Tavares (band)

Tavares
The group in 1977.
Background information
Also known as	Chubby and the Turnpikes The Tavares Brothers
Origin	Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Genres	Pop, R&B, disco, soul, funk
Years active	1959–present
Labels	Capitol, RCA
Website	Official website
Members	Arthur Paul Tavares Antone Lee Tavares Perry Lee Tavares
Past members	Victor Tavares Ralph Vierra Tavares Bernie Worrell Feliciano Vierra Tavares

Tavares (also known as The Tavares Brothers) are an American R&B, funk, and soul music group, composed of five Cape Verdean-American brothers. Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, they would later move to New Bedford, Massachusetts. They were inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame in 2014.

The Tavares brothers, whose parents were of Cape Verde an descent, started performing in 1959 as Chubby and the Turnpikes when the youngest brother was 9. P-Funk keyboardist/architect Bernie Worrell briefly joined the group in 1968 while attending the New England Conservatory of Music. Future Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer appeared as the "token white-guy drummer" in a later incarnation called The Turnpikes from the fall of 1969 until September 1970, when he was invited to join Aerosmith. Chubby and The Turnpikes signed with Capitol Records in 1967 and had a couple of local hit records including "I Know The Inside Story" in 1967 and "Nothing But Promises" in 1968. By 1973, they had changed their name to Tavares and scored their first R&B Top 10 (Pop Top 40) hit with "Check it Out", and soon began charting regularly on the R&B and pop charts. Their first album included their brother Victor, who sang lead on "Check it Out", but dropped out of the group shortly afterward. In 1974 Tavares had a #1 R&B hit with Hall & Oates's "She's Gone", (which became a hit for Hall & Oates as well two years later).

1975 turned out to be their most successful year chartwise, with a Top 40 Pop album (In the City), the #25 hit "Remember What I Told You to Forget", and their biggest hit, the Top 10 Pop/#1 R&B smash "It Only Takes a Minute", which was later successfully covered by both Jonathan King and Take That, and sampled by Jennifer Lopez. They parlayed this success into a spot as an opening act for The Jackson 5. KC and The Sunshine Band was also on this tour. "Minute" was followed by a string of hits: "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" (1976), "Don't Take Away the Music" (1976), and "Whodunit" (1977, another #1 R&B hit). In 1977 they also recorded "I Wanna See You Soon", a duet with Capitol labelmate Freda Payne which received airplay on BBC Radio 1 but failed to chart.