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Once Upon a Time...

The Birth Of The Persuasions - Part 1
By Jerry Lawson

In 1961 I graduated from high school in Apopka, Florida. I really had no idea what to do so I decided to go to New York where I figured there had to be more opportunities. One of my favorite uncles, Peter Callahan Hickson, lived in Brooklyn. He had no idea I was coming and was completely shocked when he saw me standing at his door at 4 in the morning. Well, one thing led to another and it turned out that a buddy of mine, Leroy Massey, who had left Apopka earlier and was now living in Brooklyn, offered me a room in his apartment. One night Leroy and I went out to The 521 Club for a drink. The band was smokin’ and Leroy said I should go up and sing. So I did. I sang Your Precious Love, by Jerry Butler, one of my idols. Boy, was I surprised by the audience reaction. I mean, they went wild. The club owner offered me a job singing on weekends. But that same night a guy in the audience named Beatrice Best asked if I would sing with his group, The Shufflers. I told him "No, right now I’m looking for a job." He said "I’ll get you a job where I work." So I didn’t take the job singing at the 521 Club 'cause I figured it wouldn’t be no real money. Believe it or not, he worked at a company that printed album covers. My first job was running the printing press, a Davidson 222, printing out the album covers of all the big stars like Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Tennesee Ernie Ford, Judy Garland, and on and on and on......Oh how I would dream about seeing myself on an album cover some day! Boy do dreams really come true.

Meanwhile, Best entered The Shufflers into the Wednesday night amateur hour at The Apollo Theatre. I shared the lead on “Guess Who” by Jesse Belvin, which I did the arrangement for, with my friend Julius who was the group's lead singer. We won 7 weeks straight. Twenty five dollars a week! Five dollars a man. I moved into the Ritz and boughta brand new cadillac. Well, OK, but I did move on up: across town with my new girlfriend to our own 3 room apartment at 58 Green Avenue.A spiral staircase led up to my 3rd floor apartment.

At some point my gal & I got into a tiff and when it was over there was a guy outside who had observed the whole thing (he lived at 68 Green Ave) and said “Seem to be having girl trouble man.” I couldn’t believe that this little guy had such a big deep voice. That was the beginning of my friendship with Jimmy Hayes. I quit my job at the printing press and decided to live alone and moved 4 blocks away to Cambridge Place. Jimmy was the elevator operator at Abraham & Strauss on Fulton Street. So I went across the street to Goodwin's department store and also got a job as an elevator operator and later became their store detective..

Jimmy & I would go to work together and wait for each other after work. At some point Jimmy told me that he’d heard me singing . Well, at that time, I did sing wherever I’d go. So it turned out that we knew a lot of the same songs and we’d just sing to amuse ourselves 'cause we sounded so good together. In fact, at one point, we thought we could be a duet. We harmonized so well together.

One day Jimmy told me he had been asked to sing with a group called The Parisians. He had asked the group if he could bring me along to their rehearsal. We went to this fella's apartment, also in Brooklyn. They had a little piano. There were about 5 other guys and one of them was Joe Russell. After they went through a few songs, Jimmy asked them to let me sing a song. I asked them if they knew “Up On The Roof” and they did. We sang it. It was smokin’. Then their lead singer, Bob Samuels, asked me to leave. Said I was interrupting their practice. So me & Jimmy left.We just laughed all the way home.

A few days later Joe came to us and said he had quit the group. He said "What about us puttin’ a group together?" We said that sounded good but we need a baritone. Joe said he knew a guy. So that’s when we met Toubo. We started practicing every day at Joe’s house or wherever we went. We played basketball every evening and after the games the 4 of us would sing and the rest of the guys would join in. Our friend, Jimmy Docket, said we needed a tenor and that he knew someone. That’s when we met Jayotis. We went to Jay’s house and he sang Stardust and we backed him up on it. He had his own unique sound that blended really well with us. That’s when it hit us! Wow, what a sound we got here.

Next we decided to get a guitar player. God works in mysterious ways. The guitar player never showed up when we had a show to do. We would apologize to the audience for the guitar player not showing up. And the audience would say “You don’t need no band." I guess they were right because after 40 years, we still ain't got no band.

Continued...