The Chanters

The Chanters belonged to the "kid-sound" school of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which was, at the time they formed, riding high because of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. The Chanters formed in late 1957 out of a group of friends in Queens, New York. This locale was far removed from the R&B centers in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and allowed for more original sounds from groups like the Rivileers, the Cleftones, and the Videos. The two oldest members of the Chanters, Fred Paige (first and second tenor) and Bud Johnson, Jr. (second and first tenor) were in high school; the others — Larry Pendergrass (lead), Elliot Green (baritone) and Bobby Thompson (bass) — were in junior high. Paige, Thompson and Johnson first started singing together informally, until Bud's father, baritone saxman and bandleader Albert "Bud" (or "Budd") Johnson, Senior, talked them into forming a full group. Finally, Bud, Sr. took them to see Andy Gibson, an a&r man at King Records’ Deluxe subsidiary. Gibson signed the group (and also produced their session.) While Bud Johnson’s parents encouraged them to be singers, the relative obscurity of the Chanters is due to the fact that their parents felt they were too young to be performers. They appeared only in the New York area and even then, not at any theaters or clubs. In the early 60s, the Chanters enjoyed a resurgence of airplay. This prompted DeLuxe to re-release some of the group’s sides in 1961. In spite of this, the group disbanded, possibly never cashing in at all at the birth of the oldies craze. --Paraphrased from article by Marv Goldberg