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June 4, 2025 3 mins
In honor of Black Music Month, journalist Mike Eiland pays tribute to the legendary brotherhood that is Tavares — the Massachusetts-born group whose harmonies helped shape the sound of 1970s R&B and disco.

Through signature hits like Check It Out, Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel, and their Bee Gees-penned classic More Than a Woman, Mike traces how Tavares went from Chubby & The Turnpikes to chart-topping icons. He also dives into their surprising connection to American political history — discovering, years later, that Ohio trailblazer Charleta Tavares, the first Black woman to serve in leadership in both the state’s House and Senate, is actually part of the Tavares family legacy.

From AM radio memories to cultural revelations, this segment is both a musical celebration and a personal full-circle moment.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Mike Island as we celebrate Black Music Month on
the Black Information Network. To know that I catch that's
check It Out by Tavares from the fall of nineteen
seventy three, the first big hit from the Five Brothers
from Massachusetts. They had all their biggest hits on the

(00:21):
Capitol Records label they signed on in nineteen sixty seven
as Chubby and the Turnpikes. Chubby was brother Antoine. By
the time check It Out hit, they had changed their
name to Tavares. Chubby left the group shortly afterward. I
remember first hearing check It Out on American Top forty
with Casey Kaseum. They later hit with She's Gone in
nineteen seventy four. She's Gone had been a largely unknown

(00:47):
song released earlier in the year by Daryl Hall and
John Oates. It wasn't a big hit for the duo,
but Tavares turned it into a huge R and B
hit in late nineteen seventy four. Then in nineteen seventy six,
Hall of Notes re released their old song She's Gone,
to much bigger success, so big that many to this
day think that the duo had remade She's Gone by

(01:07):
Tavares Tavares is perhaps best known for Heaven Must Be
Missing an Angel, a million selling hit single for.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Them Must.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
They also scored big with The Beg's penned hit more
Than a Woman from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Tavares'
version was used in the movie when John Travolta's character
was rehearsing a dance contest move with his partner. For

(01:48):
the actual contest in the movie, the Beg's version was played.
As it turns out, Tavaris has a connection to my
hometown of Columbus, Ohio, someone I've met in person and
interviewed here on the Black Information Now Work. She's Charlita Tavares,
who became the first Democratic and African American woman to
serve in leadership in both the Ohio House of Representatives

(02:08):
and the Ohio Senate. I interviewed her on our Sunday
nine am and nine pm public affairs program, The Black Perspective.
After talking with her about all the important stuff concerning
her political history, I just had to ask, with an
unusual name like Tavares, what are the chances. Well, here's
what she told me.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Absolutely, they are the cousins of my husband. They're first
cousins of my husband's father, so they would be his
second cousins, and they're out of the New Bedford, Massachusetts area,
and both his mom and dad grew up in the Taunton,
New Bedford area of Massachusetts. Cape verdeon by nationality. The

(02:52):
Islands of Cape Verde are off the coast of northwest
Africa and they come out of a Portuguese in African history.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, that blew me away. I hear him buy records
from Tavares as a kid. Over the years, I get
on the radio on a news network, not a music network,
and it allows me to meet their cousin, Mike Island
featuring Tavares for Black Music Month on the Black Information
Network
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