In my February 20 phone interview with Dave Revels ahead of his May 2 performance of his Motown tribute revue, Shadows of the ‘60s, at the Millwald Theater in Wytheville, he kept me hooked throughout our entire 45-minute conversation with stories about being a member of the Drifters and touring with the Four Tops. However, he was particularly eager for me to report on his time as a member of an a cappella group.
If you haven’t heard of The Persuasions, you are missing out on a collective talent that is otherworldly. Their iconic vocals have reimagined the music of U2, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Barenaked Ladies across over two dozen albums. They have recorded with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Jefferson Airplane, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Springsteen.
“This group belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Revels, who became a member of the group in 2006 and later its lead singer and arranger, said. “It’s one of the most unique legacies in the history of music.”
The group was formed in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York, where they sang on street corners. All the members lived in the same neighborhood, and some met in the park, while a couple of others connected in an elevator. Their group name was chosen based on the biblical fact that Jesus had to persuade others to follow Him.
It was a fateful day in 1968 when jazz-fusion rocker Frank Zappa heard them singing over the telephone from outside a New Jersey record shop. He hired them on the spot to open his tour, taking them to perform in front of a segregated Virginia Beach audience. Surprisingly, the all-white, punk rock crowd went wild for their spiritual rendering of “The Lord’s Prayer.” From there, The Persuasions went on to open for Zappa at Carnegie Hall.
While researching the group, I discovered Spike Lee’s 1990 PBS documentary Do It Acapella. The first song I heard them sing was “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons,” the Nat King Cole standard that has served as the romantic song for my wife Emily and me throughout our entire fifteen-year relationship. That nearly brought me to tears.
As they told their story through song, the group reminisced about going to parties and locking themselves in the bathroom, searching for an echo to respond to their harmonizing. They didn’t intend to form an a cappella group, but became one out of necessity, as they couldn’t afford a backing band. While The Persuasions never claimed to have invented a cappella singing, they certainly revitalized it. By the 1960s, doo-wop groups singing on street corners had given way to the British Invasion and Motown sound, leaving a cappella as a largely forgotten genre. Despite record executives constantly dismissing the genre as extinct, The Persuasions stayed true to their art and earned the moniker “The Godfathers of A cappella” from the successful groups that followed in their wake, such as Boyz II Men, Rockapella, Take 6, and The Mint Juleps.
The original members were Jayotis Washington, Jimmy Hayes, Herbert “Toubo” Rhoad, Joseph Russell, and Jerry Lawson. Rhoad died in 1988 while on tour. Russell died in 2012, and Lawson died in 2019. Hayes passed away in 2017. Washington is still alive and resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Revels produced and arranged background vocals for The Persuasions’ most recent notable collaboration, a 2017 project with the Barenaked Ladies.
“We recorded sixteen songs in under forty-eight hours,” he recalled. “We did them live on the floor, meaning there was no overdubbing.”
On an album of Beatle covers, Revels can be heard whistling to “Octopus’s Garden.” Their last major production before disbanding in 2023 was a performance on Steven Van Zandt’s Soulfire in 2017. Revels made the decision to dissolve the group in 2023.
Jayotis Washington remains the only surviving member of the Persuasions. With the dominant signature absence of bass singer Jimmy Hayes’s voice as the root sound of the group, Revels made the decision to dissolve the group in 2023.
“As the producer of the group, it is my job to protect their incredible legacy,” he stated. “I didn’t feel like it would do justice to the group to continue touring, especially when the people who are responsible for that amazing sound have passed away. You can’t replicate it. I feel honored to have worked with four of the original five members and have dedicated the future to bring attention to their achievement and advocate for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
