Book Little Anthony & The Imperials for casinos, fairs, festivals, theaters & private events. Contact Degy Entertainment for booking info.
Little Anthony & The Imperials are a doo-wop group out of Brooklyn who never stayed put inside the genre. They took the Imperials name in 1958 and, across a recording run reaching into 1974, worked their way through rhythm and blues, soul and the rock and roll that grew out of both, a tenor lead riding high over close harmony the whole way. The records refuse a single lane too. They were singing standards on Shades of the 40's by 1960, and those same years kept getting gathered up long afterward on collections like 25 Greatest Hits, with reissues carrying the catalog on Essential Classics.
They started out under a different name. Clarence Collins, a tenor, put the group together in Brooklyn in 1957 and called it the Chesters, with Jerome Gourdine and Ernest Wright among the founding voices. Gourdine became Little Anthony, the Chesters became the Imperials in 1958, and the billing has pointed at the lead singer ever since.
More than a dozen singers and players have come through the group over the decades, George Kerr and Kenny Seymour among them, which reads less like a fixed quartet than the roll call of a working act. The honors arrived later: the Long Island Music Hall of Fame inducted them in 2006, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame followed on April 4, 2009. The stages fit the songs, the Ryman Auditorium, the Des Plaines Theater and the Family Arena among them, and the same set travels well to casino showrooms, fair and festival lineups, theater series and private events.
