The late great Weldon Arthur McDougal III's all-Philly doo-wop group with all their hits and misses. Includes vacals by Barbara Mason and productions by Van McCoy. A historical and musical joy.

Weldon Arthur McDougal III organized the Larks, wrote their songs and produced their records. The 18 songsin the CD follow the career of the Larks through ups and downs toward near-stardom, which ultimately eluded them.It was his training for the music industry, in which he went on to become a vice president of Motown Records, a nationally-known promotion man and ultimately an authority consulted internationally about the music business past, present and future.

For all the national recognition and significance in his career, it is the Larks – the group he organized in 1960 – that hold a special place for him in his career. The scored early with “It’s Unbelievable,” and later with “Groovin’ at the Go Go,” and inbetween they worked with Van McCoy, the original MFSB band and many other stellar Philadelphia musicians. After all his national success, he came back to Philadelphia, put this album out on vinyl on his own Universal Love label in the early 1990s and watched it became a collector’s item. He never re-pressed it.

Weldon learned the music business through the Larks: he learned producing by taking them in the studio, writing by composing their songs and promoting by promoting his own record. “I would never take ‘no’ for an answer,” he said. When the important Philadelphia disc jockey Georgie Woods told him that he would not play his record, “Fabulous Cars and Diamond Rings,” in fact he would never play that damned record, Weldon turned around and got Bill Curtis to play it on WHAT. Then they watched it become a hit.

It was because of the Larks that Weldon started a label originally called MRS (for its founders McDougal, Luther Randolph and Johnny Stiles) which changed its name to  Harthon. Weldon wanted the label to record the Larks, while Randolph and Stiles wanted to record their own instrumental group, the Manhattans. Weldon was soon persuaded to start recording other artists because the Larks were getting too old for the market. In addition, the British invasion that took hold from early 1964 made doo-wop obsolete and stopped it in its tracks.

Weldon conceived this album as a chronological account of the Larks with each of the lead singers and others he recruited when he needed replacements. He went on to do promotion, joining Chips Distributors in Philadelphia to handle Motown Records in the local market. Eventually, Berry Gordy brought Weldon to Detroit, where his promotional exploits got him well-known throughout the country. He got Motown to listen to the Jackson 5 after he heard them in a nightclub in Chicago. Ultimately, as vice president and head of Motown special projects, he helped the label conquer Hollywood.

But in the back of his mind, Weldon had his roots tied in with the Larks. And here they are, Philadelphia-born and -bred, the Larks.