The Arbors are still around, actually; though for the last thirty years or so they have staked their claim in the television and radio music and jingle territories of pop culture. No doubt this has been very lucrative for the guys, and they have even been inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. But once upon a time in the 1960's, the Arbors were a promising band that became terrifically diverse as they grew and evolved.
The Arbors started off in the mid-1960's as a harmony group, a la the Four Freshmen, when Scott and Tom Herrick and Ed and Fred Farran met at the University Of Michigan. The main campus is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan - hence their name, the 'Arbors". These two sets of brothers performed around Ann Arbor and at some Detroit country clubs, then they took a crack at the Big Apple, went to New York City and cut a single for Mercury. The single bombed, but on the heels of that failure they recorded another record "A Symphony for Susan", which was eventually picked up by Columbia, released on Date records, and spent some time on the charts. They followed that song up with two more charting songs - "Just Let It Happen" and "Graduation Day" - which gave them enough cachet to be asked to record a song in 1968 called "Valley of the Dolls," written for the upcoming movie of the same title. However, their version of the song was never used in the movie, and susequently went nowhere on the charts, either. Rumor has it though, that author Jacqueline Susann who wrote the book that spawned the movie preferred the Arbors' rendition.
In 1969 the Arbors had one last chart hurrah, as their cover of The Boxtops' song "The Letter" reached number 20 on the pop charts. But that was as far as the Arbors would go as a charting pop-song-singing group. However, these guys took their lemons and made lemonade, as their carrers have continued to flourish within the music industry.
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