The Honeydrippers
British rock band
The Honeydrippers were an English rock and roll band of the 1980s. Former Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant formed the group in 1981 to satisfy his long-time goal of having a rock band with a heavy rhythm and blues basis. Formed originally in Worcestershire from an existing cover band, it has had many members come and go, including fellow former Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck (a former Yardbirds member like Page), and other friends and well-known studio musicians, including original Judas Priest guitarist Ernest Chataway. The band released only one recording, an EP titled The Honeydrippers: Volume One, on 12 November 1984.
The Honeydrippers peaked at number 3 in early 1985 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a remake of the Phil Phillips' tune "Sea of Love", and hit number 25 with "Rockin' at Midnight", originally a Roy Brown recording and a rewrite of "Good Rockin' Tonight." With the EP's success, Plant stated that a full album would be recorded, but it never was.
Origins
There are a number of views on the origin(s) of the name Honeydrippers. Paul Stenning (2008) says Plant joined a Midlands blues cover band called "The Honeydrippers". In this telling, the band and its name existed prior to Plant: it is unstated who came up with the name and what it means. In Paul Rees's 2013 biography, Plant joined a "makeshift" cover band, and Plant gave the band its name, inspired by Roosevelt Sykes, an American blues singer known as "Honeydripper". Jean-Michael Guesdon in his 2018 book Led Zeppelin, All the Songs says the name is an allusion to the Led Zeppelin song "Black Dog", which contains the lyric "Watch your honey drip, can't keep away".
“The Honeydrippers” enters the record as british rock band. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Honeydrippers, British and rock can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q648841. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1984, 1985 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Honeydrippers” 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.