Sometimes lighting strikes and you have a hit. No one can explain it, except that the song is really good and the singers sound great. If it weren’t for “Our Day Will Come,” I doubt if anyone would have ever heard of Ruby and the Romantics.

Ruby is Ruby Nash and she was born in Akron, Ohio in 1934 and didn’t get interested in singing until she was a senior in high school. She got together with her sister and a couple friends and sang as a group, winning some local talent contests. The four guys who would become the Romantics were George Lee (second tenor), Ronald Mosley (baritone), Leroy Fann (bass) and Ed Roberts (first tenor). The guys sang under several names, but when they met Ruby Nash, they were known as the Supremes. (Diana Ross had not entered the scene yet.)

The five of them got together and recorded a number of demos which they sent out. New York based Kapp Records noticed them and called them in for an audition. Allan Stanton of Kapp liked them, changed their name to Ruby and the Romantics (which the four guys weren’t sure if they liked or not) and set it up so they could record “Our Day Will Come.” The writers of “Our Day Will Come” were Mort Garson and Bob Hilliard and they were not happy. They thought their song should go to an established singer and they were thinking of Jack Jones. But, the Kapp people convinced them to let Ruby and the guys have the song and so it went forward. When the song was recorded, they cut two versions of the song. One was strictly a ballad, meant to be a love song. The other was a little more uptempo with a bossa nova beat. It was the second that made it to the public ears. When Ruby recorded “Our Day Will Come” it was the first time she had ever been in a recording studio.

Ruby and Romantics were never able to repeat the magic of that first song. They continued to record, putting two more songs into the Top 40 in 1963, “My Summer Love” (#16) and “Hey There Lonely Boy” (#27.) The group struggled for ten years and then in 1971, they broke up and everybody went their separate ways.

“Our Day Will Come” entered the Hot 100 at number 79 on February 9, 1963 and took six weeks to get to number one. It spent one week at the top of the chart. Today, of the five members of Ruby and the Romantics, only Ruby is left. The four Romantics have all passed away. Ruby still lives in Akron, Ohio where she has spent her life working for AT&T and raising a family.