Carolina beach music beat ‘is for lovers’

Carolina beach music has been described as “falling-in-love” music, and many of the popular tunes dealt with teenage summer romance.

At least, that’s the way the late Steve Hardy viewed it. Clearly, Hardy knew a thing or two about beach music. His legendary radio show, “Steve Hardy’s Original Beach Party,” broadcast from Greenville, N.C., first went on the air in 1974.

 

Hardy, who grew up in the small town of Maury in Greene County, N.C., called it quits in 2019, ending a 45-year run on the beach. Suffering from dementia, Hardy died in 2020 at age 73.

Author Rosecrans Baldwin was a big fan. He had the opportunity to interview Hardy on the subject of beach music in 2012 for Our State magazine. Hardy told him: “A lot of the lyrics have to do with girls and boys falling in love.”

To illustrate, Hardy started singing the 1963 hit “So Much in Love” by The Tymes:

As we stroll along together / Holding hands, walking all alone / So in love are we two, that we don’t know what to do / So in love (so in love) in a world all our own (so in love)

 

The song was co-written by lead vocalist George Williams, who had joined The Tymes in 1960. (The group had originated in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1956 as the Latineers.) “So Much in Love” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and peaked at #44 on the Hot R&B singles chart.

The Tymes’ “Ms Grace,” written by John and Johanna Hall, was released in 1974 and instantly embraced by the Carolina beach music community. The tune is #2 on the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” chart created by the deejays at 94.9 The Surf, a radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, Ms. Grace / Satin and perfume and lace / The minute I saw your face / I knew that I loved you

Being “young and in love” described Maurice Williams, who was a 15-year-old, growing up in Lancaster, S.C., in 1953.

Charles Morris of The Financial Times, based in London, England, said that Maurice tried unsuccessfully to persuade his date “to stay out and break her parents’ 10 p.m. curfew. The next day the musically talented youngster wrote a song about it, titled ‘Stay,’ which has provided him with a lifelong financial bonanza.”

“Like a flood, the words just came to me,” Williams said.

Stay, ah just a little bit longer…./ Tell me that you’re going to / Now your Daddy don’t mind / And your Mommy don’t mind / If we have another dance, yeah / Just one more, one more time

 

“Stay” was released by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs in 1960, and the recording remains the shortest single ever to reach the top of the American record charts, at 1 minute 36 seconds.

Many groups covered “Stay,” but the inclusion of the original version on the soundtrack of the film “Dirty Dancing” in 1987 introduced Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs to a new, younger audience.

 

“Stay” ranks #24 on The Surf’s top-100 beach music chart, and another Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs favorite tune, “May I,” recorded in 1965, is included at #30.

Williams’ group was originally known as the Gladiolas but adopted the name Zodiacs in 1960 after bass player Albert Hill took a shine to a new automobile – a British-made Ford model named “Zodiac” (an upscale version of the “Zephyr”) with two-tone paintwork, leather trim, whitewall tires and other bells and whistles.