The Diamonds
Canadian Vocal Quartet
The Diamonds are a Canadian vocal quartet that rose to prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s with 16 Billboard hit records. The original members were Dave Somerville (lead), Ted Kowalski (tenor), Phil Levitt (baritone), and Bill Reed (bass). They were most noted for interpreting and introducing rhythm and blues vocal group music to the wider pop music audience.
History
1950s
In 1953, Dave Somerville, while working as a sound engineer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, met three other young singers. They decided to form a stand-up quartet called the Diamonds. The group's first performance was in the basement of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Toronto, singing in a Christmas minstrel show. The audience's reaction to the Somerville-led group was so positive that they decided that night they would turn professional.
After 18 months of rehearsal, they drove to New York City and tied for first place on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. The prize of being guest artist for a week on Godfrey's show led to a recording contract with Coral Records.
“The Diamonds” enters the record as canadian Vocal Quartet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Diamonds, Canadian and Vocal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Diamonds” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Diamonds, Canadian and Vocal provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2410857. VIAF identifies the subject as 140438204. The Library of Congress control number is n94046233. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Diamonds” 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.