The Persuasions Perform Tomorrow Night At NCHS [AUDIO]

The Persuasions perform March 17th at the John F. Welsh Auditorium at NCHS at 7:30. This is an Artcore show and tickets are available at ayers jewelry, hill music, sonic rainbow, cadillac cowgirl, the shade tree and at the door.

The story of the Persuasions begins in early 1962 in New York City, as Jimmy “Bro” Hayes remembers. They hadn’t gone to school together or grown up together. Yet starting about 1960, every day they all went to a basketball court at Green and Washington to play with about thirty or forty other guys and afterward, to sing together. One evening, Jimmy invited the group as a whole to come to his apartment to get together a little group. Four other guys showed up that night. They began to sing before even knowing one another’s names. We know them as the Persuasions.
For a few years they sang in basements, garages and in the subway, where they found a great echo. One of their garage sessions was recorded while they were “just messing around.” It was being played in a Jersey City record store which piped the sound onto the street when David Dashev walked by, heard it and sent the tape to Frank Zappa, who loved it. The decision to agree to Zappa’s offer to fly them to California to record was a momentous one, as a couple of the group had families and they all had jobs.

When they said OK they didn’t even have a name. Jimmy Hayes was reading the Bible and saw Persuader in it. When he explained to the group his idea, because they were going to have to persuade people to follow a cappella music, everyone agreed. At the time lots of groups ended their names with ions (Temptations, Impressions, etc.) so rather than Persuaders they became Persuasions. Their 20 albums include CDs covering the work of some of their (and our) favorite groups: The Beatles (“Sing The Beatles”), their patron and mentor Frank Zappa (“Frankly A Cappella”), The Grateful Dead (“Might As Well”) and now “Sing U2.”

The fellas stopped by the k2 radio studios this morning.

Click here to watch the video of their live performance.