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The S.O.S. Band Exploded onto the Urban/Dance/Pop scene with their debut single Take Your Time (Do It Right), just as disco was fading in 1980.

The Atlanta-based group began in 1977. It was a rhythm section with horns and vocals that rocked Atlanta's Campbellton Road after-hours club, The Regal Room, first as a two-night-a-week act and eventually as a seven-nights-straight staple. From covers of Aretha's Respect and Gladys' Neither One Of Us to the get-down sounds of the day, the group was super tight from the incessant gigging.

Their manager, Bunny Ransom, was friends with African American record executive Clarence Avant, the founder of Sussex Records (Bill Wither's launching pad in the early '70s) who had started his new Tabu Records label and was looking for acts. The group got an inside track and shot him a demo. Impressed, Avant paired them with a writer/producer named Sigidi, best known for penning Donald Byrd's funk-jazz fusion classics Think Twice and (Fallin' Like) Dominoes.

It was Sigidi who instigated a name change and came up with the S.O.S. Band, then consisting on lead singer Mary Davis, vocalist/keyboardist Jason Bryant, saxophonist Billy Ellis, reed man Sonny Killebrew, drummer James Earl Jones III, guitarist Bruno Speight and bassist John Simpson.

Sigidi started the band out with the hit Take Your Time (Do it Right). Following that, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis took the group even higher with hits like Just Be Good To Me and Tell Me If You Still Care.