In 1958, a couple of enterprising high school boys in Raleigh, North Carolina answered the Soviet challenge of Sputnik by forming a band called The Satellites. They played for school dances and parties, and on a good night could pocket as much as $60 for their efforts. The name soon changed to The Embers, but the timeless Rhythm and Blues music they still play remains as popular now as it was back in the late fifties and early sixties.
Rhythm and Blues laid the foundation for Soul and the Motown sound, but throughout The Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, Rhythm and Blues means Beach Music, and that means The Embers. Bobby Tomlinson, the group’s co-founder, elaborates on the genre, explaining:” One week of the year you go to the beach, meet a girl, take her dancing, and you hear this music. When you hear those songs again you think of the girl and the fun you had at the beach.”
Don’t just picture The Embers playing on a beach, however. With numerous albums, 45 years, and a busy tour schedule, The Embers are one of the most popular and active groups in the country. The Embers boast an average of three hundred dates a year, travelling form Toronto to Florida to Hawaii and back again. Although forty years ago they arrived at jobs in a car with a trailer hooked behind them, they now have a full-time productions staff, a sixty foot tractor-trailer rig carrying comprehensive sound and lighting equipment, instruments, costumes, and other necessities that may be required for shows, indoor and out. The group itself travels in a bright red Florida Custom Coach tour bus, making short and long trips comfortable and allowing them at times to be able to perform three shows a day.
