Category: Local Businesses, Mon Valley Miscellany || By

Hugh Geyer, original lead tenor for The Vogues, has rejoined the group.

That means that Geyer is no longer singing with The Vogues.

Huh?

Yeah, it's confusing. The original members of the Turtle Creek-based quartet lost the rights to the name and trademark in the early 1970s.

Opinions differ on what happened; some people claim that dishonest managers and agents cheated the group, while others claim that one of the members was greedy. Possibly the answer lies somewhere in between.

A lawsuit ensued between the new owner of the trademark and Chuck Blasko, the original Vogues' second tenor. The courts awarded Blasko the right to perform with a group called "The Vogues" in 14 counties around Pittsburgh, while the owner of the national trademark was allowed to use it everywhere else.

For years, if you saw a show by "The Vogues" around Pittsburgh, you saw a group with one original member (Blasko), but if you saw "The Vogues" anywhere else, including Las Vegas, you saw no original members. When Blasko's group toured nationally, it was billed as "The Five O'Clock World Tour," named after one of the group's biggest hits. (Sadly, it's not an unusual situation, and it's happened to other rock groups of the 1950s and '60s.)

Several years ago, after The Vogues were spotlighted in a Rick Sebak WQED-TV special, Geyer, who still lives in the Mon Valley, joined Blasko's group. I saw them at a outdoor concert in Turtle Creek a few years, and they swung --- they really laid the crowd out. I've seen a few reunited 1960s groups that could no longer perform, but this group sounded good, and a lot of that was due to Geyer, who sang the soaring, high passages on many of The Vogues' hits.

Then a week ago I heard an ad on an out-of-town radio station advertising an appearance in Cincinnati by "Hugh Geyer and The Original Vogues," and I said --- huh? I didn't think Blasko's group was allowed to tour under that name.

I emailed my friend Tom, Geyer's stepson, who maintains a website about The Vogues and also hosts tubecityonline.com. Tom says Geyer has left Blasko's group and joined The Vogues.

If you want to see them, the bad news is that you'll have to leave the Mon Valley. The nearest upcoming shows are in Mingo Junction, Ohio (that's just south of Steubenville) on Saturday, April 19 and in Mentor, Ohio (east of Cleveland) on Saturday, April 26.

But that Mentor show might be worth the trip --- Frankie "Sea Cruise" Ford and Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles are also scheduled to appear. Plus, it's good news that Geyer (who's a nice guy) is getting some national publicity.

And even if "The Vogues" is no longer all original four guys from Turtle Creek, it looks like they put on a pretty good show.

. . .

Chiaverini's Closes: One of McKeesport's nicest restaurants that you didn't know about is no more. Chiaverini's Family Restaurant on Walnut Street in Christy Park, near Enamel Products, has closed. I found out Saturday, when I stopped for dinner.

A note on the front door thanks customers for their 22 years of patronage. I'm getting old, because I didn't think they had been there that long.

Too bad. The service and the food was always good, but in recent years a limited operating schedule had sometimes made it hard to make time to eat there.

Correction, Not Perfection: This article originally said that Bo Wagner was still singing with The Vogues. Although Wagner did tour with the nationally known group, he does not any longer. I apologize for the error.