The “Golden Hits Of The 70s” 

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FLOATERS

“FLOAT ON”

(Marvin Willis, Arnold Ingram, James Mitchell, Jr.)

ABC 12284

No. 2   September 17, 1977

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Fame did not float in gently for this act; it ran fleet of foot.  In an instant the Floaters were big-time; in

anoth­er they weren’t.  Charles Clark (first tenor), Larry Cun­ningham (second tenor), and brothers Paul

(baritone) and Ralph Mitchell (lead) were born and raised in Detroit.  As the pre-teen Junior Floaters,

they danced and lip-synched their way through local gigs until, 13 years later, they were discovered by

Arnold “Brimstone” Ingram, James Mitchell, Jr., and Marvin Willis of the Detroit Emeralds.  Brim, Jim,

and Marvin arranged for the Floaters to open for the Emeralds tour, and hooked them up with ABC

Records.  Once ABC signed the group up, Ingram, Mitchell, and Willis wrote, pro­duced, and arranged the

tunes for the Floaters’ debut album.  “Float On,” extracted from that first album, sold well, but no future

product could match that feat.

“It was a refreshingly different sound, at the time,” Cunningham told Blues & Soul.  “And because ‘Float

On’ was our first record, it became a burden–one that we still haven’t gotten off our backs.  Now, don’t get

me wrong–without it, we’d be nowhere today.  And hun­dreds of groups would give their lives for such a

record!  I think the mistake we made afterwards, though, was to try to better ‘Float On.’  And it can’t be

done.”

The group has remained afloat.  “As long as we can keep a good stage show together we can continue to

work,” Larry Cunningham told Black Star’s Frederick Douglas Murphy, “whether we have another hit

record or not.”