Excerpts from Cooler Than Ice: Arctic Records and the Rise of Philly Soul:
The Temptones consisted of Daryl Hall, Barry Glazer, Ken Halpern and Brian Utain. These Temptones recordings on Arctic Records were Daryl Hall's first releases before teaming up with John Oates to become the superstar group, Hall and Oates. The Temptones came to Arctic Records as a result of a singing contest at the Uptown Theater on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. The Ambassadors, also an Arctic group, came in first; the Temptones came in second.
The Temptones got together at Temple University in 1965 where all but Glazer were undergraduates. “We just sort of fell in together,” says baritone/bass Brian Utain. “We had so much fun singing we stopped going to class!” Something else made the quartet stand out: they were white, not that anyone could discern it from their soulful Arctic 45s . When Glazer joined the group, he transferred from Penn State to Temple. Originally they called themselves the Templetones, but shortened it to the Temptones (not out of homage to the Temptations, though later they became friends of the famous Motown group).
“We found out Daryl could play piano. So we would go up to this little third floor music room in Mitten Hall and start singing around the piano, so we could do a little harder stuff. But our blend was so good, and just about everybody could sing lead. So we were doing all kinds of soul music material, doo-wop and then Motown. We were into the Tempts. We were into the Impressions. We would do Frankie Lymon tunes, we would do Lewis Lymon, we’d even do Jay and the Americans.”
Label head Jimmy Bishop produced the Temptones’ Arctic debut session at Frank Virtue’s North Broad Street studio, in the next block from Temple University, on December 7, 1966 with Kenny Gamble’s Romeos (Roland and Karl Chambers on guitar and drums and bassist Win Wilford) backing,
