your Lover went Top Ten R&B) and composer. Williams exhibited an uncanny Sam Cooke influence fronting the three-man Ovations on a series of soul gems for Goldwax led by the '65 hit It's Wonderful To Be In Love. "I loved Sam Cooke so,"said Williams."I just idolized him." Williams died October 13, 2002 in Memphis.
Various - Street Corner Symphonies Vol.14, 1962 The Complete Story Of Doo Wop
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