In the summer of 1968, Ron Tyson called Thaddeus Wales to see whether Wales was interested in backing and producing a group featuring Tyson and his friend Joe Freeman. Thaddeus Wales, who had enjoyed some success with his previous group The Springers ("Nothing Too Good for My Baby"), agreed. Tyson and Freeman approached two other singers they knew from Philadelphia’s active musical scene. The Ethics were formed by the amalgamation of two groups of high-school singers: Ron Tyson and Joe Freeman from Tioga and Andy “Bike” Collins and Carl “Nugie” Enlow from Germantown High School. Collins had just finished four years in the service and was working at the Budd Company, a railroad- and subway-car manufacturer with a major industrial plant in North Philadelphia. Collins’s friend Enlow was working as a probation officer for the City of Philadelphia after finishing college, and Collins got him part-time work at the Budd plant.

At first, Tyson wanted to have a trio with himself, Freeman and Collins, but Freeman and Collins convinced him to make it a quartet, a decision endorsed by Wales, a producer, manager and label owner. In rehearsals at Collins’ Germantown home, the group sang songs by the Temptations, Intruders, and other practitioners of the tight harmonies that characterized the emerging R&B sound in the wake of Motown’s dominating success.

Thirty-five years later, Collins was still working for the Budd Company and Enlow was still working for the City of Philadelphia. Meantime, Ron Tyson continued his music career and became one of the Temptations, a group he had imitated when he started singing in Germantown High School in Philadelphia.