The Twisters (2) / The Rivingtons 

Sammy Turner & The Twisters (2) (Los Angeles)

aka

The Rivingtons
The Four After Fives
The Crenshaws
The Sharps (1)  
The Ebbtides (3)

The  Friends (3)

Personnel :

Sammy Turner (Lead)

Carl White (Tenor)

Al Frazier (Tenor)

Sonny Harris (Baritone)

Turner "Rocky" Wilson Jr (Bass)

Discography :

1959 - Sweet Annie Laurie / Thunderbolt (Big Top 3007)

Biography :

Sammy Turner, born Samuel Black in 1932, grew up in Paterson, New Jersey and developed an interest in singing and songwriting at an early age. When the Korean War began in 1950 he put his dreams on hold and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, later serving active duty as a paratrooper. Afterwards Sammy returned to Jersey and worked as an accounting clerk, moonlighting on weekends as a nightclub singer.

 
Sammy Turner                                                                                          

He was spotted by longtime record promoter and music manager Herb Lutz, who was looking for a guy who could pull off some of the old standards Herb had loved and, in some cases, helped develop the first time around. Atlantic Records showed some interest, but Bienstock offered a better percentage and Sammy turned up on Bigtop's doorstep. Either way, he wouldn't have missed out on working with hitmakers Leiber and Stoller.

   
The Twisters (2)                                                                     Sammy Turner

For his first release, the label matched him with an R&B studio group that had already used a few different names including The Lamplighters and The Sharps; at the time, the quartet consisted of Carl White, Al Frazier, Sonny Harris and Rocky Wilson. The five-man team, with Sammy Black-turned-Turner its lead singer, tackled "Annie Laurie," an 18th century poem written William Douglas with a melody by Alicia Scott that had been a hit in 1910 for Irish tenor John McCormack.

Nearly five decades later, the melody had been updated by songwriter Rita Murphy, the titled was expanded to "Sweet Annie Laurie" and the resultant Leiber-Stoller production by Sammy Turner and the Twisters made an ever-so-brief chart appearance in March of '59. Afterwards Sammy was strictly a solo act and the Twisters went on to have their greatest success in the '60s as the "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"-in' Rivingtons.

Songs :

  
Sweet Annie Laurie                           Thunderbolt   

 ….