Our Story (page 2)
We embraced that music during our school years and decided to form "combos" or groups to perform for our peers at school functions. We named ourselves "The Embers" our senior year at Woodrow and began to win school talent shows and perform for assemblies. In one of our few performances outside school walls, we won second place in a Central Dads Club Talent Contest at State Fair Music Hall. The First Place winner was a band led by Jesse Lopez, brother of Trini Lopez. This group was later disqualified because Jesse was performing professionally at the time.
College and the military sent us all in different directions, but we somehow managed to reconnect along the way. Eventually, all but one of us made our way back to our roots in the Dallas area. Mike, a trained tenor, put his voice to work with bands all through his years at Baylor University. Glenn started High Spirits, a band he lead full time for a couple of years in Dallas. Ralph joined friends from the Guard in a rock/doo-wop band, while Jack and Jerry had no affiliations musically again until the winter of 2001.
That night at Cafe Express we were, as always, reminiscing a little and the subject of our upcoming 40-year high school reunion came up. Jack, a doo-wop lover, popped out with something like, " Wouldn't it be cool if we could pull our old Embers group together and sing a few of our old songs at the reunion?". "I was thinking about that myself," returned Glenn, a former professional musician with his own group, High Spirits, a local 70s band. Everybody seemed to like the idea, with reservations. What was conceived as a casual idea over dinner begin to incubate. The pros and cons were followed by more ideas, obstacles and possibilities: Could we still sing? Good question! Who would join us? How would we start? What would we sing? What would we call ourselves?
