Tavares

Release date

01 January 1970

If you are interested in booking Tavares, please contact one of our agents: info@international-artists.com

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The brothers from Tavares, whose parents were of Cape Verdean descent, started performing in 1959 as Chubby and the
Turnpikes when the youngest brother was nine years old. P-Funk keyboardist/architect Bernie Worrell briefly
joined the group in 1968 while attending the New England Conservatory of Music. Future Aerosmith drummer
Joey Kramer appeared as the “token white-guy drummer” in a later incarnation called The Turnpikes from the fall
of 1969 until September 1970, when he was invited to join Aerosmith. He was later replaced with drummer Paul
Klodner and bassist Steve Strout, which gave them a tight, punchy rhythm section. Chubby and The Turnpikes
signed with Capitol Records in 1967 and had a couple of local hit records including “I Know The Inside Story” in
1967 and “Nothing But Promises” in 1968. By 1973, they had changed their name to Tavares and scored their first
R&B Top 10 (Pop Top 40) hit with “Check it Out”, and soon began charting regularly on the R&B and pop charts.
Their first album included their brother Victor, who sang lead on “Check it Out“, but dropped out of the group
shortly afterward. In 1974 Tavares had a No. 1 R&B hit with Hall & Oates’s “She’s Gone”, (which became a hit for
Hall & Oates as well two years later).

1975 turned out to be their most successful year chart wise, with a Top 40 Pop album (In the City), the No. 25 hit
“Remember What I Told You to Forget”, and their biggest hit, the Top 10 Pop/No. 1 R&B smash “It Only Takes a Minute“, which was later successfully covered by both Jonathan King and Take That, and sampled by Jennifer
Lopez. They parlayed this success into a spot as an opening act for The Jackson 5. KC and The Sunshine Band was
also on this tour. “Minute” was followed by a string of hits: “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel” (1976), “Don’t Take
Away the Music” (1976), and “Whodunit” (1977, another No. 1 R&B hit). In 1977 they also recorded “I Wanna See
You Soon”, a duet with Capitol labelmate Freda Payne, which received airplay on BBC Radio 1 but failed to chart.

Many of their hits, however, underplayed their R&B background and gave the group the image of being a disco act.
This perception was reinforced by their appearance on the soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977.
Tavares recorded the Bee Gees song “More Than a Woman”, and their version reached the Pop Top 40 that year.
The soundtrack became one of the most successful in history, giving Tavares their only Grammy.

Later albums, such as Madam Butterfly and Supercharged, strayed from the disco format and were less successful
on the pop chart (although they continued to have Top 10 R&B hits such as “Never Had a Love Like This Before” and
the popular sociopolitical “Bad Times” written by British singer-songwriter Gerard McMahon). At the start of the
1980s, Tavares left Capitol Records, signing with RCA. They had one last major hit, the ballad “A Penny for Your
Thoughts”, for which they were nominated for a Grammy in 1982; their last major release was Words and Music in
1983.

In 2013, the brothers were honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards by The National R&B Music Society Black
Tie Gala in Atlantic City, NJ. All six brothers attended and performed on stage together for the first time in 37
years.

They were inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame in 2014.