ROBERT AND JOHNNY
We Belong Together
Old Town Records was founded in 1953 by Hy Weiss, a Romanian immigrant brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was just one year old. Growing up in the Bronx, he gravitated towards rhythm and blues and started his own independent record company at age 20. In those early years, he hand-picked the label's roster from among local harmony groups; some of the earliest Old Town acts include The 5 Crowns (a very early version of the group that, with roster changes, became the "new" Drifters six years later) and The Solitaires (who stayed with the label for several years, scoring regional, but no national, hits including "The Wedding," "Later For You Baby" and "The Angels Sang"). Weiss was known as a gruff, no-punches-pulled promoter who wanted the best for his acts, so they had a tendency to stick around. In 1956 he found the guys who would soon give the label its first bona fide national hit: two teenagers who lived near Hy's part of town, Robert and Johnny.
Robert Lee Carr, born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, arrived as a child in the low-income Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania where, as in greater New York, many budding harmonizers practiced their craft on street corners. He was briefly a member of The Royaltones, a group that recorded for Old Town in '56, though he was not a member at that time. Singer and guitarist John Naylon Banks, Jr. (who decided on Johnny Mitchell, after his mother's maiden name, as his professional moniker) met Robert at Morris High School and they formed a bond; an early 1956 audition for Weiss, doing some of their original songs, produced the desired result.
"I Believe in You" came out of the first session, Robert emerging with smooth lead vocals and Johnny singing harmony while supplying a catchy opening riff and guitar backing. It received minimal airplay in New York, but had a solid run in Pittsburgh in the spring. "You're Mine" followed, not much different than the other recordings, though Johnny's picking gave it a nice blues feel not heard in most other doo wop recordings of the time. A pianist accompanied them on "Baby Come Home" and a quicker-paced fourth effort, "Broken Hearted Man," despite a hot saxophone break, made a fast exit. The duo had something special...a breakthrough seemed inevitable. In November they secured a week of performances at the Apollo Theater, a show hosted by WWRL-AM 1600 personality Dr. Jive (real name Tommy Smalls, he was the owner of Harlem's premier nightclub Smalls Paradise). The rookie balladeers opened for current hitmakers Bo Diddley, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, The Cadillacs and several up-and-comers like themselves. Things were looking up.
A second Apollo stint in February '57 featured not only Robert and Johnny but labelmates the Solitaires, who were gaining traction with their latest disc, "Walking Along." Late in the year the developing performers, nearly two years into their contract with Old Town, recorded 'You're mine...and...' "We Belong Together" (an attention-grabber from the start). Another Apollo show in January '58 starring Joe Turner featured R&J and the song clicked immediately. The record landed on the Billboard Top 100 in February and in late March they appeared on American Bandstand; host Dick Clark was impressed and had them on his Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show a couple of weeks later to do it again. The single was already top ten in N.Y., Boston and other eastern cities, warming up for the same kind of success in San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere before working its way back across America from April to June, hitting big in Minneapolis, parts of Texas and other locations. It was a gradual takeover lasting more than five months through mid-summer, peaking in May in the pop top 40 and R&B top 20.
Weiss re-released the underrated gem "I Believe in You," which impacted the top 40 that summer on stations in San Francisco, L.A., New York, Seattle, Oakland, Allentown and Denver and made a brief showing on the national pop chart in August. The next few singles failed to catch on, but there was one standout: "Hear My Heart" landed on station playlists in early 1960, doing particularly well in Chicago and Cleveland. As many vocal group standards began reappearing on radio, a reissue of "We Belong Together" rode the wave, working its way around again starting in the summer and managing a few weeks on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" list months later, in early '61. Leaving Old Town after seven years, Robert and Johnny had one release on Juggy Murray's Sue label, "A Perfect Wife," in the summer of 1963.
It was a better run than most ballad-heavy vocal acts of the era could claim. Opportunities to make records stopped in the '60s but the two remained close, continued living in the Bronx and occasionally made appearances in the New York area. They have one distinction that few artists in the genre can claim, having composed nearly all of the more than two dozen songs they recorded over an eight-year span...even their boss Hy Weiss refrained from adding his name to the songwriting royalties (a rare thing in those days). Robert Carr and Johnny Mitchell passed away within a couple of years of each other in the 1990s, but their memory lives on through tthat one memorable hit. A staple of oldies stations for many years, "We Belong Together" is cherished by passionate R&B fans as one of the greatest romantic songs ever.
