Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were an American singing group, one of the most popular Philadelphia soul groups of the 1970s. The group's repertoire included soul, R&B, doo-wop, and disco.
Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 1950s as The Charlemagnes, the group is most noted for several hits on Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International label between 1972 and 1976, although they performed and recorded until Melvin's death in 1997. However, the remaining members, the Blue Notes, will be reunited in 2013 for the Soul Train Cruise.
Despite group founder and original lead singer Harold Melvin's top billing, the Blue Notes' most famous member was Teddy Pendergrass, their lead singer during the successful years at Philadelphia International.
Famous quotes containing the words harold, blue and/or notes:
“Together, we three, until the world crumbles and there is no longer a stone or a rock or a tree or a blade of grass.”
—Griffin Jay, and Harold Young. Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey)
“But now Miss America, World’s champion woman, you take your promenading self down into the cobalt blue waters of the Caribbean and see what happens. You meet a lot of darkish men who make vociferous love to you, but otherwise pay you no mid.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“My weary limbs are scarcely stretched for repose, before red dawn peeps into my chamber window, and the birds in the whispering leaves over the roof, apprise me by their sweetest notes that another day of toil awaits me. I arise, the harness is hastily adjusted and once more I step upon the tread-mill.”
—“E. B.,” U.S. farmer. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)