Elliott thought Australia was “grand.” A part-owner in a nightclub was so enamored with Elliott that he wanted him to stay and perform regularly. They almost immediately went on tour, he said, starting in Sydney, Australia. The band wasted no time rehearsing to learn Elliott’s songs because he was their opening act.
I thought I was high on the hog,” he said, laughing.Įlliott was 22 years old. “I had a brand-new Monte Carlo waiting on me at the apartment. When he arrived, The Stylistics were all there. He didn’t get any farewell parties or have time to say goodbye, but “I’m not going to turn it down,” Elliott said. I’ve got a one-way ticket from LA to Pennsylvania, and it’s leaving tomorrow morning.’” “A couple of months later, I got a call from TWA. It was embarrassing I wasn’t going anywhere,’” he said. “The club owner gave me a big going-away party. He told everyone he knew that he was going on tour with The Stylistics, but time passed. When The Stylistics left Los Angeles, they exchanged phone numbers and addresses with Elliott and told him “they’d be in touch,” Elliott said. Elliott recalled that The Stylistics came to his mother’s house for dinner once. I played with them.’”Įlliott went to the club where The Stylistics were performing, and the group’s manager approached him and said the group’s members wanted him to tour with them, which he found hard to believe. “I’m sitting there, and I’m listening to TV, and it said The Stylistics were coming to LA. He went back to Los Angeles, and The Stylistics went to Philadelphia. That was the beginning of their relationship, Elliott said. That didn’t work out, so the manager asked Elliott about using his band. The Stylistics couldn’t afford to bring the band to Germany and planned to use a studio band. They had hit record after hit record after hit record.” Their songs include “You Make Me Feel Brand New” and “Betcha By Golly, Wow.”Įven with The Stylistics’ popularity, Elliott said, he had never heard of the group. “I think we stayed over there six months then it was time for us to go,” he said.īefore he left, Elliott met The Stylistics of Philadelphia on one of the military bases.
Next, the band went to Germany, playing a lot of military bases. Elliott played cover tunes from James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and other artists, all with the same genre. “Loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it,” he said. His first big gig was in the south of France, where he said the group found a receptive audience. “My mom wasn’t too cool, but my dad didn’t care.” Another band asked him to travel with them and sing - and he called it the Don Elliott Revue. “It was a situation - I thought I was getting away with something.”Įlliott performed at various clubs after high school and had an all-white band called the Blue-Eyed Soul Brothers. The next thing I knew, I started getting up on stage and singing with some of the bands, even though I wasn’t old enough,” he said. “I had a brother who worked in a nightclub in Los Angeles. His parents moved him and his three siblings who were still at home to Los Angeles, where the family had relatives.Įlliott grew up singing in the church and school choirs, but he added a secret venue when he was 16 or 17. “He’s great.”Įlliott lived with his parents, Rosa and Willie, and 10 siblings in Camden until he was 13 years old. “He has this whole place going when he gets going up there,” Robinson said. Robinson said she thought Elliott was joking when he kept telling her he was going to perform at the talent show then he wowed the audience. The staff and guests at the senior center discovered Elliott’s talent when he picked up a microphone and pulled a few women out of the audience at a talent show, said Debra Robinson, director of the center. We were just having fun,” he said.Įlliott said he didn’t want to be the next James Brown, although he said Brown once told him: “Man, you’re just like me - you can’t dance as good as me, but you can beat me singing.” “I just enjoyed doing what I was doing - it was a lot of fun. “I filled up two passports with countries,” Elliott said, dressed to the nines and sitting on a couch in The Ola and John Hawks Senior Activity and Wellness Center in Conway. The Conway resident was a hot commodity in the ’60s and ’70s, starting with the Don Elliott Revue and traveling the world as the opening act for The Stylistics, a soul group. Based on the women shouting and swooning as he sang, 67-year-old Don Elliott’s still got it.
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