The Drifters: Charlie Thomas is dead

Charlie Thomas is dead. The Drifters singer succumbed to liver cancer on January 31, as has only just become known. He was 85 years old. Thomas leaves behind his wife and three children.

Thomas was active in the band The Five Crowns in the 1950s, which became the “new” Drifters in 1958. The group was performing at the Apollo Theater in New York when George Treadwell fired the original Drifters and hired The Five Crowns. The following year they landed their first hit “There Goes My Baby”. More hits like “Sweets for my Sweet”, “Under The Broadwalk” and “This Magic Moment” followed.

The singer toured with the band until the outbreak of the corona pandemic. “Although he was getting older, he was active almost every weekend,” said Thomas Freund Peter Lemongello Jr. the Los Angeles Times. “Unfortunately, he made the transition from active life to staying at home and things started to go downhill for him.”

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