Just Around the Corner

The refusal to quit and the determination to keep going, to go another round after getting knocked down is what this book is about. It does not tell the story of the champions, the superstars, or the household names, although they too have surely endured their fair share of setbacks and even tragedy before reaching the ultimate success they achieved. For every original musical act that has sustained commercial success, selling out stadiums and garnering millions of downloads on a streaming service, there are thousands more who play as virtual unknowns to anyone other than those in attendance at the clubs, festivals, weddings, or block parties they appear at in cities and states around the U.S. Most acts never "make it" by conventional standards, yet there they are lugging their equipment across muddy park grounds and down basement stairs to practice and perform for pennies on the dollar night after night. Most also hold down day jobs to pay their bills and many struggle in their personal relationships and with alcohol or other drugs as they teeter between two worlds, and even two personas of who they are and who they want to be. The endorphins flooding your brain during a performance fuel the belief that your lucky break is sitting in the shadows of the back bar, waiting to sign you to the deal you've dreamt of. Many of these acts have enormous talent, so why do they linger in anonymity? This book explores that question through the singular experience of one group, The Sons of Robin Stone. The Sons were Philadelphia's first racially integrated music group, forming in the late 1960s and once called "the White Temptations" in an era when Blacks were fighting to have the same rights as Whites. Despite the group's success landing record deal after record deal, playing to large crowds up and down the eastern seaboard, with records playing on the radio, a mix of tragedy and circumstance limited their success and they never become the superstars they had imagined for themselves. Despite so many setbacks, the book explores their underdog mentality and why they kept coming back, at great cost to them personally and over three decades, every time they were knocked down.