Marcus Hutson (The Whispers) - A Profile

On Thursday/Friday night (5 Jan) we lost one of the original members of The Whispers, Gordy Harmon, and today it would have been another original member's, Marcus Hutson, birthday.  Hutson left the group in 1992 owing to prostrate cancer and died in 2000 aged 56, he would have been 78 today.

Whilst Hutson was involved during the group's most successful commercial period in the early/mid 80s, Harmon had already left the group. So, to pay tribute to both, the playlist below is limited to the period from when the group was formed in Watts, CA, in 1963 through to 1974 which covers their Dore, Soul Clock and Janus years before joining Soul Train / Solar in 1976 with just under two hours of their finest early material.

None of their eleven Dore singles charted and only two of their six Soul Clock and eight of their twelve Janus singles charted. Their biggest hit during this period was "Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong" in 1970 which reached #6 R&B and #50 Hot 100 with only two others breaking into the R&B Top 10.

When Harmon left due to a driving accident in 1973, he was replaced by Leaveil Degree who had been a member of Friends Of Distinction. When Hutson left in 1992 the group vowed never to replace him and continued as a quartet until the death of Nicholas Caldwell in 2016 and have been a trio since then consisting of Walter and Wallace Scott and Degree. This year they will celebrate their 60th anniversary and continue to perform and have begun re-recording some of their hits so that they retain ownership. Most recently they have re-recorded their two biggest hits "And The Beat Goes One" and "Rock Steady" which were both #1 R&B hits with the former reaching #17 (1980) and the latter #7 (1987) Hot 100.

For more Whispers material there was a post for The Scott twins' 79th birthday in Sep 2022 and also recently a reissued compilation of their Dore singles.

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