Maurice Williams And The Zodiacs on Cole

Maurice Williams

And The Zodiacs

 (Former Gladiolas)

     CP-2466 – Lover (Where Are You)

Williams-Massey, Colehard Music BMI

CP-2467 – She’s Mine

Williams-Gore, Colehard Music BMI

Cole 101

A P. Gernhard And J. Carter Production
Nationally Distributed By National

November 1959

Their second release on the label  (first was as by the Zodiacs ( "  T Town / Golly Gee "  - Cole 100, a RCA custom pressing)

Cole Records, located at 2441 Rigby Dr., Columbia, S. C, was started in the summer of 1959 by Vincent Cole and Phil Bernhardt.    

They were originally named the Royal Charms.   Ernie Young, prexy of Excello Records, changed their name to the Gladiolas after their first recording session in Nashville.  

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In 1958, when the group left Excello Records, and because the Gladiolas name stayed with the label, they have to renamed themselves :

 

The group would undergo yet another name change. “When the contract was up with Ernie, we decided to go more national, because he only distributed in the southeast. We were in West Virginia getting our car fixed, because the station wagon had broken down and we were in this dealership and there was this car called the Zodiac. My bass player Robert Gore saw the car and suggested we think of the name Zodiacs and we liked it, because it was completely different. It was a European car (U.K – Ford). Then our manager said, ‘We will call you Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs and then you do not have to worry about your name anymore.    Interview with Maurice Williams

Their biggest hit came with "Stay",  a song Maurice Williams had written years earlier about that one Lancaster girl and the night she had to leave because she had to be home by 10 :00 pm.  

In 1960, Herald released « Stay », and audiences loved hearing about Williams’s efforts to persuade his girlfriend to remain past her curfew as he assures her that her parents won’t mind if she stays for just on more dance.  By November, the record had reached #1, and at one minute and thirty-seven seconds the record is well known for being at the shortest #1 record in the history of the Billboard charts.  Today it’s estimated that the record has sold more than ten millions copies.    Carolina Beach Music: The Classic Years by  Rick Simmons, book.