All the originals grew up in the housing project Herman Gardens on Detroit’s west side but went to school in Ferndale and the singer Henry Fambrough said that in 1954 “it was a pretty good neighborhood, nobody getting killed by the gangs but you might get your butt beat up, though.”
Until they had enough hits, they worked at jobs such as “road managers, chauffeurs, chaperones, and salesclerks.”
The story today might have been: Born and brought up in the projects, they had no chance in racist white America but to live lives of career criminals.”