Shefik presents Invocation: The Journey Continues

Leaveil Degree of The Whispers: We Knew Immediately This Was Going To Be a Hit Record

Episode Summary

Endurance - Leaveil Degree is a member of The Whispers. The group scored 15 top-ten R&B singles, and eight top-ten R&B albums, with two of them, "The Whispers" and "Love Is Where You Find It", reaching the #1 spot. They have earned two platinum and five gold albums. (Producer: Shefik)

Episode Notes

Endurance - Leaveil Degree is a member of The Whispers. The group scored 15 top-ten R&B singles, and eight top-ten R&B albums, with two of them, "The Whispers" and "Love Is Where You Find It", reaching the #1 spot. They have earned two platinum and five gold albums. (Producer: Shefik)

Episode Transcription

Hi, this is Leaveil Degree of The Whispers, and there's so many favorite songs. This is probably the number one song that's my favorite and that's "And The Beat Goes On." And the reason why it is for me is because it was the first million seller record that we ever had. And back in 1979, at that time, we were thinking about getting jobs and lo and behold, here comes a guy named Leon Sylvers with this wonderful song and the amazing part about it, back in those days, they didn't have drum machines. So when we were in the studio recording the song and watching him do the tracks to it, he was on his knees and he was really a human drum machine. So he would take and play the bass drum, and then he would do the snare and then he would do the toms. He would do all of those things one at a time till he got the beat that he wanted. And we actually sat there and watched him do it and thought he was crazy. But lo and behold, when he finished this track, we had probably, I mean, for us, we were like amazed by how he came about this track. When he finished this track, we knew immediately that this was going to be a hit record. So he was actually the first person to launched us into success because, like I said, back in '79 and the record came out in '80, we were thinking about going to get jobs. That's how bad it was at that time. I think the year before that I did one job, I worked one gig and he turned it around for us.