Odessa's forgotten singers

The intersection of South Tom Green Avenue and East Pearl Street was once a place where aspiring singers produced tight harmonies and timeless sounds.
One group, The Vellbairs, sung songs that became classics, “Blue Moon” and “Oh What A Night.”
It was the ’50s; the songs were new and the music was doo-wop.
Vellbairs tenor and Odessan Robert Thursby remembers the “good times” vividly.
“You get a couple of people together before you know it, there’s four or five there and everybody’s trying to sing a part, just really getting into it,” Thursby said. “It sounded really good, too.”
The Vellbairs included Mark Prince, Clearance Rigsby and William Solomon. Along with Thursby, all were students at Blackshear High School looking for a chance in music. The desire was shared by the group’s creator and lead singer, Odessan Virgil Johnson, a Blackshear English teacher.
“He got word of who could sing and what was what,” Thrusby said.
Johnson took the teens under his wing, and the Vellbairs performed in talent shows and school dances.
“They would get out of school in the afternoon; out of band practice, out of football practice, then they’d come to my practice,” Johnson said. “We would harmonize and doo-wop on the street blocks and street corners, and everybody listened to us.”
Gathering to sing was turning out to be something extra for the harmonizers, until Johnson got a call from a friend. Wink native Roy Orbison.
“I was teaching an English class at that time, and he said, ‘How would you like to come to Nashville and record?’,” Johnson said. “And after I got myself off the floor and realized this was a reality, I said, ‘I’d love it.’ ”
They left for Tennessee and performed for the president of Monument Records. Halfway through the audition an assistant drew up a contract.
There was only one change, the group’s name. The Vellbairs were now The Velvets, but there was a problem, another group had already locked up the name. The solution: bill the group, “The Velvets featuring Virgil Johnson.”
“If we walked into a club, if we walked into an appearance, anyone who would say anything to me, well I’d admire that,” Johnson said, “but I didn’t want them to forget the guys.”
“That Lucky Old Sun” was the Velvets’ first releases. They reached stardom, but their songs were not identical to other artists.
“These were songs about, ‘I love you, girl,’ where the woman was respected, and you would sing to her,” Johnson said. “You might sing to her something you could not say to her, and (they) would like that.”
The way the Velvets sang also separated them in the genre.
“We were actually pretty famous for being articulate,” said Thursby, who still records to this day and divides his time between his homes in Honolulu and Denver. “We would pronounce our words correctly.”
The enunciation, Johnson admits, comes from being a teacher. But there was another ingredient making the Velvets different, stringed instruments in the background with the repetitive piano and saxophone.
“Strings were just really coming in then,” Johnson said. “We would put out something and no other artist had done that.”
“Tonight (Could Be the Night)” was the group’s biggest single. The upbeat tempo of doo-wop sung in the background allowed the song to peak at No. 26 on the Billboard pop charts.
“People wondered why the song was not titled ‘Doo-Wop’ because they said that’s what we did all the way through,” said Johnson, who is now retired after spending 38 years as principal at Dunbar High School in Lubbock.
The Velvets recorded until the mid-1960s, but one thing they weren’t doing much was touring. The Velvets didn’t succeed in live exposure.
Johnson said it was because they were a black group who sounded white.
“Our biggest problem we ran into was in the black community because they didn’t know we were black,” Johnson said. “Cities would invite us, we would perform one night there and that’s the way that it was.”

GET THE WHOLE STORY

>> Click the link to Dominic Genetti's blog and read the indepth story of Virgil Johnson and the Velvets.

FACT FILE
>> Virgil Johnson was an English teacher at Blackshear High School when the Velvets signed a recording contract.
>> All members of the Velvets were Johnson’s students at Blackshear.
>> Wink native Roy Orbison persuaded Monument Records to sign the Velvets.
>> After his singing career, Johnson became a principal at Dunbar High School in Lubbock.

Are you an oldies fan?
Check out The Original Skyliners in concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Ector Theatre, 500 N. Grant Ave. Tickets are $25. Call 580-0898.