Hank Ballard and the Midnighters have always been one of my favorite groups, ever since they caught my teenage hormones’ attention, ‘way back in the middle of the 20th century — the 1950s, to be precise.
Their “Greatest Hits” album, released in 1956 on the Federal label, was my first album purchase. I was already hooked on classic doo-wop and early R&B, thanks to Pittsburgh DJ, the Daddio of the Raddio, The Bossman — Porky Chedwick.
But the Midnighters aroused my teen blue genes from their musical slumber. Their furiously styled music was great for dancing, their lyrics magnificently raunchy, giving hope to teens everywhere that there might be, according to one account, “life below the waist,” despite much of the soporific pop from earlier years.
Ballard augmented the horns of more traditional R&B with guitars, driving the music hard behind soaring vocals. The band played a pivotal role in bridging the gap between traditional rhythm and blues and early rock and roll, turning out a series of hits in 1954. Those early sides included a set of deliciously salacious and unabashedly sexual recordings built around the “Annie” songs: “Work With Me Annie” (It sold more than a million copies despite being banned from many radio stations) and “Annie Had a Baby.” But even without that notoriety, the Midnighters created cutting edge R&B that bled into rock ‘n’ roll. Even their more sensitive ballads (“Teardrops on Your Letter,” “Rain Down Tears”) churned with emotion. Ballard would write “The Twist” in 1959, which was turned into a Chubby Checker hit by Dick Clark, earning Ballard royalties, if not fame.
The Midnighters’ eventually faded into the 1960s, and even though they continued to record, their R&B stylings became less relevant. I hadn’t played any of their music for years, and they were unlikely to be found on many modern streaming playlists.
Then a few years ago, radio came back into my life.
I discovered WMNF, a public radio station in Tampa, Fla., and its three weekly hours of music that I loved – The Rhythm Revival, hosted by the Rev. Billy C. Wirtz (William Wirths) and Marvelous Marvin Boone (Marvin Boone). They play great old post-war blues, R&B, country and gospel, and displaying their encyclopedic musical knowledge, connect the dots between all those genres.
The Revival claims several groundbreaking artists as its “patron saints,” including Patsy Cline, Wynonie Harris, and much to my delight, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. The inspiration for this post comes from the Revival’s recent birthday tribute to Ballard (born John Henry Kendricks on Nov. 18, 1927, in Detroit).
The early years of Ballard and the Midnighters’ were filled with much of the shape-shifting, name and personnel changing common to much of the industry. Here are some details of their illustrious career, shamelessly copied from Wikipedia:
In 1953, Ballard joined doo-wop group the Royals, which had previously been discovered by Johnny Otis and signed to Federal Records (a division of King Records), in Cincinnati. Ballard joined Henry Booth, Charles Sutton, Sonny Woods and Alonzo Tucker in the group, replacing previous singer Lawson Smith, who went on service in the Army.
The Royals released “Get It” which Ballard wrote (1953), an R&B song with possibly sexually oriented lyrics, which some radio stations refused to play, although it still made it to number 6 on the US Billboard R&B chart.
The group then changed its name to the Midnighters to avoid confusion with the “5” Royales. In 1954, Ballard wrote a song called “Work with Me, Annie” that was drawn from “Get It”. It became the Midnighters’ first major R&B hit, spending seven weeks at number 1 on the R&B chart and also selling well in mainstream markets, along with the answer songs “Annie Had a Baby” and “Annie’s Aunt Fannie”; all were banned by the FCC from radio airplay. Their third major hit was “Sexy Ways”, a song that cemented the band’s reputation as one of the most risqué groups of the time.
Between 1953 and 1962, the Midnighters had several hits on the U.S. pop and R&B charts. Their hits included the million-selling Billboard top 10 pop hits “Finger Poppin’ Time” (for which they received a 1961 Grammy Award nomination),[1] and “Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go”. The Midnighters also had 13 top 10 R&B hits, including three that reached number 1. Their top 10 R&B hits included “Work with Me, Annie”, “It’s Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)”, “Annie Had a Baby”, “The Hoochi Coochi Coo”, “Teardrops on Your Letter”, “Get It”, “The Float” and “Nothing but Good”.
They received the Rhythm and Blues Foundation’s prestigious Pioneer Award in 1992, and were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. The Midnighters are also noted for achieving a music industry milestone in 1960, by becoming the first group in history to place 3 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. The group’s lead singer, Hank Ballard, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. The Midnighters as a group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14, 2012.
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters deserve a unique place in American musical history. They created a sound that would shake rhythm and blues, rattle its bones, and roll it into the primitive days of rock ‘n’ roll.
Best of all, the Midnighters still sound damn fine!
Here are three songs that helped define Hank Ballard and the Midnighters:
Blues Roadhouse 