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Tavares
Tavares (also known as The Tavares Brothers) is a successful American R&B, disco, funk and soul music group, composed of five Cape Verdean-American brothers from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The Tavares brothers from New Bedford, Massachusetts started performing in 1959 as Chubby and the Turnpikes when the youngest brother was 9 years old. Future Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer honed his funk chops as the "token white-guy drummer" in an early incarnation of Tavares. Chubby and The Turnpikes signed with Capitol records in 1967 and had a couple of local hit records including "I Know The Inside Story" in 1967 and "Nothing But Promises" in 1968. By 1973 they had changed their name to Tavares and scored their first R&B Top 10 hit with "Check it Out" that same year, and soon began charting regularly on the R&B and pop charts.
Their first album included their brother Victor, who sang lead on "Check it Out", but dropped out of the group shortly after. In 1974 Tavares had a #1 R&B hit with Hall & Oates' "She's Gone". Tavares followed up that success with "Remember What I Told You to Forget."
1975 turned out to be their most successful year chart-wise, chalking up a Top 40 Pop album (In the City) and their biggest hit, the Top 10 Pop/number 1 R&B smash "It Only Takes a Minute", which was later successfully covered by Jonathan King, Take That and recently sampled by Jennifer Lopez.They parlayed this success into a spot as an opening act for the Jackson 5. KC and The Sunshine Band was also on this tour.
This was followed by a string of hits: "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" (1976), "Don't Take Away the Music" (1976), and "Whodunit" (1977, another number 1 R&B hit), among others.
Many of their hits, however, underplayed their R&B background and gave the group the image of being a disco act. This perception was reinforced by their appearance on the soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977. Tavares recorded the Bee Gees track "More Than a Woman," and their version reached the Pop Top 40 that year. The soundtrack became one of the most successful in history, giving Tavares their only Grammy.
They had one last major hit at the start of the 1980's, the ballad "A Penny for Your Thoughts", for which they were nominated for a Grammy in 1982, and their last major release was Words and Music in 1983.
In 1984, Ralph Tavares stepped down from the group, and Tiny left in the mid 1990s, but the other three brothers continue to tour. In early 2009, Tiny Tavares rejoined and is currently touring with the group.
