Papa Bear & His Cubs: Sweetest Thing on This Side of Heaven
Founded in 1963 by Eddie Disnute Sr, Papa Bear & His Cubs was a family band—Disnute Sr and his six kids—from Hampton, Arkansas. The group toured, recorded at SugarHill Studios and produced an LP—though only two tracks ever surfaced from those sessions. Our favorite, “Sweetest Thing on This Side of Heaven,” is a rich and soulful gospel-influenced track. Disnute Sr taught the kids to sing and play instruments. They would play together until the early ’80s, as their releasing labels Athens of the North puts it: until “the cubs were bears themselves.”
