In 1953, six school friends at Thornton Township High School in the southern Chicago suburb of Harvey formed The El-Rays. The members were Marvin Junior (lead baritone), Johnny Funches (lead tenor), Lucius McGill and Verne Allison (tenors), Mickey McGill (baritone) and Chuck Barksdale (bass). The group duly released their first recording in 1954 on Chess Records’ subsidiary label Checker Records. This was “Darling I Know”, a slow ballad that made no mark.
Lucius McGill left, and the boys continued as a quintet. A visit to see Vivian Carter resulted in a switch to Vee-Jay Records in 1955, where they recorded their second release with the Al Smith Orchestra, featuring two Verne Allison compositions entitled “Dreams of Contentment” and “Zing Zing Zing”, which was a minor hit on the R&B chart. Vivian Carter had suggested that a name change might be a good idea and Verne Allison had come up with theDells.
They released a second single in 1955, another Verne Allison song called “Tell The World”, which didn’t make much impression. Then, in 1956, the new name brought them some good luck, when their next single “Oh What a Nite” went to number four on the R&B chart.
The song was co-written by two of the group’s members, Johnny Funches and Marvin Junior, who shared lead vocals on the recording. The song sold over a million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. It gave them hope of a real breakthrough, but of the next eleven singles only two scraped into the R&B chart.
Their progress was severely affected by a car crash in 1958, as a result of which Mickey McGill spent six months in hospital in Ohio. The group disbanded and didn’t reform until 1960, with Johnny Carter taking the place of Johnny Funches. Chuck Barksdale took advantage of the break to sing with Harvey Fuqua’s Moonglows alongside a young Marvin Gaye! In 1961, The Dells left Vee-Jay and signed for Chess subsidiary Argo, after auditioning with Dinah Washington.
The reformed line-up stayed together for another forty-eight years! Vee-Jay Records never saw the best of the Dells, but the company takes the credit for developing the group and setting them on the path to an impressive career. Vee-Jay released a Dells album in 1959, “Oh What a Nite”, featuring many of the songs the group members had written.
Then, in 1965, a second album appeared with a wider range of songs, many of them covers. “It’s Not Unusual” doesn’t tick many boxes for fans of Soul and R&B.
The final releases associated with Vee-Jay came in 1974 and 1993, when VJ International first issued an album of the group in concert and then a final compilation entitled “Dreams of Contentment”.
