The Chants
All the Merseybeat performers who made the charts were white, but
Liverpool was (and still is) a cosmopolitan city and there were
several black performers. The main showman was Derry Wilkie, who
often worked with white musicians, while the black groups included
The Sobells, The Conquests, The Poppies and The Chants.
The Chants were a male vocal-harmony act backed by several
Merseyside groups (including The Beatles) and they made quite an
impact as the first local group to sing songs by black acts like
The Drifters and The Coasters in the way they were meant to be
sung.
Quite what persuaded The Chants - and their record company, Pye
- that the time was right for a Doo-Wop revival is a mystery, but
their fourth single in a row, Sweet Was The Wine, offered
a delightful throwback to the previous decade.
The Chants were championed by Merseyside MP, Bessie Braddock
after their first single, I Don't Care, came to her
attention. Her interest was primarily because they were a black
group from a depressed area of Liverpool.
The band broke up, but Joey and Edmund Ankrah later had success
on ITV's New Faces as part of Ashanti. Eddie Amoo
went on to have chart success as part of the Liverpool soul group,
The Real Thing.
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