Jarmels - Keep Your Mind On Me - Laurie

[Windlesoul]

Picked up the Jarmels - Keep your mind on me - Laurie recently, love it, nice bit of doowop meets northern. Seems surprisingly hard bearing in mind the label / group, where I could find it ,it was listed for around $60 - $80 or so. Just wondering if it was the doowop or northern demand which commanded the price - hasn't come to my attention before on the northern scene but curious if this has been played out here?

Have actually got another one for sale but genuinely not my intention for a free flog, just interested in how known it is. I believe it was a second release of 'Come on girl' on the flip which might've been a hit for them (both mine are advance release copies, so did this second one never get issued hence why its not common?)

Cheers in advance

Mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vphWK87MD8U

Edited January 17, 2012 by mark w.

[Windlesoul]

Just come across a discog though, looks like this wasn't a second release, but was actually the last thing they recorded (1963) on the label (or at all as the Jarmels I believe). Found this on a doowop website.....

The Jarmels (Richmond, Va)

Personnel :

Nathaniel Ruff (Tenor)

Earl Christianson (Tenor)

Ray Smith (Baritone)

Tommy Elridge (Bass)

Paul Burnett

The Jarmels

1961 - Little Lonely One / She Loves To Dance (Laurie 3085)

1961 - A Little Bit Of Soap / the Way You Look Tonight (Laurie 3098)

1961 - I'll Follow You / Gee Oh Gosh (Laurie 3116)

1962 - Red Sails In The Sunset / Loneliness (Laurie 3124)

1962 - One By One / Little Bug (Laurie 3141)

1963 - Come On Girl / Keep Your Mind On Me (Laurie 3174)

N/A - Why Am I A Fool For You (Collectable LP 5044)

N/A - You Don't Believe A Word I Say (Collectable LP 5044)

Discography :

The Jarmels were one of those one-hit wonder groups, responsible for a number 12 single in 1961 entitled "A Little Bit of Soap." If none of their other five singles did remotely as well, that song has lingered in the public consciousness, partly with help from periodic new hit versions by the Exciters in the mid-1960s and Showaddywaddy in England during the 1980s.

The Jarmels came from Richmond, Virginia, where the five members had all begun singing together in church and school. Nathaniel Ruff (b. 1939), Ray Smith (b. 1941), Paul Burnett (b. 1942), Earl Christian (b. 1940), and Tom Eldridge (b. 1941) may have come from Virginia, but the name of the group they formed in the late 1950s came from a street in Harlem.

Their manager was Jim Gribble, who also managed the Mystics and the Passions, and brought the Jarmels to Laurie Records in New York in 1961. They were a rather unusual addition to the Laurie roster, for most of the company's artists were white, and sounded more pop than R&B-influenced. The Jarmels combined pop and R&B influences, most notably the sound of the post-1958 Drifters.

Their first single, "Little Lonely One," was a hit in New York but never charted nationally. Their second record, "A Little Bit of Soap," written by future Neil Diamond/Van Morrison manager Bert Berns, (who also produced the Drifters), got to number 12 in America in the summer of 1961 during a six-week run on the charts. This was the Jarmels' first and last chart success, none of their four subsequent singles charting at all.

They recorded their last single, "Come on Girl," in 1963, and the group soldiered on for a while into the mid-1960s with numerous personnel changes --their later membership included Major Harris, who subsequently became part of the Delfonics.

Edited January 18, 2012 by mark w.

[Guest Preems]

Great track, my partner plays it all the time out here in San Francisco