“I [Herbie Cox (1939- )] was a student in Jamaica, Queens, when the group got started. We were all young, 16- and 17-year-old students. Some kids who never won an election thought it would be a good idea if we wrote a campaign song for them. In those days, it was against the rules in our school to play rock 'n' roll music. So we took a rock song and disguised it as the campaign song. It went over big and won the election for the students who had engaged us… In the early stages of our career back in the 1950s, we did get our education, that was important, but the Cleftones spent several years criss-crossing the country working with folks like Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and La-verne Baker, who used to watch over us like a mother. As kids, we were just happy to have our records played on the radio” (Deardra Shuler, New York Amsterdam News, Jan. 17, 2013).
The Cleftones “Heart and Soul”
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