Sonny Til born August 18, 1925

 Sonny Til (August 18, 1925 – December 9, 1981), was  the lead singer of The Orioles, a vocal group from Baltimore, Maryland, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. By 1960 Til was the only original member left. He led the Orioles from its establishment until his death in 1981.

Sonny Til was born Earlington Carl Tilghman, in Baltimore, Maryland. He picked up the nickname "Sonny" from his favourite record as a child: Al Jolson's "Sonny Boy". From the start, Sonny knew he wanted to be an entertainer. During the War, Sonny enlisted on October 29, 1943, two months after his eighteenth birthday. He did a lot of Special Services work: singing and entertaining. But when he was with his combat unit overseas he was  a smoke layer in the Chemical Corps. He was discharged on April 4, 1946. After working in a rubber heel factory then as delivery truck driver he began to sing  regularly in amateur shows billed at clubs with every possible variant of "Sonny", "Earl", "Til", and "Tilghman" until 1947 at the Avenue Cafe in Baltimore, where he met George Nelson, Alexander Sharp and guitarist Tommy Gaither. 

They decided to form a group, calling themselves The Vibra-Naires. They came to the attention of Deborah Chessler, a local merchant who also wrote songs; she would write some of the group's subsequent hits. Chessler became the band's manager and she was able to get the Vibra-Naires a spot on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television show in April 1948. Although the group lost to pianist George Shearing, they caught the eye of Jerry Blaine, a New York record company executive, while they were in town for the program.

                                  

Blaine signed the group to his newly created It's a Natural record label and changed their name to the Orioles, in honour of the state bird of Maryland and in emulation of another popular group, The Ravens. The band cut "It's Too Soon to Know," a ballad written by Chessler, with Sonny Til taking lead vocals. In the late summer of 1948, But shortly after the single's release, National Records complained about the name of Blaine's new label, so he re-released the song on Jubilee Records. "It's Too Soon to Know" became a number one R&B hit and crossed over to number 13 on the pop charts. At the time of its release, no Black group had managed to cross over to the pop charts with what was then known as a "race" record. The Orioles immediately followed the success of their debut single with the seasonal "(It's Gonna Be A) Lonely Christmas," which reached the R&B Top Ten at the end of 1948.

The Orioles then began touring widely. "Tell Me So" became the Orioles' second number one R&B hit in the spring of 1949, beginning a streak of six R&B hit singles that year. In addition to "Tell Me So," the group charted with "A Kiss and a Rose" (number 12, late summer), "I Challenge Your Kiss" (number 11, fall), "Forgive and Forget" (number five, fall), a re-released "(It's Gonna Be A) Lonely Christmas" (number five, winter), and the B-side of "Lonely Christmas," "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" (number nine, winter). In performance, The Orioles were a phenomenon, with girls in the audiences screaming, fainting, and attempting to reach their idol Sonny Til in particular. They differed from groups like the Mills Brothers and the Delta Rhythm Boys in that they made vocal music with limited orchestration and accompanied only with the guitar of Tommy Gaither and the bass Johnny Reed. From 1948 to 1954, they cut over 120 sides for the Natural and Jubilee labels. By late 1950 they were major stars, although their supply of hit records had dried up.

Following their peak year of 1949, the group ran into tragedy. In 1950, Gaither, Nelson, and Reed suffered an automobile accident that killed Gaither and severely injured the other two members; Nelson quit the group later in the year. As Reed recovered, the group found replacements for Gaither and Nelson, finally settling on guitarist Ralph Williams and vocalist Gregory Carroll. The new lineup of the band had its first hit in 1952, when "Baby Please Don't Go" reached number eight on the R&B charts. The following year, the group had their biggest hit with "Crying in the Chapel." Released in the summer of 1953, "Crying in the Chapel" spent five weeks on the R&B charts and reached number 11 on the pop charts, eventually going gold; Elvis Presley had a hit with the song 12 years later. Toward the end of the year, the group had another Top Ten R&B hit with "In the Mission of St. Augustine." The single would turn out to be their last hit.

In 1954, the Orioles began to splinter, as Sharp and Reed left to join the Ink Spots. Til assembled a new lineup, but the group didn't get much attention. In spite of his involvement with a group, Sonny started recording as a soloist in 1969 for RCA. Five singles (including two one-sided DJ discs) resulted over the next couple of years, and an album ("Sonny Til Returns") in 1970. Sonny continued to lead many different incarnations of the Orioles, performing concerts and re-recording the group's old hits.

During the final years of his life, Sonny was plagued with health problems. In 1980, diabetes caused him to have part of his left foot amputated. In spite of this, he continued to perform, on crutches, and as  leader of his sixth group of Orioles he released an album on Ivory in 1981 that had the strange title "Sonny Til And The Orioles Visit Manhattan Circa 1950's." The songs included many 1940s and 1950s standards. This was his last recording. He died from  a massive heart attack, in Washington, D.C., on December 9, 1981. He was 56. 

In 1995, 40 years after the original line-up of the group disbanded, the Orioles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia &  Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks) (also thanks to Marv for the loan of most of the photographs.)