Listen: Shake Sherry / The Contours
Shake

The musical chairs surrounding the often interchanging members of The Contours will have your head spinning if you let it. Some of the guys still perform today, and a family tree type timeline is readily available on Wikipedia. But be forewarned, it’s for the clear headed only and I do commend whoever got all those details together.

‘Shake Sherry’, one of the many lyrically intentional dance songs the group recorded, followed up their only Top 10, ‘Do You Love Me’. As with the majority of their other 60′s Gordy label releases, it peaked mid chart (#43). Seemingly in the shadow of The Temptations and The Four Tops, apparently The Contours were the act whose wild live performances on those Motown Revue package tours would truly tear the house down.

Even despite being written by Berry Gordy himself, and getting a top vocal drill by Billy Gordon, the record just didn’t get the muscle at radio from the Motown machine. Who the hell let that happen?

The Contours ended up benefitting from numerous Northern Soul dj’s bringing many of their records justice years later. And in fact, when ‘Do You Love Me’ was used in 1987′s DIRTY DANCING, the re-released single found it’s way back into the US BILLBOARD chart, peaking at #11. As we all know, a very uncommon result in America.