Cathie Taylor born 26 July 1944

Cathie Taylor (born July 26, 1944) is a Canadian-born singer of country music and later Gospel music who won two Academy of Country Music Awards and was a regular vocalist on several television series. 

Cathie Taylor, the daughter of Anne and Cecil Taylor, was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on July 26, 1944. She has a sister and a brother. Taylor's father died when she was three years old, and her family moved to Vancouver, to live near a maternal aunt. When her sister received a scholarship to a teacher's training college in California her family moved to the United States. 

Taylor's first television performance was when she was 11-years-old, as a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club.At the age of 13 she had her own radio show, The Cathie Taylor Show, on KPER in Gilroy, California. In 1959, when Taylor was fifteen years old, she signed a five year recording contract with Capital Records and recorded three folk albums for them. Billboard Magazine in 1960 said "Cathie Taylor is a young vocalist who handles folk songs in a fresh, modern style" and "Young thrush has sweet, pure vocal sound". 

                                  

Her early career was managed by Cliffie Stone. She was a guest performer on the June 30, 1961 episode of Five Star Jubilee. In 1962 Taylor was a cast member on The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, and in 1963 she was a regular on The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, and had a small music role in the 1963 film Hootenanny Hoot. She also appeared on Alfred Hitchcock and Lawrence Welk television shows. 

Cathie with Tennessee Ernie Ford

Taylor became a regular vocalist on the 1966 syndicated television series Gene Autry's Melody Ranch. During the same year she had a guest spot at Kraft Music Hall. In 1968 she was a regular singer during the final year of the daily Don McNeill Show (previously Don McNeill's Breakfast Club), broadcast from Chicago, Illinois. She appeared on the long-running radio show's final episode, on December 27 of that year. The Country Music Association Awards (CMA Awards) honored her as Most Promising Female Vocalist in 1966, and Top Female Vocalist in 1968. 

 In 1975, Cathie began singing on the "700 Club" for Christian Broadcasting Network and continued to do so for the next five years. She gave church concerts and recorded three gospel albums for Housetop Records. She started writing songs during this time and some were included in her gospel albums. She recorded additional CDs: "Songs My Mother Sang To Me: Generations", "Praising My Savior", "The Heart Of Christmas", & "Sing to the Lord A New Song". 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Discogs)

 

Jef Gilson born 25 July 1926

Jean-François Quiévreux (25 July 1926 – 5 February 2012), better known as Jef Gilson, was a French clarinetist, pianist, arranger, vocalist, composer and big band leader who played in a straight-ahead hard bop style and also made forays into Afro-jazz and free jazz. 

Gilson was born Jean-François Quiévreux in the Alsatian town of Guebwiller, in northeastern France. When Jean-François was 11, his father, a mining engineer and music enthusiast, uprooted the family to Paris after a work-related injury forced him to transfer into an office job. As a youth he claimed to have switched from playing piano to clarinet to fool his parents into thinking he was studying classical music and not jazz. Yet as a teenager living in the severe backdrop of Nazi-occupied France, Jean-François was already organizing secret jazz gigs in Paris with celebrated musician Claude Luter and trumpeter/novelist Boris Vian.

 Paris had been the European Shangri-La of jazz activity since American soldiers first brought the daring sounds to the city post-World War I. Attracted to the respite from racism and segregation that Parisian culture offered, African-American musicians forged an everlasting bond with the city. The liberation of Paris saw jazz return in a big way. Young Jef Gilson even found himself playing in U.S. Army centers to celebrate American troops. 

fter the war, Gilson threw himself back into mastering the piano. As an admirer of both Canadian cool jazz pioneer Gil Evans and bebop arranger Walter “Gil” Fuller, he took on the moniker of Gilson—“Gil’s son.” Heavily influenced by the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, the young maestro was entranced by the forward-thinking sounds of bebop. It was a bold direction to take, as French jazz audiences were still feeling the more traditional New Orleans style. But Gilson, setting the tone for his entire career, opted to follow his own sonic interests. 

                                   

For this and other reasons, major success never quite crystallized for Gilson. By the 1950s, he’d started to lay down his compositions on wax but was also taking shifts in record stores and freelance jobs as a sound engineer to pay the bills. Gilson served behind the boards at Charles Delaunay’s Vogue label from its foundation in the early 1950s and for a period even ran his own record shop, Kiosque d’Orphée, on the rue des Beaux-Arts. In the back room, the musician built his own studio, recording French musicians like his old friend Vian and a young American named Lloyd Miller, who’s hailed these days for his research on Persian and Afghan music. 

Gilson enjoyed a diamond reputation among local jazzmen. His collaboration list reads like the record collection of any serious French jazz music collector: Henri-Claude Fantapié, Jean-Louis Chautemps, Eddy Louiss, Michel Portal, Jean-Luc Ponty, Bernard Lubat, Mino Cinelu, Henri Texier, Alby Cullaz, Jacques Di Donato, François Jeanneau, and others. 

His role as a key touching point for visiting American musicians and expatriates in Paris also saw him mix with legends like Bud Powell, Woody Shaw, Bill Coleman, Byard Lancaster, Nathan Davis, Philly Joe Jones, Ted Curson, Hal Singer, Butch Morris, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane. A career highlight came at the Festival d’Antibes, Juan Les Pins in 1965 when Gilson opened for Coltrane. 

Gilson took an interest in the early development of free jazz. His recordings, on which early compositions with tempo changes (such as Enfin!), bitonal layers and chromatic topics are included, first appeared on a mini label. Some of the harmonic function has been overridden in his compositions since 1964, without, being exclusively free jazz oriented (New Call from France, 1966). Commercial success did not materialize. In addition, in 1965 he joined the vocal sextet Les Double Six, first as and a member, later as its musical director, which he left in 1968 to teach music in Madagascar. 

In 1971 he returned and concentrated first on ethno jazz and later "total improvisation". In 1973 he founded his label, Palm, on which are especially the recordings with his orchestra Europamerica, and with Butch Morris. For this more arranged record, which started reflecting his achievements of free jazz, he was awarded the 1978 Prix Boris Vian. He also established a jazz school in Paris. 

In the 1980’s he ceased to perform while continuing to teach and became more important for helping the careers of other younger musicians than for his own playing.  Up to his final days he lived withdrawn in Ardèche. Gilson lived only to see the first shots of a surge of interest in his work before passing away on February 5, 2012.

(Edited from article by Dean Van Nguyen @ Bandcamp Daily, New Grove Dictonary of Jazz & Wikipedia)

Jodie Sands born 1927?

 Jodie Sands (born c. 1927) was a popular American singer of the 1950s and 1960s who had fleeting chart fame before descending into relative obscurity. 

Born Eleanor DeSipio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sands’s father was an opera singer, and she received classical training with the hopes of one day performing at the Met. By 1955, she was working the club and cabaret circuit in the northeastern United States and in Canada. Although little has been documented about her, the world first heard Jodie Sands on record in 1955.  She was one of handful of Philly singers propelled into the spotlight thanks to Bob Horn, the original host of Bandstand.  She was signed to the Teen label he co-owned with Artie Singer, a local voice coach and musician, Bernie Lowe and Kal Mann.  

At the time it was customary to have pop artists record cover versions of R&B tunes that were desperately trying to make it onto the charts.  Sands first etching was just that but with a twist.  "Love Me Always," the a-side, was a West Coast song by professional baseball player Arthur Lee Maye and his group, The Crowns.  The twist is that Bob Horn actually played his version on Bandstand and Jodie's cover was, in reality, only a local release.  Her second and final record for Teen, "Let Me Show You Around My Heart," was the b-side of "When You Dance" by The Turbans, another South Philly R&B group.  The next move for Sands would be the biggest and most important one of her career. 

                                   

Signing to Chancellor records in 1957, Jodie Sands immediately had her biggest hit, "With All My Heart."  Sporting a Mediterranean cha-cha beat thanks to label owners Bob Marcucci and Pete DeAngelis, "With All My Heart" was soon heard on every transistor radio in the US and was featured regularly on the now national American Bandstand with new host Dick Clark.  The song made it all the way to #15 on the pop charts garnering her numerous television appearances and a spot in the 1957 film "Jamboree" singing her next Chancellor release, "Sayonara."  

Her next recording "Someday (You'll Want Me to Want You)" barely made the Top 100 chart the following year, reaching No. 95, but did better in the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 14 in the UK Singles Chart. While the songs were not very rock and roll, their popularity put Sands in the spotlight at a time when many promoters were looking for a “girl singer” to round out their rock and roll bills. 

She became part of Alan Freed’s regular cohort of performers in 1957, appearing on the shows he produced at the Paramount Theater alongside stars like Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, the Everly Brothers, and Frankie Lymon. She also toured to Hawaii with Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Paul Anka. In 1957, she was cast in the quasi-concert film Jamboree, which featured several of rock and roll’s biggest stars, including Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis. She also appeared in the film American Bandstand. Sands, who already operated in the same circles as Fabian and Frankie Avalon, appeared well-positioned to capitalize on the “teen idol” phenomenon of the late fifties and early sixties. 

After leaving Chancellor records she signed briefly with Thor Records, followed by a one off for Paris records and then 3 singles for ABC-Paramount in 1962, concluding her recording career. Sid Fisher (brother of Eddie Fisher) took an interest in her career and became her manager.  Jodie spent a few years doing nightclub work in the area and then retired, disenchanted and jaded from the cutthroat music world. She taught private voice lessons then later appeared on a 1973 Bandstand Reunion hosted by Ron Joseph and Pat Delsea. 

She also sat for a TV interview on Bob Horn's original set with Tony Mammarella and Sy "Pop" Singer.  Sands continued to perform in clubs until at least 1975 as reported by the Philadelphia Daily News when she was billed at the Holiday Inn, New Jersey, during September that year. 

Please note - According to Rate Your Music, Jodie died in 1996, although I haven’t found this information confirmed anywhere else. I think they have quoted one of the death notices for her siblings in 1996 and 2000, which refer to Jodie Sands by the name of Eleanor Ferro. 

(Edited from womeninrock project, Jimmy DePre blog, Wikipedia & last.fm)

 

Johnny Darrell born 23 July 1940

Johnny Darrell (July 23, 1940 – October 7, 1997) was an American country music artist. 

Darrell was born Eddie Ray White in Hopewell, Alabama but grew up in Marietta, Georgia. Hel had taught himself to play guitar whilst still in his early teens and on joining the army performed at base dances. By 1964, having left the military, he was managing a Holiday Inn motel in the Nashville area and found himself regularly dealing with people in the music business. 

He soon came to the attention of United Artists music producer Kelso Hairston through his friend Bobby Bare. Hairston, who liked Darrell's brand of songwriting quickly signed the musician to a contract with United Artists in 1964. Keen to pursue his own interest in that field, it wasn't until the country star Bobby Bare arranged a meeting with United Artists that he got the chance to cut a record. His debut disc for the label in 1965, the first recording of Curly Putman's now classic "Green, Green Grass of Home", fared poorly, becoming a country hit only when covered the same year by Porter Wagoner and an international smash when tackled by Tom Jones in 1966. 

                                   

His next single, "As Long as the Wind Blows" (1966), again penned by Putman, found its way into the country Top 30 and saw Darrell being named "Most Promising Male Artist" by Cash Box magazine. His chart run continued and in 1967, by now produced by the label head and former Buddy Holly associate Bob Montgomery, his version of Mel Tillis's "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" went to the Top 10. Inspired by an incident during the Second World War, the song's reference to "this crazy Asian war" was widely believed to refer to Vietnam and, trading on that presumed association, became a huge pop hit two years later for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. 

Darrell's next single, the original version of another future pop smash, Dallas Frazier's "Son of Hickory Hollow's Tramp" (1968), made it only into the Top 25. It was followed by "With Pen In Hand", the closest Darrell came to a chart-topper and his only single to edge its way into the US pop chart. After "I Ain't Buying" (1968) and "Woman Without Love" (1969) came a duet, "The Coming of the Roads", with the underrated Anita Carter of the famous Carter Family; its lowly chart placing failing to reflect its obvious quality. 

Having garnered the respect of the cream of Nashville's songwriting community, Darrell next turned to two of its heaviest hitters, gaining Top 25 successes with first, Mickey Newbury's "Why Have You Been Gone So Long" and second, Billy Ed Wheeler's "River Bottom" (both 1969). 

In the 1970s, Darrell continued his association with friend Bobby Bare, and also became part of the outlaw country movement by joining the Grand Ole Opry's Party Night. The event was an English concert that celebrated the birthday of a now defunct Opry magazine. The lineup of performers included Nat Stuckey, Hank Snow, Wes Buchanan, and Willie Nelson, among others. The hits however, begin to dry up, a label switch to Monument producing the uncharacteristic "Dakota the Dancing Bear" (1973), and a further move to Capricorn resulting in one album and a final hit, an unsuccessful reworking of the bluegrass standard "Orange Blossom Special" (1975). 

Diagnosed in the mid-Seventies with the diabetes which eventually would kill him, Johnny Darrell cut just one further album, in 1979 re-recording of his hits for Gusto before fading into an undeserved obscurity. Darrell succumbed to the disease at age 57 in Kennesaw, Georgia, 7 October 1997and was survived by his wife Jody. He was buried in the Winkenhofer-Pine Ridge Memorial Park, Kennesaw, Cobb County, Georgia. 

In 2000, three years after his death the album, "Singin' It Lonesome: The Very Best...1965-1970", was released in his memory. The album included all of Darrell's chart topping successes. 

(Edited from  Paul Wadley obit @ The Independent,, Wikipedia & Find a grave)

Billy Brown born 22 July 1929

Billy Brown (22 July 1929 – 10 January 2009) was an American Rockabilly and Country singer. 

There are several reasons why Billy Brown should go down in Southern music history, but you’d have to search long and hard to find him in any of the books. You could look for him under any of these guises- as a one time rockabilly singer; as a major label singer in the formative years of post-war country; as the first man to record one of the foremost ballads of country music; as a country gospel evangelist; as a brilliant comedian and vocal mimic; or as a mainstay of the local music scene in central Florida.

William George Brown was born in Princeton, West Virginia, near the Virginia line, the son of George and Sadie Brown. When he was 8 years the family relocated to New Smyrna Beach towards the southern end of the Florida East Coast Railway. One of the things people knew the Browns for was music. Billy was quite young when he realised he had a talent for it. He later told Jim Jones of the Smyrna Observer that he sold twelve boxes of Cloverine lip salve on the streets in order to make enough money to buy his first guitar, choosing that product because he saw it advertised on the back of a comic book as 'good for anything and everything'. 

His favourite singers in those days were Gene Autry, Eddy Arnold and Elton Britt and that he started performing as a teenager. He started to sing at local events and functions and even combined this with another of his interests, the rodeo, where he became proficient in the cowboy arts of gun-twirling and singing like Gene Autry. By the age of sixteen he was singing in touring shows and also at rodeos with a group known as the Indian River Boys. As a singer, he gradually worked his way up until he was invited to play in some of the nightclubs in central Florida. Then a big break came his way. But within a few months of signing up for the 'Grand Ole Opry', Billy Brown was drafted into the Army. 

He served in the infantry during the Korean War. Brown was discharged from the Army in 1953 and not long afterward he headed out West, winding up recording a single for Decca --"High Heels But No Soul"/"Drunk, Drunk Again" -- in 1955. He kept working out in the West for a while then drifted back east, recording a single for Stars Inc in 1957, the rollicking "Did We Have a Party" where he eagerly jumped on the rock & roll bandwagon with the assistance of guitarist Jerry Reed and pianist Ray Stevens. Brown took the single to Troy Martin who once again finagled a contract with Columbia for the single.  

                                  

The label reissued "Did We Have a Party" in the fall of 1957 and pushed it fairly hard, getting him an appearance on American Bandstand and into the studio to cut some more rock & roll, including the single "Meet Me in the Alley Sally," and putting him on a package tour that also featured Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, and the Everly Brothers. More singles followed in 1958, including "Once in a Lifetime," but hits weren't forthcoming. Nevertheless, Columbia continued to see promise in the vocally versatile Brown, and in 1959 they released the gorgeous ballad "He'll Have to Go." 

This had the potential to be Brown's big breakthrough but Jim Reeves wound up recording the song six months after Brown's version was released and it soon eclipsed the original on its way to becoming a country standard. Livid at this change in fortune, the singer demanded to be released from his Columbia contract, a request that was granted. In 1960, he recorded a pair of singles for Republic -- the smooth "Be Honest with Me" and the swinging "Lost Weekend" -- neither of which made much impact; neither did 1961's Look Out Heart." 

Bitter at his lack of success, Billy Brown started drinking heavily, eventually turning to religion by 1963. Over the next several years, he was part of evangelistic revues and recorded some occasional gospel sides along the way. He returned to secular music for financial reasons, playing shows and once again taking another stab at recording success when he signed with Challenge Records in 1969. Like his previous singles, "Open Arms"/"One of the Ten Most Wanted Women" didn't go anywhere, but Brown eked out a living playing Holiday Inns and other chain hotels. 

During the '70s, he returned to the studio quite regularly, recording singles for nine different labels, all to little success with the exception of "Thank You Darlin'," which performed strongly in several regional country markets in 1976. He cut his last sides for a label called Citadel in 1979 and then in 1983 he suffered a stroke that left him unable to perform. After the stroke, he once again found religion and took up residence at his home in New Smyrna Beach, Florida until his death on January 10, 2009 from emphysema. 

(Edited from Bear Family notes and AllMusic)

Kim Fowley born 21 July 1939

Kim Vincent Fowley (July 21, 1939 – January 15, 2015) was an American record producer, songwriter and musician who was behind a string of novelty and cult pop rock singles in the 1960s, and managed the Runaways in the 1970s. He has been described as "one of the most colorful characters in the annals of rock & roll", as well as "a shadowy cult figure well outside the margins of the mainstream". 

Born in Los Angeles, he was the son of the actor Douglas Fowley. After his mother left them, at the age of two Fowley was dispatched to a foster home, where he would spend the next five years “with 27 children in a large room fighting for the cinnamon toast”. Having survived a bout of polio, he went to University High School in Los Angeles, where he developed an interest in music, singing with a group called the Sleepwalkers that included his classmates Bruce Johnston (later of the Beach Boys) and the drummer Sandy Nelson, along with a young Phil Spector. 

After a short spell in the US military, Fowley floated on to the Hollywood music scene, working as a promotions man and record producer. In 1960 he co-produced and sang on the single Alley Oop, a pastiche of the doo-wop style . It went to No 1 in the American charts, selling one million copies. The following year he conceived Nutrocker, a frenetic pastiche of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite performed by a group of session musicians under the name B Bumble and the Stingers which reached No 1 in Britain. 

He enjoyed a second American success in 1964, with a gloopy girl-group confection, Popsicles and Icicles, by the Murmaids, which was knocked off the top of the American charts by the Beatles’ first US No 1, I Want To Hold Your Hand.  Fowley came to London, where he worked as a publicity man for his friend PJ Proby, wrote songs for Cat Stevens and the Seekers, and produced early incarnations of Traffic and Slade. 

                                      

Noddy Holder, Slade’s lead singer, would later remember how Fowley had “discovered” them at a London club in 1966: “There was this strange character in the audience, about 7ft tall, a beanpole, wearing a cowboy hat and doing all this hippie dancing with his arms flailing about. And after the show he came up and told us we could be as big as the Beatles. ” Fowley produced one single with the group, which sank without trace, then returned to America. “Van Morrison and Them had had a big hit with Gloria in the States but then split up,” Holder remembered. “Kim wanted us to go back with him and go on tour pretending to be Them. He was a rogue, but a very lovable rogue.”

Hardly a bandwagon passed by without Fowley jumping on it. In the late 1960s it was psychedelia; in the 1970s he moved to Finland, where he produced a group called Wigwam (“the Finnish Beatles”, according to Fowley); and then to Sweden, where he produced Scorpion (“the Swedish Beatles”). He went on to produce Helen Reddy and Vicky Leandros, and – “just for the sheer joy of it” – Christian family music in Detroit. A friend once visited Fowley at his home in Hollywood at a time when environmentalism was coming to the fore, and found him writing songs for a putative band he planned to call Ecology. 

Kim with The Runnaways

In 2009 an assortment of offcuts and oddities which Fowley had recorded and produced under a variety of pseudonyms were gathered together on two albums, One Man’s Garbage and Another Man’s Gold . Fowley had enjoyed great success as the composer and publisher of songs for such bestselling heavy metal groups as Poison, Guns N’ Roses and Kiss, which he claimed had funded profitable investments in a range of businesses from minerals in Australia to hotels in Spain. In 2012, Fowley won the Special Jury Prize at the 13th Melbourne Underground Film Festival for his two feature projects – Golden Road to Nowhere and Black Room Doom. 

Tall, cadaverous and poker-faced, Fowley cut an unsettling figure on the Los Angeles music scene. In his later years he retreated to the unlovely desert town of Redlands, better known for its drive-by shootings than for its music scene. There he lived in a small woodframe house fronted by an almost sinisterly manicured lawn and surrounded by an industrial chain-link fence posted with “Keep Out” signs. Gold and platinum records were propped against the sitting-room wall, “to remind media people and investors who I am”. 

In his last years, Fowley worked on writing and publishing his autobiography, which he divided between three distinct books. The last volume was intended to be finished on his deathbed and to be released posthumously because, as the 2010s began, Fowley was terminally ill. On September 24, 2014, Fowley married longtime girlfriend and music executive Kara Wright-Fowley, in a private ceremony in Los Angeles. He died of bladder cancer in Hollywood, California on January 15, 2015, at the age of 75. He is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

(Edited from The Telegraph & Wikipedia)

Brenda Reid born 20 July 1945

Brenda Reid (born July 20, 1945) is an American singer, who was lead singer of the group The Exciters best known for (U.S. #4) single "Tell Him". Brenda was married to fellow band member Herb Rooney.

The Masterettes

 Brenda Reid, Carolyn (Carol) Johnson, Lillian Walker, and Sylvia Wilbur formed a group while at high school together in Queens, New York City, in 1961. They were originally called the Masterettes, as a sister group to another group called the Masters, and released their first recording, "Follow the Leader", in early 1962. Wilbur then left the group to be replaced by Penny Carter, and they auditioned for Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, winning a recording contract. Penny Carter then left, and was replaced by Herb Rooney, a member of the Masters; Reid and Rooney later married. 

The group's name was changed to the Exciters, and their first hit record, arranged by Teacho Wiltshire and produced by Leiber and Stoller for United Artists Records, was "Tell Him", which reached no. 4 on the U.S. pop chart in early 1963, and no. 12 in Canada. The song had previously been released unsuccessfully, as "Tell Her", by Gil Hamilton later known as Johnny Thunder. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMusic, the Exciters' version of "Tell Him" "...boasted an intensity that signified a sea change in the presentation and perception of femininity in popular music, paving the way for such tough, sexy acts as the Shangri-Las and the Ronettes." 

                                    

Dusty Springfield was on a stop-over in New York City en route to Nashville to make a country music album with the Springfields in 1962, when she heard the Exciters' "Tell Him" playing while taking a late-night walk by the Colony Record Store on Broadway. The song helped Springfield decide to embark on a solo career with a pop/soul direction. She'd recall: "The Exciters sort of got you by the throat...out of the blue comes blasting at you “I know something about love”, and that’s it. That’s what I wanna do. 

Other songs by the group with Reids lead vocals included "He's Got the Power" (written by Ellie Greenwich and Tony Powers), "Get Him", and Northern Soul classic "Blowing Up My Mind". The Exciters also recorded "Do-Wah-Diddy", written by Greenwich and Jeff Barry, in 1963; with a revised title of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" it was covered shortly after by Manfred Mann, for whom it was an international hit. They were one of the opening acts for the Beatles during their first North American tour in August–September 1964. During this tour, they became the first black musicians to perform at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida; the stadium's management had initially refused to allow the Exciters to perform because of their race, but when the Beatles said they would refuse to perform too, the group was allowed to go on. 

In 1965, the Exciters left the Leiber-Stoller management team, and the United Artists label, for Roulette Records. There they issued a remake (with revised lyrics) of the Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' song "I Want You to Be My Boy". They continued to record through the 1960s for Bert Berns' labels Bang and Shout, and later for RCA, but with little success. Ronnie Pace and Skip McPhee replaced Johnson and Walker. The group broke up in 1974. By the early seventies Walker and Johnson had left and were replaced by Skip McPhee and Ronnie Pace. The group continued to tour the US and abroad, eventually breaking up in 1974. Carole Johnson worked as an account clerk for G&G Retail in New York. Lillian Walker established a career as a Guidance Counselor in the New York City school system. 

In 1975, Brenda and Herb Rooney, credited as the Exciters, enjoyed a hit single in the UK with "Reaching for the Best", produced by Rooney and young newcomer producer Ian Levine. The song was aimed at the British Northern soul scene but crossed over to the UK Singles Chart where it peaked at No. 31. In 1978, Reid formed a group with her husband Herb Rooney called Brenda And Herb, had a final R&B chart hit in 1978 with "Tonight I'm Gonna Make You A Star" and released one album in 1979, "In Heat Again". 

The pair later separated with Herb owning a cosmetics company on Long Island, but Reid kept the New Exciters going with her children Mark, Tracy & Jeff on backup vocals and instruments. One son, Mark, became a famous songwriter and producer for acts like Lisa Lisa, Eric B, and Rakim, under the name L.A. Reid. By the mid-eighties the Rooneys had separated. In the early 90s Brenda retired to devote her life to her church although Reid and Lillian Walker still occasionally performed together as The Exciters. Carole Johnson died on May 7, 2007, aged 62. Lillian Walker-Moss died on February 5, 2023, at the age of 78. She had been battling angiosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. 

(Edited from Wikipedia,History of Rock & Soul Tracks)