The Five Du-Tones Were Robert Hopkins (group founder), Willie Guest, Frank McCurrey, LeRoy Joyce, James West, and Andrew Butler. They formed at Patrick Henry High School in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, in 1957.

Between 1963 and 1966 the Five Du-Tones recorded nine singles

Single (music)

In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 on George Leaner's One-derful Records. "Please Change Your Mind" failed to chart, as did "Come Back Baby".

The group's third release in 1963 finally got them noticed: "Shake a Tail Feather

Shake a Tail Feather

"Shake a Tail Feather" is a song originally recorded in 1963 by the Chicago-based group The Five Du-Tones...

" (co-written by Andre Williams

Andre Williams

Andre Williams is an American R&B and punk blues musician who started his career in the 1950s at Fortune Records in Detroit.-Biography:...

) was played on R&B stations across the country, but it failed to make the sales and chart position the airplay

Airplay

* Airplay is the amount of time a song is played on the radio.It may also refer to:* AirPlay, an audio & video streaming technology from Apple Inc.* Airplay , Foster & Graydon music project from 1980* Citroën C1, Citroën C1 Airplay...

 justified. The track peaked at #28 on the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

R&B

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

 chart

Record chart

A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....

, and #51 on the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

. The group continued to record fun dance tunes that helped bridge the gap between doo-wop

Doo-wop

The name Doo-wop is given to a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music that developed in African American communities in the 1940s and achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. It emerged from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and...

 and soul music.

Next was "The Gouster" backed with "Monkey See Monkey Do." The B-side

A-side and B-side

A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...

 got some airplay, but neither track built on the success of its predecessor. "Nobody But (My Baby)" did even worse, so they tried another dance craze, "The Cool Bird". 1965 saw "Sweet Lips" and "The Woodbine Twine". The last Five Du-Tones single, a ballad called "Mountain of Love" was released in 1966; they disbanded in 1967.

"Shake a Tail Feather" was featured on the soundtrack

Soundtrack

A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

 of the 1988 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, Hairspray.

The group's lead singer, Andrew Butler, eventually moved to Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 and joined a latterday version of The Rivingtons

The Rivingtons

The Rivingtons were a 1960s doo-wop group. The group members were:lead vocalist Carl White , tenor Al Frazier , baritone Sonny Harris, and bass singer Turner "Rocky" Wilson Jr.. Frazier was replaced by Madero White for a period in the late 1970s.-History:Their first hit was "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"...

. After their dissolution due to illness, Butler worked in various versions of others 1950s doo wop such as Billy Richard's Coasters and The Robins

The Robins

The Robins were a successful and influential American R&B group of the late 1940s and 1950s, one of the earliest such vocal bands who established the basic pattern for the doo-wop sound.-Original members:...

.