Thanks to the radio and the huge record collection he’d begun amassing, Flash also began to play jazz and popular songs. Drought and poor economic conditions had caused a wave of immigration led by those seeking employment in the cranberry bogs on Cape Cod and on the fishing fleets out of New Bedford, Massachusetts and Galilee in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Growing up in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence, he was immersed in the Cape Verdean and Portuguese musical traditions which had come flowing across the Atlantic in the early 20th century. “Flash,” as he was known to the music community, was a singer and self-taught guitarist of great skill and talents. (called “Butch”) and Perry Lee (as the youngest, dubbed “Tiny”) all received their earliest musical schooling right at home from their dad. John, Ralph, Arthur (nicknamed “Pooch”), Antone (known as “Chubby”), Victor, Feliciano Jr. The seven sons of Feliciano Tavares were born to their calling.
We proudly welcome Tavares as 2014 inductees into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. One of the earliest known photos of the group shows six boys, all dressed in matching Fox Point Boys Club t-shirts. Their family’s musical endeavors were based out of Fox Point and Tiny speaks with great fondness of his musical education at the Roger Williams Middle School in South Providence. Although most resources refer to Tavares as a New Bedford, Massachusetts band and it is well known that the family lived in southeastern Massachusetts at different times, it is equally well known that they spent a great deal of their early years in the Fox Point and South Providence neighborhoods of Providence. Not bad for “…a bunch of snot-nosed kids from Rhode Island,” as Tiny Tavares put it in an interview with The Providence Journal on the eve of their induction into the Cape Verdean Heritage Hall Of Fame in 2006.Īnd this is where the story begins – in Providence, Rhode Island. Tavares toured the world in tandem with their peers and as headliners and performed dozens of times on television guesting on every major variety, talk and music program of the 1970s and 1980s.
Along the way, they managed to place 8 singles on Billboard’s Top 40, 12 singles on the R&B Top 10 chart (including three #1 records), 3 Dance Chart hits (1 at #3 and 2 at #1), 10 hit albums, and won a Grammy for their work on the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, one of the best-selling albums of all time (recently certified at 15 times Platinum). For more than two decades, the Tavares brothers were in the thick of it with the best and biggest of them. The story of Tavares is the inspirational tale of a band of young brothers bound not only by blood, prodigious talent, and a rich musical legacy, but by a fierce determination to succeed in the music business. Special thanks also go out to Bob Bovi, an early friend and supporter, to Brian Panella, the group’s longtime manager, and to Tiny Tavares for filling in the gaps and shedding light on the hazier parts of the story.
#BRIAN NOLAN CAPITOL RECORDS ARCHIVE#
The author would like to thank Ralph Tavares for his generosity and cooperation during the interview process and for opening up the family archive to the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. “But, we’re not doing anything – we’re just singing!” And that’s when the officer said, “Okay, get in the car,” and took them all down to headquarters on a charge of disturbing the peace! Little did he know that he had so rudely interrupted one of the earliest public performances by a group which a decade later would become one of the most successful singing groups of all time and known worldwide as simply “Tavares.” The eldest among them spoke up, “But we live here.” “Oh, yeah?” “Yes, this our house – we live on the third floor.” “Well, I still need you to move it along.” The eldest tried to reason with him one more time.
Up in the North End of Providence, Peter Andreoli and Vini Poncia held court while their group, The Videls, serenaded the neighborhood.Īnd so it was on the South Side of Providence about fifty years ago when a police cruiser pulled up to a group of youths singing on the sidewalk on Willard Avenue. Out in Detroit, two rival groups, The Distants and The Primes battled it out nightly under the street lamps until they both cried “uncle” and merged to form The Temptations. Down in New York City, Dion DiMucci and his gang staked their claim on Belmont Avenue in the Bronx. Street corners loom large in the history and legends of the rise of the American singing group in the Rock ’n’ Roll/Rhythm & Blues era.
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