ALVIN CASH
The following was excerpted from the liner notes to SSR-LP-35.2 The One-derful! Collection: Mar-V-Lus, written by Robert Pruder.
Mar-V-Lus’s premier act was Alvin Cash, who while with the label was the greatest disseminator of African American dance tunes in the 1960s. His career-long output of dance records, especially for Mar-V-Lus, provided the inspiration and soundtrack for the great explosion of dance fads during the soul era. Cash was only a passable singer, could not play an instrument, and was a minimal songwriter. He was, however, a genius entertainer who could dance his ass off and understood the essential nature of dance records and how to infuse them with exuberance and make them compulsively danceable.
Cash was born Alvin Deforest Welch, on 15 February 1939, in St. Louis, to Edgar and Priscilla Welch. He was the eldest of what became a large sibling crew of one sister and seven brothers. Cash attended Sumner High in St. Louis. When Alvin was about twenty-one, sometime in 1960, he formed with three of his brothers Robert, Ruben, and George, whose ages ranged from eight to ten a dance troupe called the Little Step Brothers, a name derived from the famous African American dance act, the Step Brothers. The act made appearances in all the clubs in St. Louis, and across the river in East St. Louis and other communities in Illinois.
On the bill with them would be such performers as Ike and Tina Turner, Johnny Sayles, and Little Milton.
In 1961, Alvin and his brothers moved to Chicago, and performed as “The Crawlers.” The Crawlers performed at social club parties, benefit concerts, and a few club dates but it took a while before they ended up on record. Cash had been bugging George Leaner for a long time for a recording opportunity, but Leaner always rejected his entreaties because he thought he couldn’t sing.
Leaner had a point. Cash’s manner of “singing” was to talk and chant the lyrics. The break came with the Twine dance fad that emerged in late 1964. The kids around 35th to 39th streets started the Twine and it was discovered by One-derful! A&R director Andre Williams at the dances at nearby Dunbar High. “Andre Williams told me to come down to the studio,” related Cash. “He had a dance that the kids were doing and it was the Twine, and I came down and cut it with a band that I was traveling with from Louisville, Kentucky. For the records we changed their name to the Registers.” The record was released on Leaner’s Mar-V-Lus imprint.
“Twine Time” exploded as a national hit in November 1964, selling some 900,000 records. On the Cash Box R&B chart the record went to number one position and lasted an extraordinary sixteen weeks. The record was a sizable pop hit, and crossed over to rise to number 14 and stayed eleven weeks on the Billboard pop chart. The record’s pop achievement could have been greater, but some major Top 40 stations, such as WLS in Chicago, refused to play it because of what they considered lewd chanting at the beginning of the record “ooh ah…ooh ahh.” Leaner had become a convert not to Cash’s talents, but to his sales worth.
Cash’s follow-up record, “The Barracuda,” released in January 1965, proved to be another national hit, riding the crest of the Barracuda dance craze (the dance was a line dance with various turning movement and quite similar to the Bus Stop of some years later). The record did best on the Cash Box R&B chart, where it rose to number 15 and lasted eight weeks. The record did not cross over to the pop chart, its number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100 reflecting only R&B sales. According to Cash, he got the dance and song from Chicago R&B composer extraordinaire, Bernice Williams. “A lady named Miss Bernice Williams brought me the song,” he said, “and the dance was demonstrated to me at One-derful!” What is going on here is that Cash learned to chant or sing the song with a visual demonstration of the dance to get the feel for how the rhythm should go. “The Barracuda” introduced a new element, a girls’ chorus that allowed Cash to interact and to make the record more of a vocal rather than an instrumental production.
Left in the can was “Sweatin’,” which has Cash assisted by a male chorus chanting the lyrics that mention a host of dances, which besides listing Twist, Boomerang, Pony, Shake, and Twine, lists the latest dances, “Barracuda” and “Shotgun,” which puts the song around 1965.
Debuting in this collection, “Sweatin’” seemed strong enough to have been released at the time, and that time was probably not long after “The Barracuda.” Years later, an instrumental acetate of this song surfaced in England, becoming a floor filler on the northern soul scene.
Mar-V-Lus even released an LP on Cash. Most of the LP appeared to have been produced as well as arranged by Monk Higgins, who was credited as composer on a good part of the numbers. The LP included Cash’s two latest hits, “Twine Time” and “The Barracuda,” plus a bunch of numbers that followed the “Twine Time” formula, largely instrumental in nature with Cash chanting out the dance calls. Most appealing were “You Shot Me Thru the Grease” and “Hawk Eye.” The LP was slightly revamped for an album release in the UK on the President imprint in 1966, with three tracks dropped and three later singles added, notably “The Philly Freeze” (which served as the name of the LP).
Alvin and his brothers almost immediately went on tour off the record. One of the first places was at a theater in Michigan City, Indiana. Barbara Green, who was performing her hit “Young Boy,” was there to see the act and developed a little more worldliness. She said, “Alvin Cash and the Registers headlined and his two younger brothers performed with him dancing to ‘Twine Time.’ His brothers, who were approximately 13-14 years old, stole the show dancing. Those boys could dance, and they made his live performance of ‘Twine Time’ work, as there weren’t many lyrics to the song and all Alvin did was basically play to the audience.”
In May 1965, Alvin Cash and the Crawlers appeared at the prestigious Regal Theater in Chicago with Etta James, Dee Clark, and others, and then in December appeared at the Regal again, along with Gene Chandler, Major Lance, the Staple Singers and others. By this time, the act had solidified to Cash and just two of his brothers (whose names and number would vary) making up the Crawlers (George and Robert). Meanwhile, in June 1965, Cash was able to get a spot on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is daily afternoon show, where he mimed his latest hit (probably “Twine Time”).
In July of 1966, Cash hit again with the “Philly Freeze.” By this time the company had dropped the Crawlers from the artist credit, and made the credit read only “Alvin Cash and the Registers.” Although the live performance act was legitimately Alvin Cash and the Crawlers, the company decided that the new designation reflected the actual musical input in the records. As usual, “Philly Freeze” did best on the Cash Box R&B chart, going as high as number 7 and staying a healthy eleven weeks, but on the Billboard R&B chart its showing was respectable as well, going to position 12 and lasting eleven weeks. The song, written by house songwriter Jimmy Jones, promoted a dance that combined Boogaloo movements with the classic freeze gesture.
Another national hit for Cash continued his Boogaloo interest with “Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo,” which took advantage of interest in the huge Boogaloo dance craze that had been sweeping across the country. The female chorus was particularly rousing (“Alvin’s got a Boo-Ga-Loo, hey hey hey”). The record managed to nudge itself on the charts for a few weeks in late 1966 and early 1967. On the Cash Box R&B chart it went to number 38 and lasted three weeks, while on the Billboard counterpart it went to number 48 but lingered on the chart for eight weeks.
From Christmas of 1966 through January of 1967, Cash and now three of his brothers George, Arthur, and David toured all over England as Alvin Cash and the Crawlers. They performed short sets that included some dancing and acrobatic moves, and did their numbers “Twine Time” and “Philly Freeze,” plus dance accompanied versions of the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say.”
In 1967 Cash recorded the first of his tribute records to the great boxer, Muhammad Ali (who began as Cassius Clay). Called “Doin’ the Ali Shuffle,” the record was produced and written by Eddie Silvers. The record was one of Cash’s better ones with an appealing chick chorus and blues guitar but alas for Cash’s career it did nothing. The dance Alvin was trying to promote (without success, as it turned out) was based on the moves Ali used in his boxing work and accented by little sparing movements of the hands. “Doin’ the Ali Shuffle” was the first intriguing evidence of the extent to which the black boxing superstar had taken hold of Cash’s imagination.
“The Charge” was Cash’s next dance record. The song was written by Eddie Silvers and probably produced by him as well. The record reflected Silvers’ approach to producing Cash, exhibiting nice stinging blues guitar riffs. The dancers in Chicago started doing this line dance to Lowell Folson’s “Tramp,” where they would face each other and sort of “charged” in a march-step at each other, along with steps backwards and parade-ground turning movements. One-derful! Records attuned to the dances on the street brought Cash into the studio to add another dance record to his legacy. The record did well locally, but nationally it failed to make any kind of impact.
The year 1967 was a stellar one for Cash and his brothers. The nightclub scene in the African American community was still thriving and Cash’s show was in hot demand and he played clubs on the West and South Sides throughout the year. In June, hot off the success of “The Charge,” Alvin Cash and the Crawlers played at the Bonanza Lounge (7640 S. Halsted), and were such a hit that they were held over five extra nights. In August, Cash played The Hurricane (1622 E. 79th), in an act that was featured as the “Alvin Cash Revue.”
The Registers were now a nine-piece band. The revue through the remainder of the years made two more appearances at the Bonanza and one at Barbara’s Peppermint Lounge (3219 W. Harrison). The four songs listed in the advertisements were “Twine Time,” “Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo,” “Philly Freeze,” and “The Charge.” By this time Alvin Cash was at the top of his game, providing entertaining full-blown shows that presented Alvin singing, chanting, and dancing, accompanied by a large rousing band unit and his dancing brothers.
When Leaner closed his One-derful! operation in 1968, Cash became one of the key artists for Ernie, Billy, and Tony Leaner’s Toddlin’ Town endeavors. After several releases though, Cash left Toddlin’ Town in 1969 and continued releasing records steadily for the next decade. Cash’s enduring legacy is that he had a huge impact on the production of dance records during the soul era, and was undoubtedly George Leaner’s best selling artist, which allowed the company to prosper throughout the mid-1960s.