Charles Hunt (b. 1933) was nicknamed Tommy, and the name stuck. He ditched school enough in Pittsburgh to do a stint in reform school, after which he and his mother took off for Chicago. He spent some time in the Air Force, going AWOL to see his dying mother, and doing prison time for that absence.
He returned to Chicago and formed the Five Echoes. It was Zeke Carey of the Flamingos who asked Tommy to take his place when he was drafted, and Tommy was so successful that Zeke asked him to stay on when he got out of the Army. That’s Tommy in the background singing “she-bop she-bop” on “I Only Have Eyes for You,” one of the seminal recordings of the Fifties.
In 1960, Luther Dixon and Flo Greenberg lured him over to Scepter Records, and this was the first of his two hits for that label.
He lives in the UK today.