#2: Patches by Chairmen of the Board
City: Swift Current, SK
Radio Station: CKSW
Peak Month: November 1970
Peak Position in Swift Current ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #38
YouTube: “Patches”
Lyrics: “Patches”
General Norman Johnson was born in 1941, in Norfolk, Virginia. “General” was his first name, not a military name, stage name or nickname. He began singing in choirs at the age of six. In 1953, Johnson formed The Humdingers. They were recorded by Atlantic Records in 1956, but their four singles were not released. In 1961, the group changed its name to The Showmen. They moved to New Orleans from Norfolk (VA) and were signed to Minit Records and Allen Toussaint produced fifteen of their singles. General Norman Johnson was the lead singer for The Showmen. They had a minor pop and R&B hit in 1961 titled “It Will Stand”. Johnson left The Showmen in 1968 and subsequently formed Chairmen of the Board.
The other members of Chairmen of the Board were Danny Woods Jr. (born 1942 in Atlanta), Harrison Kennedy (born in 1942 in Hamilton, Ontario), and Eddie Custis. Harrison Kennedy grew up in a house in Hamilton where his parents would host visitors in the blues and jazz scene. This included Duke Ellington, Lonnie Johnson, and Billie Holiday. Danny Woods Jr. moved from Atlanta to Detroit in the early sixties. He met David Ruffin and was part of an R&B vocal group that toured around Michigan prior to Ruffin joining The Temptations. Danny Woods Jr. performed with Rare Earth, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Picket, The Spinners, The O’Jays and others prior to joining Chairmen of the Board. Prior to joining Chairmen of the Board, baritone vocalist Eddie Custis was a member of the Philadelphia doo-wop group The Superiors who had one minor hit with “Lost Love”. After Lee Andrews left The Hearts, Eddie Custis joined the group who had their moment of fame in 1957 with the Top Ten R&B hit “Long, Lonely Nights”. He was recruited to join Chairmen of the Board.
The Chairmen of the Board released “Give Me Just A Little More Time” in 1970 and it reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the UK pop singles chart, as well as #8 on the Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart. A followup, “(You’ve Got Me) Dangling On A String” reached #5 in the UK, but stalled at #38 on the Hot 100 in the USA.
The next single release was “Everything’s Tuesday” backed with “Patches”.
“Patches” was cowritten by General Norman Johnson and Ron Dunbar. Born in 1939 in Detroit, Ron Dunbar’s first song he wrote that charted was in 1961 with “Greetings (This Is Uncle Sam)” by The Valadiers. The song was covered by The Monitors in 1966 and charted to #21 on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart during the Vietnam War. Dunbar’s biggest hit was Freda Payne’s number-one UK hit “Band Of Gold” (#3 on the Billboard Hot 100) in 1970. He also scored with Freda Payne’s followup “Deeper And Deeper”. He wrote songs for The Flaming Ember (“Westbound #9”), 8th Day (“She’s Not Just Another Woman”), 100 Proof (Aged in Soul), The Honey Cone, and others. He died in 2018 at the age of 77.
“Patches” is a song about a boy who is raised in a backwoods farm in Alabama by a father who never had any formal education. However, he worked hard to grow the crops and pay the bills to keep the family fed. But life had worn his father down. The narrator is nicknamed “Patches” because of his ragged, patched-together clothes. On his deathbed, the father places his hands on his son’s shoulders and tells him: “Patches, I’m dependin’ on you, son, to pull the family through. My son, it’s all left up to you.” Two days later the father dies, and the boy “became a man that day.”
Patches wants to quit school to work the farm full-time, but his mother refuses, saying that continuing his education was his father’s strictest rule. He therefore does farm chores (feeding chickens, chopping wood, working the fields) before and after school so the family can eat. He nearly gives up under the pressure—especially after a storm washes away the crops when he is about 13—but he keeps going by remembering his father’s dying words and drawing strength from his mother’s prayers. Years later, after his mother has died and his siblings have grown up, he reflects that his father’s voice helped sustain him through the hard times. The song explores themes of poverty, early maturity, familial duty, sacrifice, resilience, and the lasting impact of a parent’s expectations.
It was Clarence Carter, a blind singer from Alabama, who had a #2 hit with “Patches” in both the UK pop singles chart and on the Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart (and #4 on the Hot 100) in the fall of 1970. Though Carter was never raised on a farm, many radio listeners thought the song was autobiographical.
Perhaps due to the Chairmen of the Board being an American-Canadian band, and qualified for airplay under Canadian content rules by the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC), the pop station in Swift Current opted to spin the Chairmen of the Board recording instead of the Clarence Carter disc.
“Patches” by Chairmen of the Board peaked at #1 in Swift Current (SK).
The flip side of “Patches”, titled “Everything’s Tuesday” reached #12 in the UK. Subsequently, with the release of a second studio album, the singles “Pay To the Piper” and “Chairmen Of The Board” both reached the Top Ten on the Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart.
General Johnson and Ron Dunbar won Best Rhythm and Blues Song at the Grammy Awards in March 1971 for “Patches”.
Part way through 1971, after a second album titled In Session, Eddie Custis left the group and faded into obscurity. Johnson, Kennedy and Woods carried on as a trio.
With their hit records, Chairmen of the Board appeared on American Bandstand, Soul Train, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, and Englands Top of the Pops variety show. They also performed at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. On tour, Chairmen of the Board shared the stage with many other performers including James Brown, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, and Smokey Robinson. A final Top Ten Best Selling Soul Singles entry, “Finders Keepers”, reached #7 in early July 1973.
Harrison Kennedy left the trio in 1974 after the release of the groups fourth studio album Skin I’m In.
The Chairmen of the Board, represented by General Johnson, Danny Woods and Ken Knox, were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 1999. General Johnson continued to perform with Woods and Knox as the Chairmen of the Board until Johnson’s death from lung cancer in 2010.
Over the years on a part-time basis Harrison Kennedy played a variety of musical genres including funk, soul, R&B, folk, rock, and gospel. Concurrently, Kennedy mostly spent almost 30 years outside of the music industry serving as a corporal in the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, and later for the Allied Chemical Corporation. In 2003, Harrison Kennedy returned as a blues singer and guitarist with the release of Sweet Taste. In 2007, Kennedy signed a new recording contract with Electro-Fi Records and has since released a number of internationally acclaimed albums. In 2008, Kennedy was nominated for Best Blues Recording in Canada’s Juno Awards. That year he performed at the Vancouver International Folk Festival. He separately achieved second place against 83 others in the solo/duo category at the 2011 International Blues Challenge, held on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2014, Harrison Kennedy toured with Ruthie Foster and Leon Bibb. Kennedy was awarded the 2016 “Blues Album of the Year” Juno Award for his release, This Is From Here. His eleventh studio album, Thanks for Tomorrow, was released in 2022.
September 2, 2026
Ray McGinnis
References:
Mark Washburn, Lawrence Toppmann, and April Baker, “Beach Music Icon General Johnson Dies,” Charlotte News and Observer, Charlotte (NC), October 15, 2010.
Brad Wheeler, “Harrison Kennedy Wants a World with Less Hate,” Globe and Mail, November 15, 2013.
“This Is Harrison Kennedy,” Harrisonkennedy.ca.
“Daniel ‘Danny’ Woods Jr.,” Findagrave.com, January 13, 2018.
Marv Goldberg, “Lee Andrews and the Hearts,” uncamarvy.com, 2009.
The Superiors, “Lost Love“, Main Line Records, 1957.
“R.I.P. Legendary soul hitmaker Ron Dunbar,” Soul Tracks, April 4, 2018.
“Grammy Award for Best R&B Song,” Wikipedia.org.
Sound Beat ’70 CKSW 1400-AM Swift Current (SK) | November 28, 1970
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