I had first noticed B.J. Bernard Jones a few days earlier, as part of a four-man doo-wop group that livened the Times Square subway station and had even the youngsters snapping fingers, singing along and dancing. One notices the mans medium-length Afro and Buddy Holly glasses, but most of all his physical presence and beautiful deep bass voice.

It is not a surprise that his first love had been sports, nor that, with many years in Harlem softball leagues, he had had a tryout with the Chicago White Sox and, after De Witt Clinton High School, spent a year-and-a-half at Clark College in Atlanta on a partial track-and-basketball scholarship. He had that basso then, too, but turned down the Five Crowns in 1957, when they approached him in the uptown laundromat for which he was delivery boy. I was wrong, thought they was just a uptown gang, and my block was the Imperial Knights, you see.

As their bass, the group took on Barry [Elberry] Hobbs, instead. But at about that time, manager George Treadwell fired the original Drifters (Clyde McPhatter, Bill Brinkney, John Moore, brothers Gerhardt and Andrew Thrasher, Tommy Evans) and hired the Crowns, who henceforth became the Drifters (Charlie Thomas, Ben E. King, Doc Greene and Hobbs). B.J., on the other hand, went on to organize a number of groups himself, none of them famous, and to sing with Dino and the Heartspinners, who were to become Earl Lewis and the Channels and then, minus Dino and plus Louie Velez, Reason To Live. They recorded on the local Harlem P and P label, got airtime on WLIB but went nowhere, though by then B.J. had got some juice, wanted to go somewhere.

Sometimes the group sang under what he calls bogus names, for Bim Bam Boom magazine. As they were singing at Harlequin Studios as the Fascinators, the real lead of that latter group showed up. Luckily, Tony Pasalaque liked what he heard, and the two groups started doing shows together. They were impressive enough for Ellie Greenwich [Pineywood Productions] to put up $100,000 to record them, though nothing came of that, either, for Pasalaque retired to Florida.

B.J. answered a trade magazine advertisement and, in 1978, at last became a member of the Drifters. Fate, he muses, remembering the original Crowns, it was where I was supposed to be in the first place.

If it were indeed fate, there were other turns shortly to follow. B.J. went with Doc Greene when the latter formed his own version of the Drifters, only to lose rights to that name in a suit filed by Larry Marshack. End Records The Flamingos then wanted B.J., but the rehearsal-tryout in Brooklyn was called off, and he wound up instead with Fred Parris and the Five Satins. They recorded for Elektra Records, including Memories of Days Gone By, but mainly did doo-wop shows, and B.J. wanted to make more money and, anyway, got tired of going up to Parris Connecticut home to rehearse.

Then followed several years and four CDs with the Persuasions, plus performing in Germany and Sweden with them. After that, he sang with the Del-Vikings and, finally, Cleve Still and the original Dubs. Made up of Steve Brown and John Truesdale (both from the Charts), former schoolteacher Leslie Anderson, Still and B.J., the group has traveled a bit, mostly in the Tri-State area but also as far as Florida and the West Indies.

B.J. modestly shrugs it all off as just a joband this about being part of some of the finest, most influential pop music of the past forty-five years! But he is upbeat, as well, however, and has high hopes for their newest CD, Cleveland Stills Dubs, featuring Leslie Anderson: Bringing Back the Magic.