The Five Sharps

In 1952, after months of performing at local functions, The Five Sharps were spotted by a producer and taken into a studio to record two songs. The group recorded their own "Sleepy Cowboy" and the standard "Stormy Weather". The session took most of the day and they were paid in hot dogs and soda pop. First tenor Bobby Ward remembers that sales of "Stormy Weather" were so bad that he and the other members had to buy their own copies, even though they had never been paid for the recording in the first place.