This track comes off Numero Groups phenomenal Home Schooled: The ABCs of Kid Soul, which features a ton of great groups of kids singing soul music that didn’t create a weird Peter Pan-inspired ranch or show their nipples at the Super Bowl later in their lives (as far as I can tell). This is my favorite track on this comp and it comes from a group out of Silver Spring, Maryland. They were discovered performing in a Holiday Inn ballroom as the Gerladets by Robert Hosea Williams, who wanted to market the group to adults after the Jackson 5 exploded in the early 70s. Williams originally wanted to call the group Kiss, but had to change the name to Promise after a certain long-tongued, platform-booted outfit of the same name was given a record deal in 1973.

Though the group only recorded two singles for New Directions Records, both of which received little airplay and attention, they did open for Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and the Supremes, which is more than most children can (probably) say. I couldn’t find much in the way of information about this group short of reading the bio from Numero’s website, but I’ve spent plenty of time imagining choreographed routines to this song in this style to more than make up for the lack of information: