by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
Myles Savage, who’ll lead The Stars’ Platters, Coasters, Drifters and Motown Tribute to the F.M. Kirby Center Saturday, is as much a time-machine operator as he is a singer.
“When our music was written, it was back in the days when music was actually poetry in motion,” Savage said in a phone interview. “Where are you going to find songs that have lyrics like [breaks into song] ‘Heavenly shades of night are falling, it’s twilight time,’ or ‘Only You’? Those types of songs actually do touch the heart and the souls of people, and it just brings back such memories of beauty and innocence and a time when the world was a little slower, ya know?”
Savage is joined on the tour by Barry Gunn (Cornell Gunter’s Coasters), Ira Greig (Beary Hobb’s Drifters) and Wolf Johnson (Richard Street’s Temptations). Each of the singers will perform his group’s classic songs backed by the other members, so expect “Under the Boardwalk,” “Poison Ivy,” “My Girl,” “Charlie Brown” and “The Great Pretender.”
Savage, whose mellifluous speaking voice is punctuated with hearty laughter, is a former member of The Platters. He formed The Stars with the other Motown and doo-wop luminaries for a series of shows at the Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He’s been enjoying performing not only songs from his own repertoire, but also the hits from the other members’ groups.
“It’s really a pleasure, because most of The Platters [dance moves] are kind of laidback and basic movement, but it still works because it comes from that era,” he said. “Then you get into that Drifters, whoa, those guys are steppin’ [laughs]. We’re all around the same age, 60s or so, so it’s pretty cool. It’s fun to switch up like that.”
Savage has performed with Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker and Cab Calloway, the latter in the Broadway show “Bubbling Brown Sugar.” He also played the role of Robbins in a European tour of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.”
It’s performing the songs like the ones featured in The Stars’ production that is nearest to his heart, though.
“Within the last few years, I’ve been asking the patrons that sit on the aisles to stand up, because they’re going to be treated to something special, and they don’t know what it is,” Savage said. “So I go along the aisle before I actually sing ‘Only You,’ and as soon as I see everybody standing, I say ‘Hey band, you go ahead and hit it,’ and everybody starts dancing, and it’s like prom night 1959, 1965. And the tears just start flowing, because these are husbands and wives that haven’t danced together in years.
“The young kids love it, because they see their parents dancing; it’s so cool. That’s the type of beauty that we bring to these towns we come to and these concerts. We bring back memories, and we make memories.”
Despite the wholesome, carefree nature of the music, there is some seriousness in its history, especially with regards to race.
“When The Platters came along, they were actually the pioneers of black artists getting into the mainstream, because The Platters were the first crossover group from what was called ‘race music’ back in the ’50s, to the Hit Parader, which was the mainstream,” Savage said. “Buck Ram, who was a manager of The Platters, he really knew what he was doing. This was an intentional design. He felt the time was right. … He realized ‘Here’s a niche here.’ We can have a well-groomed, at that time called a ‘Negro group,’ singing love songs. Nat King Cole actually opened that up around 1945 when he did ‘Nature Boy.’
“So Buck Ram picked up on that, and he fashioned The Platters after that theme. And it worked.”
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The Stars’ Platters, Coasters, Drifters and Motown Tribute, with The Black Mountain Boys, Sat. Nov. 29, 7 p.m., F.M. Kirby Center (Public Square, Wilkes-Barre). Tickets: $19, $29, $39, $45 at all Ticketmaster outlets. Info: kirbycenter.org, 570.823.4599
