Music of The Drifters comes to Ballina

The fabulous multi-award-winning Drifters tribute band, Soul Kinda Wonderful, is coming to Ballina Arts Centre on Saturday, November 18th, as part of a packed ten-day tour of Ireland.

It’s not their first tour of the Republic. Band founder and lead vocalist Richie Sampson says: “We love touring Ireland. Irish people love music, they have a passion for it, it’s at the centre of their lives, just as it is for we Caribbeans…” 

Richie Sampson is a child of the Windrush generation, whose parents moved from Jamaica to Dudley, near Birmingham, answering Britain’s call for workers to help fill post-war labour shortages and rebuild the economy.

In England, he remembers, his parents had a huge old-fashioned gramophone – “of the sort you only see now in museums” – which took pride of place in their living room, and there were regular gatherings of the Caribbean community in their own and their neighbours’ houses.

“We used to call those gatherings ‘the Blues’. All the furniture was taken out of the living room, and when you were still little (he was seven when he first arrived in Dudley) you were shoved in a separate room with all your cousins while the mums and dads danced the night away to all those great Motown tunes. And when I tour Ireland, somehow it feels as that – music is such a central part of what the Irish do.” 

He adds, with a laugh: “And at the end of the show, people like to sit and drink with you… In Ireland, I’ve never bought myself a drink.” 

It was quite a shock for a small boy to move from Jamaica to a small industrial town in the West Midlands. 

“It was very strange, the cold, the weather, everything felt alien…” 

At school, he “tried to adapt very quickly, and children do adapt”.

Encouraged by his teachers at primary school, who spotted how intelligent he was, Richie excelled academically. In the street, in Buffrey Park, he played football with his neighbour Lenny Henry (now Sir Lenny Henry), and at home, he developed his voice, singing along to the records his mother played. 

“She particularly loved Harry Belfonte," he adds.

After Dudley Grammar School he studied science at Leicester University and went on to teach physics and chemistry. This brought him to John Roan Secondary School in Southeast London, where he taught Stephen Lawrence, the teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus.

“I’ll always remember that day for the rest of my life,” he says. “The kids came in and said, ‘Sir have you heard what happened about Stephen last night?’ And they sat in silence for an hour. No one spoke, none of them spoke, they didn’t say a word. They couldn’t explain what had happened to their best friend.” 

He felt he was “seeing children growing up instantly in front of my eyes”.

Stephen’s murder, and the botched investigation that followed it, led to the Macpherson Report, which concluded that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist. The tragedy became a catalyst for social and political change.

Richie stayed teaching, but he started to think more about developing his musical skills. 

“I felt I now needed to make a change. I thought to myself ‘In this world you get one chance to dance, but you get to choose the music’.” 

There was a place called “The Spot” in Covent Garden, where musicians gathered, and Sunday evening was “singers’ night”, where Richie met the likes of Chaka Khan. There was a special seat in The Spot reserved for a woman known as 'Miss Management', who came to check out the singers; this was Faye Treadwell, manager of The Drifters, the famous American soul vocal group which had undergone many changes since its foundation in 1959 but which had always stayed true to its original sound.

Faye called Richie over. 

“Have you heard of The Drifters?” she asked.

He hadn’t, but he soon would. He soon found himself singing with the likes of Ray Lewis, Butch Leake and Roy Hemmings, all big names from the second phase of The Drifters. He also spent a while as frontman for the fantastic British band, The Foundations, along with founding member Alan Warner.

For a while, Richie mixed teaching with singing, by becoming a supply teacher “to pay the mortgage” where he now lives in Leicester, but in the last ten years, he has found his feet with his own band, the four-part harmony group Soul Kinda Wonderful.

As a Drifters tribute band, Richie’s band has won the prestigious National Music Tribute Award three times in the last ten years and remains the only group in the UK to achieve this. They are regular headliners on luxury cruise ships; they have recently returned from tours of Cyprus, Spain and Dubai and the ‘Soultasia’ festival is on next year’s horizon.

In Ballina, we can look forward to hearing the sounds of The Drifters – songs such as Stand By Me, Under The Boardwalk, Save The Last Dance For Me and Kissing In The Back Row Of The Movies – along with a few other Motown classics. And also some originals! 

As well as being a science teacher and then a performer, Richie’s career is taking a new turn these days with the production of his new original album Closer and Closer To You (Never Knew Love) and two more albums are in the pipeline.

Richie Sampson is certainly enjoying his chance to dance. And the people of Ballina will surely enjoy the music he chooses to dance to!

The music of The Drifters lives on at Ballina Arts Centre, on Saturday, November 18th, at 8pm. Tickets: €30.