After the success of Tommy Dorsey’s The Pied Pipers, vocal groups became hip in the early 1940s. So bandleader Bob Crosby and band manager Gil Rodin heard a vocal quartet called The Downbeaters on radio station WWJ and promptly hired them, changing their name to The Bob-O-Links. Composed of three men and one woman, singer Johnny Desmond got his start in the quartet. Other members were Tony Paris, Ed Lavine, and Ruth Reddington.