Listen: Twine Time / Alvin Cash & The Crawlers
Twine

St. Louis born raised Alvin Cash and his brothers attended the very same high school as both Luther Ingram and Tina Turner. How great that must have been.

Moving to Chicago, they performed primarily as a dance act and were eventually signed by Andre Williams to One-der-ful Record’s Mar-V-Lus imprint, and who knows why they needed an imprint but big props on both label names.

Alvin Cash & The Crawlers captured what I wanted to believe was street soul circa 1965. Despite the low rent sound of ‘Twine Time’, it became a pretty big hit during the winter of that year, reaching #4 on the BILLBOARD RnB chart and a justice after all #14 on the Hot 100.

Listen: Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo / Alvin Cash & The Registers
AlvinCashBooGaLoo.mp3

After ‘Twine Time’, and two more singles, the act changed their name to Alvin Cash & The Registers. In reality, only Alvin was left, his brothers, the dancers, having dropped out. So the touring band lineup became The Registers.

The third single as Alvin Cash & The Registers, ‘Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo’, although a rather small success (#42 RnB, #74 Pop), tirelessly self promoted Alvin and latched to that week’s flavor when it came to dances. Despite losing his two brothers as part of the act, the whole dance angle always remained.

Took a while, but finally the footage from SHINDIG has been posted: