The Five Royales - by Al Kelly How do you figure this record out ("Think" by the Five Royales)? Is it Pop, (Yep!), Is it R&B (Yep!), is it Group Harmony (Yep), Is this the original? (Yep). James Brown made this song a big hit a few years later but the Five Royales had the original. (The trouble with trying to locate Brown's original releases is Syd Nathan first released his records on the Federal label in the late 50's and then re-released them again on the King label in the 60's, making it confusing. I worked for King Records for about three years and asked Syd Nathan, why he kept releasing the old stuff, he always felt there was a newer generation to love James Brown, he was right!!! The Five Royales or 5 Royales were from Winston Salem, NC and Johnny Tanner led on most of their releases and his brother Gene led on about 25% of their songs. They started out as a gospel group known as the Royal Sons and when they changed to R&B, changed their name. They first signed with the Apollo label and after seven releases felt they were not getting the proper exposure from Apollo and left and joined the King label in '54 and had 27 releases on that label. They had many R&B hits and several got some Pop station play but in the mid 50's, that was rare. It took Fats Domino, Nat King Cole and Little Richard to break that little wall put up by the radio stations. You could only hear this type of music on the "Black" stations as they were called back then, Philly had two great stations that played this music and many white kids listened every night. I remember bringing a record to a party called "Work With Me Annie" by Hank Ballard, nobody ever heard it before but after the night, they were all singing it. Getting back to this group, even thought they had strong seller s in R&B and the group felt King didn't promote them well enough so when the group's contract ended in '60, they moved on to the Home of the Blues label, where their first release was "Please Please Please". The group remained intact and performed the R&B tour shows. They had some long forgotten releases in '62 on ABC and in '63, they moved to the short lived Todd label.