Arthur "Pooch" Tavares

For more than a half century, the name Pooch Tavares has meant a whole lot to soul music fans like me. He was the baritone who helped shore up the bottom end of a decade’s worth of my favorite albums from my favorite group, the family quintet Tavares. And when he took the lead vocals – as he did on such hits as “Never Had A Love Like This Before” and “Penny For Your Thoughts” – you realized that he could be the front man in most vocal groups. But he was just one of five possible lead singers in Tavares, an act whose real magic came when those five voices joined together in harmony.

While they didn’t always get their due, the five brothers from New Bedford, Massachusetts - Ralph, Tiny, Chubby, Butch and Pooch Tavares - created some of the most consistently high quality soul music of that period. Originally called "Chubby and the Turnpikes," the Tavares brothers spent the late '60s and early '70s in their native New England covering tunes of R&B greats at various clubs, while trying to land a record deal.

They finally scored a contract with Capitol Records' fledgling black music division and released their first single, "Check It Out," in 1973 (the original version of which had a sixth brother, Victor Tavares, singing lead). It soared to the top 10 on the R&B charts and became the group's first top 40 pop hit. It also became the centerpiece for the their Johnny Bristol-produced debut album, an excellent example of early '70s Soul that also featured the hit "The Sound That Lonely Makes." The Check It Out LP gave the first glimpse of tight brotherly harmonies and alternating lead vocals that would become the Tavares trademark sound.

For the rest of the decade, Capitol and manager Brian Panella teamed the quinted with some of the hottest songwriters and producers around. First it was Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, coming off the hugely successful Keeper of the Castle album for the Four Tops, who produced for the group such classics as “It Only Takes A Minute” (the only top 10 Tavares hit) and the first #1 soul charter, a cover of Hall & Oates' "She's Gone."

By 1976, Tavares was teamed Motown veteran Freddie Perren, who brought a more beat-heavy dance sound, as well as the group’s signature hit "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" and the Grammy Award winning Bee Gees' composition, "More Than A Woman" (from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack).

Despite the success, by the end of the decade, Tavares was working to shake the “disco group” label that SNF had brought them, and they created Madam Butterfly, a disc of Philly-style ballads with veteran Bobby Martin that reestablished their soul bonafides. But trends continued to change, and by the early 80s, the music industry’s focus on self-contained funk bands and the normal arc of a career led to lower charting of such solid albums as Loveline, Supercharged and the excellent Love Uprising -- even though Tavares was working with such future star producers as Kashif and David Foster. And after an ill-fated 1982 move to RCA and one last major hit, “Penny For Your Thoughts,” Tavares made the transition from a charting recording act to a legacy touring group.

Brother Ralph resigned from the group in 1983 to spend more time with his wife and their two children, and the remaining brothers (occasionally with older brother Victor) continued to perform internationally, both alone and in multi-artist disco shows, well into the 2010s. In 2014, Pooch suffered a stroke, causing him to retire from the group, and leading Ralph, after serving 30 years as a court officer, to rejoin the group for nearly a decade, until his death in 2022.

Over the years in my conversations with him, I’ve found Pooch Tavares to be as good a man as he is a singer – patiently interviewing with me when I was just a teenage college newspaper, and being just as engaging three and a half decades later, when I interviewed for the liner notes I penned on a Tavares reissue. Here’s hoping that his retirement years bring the same kind of joy that his music has brought millions.

By Chris Rizik