The Daylighters also recorded sides with producer Don Talty (Phil Upchurch Combo's 1961 You Can't Sit Down, Jan Bradley's 1963 Mama Didn't Lie). Group member Charles Chuck Colbert Jr.'s father gave the group money to buy the recording masters from Talty and helped to start the Nike Records label in 1961. Daylighters founding member Tony Gideon worked as one of the label's promotion men before being drafted into the armed services. In late 1961, the Daylighters' debut Nike single This Heart of Mine was released. The second single, Cool Breeze, arranged by Johnny Pate (Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions) was a local and regional hit, gaining some airplay on pop stations. Sims left the group and began recording as a solo artist with OKeh Records' Chicago branch head/producer Carl Davis (Major Lance, Walter Jackson, Billy Butler, Otis Leavill). Instead of getting a deal with the OKeh subsidiary, Sims was signed to the mother label, Columbia Records. Cool Breeze was reissued as the first Gerald Sims single. Meanwhile, the Daylighters, now consisting of a returning Tony Gideon, Thomas, Colbert, and former Dolphins members Curtis Burrell and Ulysses McDonald, continued to record for Nike, releasing Bottomless Pit b/w I Can't Stop Crying, which received massive local radio play in late 1963. Around the same time, the group's ode to a popular dance craze, Oh Mom (Teach Me How to Uncle Willie), got airplay. Another single, Whisper of the Wind, was picked up by VeeJay Records and issued on their Tollie imprint in late 1964. Not long after, the Daylighters issued their last single, For My Baby, and then disbanded.
Other Daylighters singles were Tell Me Before I Go b/w What About Me on Smash and You're Breaking My Heart on Bea and Baby. ~ Ed Hogan, Rovi