{"id":496,"date":"2010-07-09T14:40:34","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T18:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/?p=496"},"modified":"2010-07-09T14:40:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T18:40:34","slug":"harvey-fuqua-passes-away-at-age-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/2010\/07\/09\/harvey-fuqua-passes-away-at-age-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey Fuqua Passes Away At Age 80"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvey Fuqua<\/span><\/h1>\n

1929 – 2010<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even though we were all prepared for the worst, it was still heartbreaking to learn of the passing of one of music’s greatest vocal group singers: Harvey Fuqua.\u00c2\u00a0 He had been recovering in a Detroit hospital for some time before dying of cardiac arrest in the early evening of Tuesday, July 6, 2010.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey spent his life immersed in the music business and his voice and production put a stamp on some of the greatest tunes of his era.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Harvey was born in Chicago, but grew up in Louisville, KY.\u00c2\u00a0 There, he met fellow classmate Bobby Lester and the two began singing together.\u00c2\u00a0 After high school, Harvey moved to Cleveland, where he formed a group called The Crazy Sounds.\u00c2\u00a0 He soon asked Bobby Lester to join the group and they became The Moonglows after being championed by local DJ Alan Freed (who was known at that time as “The Moondog”).\u00c2\u00a0 Freed signed them to his own Champagne Label, but that endeavor soon fell apart.\u00c2\u00a0 Freed then got the group a recording deal with Chicago’s Chance Records.\u00c2\u00a0 While on Chance they scored with an R&B cover of the Doris Day pop hit, “Secret Love.”\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soon, Phil Chess of Chess Records was applying some pressure to get the Moonglows to sign with Chess.\u00c2\u00a0 The label was already a market leader with straight blues and R&B, but they had yet to cash in on the growing vocal group market.\u00c2\u00a0 The Moonglows would certainly fill the bill.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1954, The Moonglows signed with Chess and the hits started coming right out of the gate with the release of “Sincerely” at the tail end of 1954.\u00c2\u00a0 It became a monster hit in 1955 and spawned a white cover version by the McGuire Sisters.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey Fuqua wrote the tune and he became the Moonglows chief songwriter.\u00c2\u00a0 Not too many groups at the time\u00c2\u00a0featured two incredible “lead” singers.\u00c2\u00a0 The Moonglows were so fortunate to have both Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua exchanging leads (The Flamingos would also make that short list of vocal groups).\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hits kept on coming with “Most Of All,” “We Go Together,” “See Saw,” “Please Send Me Someone To Love,” but the inner tensions in the group were growing.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey was a workaholic and Bobby Lester and the boys weren’t living up to Harvey’s expectations.\u00c2\u00a0 So, backstage at the Howard Theater in Washington, DC in 1958, Harvey dismissed the original Moonglows and replaced them with a local DC group called The Marquees.\u00c2\u00a0 These new Moonglows included a DC kid by the name of Marvin Gaye.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fuqua now called the group, Harvey & The Moonglows and they scored another giant hit later in 1958 with “The Ten Commandments of Love.”\u00c2\u00a0 Soon, Harvey had his new Moonglows singing backup on records by Chuck Berry, Etta James and Detroit’s own Jackie Wilson.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey would even record a few successful duet with Etta James billed as Harvey and Etta.<\/p>\n

During the early 1960s, Harvey moved on to greener pastures and started his own Tri-Phi and Harvey labels, singing groups like The Spinners, Shorty Long and Marvin Gaye.\u00c2\u00a0 He soon took a position at Motown and produced records by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey was also heavily involved in Marvin Gaye’s early ’80s comeback and served as Gaye’s surrogate father.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Harvey Fuqua continued to perform live up until his recent illness.\u00c2\u00a0 He had such a unique voice that you could always tell that it was him and not Bobby Lester singing lead on those great Moonglows’ records.\u00c2\u00a0 He may not be a household name, but then again neither was his famous uncle Charlie Fuqua of the Ink Spots, yet both hold an important place in music history for those of us who know and remember.<\/p>\n

-Matt The Cat
\n<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvey Fuqua 1929 – 2010 Even though we were all prepared for the worst, it was still heartbreaking to learn of the passing of one of music’s greatest vocal group singers: Harvey Fuqua.\u00c2\u00a0 He had been recovering in a Detroit hospital for some time before dying of cardiac arrest in the early evening of Tuesday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-i-p"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattthecat.com\/Blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}