[Rs] del-larks - out of the in crowd - jet

[Gold Band]

Title: del-larks - out of the in crowd - jet
Artist: del-larks
Track: out of the in crowd
Label: jet

101 1961 Record information:

sammy campbell was born may 6, 1941 in plainfield, nj. the seventh of ten children. the del-larks were formed by sammy campbells brother david in the 1950's while they were in high school. their first records were doo-wop songs released on george eastman's ea-jay label. they then put out a record on atlantic-distributed east west remember the night. in 1961 the del larks released this record called…"out of the in crowd"šÂ on the jet label the same year that ron taylor left the group. in the early 60's sammy was writing his own songs and was hired by george blackwell to write for his smoke records outfit it newark. this time ray davis did the lead with sammy campbell doing the bridge and the ending. blackwell kept him on staff for a year, but never released any of his material and never paid him. sammy made money promoting local concerts and performing with the del-larks.

sammy promoted a concert at the cotton club, with both the del-larks and the parliaments performing, he borrowed $350 from george blackwell for promotion & hire of the club. sammy gave george the better part of a year with his writing efforts for smoke to no avail. he had even presented george with two finished masters to release, but george has steadfastly refused to do anything with them.

frustrated by his business relationship with george blackwell and unaware that blackwell had secretly release two of campbell tracks (sos for love/ listen to my radio) on a label called vision, sammy terminated his association with smoke and started putting out his own records. he released sos on queen city records, his own label. still performing with the del-larks, he wrote a song for his group that he felt confident would finally launch him to greater levels of success. the group recorded his new song, job opening, at tony camillo's studio in greenwich village and proceeded to look for a label to release it. the savoy label expressed interest and at least one member of the group believed they should let savoy release it, but sammy didn't think the deal was a good one for himself or the group and he decided to release it on queen city, so confident was he that the record would be a hit. job opening had it all, good production, uptempo, danceable beat, a topical title and phenomenal lyrics, with a great poetical twist to them.

sammy trades lead vocals back and forth with ronnie taylor, and the rest of the group, in classic call and response manner on the track. sammy spent the last money he had to press 500 copies of this legendary record. it began to get some local airplay initially & everyone who heard it thought it was great. enter george blackwell again. when blackwell found out that dj's were spinning sammy's disc, he used his influence and his wife's formidable power to prevent the dj's from pushing it any further. out of money, he disbanded the del-larks and concentrated on writing and performing solo. sammy believes that if george had been smart, he would have let the record go as far as it was destined to and then sue sammy. but george was not after the money, he only wanted revenge.

after this, sammy moved out to california for a brief period and did some writing for galaxy records. galaxy thought sammy would be another little johnny taylor and recorded him on a bluesy track he'd written. sammy's next track was refused by the label since it wasn't in the same vein, it went to chess/checker/cadet and phil-la of soul. it was released on phil-la of soul. this time, under a pseudonym tyrone ashley a name that sammy had thought up with his girlfriend. the a-side,…"let me be your man"šÂ was written by sammy when he was living one floor directly above a cute girl he had a crush on.…"please let me be your man"šÂ. this was to be sammy's most successful release, reaching 20 on the r&b charts in 1966. in the early 70's sammy continued to tour based on his hit record, but he didn't release anything else for himself