The Drifters Essay

Ahmet Ertegun who was from atlantic records went to the Birdland nightclub to see Billy Ward and the Dominoes, mostly to hear Ward's lead singer Clyde McPhatter. When the Dominoes performed, Clyde McPhatter was missing so Ahmet went backstage to find out where he was. Billy Ward informed him that he had fired McPhatter for breaking group rules. Ahmet left to find McPhatter, and an hour later he located McPhatter in a rented room in Harlem rehearsing a new group. Ertegun signed Clyde McPhatter and his new group, which Ahmet named the Drifters. The Drifters debut release was a song written by Jesse Stone called "Money Honey," and it was huge success in February, 1953. The Drifters with many personal changes had hits for the next thirteen years on Atlantic.
They continued recording for Atlantic with a succession of producers until 1972. By that time, the company itself was part of a huge corporate conglomerate, far removed from its origins. Scarcely anyone at the company except Ertegun and Wexler likely even remembered who the Drifters were or how they'd started. Johnny Moore still sang lead, but there were no more hits after the mid-'60s. The group was dead after they had lost so many members and with eras changing music, they lost many listeners. They attempted to alter their music in effort to attract old listener by becoming more like a mainstream adult pop group, but they even failed at that and the group officially came to a close with the death of johnny moore. Although many people tried to recreate the drifters or the “original drifters” they just didn't have it and by 1990 the group the drifters in just a memory and a group from a different era. The drifters had died and their era has ended, and a new one took