On Saturday evening, February 1, 1975, promoter Drew Cummings of Monsey, New York staged a 20th anniversary of Rock’n’roll concert at the Rockland Community College Field House in Suffern, New York under the Barmann’s Concerts and Productions Inc. banner. The event offered general admission seating and all tickets were priced at $6.75. By comparison, that’s just over $38 in 2024 money. The bill contained six of the most popular and beloved vocal groups from the era: Original lead singer Tony Williams and his Platters, the Drifters, the original Skyliners, The Coasters, Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Five Satins featuring Fred Parris. Television and concert host Clay Cole (1938-2010), a staple on New York’s WPIX and WNTA from 1959 to 1968, was hired to serve as emcee. In addition, the producers arranged to have the concert filmed for syndicated national television broadcast. Two one-hour cuts of the program, “20 Years of Rock & Roll”, were edited, produced, and broadcast on American television in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Apart from Tony Williams, most of whose inebriated performance ended up on the cutting room floor, all the acts – primarily in their late 30s and early 40s, gave a fine accounting of themselves for a highly enthusiastic sold-out audience of over 5,000 who were aware the event was being filmed.
Three of the vocalists who had transitioned from the Five Crowns to become the Drifters in 1958, Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, and Elsbeary Hobbs, and their longtime guitarist Abdul Samad, had reunited for a rock and roll revival show at the Academy of Music in New York in 1971 and subsequently decided to remain together. A newcomer, tenor Al Hirst was soon replaced by Al Banks, the original lead of the Turbans. Demand for personal appearances was high, and the group performed regularly and recorded sporadically in the years that followed. In the mid-1970s, there were no less than four sets of Drifters with ties to the Atlantic hitmakers touring. In Europe, the United Kingdom-based Treadwell Drifters with lead singer Johnny Moore were enjoying a string of hit records while in the United States, Bill Pinkney’s Original Drifters, a group led by Bobby Hendricks, and the Thomas-Green-Hobbs lineup were all working steadily. Banks left the Drifters in 1974, four years before his untimely death, and Michigan native Bobby Ruffin, who had been working with the Royal Jokers since 1966, filled the tenor spot. He would remain with the Drifters until 1978 and, in 2024, is the lone survivor of this lineup at age 80.
A full 25 minutes of film from the Drifters’ performance at this event has been culled from several source tapes. The set opens with a medley of two Ben E. King hits, “Stand By Me” and “Don’t Play That Song”, and two Sam Cooke favorites, “Chain Gang” and “Cupid”. Although “Don’t Play That Song” was eventually dropped from the medley, Charlie Thomas continued to perform a medley of the other three songs for the remainder of his life.
In the opening number, Abdul Samad’s young son, Mustafa, walks onto the stage and approaches his father but is quickly overcome by the stage volume. Both Abdul and Charlie try to calm the boy who is eventually led off stage out of camera view. Two of the group’s 1959-60 hits, “This Magic Moment” and “Save The Last Dance for Me”, originally led by Ben E. King, follow. The final two songs, “Under the Boardwalk” (originally led by Moore) and “On Broadway” (sung originally by Rudy Lewis) comprise the remainder of the set.
While purists today prefer the original arrangements to the sped-up versions the group performed in the 1970s, the act was popular with fans and reviewers at the time. Nancy Cacioppo, who reviewed the show for the New York newspapers, stated “the Drifters hit one of the evening’s highs with their singalong hit, ‘On Broadway’.” The rave-up versions arranged by Abdul Samad were designed to engage the audience, encourage dancing and singing, allow for flashy choreography from the group, and produce energy.
Dock Green (1934-1989) left and formed his own Drifters group in 1979. Elsbeary Hobbs (1936-1996) continued working with the act until his death from lung cancer at age 59. Born William H. Davis Jr. (1917-2006), Mubarak Abdul Samad joined the Drifters as their guitarist and musical director in 1960, touring worldwide with them throughout their heyday and throughout the 1970s. Charlie Thomas was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Drifters in 1988. He was still performing when the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to concerts in 2020. He died in 2023 at age 85. The available original footage has been presented in chronological order and the audio remixed and synchronized with the video.