Bob Kuban

Bob Kuban & the In-Men scored their lone major success in 1966 when the Top Ten single "The Cheater" appeared under that name. Earlier sideman work with Ike and Tina Turner, including repeated tours alongside Ike's Kings of Rhythm, helped shape his approach to music. In 1976 he launched a booking agency whose profitability earned him the St. Louis Businessman of the Year award. Among his inventions was the Singles Night Out series of singles dances, and he also founded the publishing firm Q-Man Music. Those business achievements placed him apart from many other artists from the 1960s who lost their royalties to exploitation. He still reserved time for performing, continuing to book his own combo and to lead the Bob Kuban Brass Band. Three decades after the lone Top Ten hit, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame included him in its tribute to "One Hit Wonders," noting that the event would have been incomplete without his presence.

Walter Scott, the vocalist on that hit, did not live to attend the ceremony. In 1983 he was murdered in circumstances that later prompted Scottie Priesmeyer's book The Cheaters: The Walter Scott Murder; his remains were recovered in 1987 from a cistern, bearing a gunshot wound to the back. Scott's widow and her subsequent husband faced charges in the case, an outcome that echoed the cautionary line of Scott's biggest recording, "Look out for the cheater..." Their partnership dated to 1963, when Kuban, then a high school teacher who played drums at weekend wedding jobs, joined Scott, already the singer for the Pacemakers. The pair formed a new group that promptly recorded for the Norman label, though without major results aside from the track "Jerkin' Time." "The Cheater" first appeared on Musicland, the same imprint that issued Kuban's follow-up singles "Harlem Shuffle" and "The Batman Theme." A 1970 single came out on Reprise, and he revisited his hit for additional labels in both 1974 and 1975. That same year the Bob Kuban Brass Band released Get Ready for Some Rock and Soul on Norman. The label remained active into the late 1980s, issuing two further singles, "Everybody's Gonna Have a Party" and "Triple Shot of Rhythm and Blues." Beginning in 2000 Kuban played drums in the band of another St. Louis rock & roll figure, guitarist Chuck Berry. Bob Kuban died on January 20, 2025, at age 84 following a stroke.