The Tams developed as a mainstay on ‘beach music’ scene

If you’re looking for “pure southern beach music,” Dr. Matt Miller, a senior research librarian at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., has found the ideal collection of vocalists.

He highly recommends listening – and shag dancing – to the music made by the group that was promoted as “The Mighty, Mighty Tams.”

Writing for the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Dr. Miller said: “Joseph Pope, his brother Charles Pope, Robert Lee Smith and Horace Kay began singing together” as high school students in Atlanta.”

“Starting around 1952, they performed in clubs around Atlanta under the name the Four Dots,” Dr. Miller noted. Soon, a fifth singer was added (Floyd Ashton and later Albert Cottle).

The group became the Tams, derived from stage attire that featured knitted Scottish tam o’ shanter bonnets.

 

The Tams broke through in 1963 with a series of tunes written primarily by Ray Whitley and Joe South, Dr. Miller said. “The group toured continuously, enjoying popularity as a mainstay of the ‘Carolina beach music’ scene.”

The Tams’ treasured hits occupy four spots on the “All Time Beach Music Top 100” chart compiled by the deejays at 94.9 The Surf, a beach music radio station in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. These songs are:

“Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy” (#6), “I’ve Been Hurt” (#37), “What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am) (#41) and “Too Much Foolin’ Around (#72).

Tams’ fans are adamant that three other major Tams’ dancing songs have “been snubbed” and deserve reconsideration – “You Lied To Your Daddy,” “Laugh It Off” and “Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me.”

Another beach music group that deserves more respect, in the eyes of many, is The Spinners. The group didn’t make The Surf’s top-100 countdown, but its music resonates with beach music devotees.

Three of the group’s biggest hits were “Working My Way Back to You,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” and “One of a Kind (Love Affair).”

 

The Spinners started out in 1954 in Ferndale, Mich. (a suburb of Detroit), when teenagers Billy Henderson, C.P. Spencer, Henry Frambough, Pervis Jackson and Bobbie Smith formed a quintet and took the name Domingoes (a tribute to their idols at the time, The Dominoes and The Flamingos).

It wasn’t long until Smith suggested a name change to The Spinners, a reference to the stylish spinner hubcaps found on new automobiles during that period and offering a connection to the Motor City. However, under the Motown Records’ umbrella, The Spinners sputtered.

The ClassicMotown website reported that members of The Spinners were “asked to assume a wide range of tasks – chaperones, road managers, drivers and background singers – while they continued to polish their harmonies and stagecraft.”

 

“With so many of Motown’s top-tier artists pumping out huge hits, The Spinners got overlooked. Bobbie Smith later told music historian Keith Hughes, “We never got angry or mad at anybody (at Motown) – we just figured our time was going to come later.”

“People would come in and go past us, but we were happy there because it was like a family,” Smith said.

In 1972, when the Motown contract expired, The Spinners were referred to Atlantic Records by Aretha Franklin, where they teamed up with Philadelphia producer-songwriter Thom Bell. “The group became a hitmaking machine with four #1 R&B hits in less than 18 months,” according to the website narrative.

 

The group reeled off an impressive string of 11 consecutive Top-10 R&B hits, causing music historian Leo Sachs to write: “The Spinners were the heart and soul of Black music in America during the early ’70s.”