Art Blakey – no, not that one – is alive and well in Cleveland, eager to affirm his position as the main singer of the Hesitations, a group that worked the Cleveland soul circuit in the ‘60s and ’70s. Blakey is in is late 60s, his high tenor still raspy and persuasive.
Don’t confuse him with Art Blakey, the great drummer who led the Jazz Messengers from the ‘50s until his death in late 1990. Let’s call him Arthur. What’s weird is that the two met at Leo’s Casino, a storied Cleveland nightclub on Euclid Avenue at East 75th Street known for presenting Motown groups to mixed audiences.
It was the early ‘60s and Arthur Blakey was working in Leo’s Casino kitchen; bebop pioneer Art Blakey was showcasing his group. That they crossed paths attests to a time in which the American vernacular musical styles of soul and jazz were both fresh and popular.
“Art Blakey, meet Art Blakey,” Leo’s Casino co-owner Leo Frank said by way of introduction. “He was shorter,” says Arthur. At the time, he also was lead singer of the Wigs and a member of the Sahibs, where he met current Hesitation George Hendricks.
In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Cleveland was awash with doo-wop groups mutating into soul aggregations. Arthur says he began singing with current Hesitations William Carter and George Hendricks in the Wigs when he was 13, growing up on the East Side around East 70th Street and Central Avenue.
Other musical names Hesitations drop are the Orientals (a Blakey group that laid down wax at Boddie Recording Company at Union Avenue near East 122nd Street in the early ‘60s); the Canton-based Mascots, soon to be renamed the O’Jays on suggestion of WABQ-AM DJ Eddie O’Jay, their first manager; Bobby Womack and the Valentinos; and the Five Quails, a “bird” group that recorded for Mercury and the Motown affiliate Harvey, owned by Harvey Fuqua. (Fuqua was married to, and later divorced from, Gwen Gordy, Motown founder Berry Gordy’s big sister. He died last year.) Hendricks also recorded with Ann Bogan and the Challengers for Fuqua’s Tri-Phi label. “Cleveland could’ve been another Motown, except we didn’t have a Berry Gordy,” says Hendricks. [pictured (l-r): Arthur and Joyce Blakey, George Hendricks / Photo by Lylah Rose Wolff]
Blakey, meanwhile, voices a lament shared by many older soul musicians, saying the Hesitations never got royalties from their record sales. “If I’d have opened up a grocery store, they would have got some of that,” he says of Hesitations tunes. “We didn’t understand it was a business. That was the part we forgot.”
The story of Cleveland’s take on Northern Soul, which also included such groups as the Imperial Wonders, the Hornets, the El Pollos and the Matadors, is only beginning to come to light. More should come clear when Numero Group, a Chicago label dedicated to soul music archeology, releases a three-CD set of Boddie Recordings this year.
