30
WBM april 2012
“You will be shocked
to see how many high
school and young college
age kids are out
there shagging and
just like the beach
music...” — David Hicks
says Jim Quick, the lead singer and
frontman of the band. Quick grew up
in Scotland County, North Carolina,
in a place known as Gum Swamp. He
had his first taste of music listening to
the soulful sounds of The Dominoes
and Sticks McGhee, which were favorites
of his caretaker, Miss Ruby.
Quick and his band began working
with beach music legend, the late
General Johnson of the Chairman of
the Board in the 1990s. It was a chance
for the young band to learn from a
man that had recorded beach music
classics such as “Carolina Girls” and
“Give Me Just a Little More Time.”
“He was the number one lure,”
Quick says. “We have to go in and
grab those college kids and the
General was the best at that. He was
a pro.” General Johnson mentored
Quick, teaching him how to hook
listeners and create disarming set lists
that had crowds, in a sense, dangling
on a string.
At any given Chairman of the
Board show in Wilmington, it was not
uncommon for the room to be shoulder
to shoulder. Lifelong fans would
shag dance casually in an open area
while college kids crowded the stage,
shouting the words of Motown classics
that were written decades before they
were born.