to his house. “We had so much fun. When I left there I was hooked, so I decided to start me a vocal group,” said Wright.
Wright started his group, but was uncertain of what he was doing, so he took advice from Belvin and contacted a gentlemen who had a studio, not far from where Belvin lived. Wright went by and asked him to listen to the group and he told Wright to get it together and come on. “We worked and worked and finally got it together and I took my group over there one night. My cousin sings like a songbird automatically. He sang the first two songs. Then I got up to sing and I started singing and the man said, “Hold it, hold it, hold it! Brother, don’t you ever try and sing lead. You stay in the background. Don’t never try to sing lead. [Laughing] So there was a tunnel not far from where I lived and I used to go in the tunnel and I would practice by myself and listen to the echo in the tunnel. I wrote a song and I went back over there by myself and played the piano and a chorus of the song I had made up and he said, “Oh No! Next time I go into the studio and record anybody, I’m taking you with me and I’m recording you.” So he had a recording session and just as he said, he invited me over, but when we got to the session, we only had fifteen minutes left and so I song two songs in that fifteen minutes time and made my first hit record,” Wright said.
The talented Wright would later tour with Dick Clark, in a couple of different groups he was in. “The first tour was in 1959 and the second one was in the mid 1960’s; 1963-64. We were traveling with about thirty-five to thirty-six people. About fifteen of them were white and the rest of us were black and Dick Clark would go get close to a town and send the police out to get us, the last ten or twelve miles into town and he would drop us off at a black (inferior) hotel and he would take the white group to the Sheraton or a hotel like that. I resented that, but that’s the way it was,” he said.
1959 and the second one was in the mid 1960’s; 1963-64. We were traveling with about thirty-five to thirty-six people. About fifteen of them were white and the rest of us were black and Dick Clark would go get close to a town and send the police out to get us, the last ten or twelve miles into town and he would drop us off at a black (inferior) hotel and he would take the white group to the Sheraton or a hotel like that. I resented that, but that’s the way it was,” he said.
Wright had three different hits in three different vocal groups before he would start The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, which was a very popular band. He had become the A & R Manager for a record company in Los Angeles when he was nineteen years old. During that time, while scouting for talent, he would run into a band called the La La Wilson Band. They were dancing, singing and had routines. Inspired by this, Wright formed The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band.
I talked with Wright about being an artist of the 60’s. When asked does he think that artists received their due respect his response was, “No, I don’t think we received our due respect, especially the black artists, we were like work horses. They used us to get the people in there, but they featured some other people.
Wright’s song “Express Yourself” was a very popular hit. I wanted to