Muncie residents who bought tickets to a holiday concert on Dec. 10 at the Cornerstone Center for the Arts might be surprised to find out that they aren't getting exactly what they paid for.
Cornerstone Center for the Arts originally billed the concert on its Web site as "the Drifters, the Coasters, and the Marvelettes."
The groups playing, however, are actually called Elsberry Hobbs' Drifters, Cornell Gunters' Coasters and the Marvelettes, according to the management company, Capitol International Productions.
These bands are imposters, according to representatives of Bill Binkney's Drifters, and shouldn't be using the Drifter's name. The ambiguity in the name arises from a legal battle over who owns the rights to the names the Drifters and the Coasters. While none of the members of the groups who will play in Muncie ever wrote or performed with the original Drifters or Coasters, they have legally obtained the rights to the names through the widows of former members. When Elsberry Hobbs died, his widow sold the rights to the Drifters name, which led to the confusion.
Part of the confusion is due to the fact that there have been so many different members, Porter said.
Elsberry Hobbs was a member of the Drifters from 1958 to 1960; however, he was never inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the group, according to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame Web site.
Cornerstone corrected the mistake on its Web site on Dec. 7 after almost 600 tickets had already been sold.
Cassie Bolander-Price, the Director of Communications at the Cornerstone Center for the Arts said there was no intentional deception in the mistake.
"I don't feel that we advertised any false premise on the site," she said. She also said the concert was originally advertised that way simply because of a lack of space on the Web site.
Maxine Porter, the manager for Bill Pinkney's original Drifters, said this situation is not unusual.
"We doubt that an arts organization would bill a false artist," she said. "We don't mind the bands singing the songs of the Drifters. We take to objection to the deception that this is an original artist when it is not. The public deserves better."
Porter called this a "misrepresentation by omission," and said even though Cornerstone took the false advertisement off the page, the damage had already been done.
Veta Gardner, the manager for the last living member of the Coasters, Carl Gardner, said she had long since given up trying to stop artists from using her husband's trademark.
"They are infringing on the copyright that Carl Gardner owns exclusively," she said.
Since Hobbs himself was never inducted into the Hall of Fame, and he wasn't alive at the time that the rights were signed, Porter said Hobbs' widow had no right to use the name the Drifters without the consent of surviving members Bill Pinkney, Ben E. King and Charlie Thomas.
While there is no law against imposter acts in Indiana, the Pennsylvania Senate has introduced legislation that will protect the rights groups like the Drifters and Coasters.
The full Senate of Pennsylvania is set to pass Senate Bill 929, The Truth in Music Advertising Act. This legislation would make it unlawful to falsely advertise a performance in Pennsylvania through misleading information.
While Bob Crosby, the CEO of the Vocal Group Hall of Fame is hopeful the legislation will spread to other states, he acknowledges that the problem has no simple solution, mainly because of a fundemental underappreciation of the real act. "The Drifters name is much bigger and has often undervalued from a media perspective," Crosby said.
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