Nathan Morris says it was the Civic Center and that Michael Bivins of New Edition was there. Was it the New Edition show at the Spectrum in January of ’89? Or Power 99’s “Powerhouse II” festival at the Civic Center in May? Some other show entirely? The details get hazy and harder to confirm with each passing year, each sepia-toned retelling. Like a lot of Philly kids with musical aspirations, the group met up with Charlie Mack - the longtime local music promoter immortalized in the DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince song “Charlie Mack (The First Out the Limo)” - who invited them to a concert. That’s when things started getting serious … and a little bit apocryphal. They bought cheap suits at a two-for-one place and made the girls scream at a Valentine’s Day concert with their pitch-perfect harmonies and synchronized dance moves.īy 1989, they’d whittled themselves down to a quintet (on their way to becoming a quartet) and changed their moniker to Boyz II Men, after a favorite New Edition song. The group was sometimes five or six strong and at least in the beginning called itself Unique Attraction. Photograph by Al Pereira/Getty ImagesĪ few years in, Morris teamed up with some like-minded vocal majors, and they began singing together. ![]() “It was definitely not a school where you just show up with the latest songs and all of a sudden you’re a superstar.”įrom left: Shawn Stockman, Wanyá Morris, Michael McCary and Nathan Morris in 1990. “They wanted to make sure that we were well-rounded when we left school,” he says. He made up for that with practice: “I’ve been a preparation guy all my life.”Īs a vocal major, he learned about classical and jazz, but also lyrical metaphors, cadences and harmony structures, all of which would form the foundation for his career. Morris doesn’t remember which songs, and he doesn’t actually speak those languages. He was accepted after an audition in which he sang in German and Italian. The way he tells it, CAPA is a real high school, only with more music classes and better talent shows. “It was nothing like that at all,” laughs Nathan Morris, the eldest member of Boyz II Men and therefore its de facto leader to this day. and, uh, Tony Luke Jr., among many others - people like to compare it to Fame, the early-’80s movie/TV franchise about kids in leg warmers who twirled in the streets and danced on top of New York City cabs. Now, you’ll find it at Broad and Christian, between the street signs that say “Boyz II Men Blvd.” The group went on to sell more than 60 million records, but in the beginning, they were just art-school kids with a dream.īecause of CAPA’s reputation - and its alumni mailing list that includes Questlove and Black Thought of the Roots, Jazmine Sullivan, Leslie Odom Jr. This was the late ’80s, back when CAPA was at 11th and Catharine. ![]() ![]() The story starts with a small group of kids from different neighborhoods meeting up at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. But the boiled-down Cliffs Notes version is right there in the first single:īack in school we used to dream about this every day
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