As rock and roll and doo-wop became their primary interest, the Junior Harmonizers changed their name to the Royal Charms.

[2] In the winter of 1956, while still in high school, Williams and his band traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to record for the Excello label.

[6] Williams finished high school and while on the road with the band, their station wagon broke down in Bluefield, West Virginia.

[2] One month later, in the early summer of 1959, the band recorded in a Quonset Hut on Shakespeare Road in Columbia.

After taking the demo of "Stay" to Al Silver at Herald Records in New York City, the song was pressed and released in early 1960.

Later versions of "Stay", by the Four Seasons (1963) and Jackson Browne (1978),[2] reached the Top 20 in the U.S., each selling over one million copies in the United States alone.

The inclusion of the Zodiacs' "Stay" on the soundtrack to the film Dirty Dancing in 1987 led to the song selling more records than it had during its original release.