Song of the Day 7/13: Archie Bell and the Drells, “Tighten Up”

Actor Charlie Robinson, best known for his role on “Night Court,” died Sunday, and many of his obituaries say he began his show-biz career as a singer with Archie Bell and the Drells, best known for their No. 1 hit from 1968.

The song started as an instrumental vamp by the Drells’ backing group, the TSU Toronadoes (named for the school most of them attended, Texas Southern, and a then-new model of Oldsmobile), played as break music at the end of their sets. Bell and Billy Butler added the lyrics. The dance was based on an impromptu one Butler did for Bell to cheer him up after Bell got his draft notice. The tune was recorded while he on leave and released locally in Houston, originally as the B-side to a different Bell tune.

Back to Charlie Robinson: I could find no independent confirmation that he was ever in the Drells — at least, not the real band. When his song was tearing up the charts, Bell was in the Army, stuck in a hospital bed on a base in Germany after breaking his leg in a car wreck. The fact that he couldn’t tour — he estimated he was losing $50,000 every night he couldn’t perform — didn’t stop unscrupulous promoters from sending out various groups of imposters, including one of “nine white boys out of Nashville, Tennessee posing as Archie Bell & the Drells,” Bell recalled. “Back then, they didn’t have the computer, so nobody knew what we looked like.” My guess is that Robinson was a member of one of those rogue bands.

BTW, here’s the song that was first promoted as the 45’s A side.

I’ll remember Robinson as a key character on the groundbreaking sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” which ran for only 26 episodes in 1983-84. It starred Dabney Coleman at his most obnoxious, playing a talk show host in Buffalo, N.Y., in what I think was the first “cringe” comedy. Robinson played his makeup man, Newdell Newdell, and their racially charged interactions were among the show’s most cringeworthy moments.