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:

Listen: Where The Action Is / Freddy Cannon FreddyCannonAction.mp3

Let’s face it. The theme song to ABC’s syndicated daily pop show, WHERE THE ACTION IS, titled ‘Action’ by Freddy Cannon, was so good, even The Ramones could have covered it.

I lived for WHERE THE ACTION IS and saw many a great act each day after school. Our local Syracuse affiliate, WSYR-TV, was wishy-washy, and many times pre-empted it with other things. Looking over the complete, chronological list of episodes and guests, I’ve only just discovered missing Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours, The Action and Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich for just that reason. Indeed, I’m a bit crushed having now discovered these atrocities. Scumbags.

But seeing an LA centric act almost daily, given they were basically down the street from the studios, must have been daily bliss. To name a few: The Guillteens, The Ikettes with and without Ike & Tina Turner, The Vejtables, The Leaves, The Seeds, Gary & The Hornets, Love, Dino Desi & Billy, The Buffalo Springfield, Jan & Dean.

Not to mention the RnB stuff: Martha & The Vandellas, Doris Troy, The Royalettes, Mary Wells, Brenda Holloway, The Toys, Maxine Brown, Kim Weston, Carla Thomas, Billy Stewart, Bobby Hebb, Alvin Cash & The Crawlers or Felice Taylor. I still replay The Vibrations doing ‘My Girl Sloopy’ vividly in my memory.

Then there were the black and white segments from England, a real high for we Anglophiles: The Small Faces, Gary Farr & The T-Bones, Them, The Mindbenders, The Zombies, The Moody Blues, The Kinks, Unit 4 + 2, The Who, Wayne Fontana, Marianne Faithfull, The Yardbirds and The Cryin’ Shames.