627 The Drifters “On Broadway” 1963

“Faye Treadwell inherited the job of managing the group from her husband and fought numerous legal battles in order to hang on to the rights to a name that became, in effect, a franchise. In the 1960s, when the group’s reputation was riding high with such hits as Save the Last Dance for Me and Under the Boardwalk, several outfits calling themselves the Drifters toured the US and Europe…It was such apparent abuses of what would now be called intellectual property that Treadwell spent much of her life attempting to counter. The confusion was intensified by complicated bloodlines which entitled some of the splinter groups to a moral share of the trademark. Black vocal groups were frequent victims of this form of counterfeiting, and others to suffer included the Coasters, the Temptations and the Isley Brothers” (Richard Williams, The Guardian, 6/15/2011). 

The Drifters “On Broadway”