the Charters

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Cincinnati, early 1960s

May 1964, Charters at Pirate's Cove

The Motown family of record labels is one of the highest regarded and most collected record labels. While the label produced 100s of hits and almost all the records were pressed in large numbers and well distributed, there are a few from the label that are very rare and never seem to have made it beyond a small demo run.

That leads us to the Charters, who had one 45 on the Mel-O-Dy label, one of Motown's labels that was intended for pop records. For many years there has been erroneous info circulating about the groups origin (Toledo was claimed) and the number of records known to exist (2 coming from someone related to the group). The story about two known copies is correct but the source was a junk shop in Detroit.

The group, in fact, were almost certainly from Cincinnati. The song "Show Me Some Sign" was first recorded by Count Ferrell on the LeRegal label. LeRegal was part of the Win-More collection of labels, Ron Moore and R.(Ray?) Reynolds.Those two are also the producers for the Charters record (and also have singwriting credits) The story behind these labels is very confusing but every artist on the labels (including the first recordings of Cody Black) were from Cincinnati. There is also the mention of them oerforming at the Pirates Cove in Cincy (see the posting above).

We certainly hope the real story will surface at some time.

Discography:
Trouble Lover / Show Me Some Sign - Mel-O-Dy 104, 1962

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