The Jewels

The Jewels were formed in the halls of Washington’s Theodore Roosevelt High School. “Sandra Bear, Marjorie Clark and Carrie Mingo were class of ’62,” says Grace Ruffin. They were all members of the high school choir and formed their first group, the Impalas. Soon they’d changed their name.

“People said we were like four jewels onstage, so we liked that name the best,” says Ruffin. As the Four Jewels, the group began playing venues in the D.C. area like the Howard Theatre, and performed throughout the mid-Atlantic, from Philadelphia to North Carolina. Bo Diddley had a house in Northeast at the time, on Rhode Island Ave., where musicians would often congregate. He heard the Four Jewels and encouraged them to record. They sang backup on his 1961 hit, “Bo Diddley’s a Lover,” and they also recorded behind Billy Stewart on his classic, “Reap What You Sow.” Through Bo Diddley’s connections, the Four Jewels recorded “For the Love of Mike” for the legendary Chess Records.

By 1964 they had changed their name to simply the Jewels and had recorded “Opportunity” for a subsidiary of Columbia Records. The single stayed on the Billboard charts for 11 weeks. “That was our nationwide hit,” Ruffin says.” We toured a lot on that one.” At a 1966 show at New York’s Apollo

Theatre, the Jewels–by this time Ruffin, Bears and newcomer Martha Harvin–met James Brown. A few months later, at a show in Washington, Brown asked the group to tour in his revue. They joined his tour, and the Jewels can be heard on the 1967 album “James Brown Plays the Real Thing.” He even wrote a song for them called “Papa Left Mama Holding the Bag.” They toured with Brown for more than a year, but the road was wearing on all of them. “James Brown was at his peak right then and he was taking airplanes everywhere, but we did most of the traveling on the bus,” says Ruffin. “And in a lot of places, we still had to use the backdoor to eat, to go to the bathroom, to get to our hotel rooms. It was hard.”

Each of the singers had begun a family, and Ruffin and Bears headed back to Washington, while Harvin continued to tour with Brown. Ruffin, Bears and Marjorie Clark continued intermittently as the Jewels, releasing an album in the ’80s, and continuing to perform. There’s talk of a new recording in the near future. “Why not?” asks Ruffin. “We’ve been singing together for 45 years, we’re not about to stop.”