The Del-Vikings
American doo-wop musical group
The Del-Vikings (also known as The Dell-Vikings) were an American doo-wop musical group that recorded several hit singles in the 1950s and continued to record and tour with various lineups in later decades. The group is notable for the hit songs "Come Go with Me" and "Whispering Bells", and for having been a successful racially mixed musical group during a period of time when such groups were rare.
History
Formation and early fame
The Del-Vikings were formed in 1955 by members of the United States Air Force stationed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Clarence Quick, Kripp Johnson, Don Jackson, Samuel Paterson, Bernard Robertson and guitarist Joe Lopes. Because all of the members were in the armed forces, the group constantly risked being disrupted by its members being assigned to other places. This happened soon after the group's forming when Paterson and Robertson were sent to Germany. They were replaced by baritone David Lerchey, the group's first white member, and tenor Norman Wright. Wright had started a group with Lawrence "Prince" Lloyd called The Valverteens from Amarillo Air Force Base, Texas, before joining The Del-Vikings.
Shortly after, Don Jackson left the band and was replaced by Gus Backus, the group's second white member.
The band's name was created by Clarence Quick. Some sources say that band members had read about Vikings with the prefix "Del" being "added to give the group name an air of mystery." Another suggestion is that Clarence Quick had known of a basketball team in Brooklyn, New York, called the Vikings and had suggested the name.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1392684. VIAF identifies the subject as 157243927. The Library of Congress control number is n91094841. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Del-Vikings” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.