Sandy and Donna Rhodes are American singers and songwriters who have performed and recorded country music, and were also backing singers on many R&B records made in Memphis, Tennessee, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. Coming from a musical family that also included their father "Dusty" Rhodes and uncles "Slim" and "Speck" Rhodes, they recorded as a duo in the 1960s, first as The Rhodes Sisters and later as The Lonesome Rhodes. They also recorded, on their own account and as session musicians, with Sandy's then-husband Charles Chalmers as Rhodes Chalmers Rhodes (RCR). Sandy and Donna have continued to record and perform with family members and associates as The Rhodes Show, which was also the name of the family's earlier radio program.
Sandra Irene Rhodes was born in 1947, and her sister Donna Christine Rhodes in 1950. Their father, Perry Hilburn "Dusty" Rhodes (June 5, 1920 – December 1, 2005) played fiddle as a member of the Log Cabin Mountaineers, from the late 1920s, with his brothers Slim (Ethmer) and Speck (Gilbert) and sister Bea. The family group toured widely and had their own radio show in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, before moving to Memphis, Tennessee, where both Sandy and Donna were born.
Sandy Rhodes had her first success writing "How Much Can a Lonely Heart Stand", a minor hit for Skeeter Davis in 1964 which was also recorded by Sandy and Donna as The Rhodes Sisters.
Charles Chalmers
born 1942
The Lonesome Rhodes were an American singer-songwriter duo of the 1960s. Sandy and Donna Rhodes were discovered in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1965 and released five singles and one LP for RCA Records. The recordings were produced by Chet Atkins and Felton Jarvis.[1][2]
They later went on to form the group RCR with Charles Chalmers[3] and had minor hits in the U.S. with the songs "Scandal" and "Give It to You" in 1980.[4]
Slim Rhodes
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/categories/42/?name=Ethmer+Cletus+_Rhodes&birth=1912&location=2&priority=usa
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-springfield-news-leader-slim-rhodes/19754655/
https://www.sirshambling.com/articles/rhodes_chalmers_rhodes/index.php RHODES CHALMERS & RHODES By Tom de Jong Around 1996 I wrote a small article on Rhodes, Chalmers & Rhodes (RCR) in “Voices from the Shadows”. At that time I was surprised by the fact that Al Green, OV Wright and many great soul artists recording in and around Memphis were all supported by this white backing group. I began noting credits on albums, listing the songs RCR wrote and tried to list their solo recording as well as I could. That soon turned to be an impossible task because they were hugely productive in the seventies and they could be singing behind Aretha Franklin on one day and then on the next have a gig with Kris Kristofferson. The only area where I could strive for completeness was the solo recordings and I then made a first attempt. I made some mistakes and over the years picked up some obscure records that were new to me. To see what I had missed, I recently typed in “Rhodes Chalmers Rhodes” and “discography” into Google. Surprisingly that did not yield much useful information. So I will try to update the discography.
RCR consists of Sandra Rhodes, Charles (Charlie) Chalmers and Donna Rhodes. All three group members are still alive and kicking. In 2003 they backed Al Green on his “I Can’t Stop” album that was produced by the late Willie Mitchell. From his website here I learned that Charlie Chalmers is still active as producer in his own studio in Branson MO. He performed alongside Paul Anka in Vegas. Sandra Rhodes was married to Charlie but they are now divorced. She still plays a mean guitar at local country shows and Donna Rhodes occasionally fills in. What I didn’t know before, but learned from the internet, was that Sandra and Donna’s parents were Dusty and Dot Rhodes, both established country musicians. Some work by Dusty & Dot is on the Sun Memphis Belles CD box, released on the Bear Family label.
No point repeating here the scattered information on RCR that is available on the internet. But I’ll make two exceptions. First, the unsurpassed reissue label Kent put out three CDs of recordings on the XL / Sounds of Memphis label and a separate CD on Barbara and the Browns. These CDs deserve mention since Charlie Chalmers was involved in many superb deep soul records made by artists like William Bollinger and Barbara Brown. Second, in 1994 RCR were involved in recording a CD single for Reuben James in the UK. A soundtrack of Listen“Hold On My Heart” is included here (See PS below) for you to enjoy because it is well within the scope of the Sir Shambling website and seriously obscure. I got my personal copy through Voices.
The career of Sandra Rhodes got a great start when she wrote Listen"How Much Can A Lonely Heart Stand" that was recorded by country star Skeeter Davis, who had a minor hit with it. The take by the Rhodes Sisters on Dot has bigger production than the one on Penthouse, so I imagine the latter was the first one to be released in 1964. The early 45s were between country and pop. The Epic LP by Donna Rhodes contains deserving covers of soul classics, among which Listen"Your Good Thing". Her singing reminds me of Jackie Deshannon, whom she covered in Put A Little Love In Your Heart. RCR are prominent in many tracks recorded in the seventies by Willie Mitchell at the Hi studios.
In the Hi sound there was always a black/ white contrast between lead singer, like Al Green or OV Wright, and the backing group (RCR). But the contrast is far less then in, for instance, Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western. And RCR were soulful by themselves, as Dan Penn, Donnie Fritts, Jeannie Greene or Bonnie Bramlett were in that period. Especially Donna Rhodes had a big voice and Listen"Where’s You Love Been" on Hi is as good as the other female deep soul output on that label. Both Warner Brothers 45s have class and were recorded at Fame. Listen"Just Someone You Had" is my favourite.
Charles Chalmers began playing saxophone at many sessions in and around Memphis. He contributed to the background vocals in the Hi studios because this produced a fuller sound. His Chess instrumentals now sound dated to my ears. But I could imagine that some of these would fit very well on a sixties movie soundtrack. I see no reason why, for instance, Listen"White Dove" when picked up by the right producer, say Quentin Tarantino, would not be a movie hit.
Sandra Rhodes b c 1947
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/sandra-rhodes/31331806
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/feb/25/mammoth-spring-residents-inducted-hall-fa-20070225/
https://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2019/01/sandra-rhodes-wheres-your-love-been.html Sandra Rhodes was a country girl who landed in Memphis rather than Nashville, which means she ended up singing a lot more than just country music. Rhodes, along with her sister Donna Rhodes and husband Charlie Chalmers, did session work with some of the biggest names in both soul and country music, from Conway Twitty to Al Green, and as a singer and songwriter she walked a tightrope between the two sides of Southern music through the '60s and '70s (which were never as different as people liked to believe). Rhodes' love of both country and soul is evident on her first and only solo album to date, 1973's Where's Your Love Been, which was cut at the Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis; while this music is clearly informed by country music, with pedal steel guitar, lonesome harmonicas, and massed vocal choruses playing into the arrangements, there's a deeply soulful note in Rhodes' vocals and melodies that suggests the average C&W radio station wasn't going to play this stuff, no matter how much "No Such Thing as Love" and "No One Else Could Love You More" sound like great country singles.
When Rhodes felt like showing off her soulful side, she did it right; "The Best Thing You Ever Had" and the title track cut a top-notch groove, suggesting classic Hi Records sides, and the gospel feel that permeates "Never Grow Old" is clearly not of the bluegrass variety. If Rhodes didn't easily fall into a generic category, this record sounds like Memphis through and through, with its easy fusion of styles and potent yet comfortable grooves delivered by a crack session band. Where's Your Love Been isn't quite a lost classic, but it shows Sandra Rhodes was a gifted vocalist who could have had a great solo career with better breaks and a more supportive label, and it's a pure product of a city where soul comes as easily as breathing. [In 2014, Omnivore Records gave Where's Your Love Been an expanded and remastered reissue, with seven excellent outtakes from the original sessions included as bonus tracks, and fine liner notes from Bill Dahl. Fans of country-soul will clearly enjoy this set, and it's a splendid tribute to an overlooked talent. by Mark Deming
While Sandra Rhodes made a name for herself singing behind Al Green on his classic Hi Records sides and writing songs including Conway Twitty’s #1 single, “The Clown,” her best work missed the public eye. And ear.
Where’s Your Love Been was Sandra’s 1972 album, recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis and originally released on Fantasy Records. Just as her backing vocals (usually performed with sister Donna and then husband Charlie Chalmers) appeared on recordings of every genre, Where’s Your Love Been moved from Country to sweet Memphis Soul. The same reason her songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as Skeeter Davis to Isaac Hayes.
Co-Produced by Sandra and Chalmers, the ten tracks on Where’s Your Love Been include originals like the title cut to a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” To make this album’s CD debut even more special, seven bonus tracks from the sessions have been unearthed—all previously unissued!
With liner notes from Bill Dahl in a full color booklet, Where’s Your Love Been is ready for the audience that missed out on it over four decades ago. Like many other great “unheard” albums, Omnivore Recordings is proud to tell everyone that the question of Where’s Your Love Been has finally been answered. Omni
Donna Christine Rhodes b. 1950
https://img.tradera.net/images/599/552470599_d17832a2-a67d-431e-8b4c-d041c65a99a7.jpg
https://www.facebook.com/TheRhodesShow The Rhodes Show got its start in the 1930's with Slim, Speck, Dusty and Bea Rhodes. Fast forward 80 years and the musical legacy continues with Sandra and Donna Rhodes, Brenda "Bear" Barnett, Craig Morris and Donna and Craig's kids, Savannah and Sam.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/61852395/perry_hilburn_rhodes Perry Hilburn “Dusty” Rhodes BIRTH 5 Jun 1920 DEATH 1 Dec 2005 (aged 85) Part of the Mother's Best Mountaineers Band along with brothers Ethmer "Slim" and Gilbert "Speck" Rhodes.
Perry Dusty Rhodes Wednesday, December 21, 2005 Piggott Times Perry Dusty Rhodes, 85, a well-known entertainer and fiddle player, died Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005, at his home in Poplar Bluff. Mr. Rhodes, the son of the late James K. and Amanda Elizabeth (Montgomery) Rhodes, was born June 5, 1920, in Manila. Winning the National Fiddle Championship at age 13, he went on to establish his own entertainment show, the Rhodes Show. Mr. Rhodes was a member of the Highland Church of Christ. He was married June 30, 1945, to Garnett L. Arnold, who preceded him in death July 7, 2003. (He had a prior marriage to Lila Mae Foster in 1941). In addition to his parents and wife, he was preceded in death by one son, Perry Rhodes; and two brothers, Ethmer "Slim" Rhodes and Gilbert "Speck" Rhodes. Survivors include five children, Ron Rhodes and wife, Lynda, of Haines City, Fla., Sandra Rhodes and adopted daughter, Brenda Bear Barnett, both of Mammoth Spring, Gordon Rhodes of Nashville and Donna Rhodes and husband, Craig Morris, of Fairview, Tenn.; nine grandchildren, Shane Rhodes, Dawn Rhodes, Keith Rhodes, Heather Rhodes, Trent Rhodes, Savannah Morris, Sam Morris, Elayana Utley, Jake Utley and Kirsten Cox; and three sisters, Beatrice Hitt of Rogers, Ruby Dunn of Poplar Bluff and Jeffie Hitt of Lebanon, Tenn. Funeral services were at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, at the Highland Church of Christ with Vernon Curry officiating. Graveside services were at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6, at Dixon Memorial Gardens in Dixon, Tenn.
https://www.discogs.com/release/23390339-The-Rhodes-Show-On-The-Road-
https://www.last.fm/music/Sandra+Rhodes/+wiki
Sandra Rhodes (born Sandra I. Rhodes in Memphis), also known as Sandra "Chalmers" Rhodes or Sandra Chalmers, is an American singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist. As well as her 1973 album, "Where's Your Love Been", she recorded with her sister Donna Rhodes in the 1960s as The Lonesome Rhodes and later as a member of Rhodes, Chalmers & Rhodes.
Born into a musical family (her father was "Dusty" Rhodes, who performed with his siblings in the group "Slim" Rhodes & His Mountaineers), Rhodes made her recording debut as half of the Rhodes Sisters, a duo she formed with her sister Donna Rhodes that cut a few singles for the Penthouse, Dot, and Dial labels in 1964 and 1965. The duo then recorded for RCA as The Lonesome Rhodes from 1967 to 1968, including a 1968 album called Sandy & Donna. She later recorded as a member of Rhodes, Chalmers & Rhodes.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/518617-Rhodes-Chalmers-Rhodes
https://soulfuldetroit.com/showthread.php?23397-Rhodes-Chalmers-and-Rhodes
http://www.charliechalmers.com/bio.htm
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https://archive.org/details/radiowhoswho00andr/page/328/mode/2up?q=Varieties Character comedian, b. Brynmawr, Mon., 26th November, 1901. First broadcast from Marconi House in 1922. Address: c/o B.B.C., London, W.l. Started in chorus of Beecham Opera at fifteen years of age. Afterwards in chorus of " The Arcadians " and " The Lilac Domino." Was first winner of Federation of British Music Industries Scholarship for Singing at Guildhall School of Music. Later appeared in small parts in West End shows, and had his first big chance in "Many Happy Returns " at the Duke of York's while playing in Co-Optimists' Cabaret at Piccadilly Hotel. Sang Cole Porter songs in Cochran revue, "Wake Up and Dream," and went to New York with this show. Also appeared in New York in " The Vanderbilt Revue." Was eight years with the famous " Fol-de-Rols," the last two with E.N.S.A. Joined B.B.C. Repertory Company, 1941, and did over two hundred broadcasts the first year, including " The Armchair Detective," " Follies of the Air," to which he contributed much material, and " Itma." Had own series " Re-View " in pre-war television, and played the comedy part in the first and, so far, only television pantomime. Best known in radio as Chairman in "Palace of Varieties." Sang five old-time songs in Cochran's " Seventy years of Song " at the Albert Hall, and considers this one of the high spots of his career. Hobbies: Pigs and darts. Ambition: To write full score of a musical comedy or opera.
Bill Stephens
Bill Stephens (1901-1949)
Actor
Writer
Bill Stephens was born on 26 November 1901 in Brynmawr, Blaenau Gwent, Wales, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Dick Whittington and His Cat (1937), Red Peppers (1938) and Charley's Aunt (1938). He was married to Anne Bolt. He died on 9 December 1949 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK.
Born
November 26, 1901
Died
December 9, 1949
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https://archive.org/details/radiowhoswho00andr/page/n5/mode/2up?q=Varieties&view=theater
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--ONLY ONE SOURCE ? -- Neil Ewart Slaven (6 August 1944 – 23 December 2023) was a British blues historian, writer, and record producer.
He was born in Caterham, Surrey, and attended school in Purley where he became friends with fellow blues enthusiast Mike Vernon. He first worked at Esquire Records, a company that licensed American blues and jazz recordings, and then joined Vernon at Decca Records where he worked on album sleeve design. His first liner notes were for a 1964 album by Otis Spann.[5]
In 1965, Slaven and Vernon set up Blue Horizon Records. The label's first release, by Hubert Sumlin, featured Slaven on second guitar. He wrote the sleeve notes for the John Mayall album, Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. He also worked as a producer on albums for Blue Horizon, Decca, and Deram, including releases by the Keef Hartley Band, Pink Fairies, Savoy Brown, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, Trapeze, and others.[5]
Slaven and Vernon produced the magazine R&B Monthly, and Slaven later worked with Mike Leadbitter to compile the comprehensive discography, Blues Records, 1943-1966. Slaven also wrote liner notes for many reissued blues and R&B LPs, CDs and box sets, and wrote articles and reviews for magazines including Blues Unlimited, Juke Blues, and Vox. In 1996, he produced a well-regarded biography of Frank Zappa, Electric Don Quixote. In 2021, he helped compile, and wrote a companion book for, a 35-CD box set of John Mayall's recordings.[5]
Slaven died in 2023 at the age of 79.[5]
- Ghmyrtle/sandbox discography at Discogs
- Interview with Frank Zappa by Slaven, 1992
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NOT ENOUGH SOURCES? Fred Hillebrand (December 25, 1893 – September 15, 1963) was an American vaudeville performer, singer and songwriter.
https://travsd.wordpress.com/2018/12/25/fred-hillebrand/ DECEMBER 25, 2018TRAVSD Fred Hillebrand: The Man Who Gave Us the Phrase “Home, James!”
I became aware of songwriter and performer Fred Hillebrand (1893-1963) via his inclusion in the Sobel’s Illustrated History of Vaudeville.
Born in Brooklyn, Hillebrand had a relatively posh background for a show biz guy in his generation: he attended St. Joseph’s Academy and Juilliard. On stage he was known for his clever musical parodies and for writing songs in the minstrel vein.
In 1919, he appeared in the Broadway show Take it From Me with book and lyrics by Will B. Johnstone. Also in the show was the older and more established star Vera Michelena, soon to become his vaudeville partner as well as his wife (they were married in 1922). Hillebrand also appeared in the Broadway shows The Rose Girl (1921), Cinders (1923), The Optimists (1928), and Pleasure Bound (1929)
In his book Vaudeville: From Honky Tonks to the Palace, Joe Laurie Jr. wrote about Hillebrand as a friend and fellow member of the Lambs Club. He also mentions that Hillebrand was a friend of Gentleman Jim Corbett, and that he introduced the phrase “Give the little girl a hand!” which doesn’t sound particularly brilliant ,but it was later tweaked by Texas Guinan into “Give the little [girl] a great big hand!” which seems somewhat wittier.
Hillebrand’s popular 1934 song “Home, James, and Don’t Spare the Horses” is the origin of that catchphrase.
In the ’30s he broke into movies. You can see him in the shorts Hizzoner (1933) with Bert Lahr; Strange Case of Hennesy (1933) with Cliff Edwards (in which he sang his composition “I Thought I Heard a Noise”); Moon Over Manhattan (1935) with Sylvia Froos; The City’s Slicker (1936) with Rufe Davis; Rhythmitis (1936) with Hal Le Roy and Toby Wing; Say It With Candy (1936) with Virginia Verrill; and Ups and Downs (1937), with Hal Le Roy and June Allyson.
Hillebrand joined ASCAP in 1942. Some of his other songs include “Shake the Hand of the Man”, “How Many Dreams Ago?”, “Please Return My Heart”, “I’ll Meet You at Duffy Square”, “I Worry ‘Bout You”, and “Will There Be Room for All of Us in Heaven?”.
In 1943 he acted in Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson’s musical, Rio Rita at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. He has bit parts in the films The House of 92nd Street (1945) and House of Strangers (1949). He had a recurring role on the TV show Martin Kane (1949-53) and also appeared on programs Armstrong Circle Theatre and Man Against Crime in the early 50s.
Sadly, what he appears to be best known for today is a book he published in 1953, Burnt Cork and Melody: A New Minstrel Folio (comprising a full show with complete dialogue, words and music). It is no doubt a valuable document transmitting knowledge that dates back to the 19th century, but the idea that it would be for “performance” as late as 1953 is frankly irksome. Amateur groups, schools, and the like, would use a book like this to put on shows. The schools of Little Rock would be integrated by Federal order four years after this. Times would change irrevocably from that point on.
In 1954 Hillebrand went into the Broadway production of The Pajama Game in a small role as a replacement; it seems to be his last professional credit. Hillebrand and Michelena lived their last years in Queens. Michelena died in 1961; Hillebrand followed her two years later.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0384839/
Fred Hillebrand(1893-1963)
Actor
Soundtrack
Songwriter ("Shake the Hand of the Man"), actor, author and composer, educated at St. Joseph's Academy and Juilliard. He was a musical-comedy actor for twenty-five years and wrote his own material, and wrote several stage scores in addition to music for television. Joining ASCAP in 1942, his other popular-song compositions include "How Many Dreams Ago?", "Please Return My Heart", "I'll Meet You at Duffy Square", "I Worry 'Bout You", and "Will There Be Room for All of Us in Heaven?".
Born
December 25, 1893
Died
September 15, 1963(69)
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/109527/Hillebrand_Fred
https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/dont-spare-the-horses/
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/16022967:6482
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/7555824:1002
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??? INSUFFICIENT SOURCES??
Jeffrey Randolph Weber III (born 1952) is an American music producer and executive.
Born in Los Angeles, California, he studied English and Creative Writing at UCLA, before graduating from Southwestern Law School in 1976. He worked as a reporter on legal issues at Cashbox magazine, before leaving in 1977
Ancestry.com. California Birth Index, 1905-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
https://www.fastbackgroundcheck.com/people/jeffrey-weber/id/f-9879464655396178680
born feb 3 https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.weber.39/
https://music.us/expert/letters/Music_Expert_Letter_Professor_Jeffrey_Weber_Esq.pdf
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyweber/ Education Southwestern Law School logo Southwestern Law SchoolSouthwestern Law School J.D., LawJ.D., Law 1973 - 19761973 - 1976 Activities and societies: Law Review, Editor - School NewspaperActivities and societies: Law Review, Editor - School Newspaper UCLA logo UCLAUCLA BA, English/Creative WritingBA, English/Creative Writing 1969 - 1973 Jeffrey Weber has been a recognized music industry professional for over forty years. He has produced over 200 CDs. Along the way, his projects have yielded two Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, at least seventeen top ten albums, two number one albums and an assortment of other honors. His books, "Pandemic Side Effects - A Tragic Comedy of Unintended Consequences," "You Sound Amazing! Every Single Lie Of The Music Business," "We'll Get Back To You! Even Bigger Lies Of The Music Business" and "You've Got A Deal! The Biggest Lies of the Music Business" are all published by Headline Books. He has founded, ran or participated in various label capacities from A&R, Music Supervision for film and TV, Production, Interactive Programming, Marketing, Sales and Business Affairs for countless indie labels. His productions have also appeared on every major label including MCA, Warner Bros., Atlantic, BMG, Columbia, A&M, Elektra as well as such labels as GRP, Hip-O, Sheffield, Concord, Bainbridge, Silver Eagle, Zebra, among countless others. Jeff is very active as a music supervisor for film, television and cable. He specializes in cost effective synchronization and master use license acquisition strategies as well as production based music options. Jeff is in high demand as a consultant to the financial industry on a multitude of music industry related matters. To date, he has consulted with such companies as Canyon Capital Advisors, Samlyn Capital LLC, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Apollo Investments, Morgan Stanley, MSD Capital (UK) Limited, BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs and Scopia Capital, LLC. Jeff is a former member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) as well as a former National Trustee and Chapter Vice President. Jeff can be contacted at jeffreyweber@me.com. Specialties: Record label business model re-definition, A&R, Music Supervision for film and TV, Music Production, Interactive Programming, Marketing, Sales, Digital Distribution, Business Affairs, International Relations, Art Direction, Educator
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/You_ve_Got_a_Deal.html?id=jAR9tQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
https://www.discogs.com/artist/273371-Jeffrey-Weber
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-10-18-ca-13708-story.html
https://www.pivotplanet.com/advisors/music-producer/jeffrey-weber
Jeffrey Weber
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Weberworks Entertainment Group
You want to know what puts a bounce in my step? It’s the challenge of making emotionally evocative and sonically superior music with extraordinarily talented individuals around the world. My goal is to inspire performance from each of my artists in a non-judgmental environment.
My projects have yielded two Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, at least seventeen top ten albums, two number one albums and an assortment of other honors.
Weberworks Entertainment Group works with a core of three to five people. Depending on the scale and complexity of projects, we can employ upwards to 200 people. We are a virtual company with a desire for nimble movement.
My productions have appeared on major labels including MCA, Warner Bros., Atlantic, BMG, Columbia, A&M, Elektra as well as labels such as GRP, Hip-O, Sheffield, Concord, Bainbridge, Silver Eagle, Zebra and countless others. My work with independent labels includes Penny’s Gang, 44-4 Records, Discwasher Records, Prima Records, Beach Jazz, Agenda Records, Denon Records, Handshake Records, Audio Source Records, Voss Records, Video Arts, Clear Audio, Pony Canyon, P.C.H. Records, En Pointe Records, Cameron Records as well as my own labels, Weberworks and Stark Raving Records.
In addition to being a music producer, I have been a concert and event producer for over ten years with extensive experience in concert management, tour management, road management, production, staging, lighting, and sound from the smallest of venues to large stadium shows. I have produced shows for the Atlantis Resort, NASCAR, the Breeder's Cup, Chicago White Sox, Cystic Fibrosis, Fallsview Casino and Resort, Ford, Harry Caray's, KTLA, Loehmann's Department Store, Lupus L.A., NAMM, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Netflix, Orange County Flyers, Pebble Beach Pro-Am, AT&T, Dockers, Shore Club-South Beach, Taste Of Chicago, USAA, American Idol, The Tonight Show, among many others.
A small fraction of the many artists for whom I have produced live shows include: Nancy Wilson, David Benoit, the Utah Symphony, Tom Scott, Etta James, Bo Diddley, Linda Hopkins, Kenny Burrell, McCoy Tyner, the Count Basie Orchestra, Buddy Miles, Billy Preston, Kenny Rankin, Diane Reeves, Diane Schuur, Band From TV and Toni Tennille.
In this business, having a vision is all important. Believing in your vision and in yourself provides the catalyst for the long distance ride to success. My PivotPlanet clients will learn to see themselves differently, and watch as the world then sees them differently as well. There is magic in creating a piece of music that contains every emotional sliver we can think of - drama, tragedy, humor, resentment, love, affection, steadfastness, commitment, anger, resignation and resolution. How can one not desire to create when the results are so life changing?
MORE After finishing law school, I accidentally found my way into making records. I started as a “gofer”. Then, I decided to take the risk and try producing a record. The rest is history.
Since 1978, I have continued to take risks, one project at a time. Many times over the years I have actually questioned my sanity! But my work and achievements have resulted in positioning me as a recognized music industry professional. I have produced more than 180 CDs with releases on just about every major label, as well as a host of independent labels.
During my career, I have founded, run or participated in various label capacities including A&R, music supervision for film and TV, production, interactive programming, marketing, sales, international relations, business affairs and art direction.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/70s/1977/CB-1977-11-19.pdf
https://www.studioexpresso.com/profiles/jeffweber.htm Jeffrey Weber producer
Jeffrey Weber has been a widely recognized music industry professional for over thirty-five years. He has produced over 185 CDs with releases on just about every major label as well as a host of independent labels. Along the way, his projects have yielded two Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, at least seventeen top ten albums, two number one albums and an assortment of other honors.
Weber with Jazz Hourigan (First row L to R) Jess Burton, Andre Frappier (Guitar), Clark Germain (Engineer), Troy Laureta (Keys, Arranger). (Back row L to R) Jeremy Miller (Asst. Engineer), Michael Clark (Score Supervisor, Assoc. Producer), Jeffrey Weber (Producer), Keith "Stix" McJimson (Drums), Timothy Bailey (Bass) at East West Studio 1.
Stark Raving Press, Weber’s next gen novella length eBook publishing company launched in 2013. There are currently close to ninety authors on his roster including NY Times Bestselling authors, Pulitzer Prize winners and an assortment of other highly lauded authors. The company has national and international distribution and focuses on mysteries, crime fiction, action/adventure, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, women’s literature, romance and non-fiction. Each of their titles is $2.99 or less.
His books, “We’ll Get Back To You! Even Bigger Lies Of The Music Business” and "You've Got A Deal! The Biggest Lies of the Music Business" are both published by Headline Books.
During his thirty-five plus year career in the music industry, he has founded, ran or participated in various label capacities from A&R, Music Supervision for film and TV, Production, Interactive Programming, Marketing, Sales, International Relations, Business Affairs and Art Director for independent labels such as Penny’s Gang, 44-4 Records, Discwasher Records, Prima Records, Beach Jazz, Agenda Records, Denon Records, Handshake Records, Audio Source Records, Voss Records, Video Arts, Clear Audio, Pony Canyon, P.C.H. Records, En Pointe Records, Cameron Records as well as his own labels, Weberworks and Stark Raving Records.
His productions have also appeared on every major label including MCA, Warner Bros., Atlantic, BMG, Columbia, A&M, Elektra as well as such labels as GRP, Hip-O, Sheffield, Concord, Bainbridge, Silver Eagle, Zebra, among countless others.
Among the many artists that have fallen under the banner of “Produced by...” include: Nancy Wilson, David Benoit, Steve Lukather, the Utah Symphony, Jackson Browne, Marcus Miller, Michael McDonald, Bill Champlin, Gerald Albright, Tom Scott, Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, Etta James, Linda Hopkins, Kenny Burrell, McCoy Tyner, Jackie McLean, Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big), Cozzy Powell, the Count Basie Orchestra, John Sebastian, Ronnie Dio, Ritchie Blackmore, Pat Boone, Buddy Miles, Billy Preston, MC Lyte, Kenny Rankin, Diane Reeves, Diane Schuur, Rita Coolidge, Luther Vandross, David Crosby, Simon Phillips, Jeff Porcaro, Patrice Rushen, Toni Tennille, among many others.
Jeff has been a concert and event producer for over ten years with extensive experience in concert management and production, staging, lighting, and sound from the smallest of venues to large stadium shows. He has produced shows for the Atlantis Resort, NASCAR, the Breeder's Cup, Chicago White Sox, Cystic Fibrosis, Fallsview Casino and Resort, Ford, Harry Caray's, KTLA, Loehmann's Department Store, Lupus L.A., NAMM, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Netflix, Orange County Flyers, Pebble Beach Pro-Am, AT&T, Dockers, Shore Club-South Beach, Taste Of Chicago, USAA, American Idol, The Tonight Show, among many others.
Jeff is in high demand as a consultant to the financial industry on a multitude of music industry related matters. To date, he has consulted with such companies as Canyon Capital Advisors, Samlyn Capital LLC, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., Morgan Stanley, MSD Capital (UK) Limited, BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Putnam Investments, and Scopia Capital, LLC.
Recently, Weber finalized his, from the ground up, re-definition of the business model for a record label that he firmly believes will be the architecture for all labels in the future. Weber’s model has embraced a complete slate of innovative concepts and procedures, ranging from the manner in which artist contracts are conceived and implemented to recording procedures, to innovations in sales, marketing and promotion. Designed to re-invent and re-energize the relationships between the artist and the label and the artist and the consumer, the model establishes format-breaking levels of transparency and unique partnerships in all label/artist/fan relationships.
His innovative concepts were the operational foundations for two independent labels distributed by Fontana (Universal). At the time, he was named President of both labels.
Jeff is well known for his involvement in high technology recording techniques, especially live two track recording, live multi-track and digital recording. Because of their sonic excellence, his recordings have been repeatedly selected by major hardware manufacturers to demonstrate their product lines.
Jeff is very active as a music supervisor for film, television and cable. He specializes in cost effective synchronization and master use license acquisition strategies as well as production based music options.
Jeff co-founded and programmed Studio M, a nationwide broadcast television network that utilized their growing 28,000 music video library to broadcast multiple genre based music video shows. It was on the air seven days a week, for five hours a day to an estimated audience of thirty million homes
In addition to music production, Jeff has spent over twenty years behind the microphone as a voice-over talent for commercials, cartoons, industrial films, infomercials, live web broadcasting, and television. He has done voice work for Interscope (Guns & Roses), Toyota, Nissan, Ford, VR Troopers, the Ventura County Star newspaper chain, Play It Again Sports, Sony, Boston Acoustics, Audio Source, the BBC, the Jazz Network, Dejaun Jewelers, the Los Angeles Zoo, CBS and Warner Bros., among countless others. He continues to be extremely active in this field.
Well versed in video production, Jeff has written, produced and directed over two-dozen music based concerts and videos. For one project, he produced a 12 camera, High Definition, robotic, five-channel surround sound DVD/CD for Band From TV, a rock and roll cover band comprised of famous television actors who travel the country raising money for their selected charities. He traveled with the band, producing all their live concerts for over five years.
He has been a music journalist with articles in major industry publications nationwide. He has received numerous awards as an art director and many of his album cover designs have been published in ”Best of...” annual publications. As an educator, he has taught courses on the music industry at universities and law schools (he has a law degree as well) across the country.
Jeff is a former member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) as well as a former National Trustee and Chapter Vice President.
Jeff can be contacted at weberworks@earthlink.net.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1634816/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm Mini Bio Jeffrey Weber has been a widely recognized music industry professional for over thirty years. He has produced over 180 CDs with releases on just about every major label as well as a host of independent labels. Along the way, his projects have yielded two Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, at least seventeen top ten albums, two number one albums and an assortment of other honors.
During his thirty plus year career, he has founded, ran or participated in various label capacities from A&R, Music Supervision for film and TV, Production, Interactive Programming, Marketing, Sales, International Relations, Business Affairs and Art Director for independent labels such as Penny's Gang, 44-4 Records, Discwasher Records, Prima Records, Beach Jazz, Agenda Records, Denon Records, Handshake Records, Audio Source Records, Voss Records, Video Arts, Clear Audio, Pony Canyon, P.C.H. Records, En Pointe Records, Cameron Records as well as his own labels, Weberworks and Stark Raving Records.
His productions have also appeared on every major label including MCA, Warner Bros., Atlantic, BMG, Columbia, A&M, Elektra as well as such labels as GRP, Hip-O, Sheffield, Concord, Bainbridge, Silver Eagle, Zebra, among countless others.
Among the many artists that have fallen under the banner of "Produced by..." include: Nancy Wilson, David Benoit, Steve Lukather, the Utah Symphony, Jackson Browne, Marcus Miller, Michael McDonald, Bill Champlin, Gerald Albright, Tom Scott, Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, Etta James, Linda Hopkins, Kenny Burrell, McCoy Tyner, Jackie McLean, Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big), Cozzy Powell, the Count Basie Orchestra, John Sebastian, Ronnie Dio, Ritchie Blackmore, Pat Boone, Buddy Miles, Billy Preston, MC Lyte, Kenny Rankin, Diane Reeves, Diane Schuur, Rita Coolidge, Luther Vandross, David Crosby, Simon Phillips, Jeff Porcaro, Patrice Rushen, Toni Tennille, among many others.
He is well known for his involvement in high technology recording techniques, especially live two track recording, live multi-track and digital recording. Because of their sonic excellence, his recordings have been repeatedly selected by major hardware manufacturers to demonstrate their product lines.
He is very active as a music supervisor for film, television and cable. He specializes in cost effective synchronization and master use license acquisition strategies as well as production based music options.
In addition to music production, Jeff has spent over twenty years behind the microphone as a voice-over talent for commercials, cartoons, industrial films, infomercials, live web broadcasting, and television. He has done voice work for Interscope (Guns & Roses), Toyota, Nissan, Ford, VR Troopers, the Ventura County Star newspaper chain, Play It Again Sports, Sony, Boston Acoustics, Audio Source, the BBC, the Jazz Network, Dejaun Jewelers, the Los Angeles Zoo, CBS and Warner Bros., among countless others. He continues to be extremely active in this field.
Jeff is a former member of the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) as well as a former National Trustee and Chapter Vice President.
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https://secondhandsongs.com/work/174992/all
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TOO LITTLE INFO!
Nehemiah Ruffin (May 24, 1920 – February 9, 1991), usually known as Riff Ruffin and also sometimes credited as Eddie Riff or Mister Ruffin, was an American jazz and R&B singer and guitarist.
He was born in Windsor, North Carolina, later moving with his family to Philadelphia. He made his first record, the self-penned "Bring It On Back" / "A Touch of Heaven", for Leiber and Stoller's Spark Records in Los Angeles in 1955. He recorded for several labels in Los Angeles, including Cash and Ebb, a label founded by Leona Rupe (the former wife of Art Rupe). He also played as second guitarist in Elmore James' band. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Amazing_Secret_History_of_Elmore_Jam/EEMIAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22Elmore+James%22+biography&dq=%22Elmore+James%22+biography&printsec=frontcover https://www.wirz.de/music/jameselm.htm
https://www.rocknroll-schallplatten-forum.de/topic.php?t=8162
https://www.discogs.com/artist/659051-Riff-Ruffin
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32335401/nehemiah-ruffin
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The Come Backs ??ALMOST NO SOURCING??
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Paul Armstrong (1869-1915) https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0035854/?ref_=tt_ov_wr The Deep Purple (1915 film) https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/76373360/paul-armstrong https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SJMN19150831.2.10&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-------- https://www.nytimes.com/1915/08/31/archives/paul-armstrong-playwright-dies-author-of-alias-jimmy-valentine.html https://missouriencyclopedia.org/people/armstrong-paul https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=NYC19150918.2.174&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN----------
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Orval M. Hixon (February 4, 1884 – January 29, 1982) was an American photographer
https://broadway.library.sc.edu/content/orval-hixon.html Orval Hixon Time Period: 1914-1930 Location: Main Street, Kansas City, MO Biography: (1884-1982)
Born near rural Richmond, Missouri, Orval Hixon as a schoolboy sought to be a painter, but color blindness prompted teachers to urge him to take up black & white photography. Through his teens he worked as a printer's apprentice in the Richmond Missourian, supplying occasional news and portrait photos. Throughout his twenties, he worked as a newspaperman shooting photographs on the side. Strongly interested in visual texture and spatial arrangement, he studied portrait photography in magazines to nourish his taste. He regarded himself a participant in the Arts & Crafts movement and held the conviction that any working person in the United States could be an artist.
He served six years as a technician in Studebaker Studios in Kansas City before opening, in 1914, Hixon-Knight Studio, a partnership devoted to children's photography. The artistry of Homer K. Peyton of the Strauss-Peyton Studio in Kansas City in handling photo backgrounds stirred Hixon's ambition. He jettisoned his partner, and sought to develop a first-tier professional business. He studied graphic arts at the Kansas City Art Institute and began aggressively to manipulate his negatives. In 1916 a theatrical gypsy, James Hargis Connelly, offered to become Hixon's business manager if Hixon would teach him photography. They formed a partnership. Connelly's theatrical connections immediately bore fruit. By the end of 1916 he produced a memorable series of publicity portraits of vamp Valeska Suratt for Fox Studio. In January 1917 Hixon placed his first portrait, of Ruth St. Denis, in Theatre Magazine, commencing his career as a first call camera artist for national periodicals.
From late 1917-1919 Connelly was a soldier in Europe, and Hixon in isolation continued his experimentation with portraits, dissolving the emulsion in the backgrounds of photographs with acetone, abrading the negatives to form areas of light, using paints and graphite pencils to sketch in patterns surrounding the subject. He specialized in romantic visions of lyrical femininity and mysterious images of gothic intensity.
In 1920, he moved his studio to the Baltimore hotel. The citizens of Kansas City flocked to the studio. Banking on the reputation, he opened branch studios in Liberty, Missouri, and Manhattan, Kansas. He also contracted short term partnerships with H. Kenyon Newman (1923) and James A. Wiese (1926, 1928). The rise of the movie house and the decline of vaudeville led to the attenuation of his theatrical business in the later 1920s. In 1930, he left Kansas City to Bert Studio and Cornish-Baker Studio, and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where he maintained the business in the Eldredge hotel until 1958.
His negatives and a number of prints were donated to the Art Museum of the University of Kansas. The Kansas City Public Library in 2010 opened a gallery whose contents were donated by members of the Hixon family of a substantial body of his performing arts images. A brief autobiography and critical appreciation appears in James Enyeart's, Main Street Studio (The University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1971). David S. Shields/ALS
Specialty: Hixon was the premier autodidact photographer of the Midwest Arts & Crafts movement. A pictorialist in the sense that he considered the photographic print an art object worthy of fetishistic elaboration, he nevertheless was drawn to artifice rather than nature.
He was also a portraitist, working at times in conjuction with James Hargis Connelly, the Chicago photographer, interested in evoking the magic of theatrical craft in the studio. His manipulations of negatives are often extensive, sometimes creating strange arabesques of light, or reticulations of shadow in the backgrounds for graphic interest. He had a penchant for dark and half shaded prints.
While he published in national magazines frequently in the 1920s, his reproduced images lack the impact of the original prints which are among the strangest and most compelling of the period. Because his subjects tended to be vaudevillians touring one of the three circuits that conjoined in Kansas City, his portraits partook of the extremity of gesture and expression characteristic of the extraordinarily competitive world of vaudeville. When glamour portraiture was tending to stillness and coolness of expression, Hixon explored the most extravagant practitioners of personal notice-grabbing.
https://www.bandwmag.com/articles/orval-hixon-portraits-of-vaudeville
https://www.sundancephotogallery.com/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Orval_Hixon
https://prabook.com/web/orval.hixon/1719451
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/6482/images/005151873_04549?pId=31117231
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Isadore Channels (February 1, 1900 – June 30, 1959) was an American tennis and basketball player, described as "one of the great African American athletes of the 1920s".
She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the only child of farm laborer Allen Channels and his wife Fannie (née Adams). Her parents divorced when she was young, and by 1916 she was living in Chicago. In 1919, she began playing tennis at the Prairie Tennis Club, which had been set up in 1912 for African Americans in the city. The club was co-owned by Mary Ann Seames, known as Mrs. C. O. Seames or "Mother Seames".
https://www.fwinkspot.com/in-touch/2023/10/1/in-touch-with-tennis-and-basketball#:~:text=Isadore%20Channels%20was%20born%20somewhere,also%20seeking%20freedom%20and%20opportunity. Isadore Channels was born somewhere around 1900 in Louisville, Kentucky to farm laborer Allen Channels, and his wife Fannie. Isadore was their only child. The Channels migrated to Chicago somewhere between 1910 and 1920 during the first wave of the Great Migration also seeking freedom and opportunity. Isadore Channels began her training in tennis in a private organization called the Prairie Tennis Club which was owned by African Americans of middle-class status. The Prairie Tennis Club was a member of a larger organization of African American tennis clubs, named the American Tennis Association (ATA) and its founding in 1916 was based on the long history of segregated tennis in the United States. The first twelve years of the ATA Women’s Singles Championship were dominated by four black women tennis icons and Channels was one of them. She won the Championship in 1922, 1923, 1924, and 1926.
Channels was also building a reputation as one of the top amateur women basketball players in Chicago. She was a founding member of the Roamer Girls, which was formed during the 1920-21 season. The Roamers were formed from a group of girls in the Grace Presbyterian Sunday School in 1920. The Roamer Girls played highly competitive games. They disbanded in 1926 but came together again for the 1927-28 season and disbanded again at the end of the season. However, they came together again in the 1929-30 season and Ora Washington and Isadore Channels were on the same team. The Roamers won the weeks long tournament in early February but by the end of the season, they disbanded.
In July 1927, Channels moved to Roanoke, Virginia and pursued nursing education. She became a Registered Nurse and worked as a nurse in Atlanta, Georgia, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Sikeston, in southeastern Missouri. She got a position in Sikeston as a Public Health Nurse where she originally served the African American population in the counties of Scott and Mississippi. By 1953, she worked in the Sikeston school system, serving as the school nurse for Lincoln School. The notices in the local newspaper mentioned Channels’ positions and some community activities but made no mention of her previous status as a tennis champion. Channels died on June 30, 1959. Her death certificate shows no known relatives. Her death went unreported in any kind of press, black or white and remained unknown for decades.
https://historyofsport.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/isadore-channels-and-the-roamer-girls-a-great-african-american-basketball-and-tennis-star-essay-by-robert-pruter/ Isadore Channels and the Roamer Girls: a Great African American Basketball and Tennis Star; Essay by Robert Pruter Posted on June 27, 2019 by Robert Pruter To illustrate concept in textIsadore Channels was one of the great African American athletes of the 1920s, a four-time singles winner of the African American national tennis tournament and captain of the top female black basketball team, the Roamer Girls, in Chicago.
Isadore Channels is commonly recognized in all the histories of African American tennis and basketball as one of the greats of both games. She established her reputation in Chicago, emerging at the beginning of the 1920s and sustaining herself for more than a decade as both a top basketball star for the Roamers team, and a top tennis star, winning four national singles titles. Despite the tremendous legacy Channels established in African American sports, and her frequent notation in the histories of both African American basketball and tennis virtually nothing had been known about her.
The basic outline of Channels’ life has been uncovered by this author in 2013, but parts of her life remain sketchy.1 She was born Isadore Channels (not Isadora Channels as she was often called throughout her life), on February 1, 1900, in Louisville, Kentucky, to a farm laborer, Allen Channels, and his wife Fannie (nee Adams). Isadore was their only child. While Allen could not read or write, Fannie was listed in the census as literate. For some years the family lived in Louisville, the length of time is unknown. The family does not appear or cannot be found in the censuses of 1910 and 1920, although there is a 1910 listing of an illiterate Allen Channels living alone in the area working as a gardener who may be Isadore’s father. At some point, possibly before 1910, Allen and Fannie were divorced.2
Isadore Channels was located in Chicago by at least late 1916, judging by an item listing in the Chicago Defender that reported that the 16-year old along with her friend Vivian Moss gave a dancing party on New Year’s Day in 1917. By 1919 it is definite that Isadore was playing on African-American tennis courts in the city.3
Channels’ migration to Chicago (possibly accompanying her mother, Fannie) was one of more than 56,000 African Americans who left the South to settle in the city seeking freedom and opportunity between 1910 and 1920. She was also numbered among the 3,164 Kentucky-born migrants to the city in this period. This migration helped to explode Chicago’s African American population in that period from 44,103 (2 percent of the total population) to 109,458 (4 percent) residents. The African American population influx into Chicago was a part of what is called the Great Migration, a massive movement of blacks from the South to the North from World War I to the end of the 1920s, a half a million from 1916-19, and close to another million during the 1920s. Hand in hand with this migration was the explosion in the national circulation of the Chicago Defender, which endlessly reported on the lynchings and everyday social and economic oppression in the South, luring blacks to the North by painting a dramatic contrast to life in the South with reports of freedom and economic opportunity experienced in the North and particularly in Chicago. Isadore Channels, undoubtedly hearing the siren calls from the North, should be counted as among the pioneers in the Great Migration.4
Channels made the most of her freedom and opportunity in Chicago by developing into a national tennis star, learning her sport in a private club owned by African Americans. Such an establishment and the opportunity it presented for blacks would have been unimaginable in the South. Sometime in 1919, Channels began training at the Prairie Tennis Club, perhaps an indication of her middle class aspirations. The club’s co-owner was Mary Ann Seames, usually referred to as Mrs. C. O. Seames, but fondly known as Mother Seames because she was considered founder of African American tennis in Chicago. Seames was 37 years old when she was introduced to tennis in 1906. She was in ill health, and decided to take up the sport to help her get stronger and well. At the time, there were only a handful of black players in the city, one of them being A. L. Turner (father of future tennis star Douglas Turner), who taught Seames’s the game. She became hugely enthusiastic over the sport, and worked avidly to spread its benefits to Chicago’s black community.
The sport received a considerable boost in black Chicago in 1912, when Seames with her husband, Charles O. Seames, and three other African American women formed the Prairie Tennis Club. The initial officers of the club were all men, however, notably Nathan E. Caldwell (an official in the local NAACP) as the first president. The club was originally located at a dirt and clay court, Prairie Avenue and 37th Street, but after three years the Seames’s relocated the court to 35th and Giles Avenue (both locations in the heart of the growing Black Belt).5
By the time Channels arrived at the club in 1919, Mother Seames was the reigning queen of African American tennis in Chicago, consistently winning the city’s women’s singles title every year. The Prairie Tennis Club presented a great opportunity for Channels as it had all the top African American tennis players in the city, and with the best teachers she was sure to blossom into a top player if she had the native athletic ability and the will to learn and work.6
The Prairie Tennis Club was member of a larger organization of African American tennis clubs, called the American Tennis Association (ATA). The ATA was formed in 1916, and what led up to its founding was a long history of segregated tennis, in which the national governing body in the United States, the United Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA), formed in 1881, and its member clubs practiced racial exclusion from their inception. African Americans, as they had in other sports, most notably baseball, were thus forced to build their own institutions and competitions to play competitive tennis. During the 1890-95 period, Tuskegee Institute claimed the lead in pioneering tennis among African Americans in black colleges and universities. But tennis during the 1890s was primarily developed among the African American social elite, who proceeded to build courts and form tennis clubs, and soon by the end of the century a number had been formed, primarily in the Middle Atlantic states and New England. Despite ostracism in polite white society, sports such as tennis and golf thus served as a means toward gaining social capital within black culture.7
By the time of World War I, tennis among African Americans was spreading beyond the Eastern cities, notably with the emergence of an African American tennis scene in Chicago. This expansion set the stage for the formation of the ATA in November of 1916, in Washington DC. Headquarters were set up in New York City, however, where a large proportion of the African American tennis clubs were located. The following year the ATA held its first national tournament, sponsored by the Monumental Club in Baltimore, involving twelve clubs, and three events—men’s singles, women’s singles, and men’s doubles. Each year the tournament grew so that by the 1920s Channels, with the competitive opportunities provided by the ATA was able to become a major champion and a significant athletic figure for her race. Her adoption of tennis would significantly help to socially advance her from a child of an illiterate farm laborer to a middle class status in African American society.8
The ATA at its founding dedicated itself with providing learning opportunities and competitive opportunities in tennis for African Americans. More importantly, tennis was viewed by African Americans as a vehicle to advance the race. The black elite saw tennis as sport of gentlemen and ladies, as it was played by the white elite. Such black aspirants aspired to white social norms because they were the only ones that the dominant mainstream white society would respect. Blacks had to accept and demonstrate that they had reached acceptable levels of “civilization.” The genteel sport of tennis spoke much louder than the victories of black boxers.9
The ATA nationals in 1921 represented the advent of Chicago into the competition, and the city had some players that would surprise the East, notably the unknown Isadore Channels. The progress of Channels had been rapid before her debut in the 1921 nationals, where Chicago was attempting to make an impact by sending five players. By July of 1920 she had won the African American championship for Chicago, dethroning Mother Seames, who reportedly had been women’s singles champion for eight straight years. Seames was due to lose, she was 45 years old. In 1921, Channels repeated as Chicago champion and then surprised the experts in the East when she took second place in the ATA in the women’s singles national championship in September., Channels upset the field, easily beating her opponent in the first round with her “clever stroking and brilliant ground play,” then “overwhelming” the number two-ranked player, Lottie Wade of New York, so that when she lost the finals match in three sets to Lucy Slowe of Baltimore, observers almost considered it an upset by Slowe. The Chicago Defender commented that despite the final match loss, “Miss Channels has undoubtedly the best command of her racquet of any female player seen on the courts.10
The Chicago Defender exclaimed in early 1922, “The rise of Isadore Channels of Chicago is most remarkable. Three years ago this young girl knew nothing of the game, but under the tutorship of two of Chicago’s best gentlemen players she rapidly developed….” The Defender report, unfortunately does not give the names of the “gentlemen players.” What Channels did in terms of African-American women’s tennis was to help develop it into a more national scope by making Chicago a factor in black tennis competition. Her teammate from Chicago at the 1921 nationals, Dr. O. B. Williams, likewise helped establish the city’s reputation, by taking second in men’s singles.11
In 1922, at the ATA nationals in Philadelphia, Channels took her first national women’s title by beating Lottie Wade of New York, which ended the Eastern states’ dominance of the tournament. Her success and the lesser success of other Chicago tennis players were influential factors in the American Tennis Association awarding the national championship tournament to Chicago for 1923. In addition, the Prairie Tennis Club had upgraded to new courts at 32nd and Vernon Avenue. This represented the first time the ATA held its national tournament outside the East, a significant civic recognition for black society in Chicago as it began to assert itself as a challenger to Harlem’s cultural leadership in the African American community.12
Channels was known for a her highly athletic game, as indicated by the following description from Frank Young of the Chicago Defender evaluating her chances before the 1923 championship: “…Miss Isadore, with her mean back-hand and her cross-court drives, her ability to play the net as well as the back court, makes her the strongest contender for the national honors.” In the championship match, which according to the Chicago Defender was played before the largest crowd ever to see an ATA national championship match, Channels again defeated Lottie Wade.13
African American journalists and their readers as well would often confer upon exceptional black entertainers and sports stars sobriquets that would associate them to their white counterparts in achievement. For example, nineteenth-century African American opera singer, Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, was famously called “The Black Patti” after the famed Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Channels was receiving the same kind of recognition in the black press, when the Chicago Defender gave her the sobriquet “the Bronze Helen Wills,” after the United States top woman tennis player. Edgar Brown in his column for the Afro American on the 1923 nationals, while not directly using a sobriquet, referred to Channels as “our own Mme. Lenglen,” to compare Channels to the great French tennis star, Suzanne Lenglen. Recognizing his readers were painfully aware that their stars were not\being given the opportunity to compete against the white stars, Browne said of Channels, “I think Miss Channels would hold her own with the best tournament players of the world and I hope to see the day come when she will be competing for the great lawn tennis trophy pitted in the finals against Mlle. Lenglen, the so far invincible French woman.14
Channels’ career peaked in the 1924 nationals, at the Monumental Club in Baltimore, not only winning singles for the third consecutive year, but also winning women’s doubles and taking second in mixed doubles. In the singles title game, Channels beat a new tennis star from Philadelphia, Lulu Ballard, a 100-pound 16-year old schoolgirl from Germantown High. This victory was no sure thing, however, because a week earlier in a Philadelphia tournament, Channels was upset by Ballard in straight sets, certainly an intimation of things to come in Channels’ tennis future. Channels was teamed up with a New Yorker, Miss Leonard, in doubles, and the pair coasted to the championship, beating an all-Chicago pairing of Dorothy Radcliff and Mrs. C. O. Seames. In mixed doubles Channels was teamed up with another Chicagoan, Richard Hudlin, and lost a close battle for the championship. Channels led a Chicago contingent that emphatically reinforced that the East was no longer domina.15
Meanwhile, Channels was also building a reputation as one of the top amateur women basketball players in the city. She was one of the founding members of the Roamer Girls, which formed during the 1920-21 season. The amateur women’s basketball scene in Chicago was ramping up at that time, and in the African American community the first notable women’s teams were the Roamers, organized by famed black athlete Sol Butler, who coached the team. Butler was one of the most renowned multi-sports stars in the African-American community, an Olympian with many track titles to his credit. Chicago was some years behind the East Coast in developing women’s basketball teams in the African American community. As early as 1911, in the New York boroughs, such women’s teams as the New York Girls and the Spartan Athletic Club girls team were competing for the metropolitan championship. In Washington DC, the African American YWCA sponsored a women’s team as early as the 1911-12 season.16
The first black women’s teams in Chicago came out of the church. The Roamers were formed from a group of girls in the Grace Presbyterian Sunday School (when Sunday schools served children until adults), probably in 1920, and initially went by the name Roamers Athletic Club. Their closest rival in the black community was the Olivet Cosmopolitans, who were from the Olivet Church Sunday School.17
The Roamer Girls, like most women teams in Chicago, played a brand of women’s basketball that was highly athletic, played under men’s rules, which was supported and sponsored by the Central AAU. A game in late March of 1921 showed how great an athlete Channels had already become, when she contributed 20 of the team’s 26 points to beat the Roamer Girls’ closest competitors, the Olivet Cosmopolitans. That Channels competed in amateur basketball in Chicago with men’s rules is significant in evaluating her legacy as an imposing athlete. The Central AAU had no color line for its competition, and amateur African American teams competed in both its tournament and league competition. Although local high schools had integrated teams, there does not appear to be any evidence of integrated teams in the AAU amateur scene.18
Meanwhile, while Channels was competing on a high-level amateur basketball team and winning national tennis titles, she was working as a “packer” (possibly in the stockyards), according to the Polk’s Chicago Directory of 1923. However, she left the job the following year to return to high school at an advanced age of 24, attending Phillips High on the city’s South Side during the 1924-25 and 1925-26 school years.19
To illustrate concept in text Isadore Channels at Phillips High School
While some other Chicago high schools had girls’ teams that competed interscholastically, Phillips did not have one, and did not even have an intramural program.29 In her junior year at the school, in 1925, Channels served as captain on the captain basketball team (captain basketball was played without a basket). Captain basketball was basically a passing game, in which the players on each team would advance the ball from each of their three sectors to get the ball to the captain standing under where the basket would be to catch the ball for a winning point. This showed the disparity between educators and the amateur sports world in the 1920s. Channels was playing in Chicago’s highly competitive amateur basketball scene, playing a rough and tumble aggressive men’s game, while educators at Phillips and some other Chicago high schools had Channels playing this tame exercise.20
When Phillips High would play a big intersectional game or a cross-state game, as against Armstrong from Washington DC and Peoria Spalding from central Illinois, the game was usually preceded by the Roamers playing another amateur team. Preceding the Armstrong game, in February 1925, for example, Channels led the Roamer Girls to a 29-3 victory over a white team from the suburbs, the Harvey Bloomers, scoring 19 of her team’s points. Her performance was described in the Chicago Defender, thusly: “Scoring and passing at will and even at times joking with the Harvey girls, she played a game far above the heads of her opponents and far in advance of her colleagues.”21
As much as Channels and the Roamer Girls easily handled some of the white teams in the Chicago area, they were rarely competitive with the big three -—the Brownies, the Taylor Trunks, and the Jewissh People’s Institute Girls–and were always eliminated before the finals of the Central AAU tournament.. The Roamer Girls were also the first African-American team to compete in one of the many leagues in which the white teams competed, the Windy City Basketball League, but performed only so so in competition. For example in December of 1924, the Roamers were defeated by the Welles Park Arrows, with the great Violet Krubaeck, 12-4, all the Roamers points being scored by Channels. On the other hand, in two Windy City contests against the Bethlehem Community Center, the Roamer Girls easily won both contests. Channels, playing forward, contributed points in both games, but was not the leading scorer. In March of 1926, the Roamers competed against one of the big three, the JPI Girls, in a preliminary game prior to the Phillips High-Peoria Spaulding game, and lost 20-8. Channels, who was a senior at Phillips High, was cited as “the best player” for the Roamers. Later in March, in the Central AAU tournament, the Roamers were eliminated by the top team in Chicago, the Tri-Chis (who later became the Taylor Trunks) by an embarrassing score of 24 to 2.22
The Roamers ended the 1926 basketball season with a game in April against their long-time rivals, the Olivet Cosmopolitans. The contest was played at the Eighth Regiment Armory before a record crowd, and the Roamers edged out a victory in overtime, 16 to 15, when, Channels made the winning basket with one of her “famous long shots from near the center.” The Chicago Defender reporter noted that the game demonstrated the “girls can charge and play as hard at basketball as boys.”23
Phillips also had a girls’ tennis club, which competed intramurally, but no contests were permitted with outside schools, as did many other Chicago high schools then. About a dozen Chicago high schools competed in tennis in the Chicago Public High School League-sponsored dual meet and tournament competition. Channels served as coach of the team, and the yearbook proudly noted that she was “national champion.” She was not on the team, given she was probably far above her fellow students in talent. Channels graduated from Phillips High in June 1926 (at the ripe age of 26), and at this time retired from basketball, ending her career with the Roamers, at least for a while. Following her departure, the Roamers disbanded, with most of the members founding a new team, the Community Girls.24
Then the Roamer Girls, which had disbanded in 1926, came together again for the 1927-28 season, but without Isadore Channels. The Roamer Girls—with some of the top players in black Chicago—competed in an African-American league, and took the championship, but for some reason disbanded again at the end of the season. But for the 1929-30 season the Roamers reconstituted themselves again, and saw Channels returning to play. Along with Channels, this formidable team included Lulu Porter, Corinne Robinson, Miglin Burns, Henrietta Seames, and the greatest player in the East, Ora Washington. The Roamers won the weeks long tournament in early February, and touted themselves as the “western champion.” Again the Roamer Girls disbanded at the end of the season. But in the next season, 1930-31, Channels, along with another outstanding tennis player, Lulu Porter, were playing with a team called the Val Donnas.25
Meanwhile, in her tennis career, things were not going well for Channels in 1925. Her reign as three-time national champion in women’s single tennis was looking seriously imperiled as the summer wore on. At the ATA’s New York State Tennis championships in August, Channels was eliminated in a first round match, in three sets to rising tennis star Ora Mae Washington of Philadelphia. Washington won eight consecutive national singles tennis titles from 1929 to 1937, and was the star of the top black women’s basketball team in the nation, the Philadelphia Tribunes. In 1925, at the nationals in Bordentown, NJ, Channels again met high school phenom Lulu Ballard, whom she had conquered the previous year. But this return meeting proved different, as Channels succumbed to Ballard in two quick sets.26
Upon her graduation from Phillips in June of 1926, Channels concentrated honing her tennis game during the summer, and was able to regain her national tennis singles championship in August, in St. Louis, getting her revenge on Ballard in a close match. Thereafter, however, Channels never won another ATA singles title. Nonetheless, by winning a fourth singles title, she cemented her legacy as one of the great African American female tennis players of all time.27
In July of 1927, Channels moved to Roanoke, Virginia, to pursue a nursing education. Her nursing training was apparently partially completed by at least 1929, because she is listed in the Richmond, Virginia, directory as a nurse, working at Memorial Hospital, perhaps serving a residency. In her new career of nursing, Channels did not leave the world of discrimination and segregation, If she had read the Chicago Defender from October 1928 she might have noticed a story on an African American nurse who was accepted for a job at a New York hospital by mail, but when she arrived she was barred from employment. While the tennis tournament reports listed Channels as being from Roanoke during her schooling, her permanent address according to the 1930 census was Chicago, living with her mother, Fannie, as lodgers in the residence of a playground instructor.28
While Channels no longer was winning national singles titles, she was still one of the top players in the late 1920s, taking second in singles to Lula Ballard of Philadelphia in the nationals in both 1927 and 1928, and taking second in women’s doubles in 1927. Her career was in decline, however, judging from national rankings, which were usually released in March or April before the season begins, and which reflects the previous year’s activity. Channels was listed fourth in women’s singles in 1929 and fifth in 1930. In the 1931 rankings, Channels was not even listed in the women’s singles, probably indicating that she had largely withdrawn from singles competition. She maintained a third place ranking in women’s doubles and a fourth place ranking in mixed doubles.29
For a time Channels boarded with the Dunham family in Chicago, and Caldwell Dunham fondly remembers as a youngster her coming into the household always carrying in her tennis rackets. He did not recall much, but one rumor about Channels stuck in his mind: “My older sister remembers an incident that would suggest that she was a lesbian.” Perhaps pertaining to this, Dan Burley, Chicago Defender columnist, commented in 1959, “She sat in front of me in high school…Man, I was afraid of her…And you would have been too!…Isadore was muscular and could use that muscle too.” Burley’s coded language is unmistakable.30
Channels was from an era when it was extremely rare for any public individual—athlete, entertainer, or politician—to voluntarily reveal sexual orientation. Homosexuality was held so beyond the pale that Channels would find those of her orientation in her everyday world assailed with such ugly terms as degenerates, queers, perverts, and deviants. The Chicago Defender and mainstream newspapers rarely mentioned homosexuality, and usually would abjure the word itself for such circumlocutory words as “unnatural” and “perversion.” It was also extremely rare for members of the media to “out” a figure that insiders knew were homosexual. Channels, like the great Bill Tilden during his heyday and other notable athletes of the time, never revealed her sexual orientation, and the press during her career never even mentioned it or even hinted at it.31
Early in 1933, Channels was again competing in basketball in yet another reconstituted Roamer Girls team. The Roamers apparently became a barnstorming team for the first time, as evident by a report of a game on January 17, playing and losing to a local white men’s team in Wakefield, Michigan. The Roamers were built up in the local press as “the outstanding women’s basketball team in the United States.” Ten days later, Channels was playing with the St. Nicholas Harlem Big Five team of New York City (managed by Channels’ former playing partner in Chicago, Blanche Wilson). Playing in Philadelphia, the Harlem Big Five found the Ora Washington-led Philadelphia Tribune team was too much for them, and were shellacked 30-5. The Harlem Big Five may have been the last basketball team that Channels played on, as she was 33 at the time.32
Some time in 1933, Channels was back in Roanoke, Virginia, which served as her base for a limited competitive schedule. In tennis, she occasionally competed at a high level, taking second in a singles championship to Ora Washington at the Midwest Tennis Tournament, for example, in 1933. Her last national ranking listing in any category, however, dated back to March of 1931.33
By 1934, Channels was working as a hospital nurse in Atlanta, and out of tennis by that time. Channels had certainly risen to a middle class existence, from her birth to an illiterate farm laborer in the South, to a nationally known tennis star working at a respectable profession. In 1935, Channels was working in hospitals in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she stayed the next five years. Every city Channels worked she brought her mother along with her, but in July of 1936 that arrangement ended when Fannie died at the age of 70. Channels had no family at this point. She was well retired from tennis competition, In 1940, Channels moved to St. Louis to work as a nurse.34
In 1947, Channels moved to the small city of Sikeston, in southeastern Missouri. With her registered nursing degree she got a position as Public Health Nurse in the District No. 2 Health Office, where she originally served the African American population of Scott and Mississippi counties. By 1953, she was working in the Sikeston school system, serving as the school nurse for Lincoln School. The notices in the local newspaper mentioned Channels positions and some community activities, but made no mention of her previous status as an tennis champion. Channels possibly never mentioned her previous tennis fame.35
Channels during her last decade of life had health issues, frequently in and out of hospitals. In 1953 she was in the local hospital twice for surgery (reason unknown), and again in 1957. The last mention of Channels appeared in the local Sikeston newspaper in June of 1958, when it reported that she was admitted into the local hospital. Channels was suffering from complications due to diabetes at this time, and while bedridden at home she developed bronchial pneumonia and died a year later, on June 30. 1959. Her death certificate shows no known relatives. Her death went unreported in any kind of press, black or white, and remained unknown for decades afterwards.36
Isadore Channels’ legacy is that as one of the great African American athletes of the 1920s. While she has not been elected to any basketball hall of fame, she was elected to the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2011. Isadore Channels was neglected and forgotten during her lifetime and afterwards and overlooked by the public and chroniclers. Her life is now partly recovered, and deservingly in future years her achievements and legacy will be more richly remembered and celebrated in African American sports history, as well as Chicago sports history.
Notes
Robert Pruter, “Isadore Channels: The Recovered Life of an African American Sports Star,” Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers, edited by Gerald R. Gems, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2017, pp.179-203. The profile on Channels here is an edited and shortened version of the essay in the Before Jackie RobinsonTwelfth Census of the United States, Schedule No. 1.– Population, Bureau of the Census, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Ward 1, Enumeration District 5, Sheet 11B (Washington, DC:: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972);2. Robert Pruter, “Isadore Channels: The Recovered Life of an African American Sports Star,” Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers, edited by Gerald R. Gems, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2017, pp.179-203. The profile on Channels here is an edited and shortened version of the essay in the Before Jackie Robinson collection.
Twelfth Census of the United States, Schedule No. 1.– Population, Bureau of the Census, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Ward 1, Enumeration District 5, Sheet 11B (Washington, DC:: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972); “Kentucky Births and Christenings, 1839-1960,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FWNP-PYS; Allen Channels , 01 Feb 1900; citing Louisville, Jefferson, Kentucky, reference Vol 1 Pg 168; FHL microfilm 209689 [Isadore is incorrectly listed as Allen but it is clearly the birth record for her]; Missouri Division of Health, Standard Certificate of Death, Isadora M. Channels, 16 July 1959; Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910 Population, Bureau of the Census. Kentucky, Jefferson County, Harrods Creek; Enumeration District 0005, Sheet 6A (Washington, DC, National Archives and Records Administration, 1982); The 1910 listing differs on two facts, two years difference in birth year and the listing as “widowed,” but the latter might be because the illiterate Allen did not understand what “widowed” meant.
“Society,” Chicago Defender, 13 January 1917. I qualified my comment with “somewhat sure” on when Channels began learning tennis at the Prairie Tennis Club, because the date was based on an article on Channels from 1922 that said she had been with the club for three years.
James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991), 3-4, 81-82, 269-70; Thirteenth Census of the United States, Volume II, Population 1910, Alabama-Montana, Bureau of the Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 504; Fourteenth Census of the United States, Volume III, Population 1920, Bureau of the Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1922), p. 261.
“CPTC History,” Chicago Prairie Tennis Club [1], 2013; “Mary Ann Seames Mother of Tennis Buried in Chicago,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 30 March 1940; Edwin Bancroft Henderson, The Negro In Sports (Washington, DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1949 revised edition), p. 217.
Ibid.
Djata, pp. 3-5; Frank A. Young, “National Net Play at Saint Louis,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 7 August 1926; Henderson, p. 204.
Henderson, p. 206; Djata, p. 4.
L. Jackson, “The Onlooker: A Popular Champion,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 1 September 1923.
“Washington Gets National Tennis Championships; Ratings Given Out,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 9 April 1921; “Woman’s Championship Goes to Miss I. Channels,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 21 July 1920; “Isadora Channells (sic) Wins Tennis Championship,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 30 July 1921; “Tennis Stars in Washington for Big Tournament,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 20 August 1921; Gerald F. Norman, “Tally Holmes Wins National Tennis Championship Title,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 3 September 1921.
“Tennis Ass’n Ratings for 1921 Given Out,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 18 February 1922; Frank Young, “City Tennis Championship Causes Many Big Surprises,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 12 August 1922; Norman, “Tally Holmes Wins.”
“National Woman’s Tennis Champion” , Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 2 September 1922; “Chicago Gets 1923 National Tennis Championship Meet,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 26 August 1922
Frank Young, “National Tennis Tournament News,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 11 August 1923; “Chicagoans Win Two Tennis Titles,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 1 September 1923.
John Graziano, “The Early Life and Career of the ‘Black Patti’: The Odyssey of an African American Singer in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 53, no. 3 (Autumn 2000), p. 566; “The Bronze Helen Wills” , Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 30 August 1924; Edgar G. Brown, ”Our Women Tennis Players Rank High,” Afro-American, 18 May 1923; Edgar Brown, “Kemp and Miss Channels Best Tennis Players of 1923, Says Edgar Brown,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 19 April 1924.
“100-Pound Lulu Ballard Beats Channels in PA.,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 23 August 1924; “Miss Channels Wins National Women’s Tennis Championship,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 30 August 1924.
James E. Odenkirk, “Sol Butler: The Fleeting Fame of a World-Class Black Athlete,” Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers, edited by Gerald R. Gems, (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 139-154; Edwin B. Henderson and William A. Joiner, editors, Official Handbook: Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association of Middle Atlantic States 1911 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1911), pp. 44 and 58; Edwin B. Henderson and Garnet C. Wilkinson, editors, Official Handbook: Interscholastic Athletic Association of Middle Atlantic States 1912 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1912), p. 10.
“Pollie Richman Leads Roamer Girls to Victory” [headline misleading], Chicago Defender, 26 March 1921; “Roamer Girls after Games Present a Strong Lineup,” Chicago Defender, 22 October 1921.
Harland Rohm, ”Boys’ Rules Speed Girls’ Basket Games,” Chicago Tribune, 27 December 1926; Walter Eckersall, “New London Five Puts Out I.A.C. in Basket Meet,” Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1919; Chicago Teams to Play in A.A.U. Cage Tourney,” Chicago Tribune, 12 February 1922; “Brownie Girls Down Institute; A.A.U. Fives Reach Semifinals,” Chicago Tribune, 4 March 1922; “Girl Quintets To Meet Here in C.A.A.U. Tourney,” Chicago Tribune, 4 February 1923; “Drawings Made for C.A.A.U. Cage Event,” Chicago Tribune, 11 March 1923; “Roamers Win and Lose; Will Meet Olivet Five,” Chicago Defender, 20 December 1924; “Roamer Girls Win in Third Overtime Period,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 24 January 1925; “Roamer Girls Lose to Tri-Chis, 24 to 2,” Chicago Defender, 20 March 1926.
Polk’s Chicago Directory 1923 (Chicago: R. L. Polk & Co., 1923), p. 1080.
“Basketball,” Centurion 1922 (Chicago: Senn High School, 1922), 149; “Basketball,” Schurzone 1926 (Chicago: Schurz High School, February 1926), 125; The Red and Black June, 1925 (Chicago: Phillips High School, June 1925), 161-64; “The Captainball Team,” The Red and Black, June, 1925 (Chicago: Wendell Phillips High School, 1925), 162-63.
Wm. Jesse Lovell, “Phillips Takes Basketball Game From Armstrong by 25-15 Score Before 4,500,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 21 February 1925.
“Roamers Win and Lose; Will Meet Olivet Five,” Chicago Defender, 20 December 1924; “Roamer Girls Win in Third Overtime Period,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 24 January 1925; “Roamer Girls Meet Bethlehems Tuesday,” 16 January 1926; “Peoria Hi Beats Phillips Five,” Chicago Defender, 6 March 1926; “Roamer Girls Lose to Tri-Chis, 24-2,” Chicago Defender, 20 March 1926.
“Izzy Channels’ Basket in Closing Seconds of Play Beats Olivet Church Five,” Chicago Defender, 17 April 1926.
“The Girls’ Tennis Club,” The Red and Black, June, 1925 (Chicago: Wendell Phillips High School, 1925), 164; “Girls Tennis Stars To Play In Annual Tennis Tournament,” Harrison Herald, 14 May 1926; “Lindblom Girls Win City Prep Tennis Tourney,” Chicago Tribune, 17 June 1926. Proceedings, July 8, 1925 to June 23, 1926 (Chicago: Board of Education, City of Chicago, 1926), p. 1817.
“Girl Cage Stars Sign with Mid-City Outfit,” Chicago Defender, 23 October 1926; “Roamers Win,” Chicago Defender, 8 February 1930; “Val Donnas Lose,” Chicago Defender, 7 February 1931.
“Miss Isadora Channels Is Beaten in First Round by Ora Washington of Phila.,” New York Age, 22 August 1925; “Thompson Beats Brown for Net Crown,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 5 September 1925; Leslie Heaphy, “Ora Mae Washington: Tennis and Basketball Queen,” Black Sports, The Magazine, February 2007, pp. 36-37; Pamela Grundy, “Ora Washington: The First Black Female Athletic Star,” in Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes, ed. David K. Wiggins (Fayetteville, Ark: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 79-92; Edgar G. Brown, “Miss Ballard Touted To Beat Woman’s Tennis Champion,” Afro-American, 4 September 1925.
Frank A. Young, “National Net Play at Saint Louis,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 7 August 1926; Frank A. Young, “Saitch Wins National Net Crown,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 28 August 1926.
Hill’s Roanoke Salem and Vinton Virginia City Directory 1927, p. 164, Ancestry.com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, 2011; “The Week,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 13 October 1928; Hill’s Richmond Virginia City Directory 1929, p. 380, Ancestry.com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, 2011; Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Population Schedule, Bureau of the Census. Illinois, Cook County, Chicago, Enumeration District 0146, Sheet 24B (Washington, DC: National Records and Census Administration, 2002).
“Finals of the National Women’s Doubles,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 3 September 1927; “Edgar Brown Regains Net Crown,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 1 September 1928; “Doctor to Enter Final Play for Tennis Laurels,” [unidentified African American newspaper clip], August 1931; “1929 Tennis Ratings Show Many Shifts Among Stars,” Afro-American, 8 March 1930; “Doug Turner, Ora Washington Lead Men and Women Tennis Players in Ratings of 1930,” Chicago Defender, 14 March 1931.
Caldwell Dunham, email to author, 8 December 2008; Dan Burley, “What’s Wrong with Women,” Chicago Defender, 1 September 1959.
“Orgies Ruin Characters in Los Angeles Colony,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 20 September 1930; “Pastor Reveals Divorce Charges: Wife Unnatural, Says Rev. Spencer Carpenter,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 1 August 1931; “Undertaker Is Acquitted by Judge in Private Hearing,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 13 March 1932; Frank Deford, Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1976), 40-41.
“Mentors Book Colored Girls,” Ironwood Daily Globe, 10 January 1933; “Mentors Will play Colored Women’s Team,” The Wakefield News, 14 January 1933; “Mentors Win Contest From Colored Quintet,” Ironwood Daily Globe,17 January 1933; Randy Dixon, “Philly Girls Seek to Bring to Philly Undisputed National Crown,” Philadelphia Tribune, 19 January 1933; “N.Y. Girls Bow to Philly,” I, 28 January 1933.
H. Williams, “Hampton Prepares for Annual Clay Tennis Tourney.” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 5 August 1933; Ralph Brown, “Hudlin Retains Midwest Tennis Crown,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 9 September 1933.
Arthur P. Chippey, “Jackson Boys Hold Top in Annual Net Ratings,” Chicago Defender (nat. ed.), 13 April 1935; Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1934, p. 279, Ancestry.com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Knoxville, Tennessee, City Directory, 1935, p. 746, Ancestry.com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN; Tennessee Death Records, 1909-1959; Roll #11, Certificate #32694, Ancestry.com. Tennessee, Death Records, 1908-1951 [database on-line], Provo, UT, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., USA, 2011; Knoxville, Tennessee, City Directory, 1940, p. 785, Ancestry.Com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920–Population, Bureau of the Census, Missouri, St. Louis, St. Louis City; Ward 17, Enumeration District 96-424, Sheet 14B (Washington, DC, National Archives and Records Administration, 1992); : St. Louis, Missouri, City Directory, 1944, Ancestry.Com. U.S. Directories, 1821-1989 (beta) [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; “Public Health Nursing Week Set for Apr. 20-26,” Sikeston Standard, 22 April 1947; “Health Office Will Be Closed Next Week,” Sikeston Herald, 20 April 1950; “Mild Influenza Epidemic Hits City Schools,” Sikeston Daily Standard, 13 January 1953; “Most of Sikeston’s Teachers Have Been Hired for Next Year,” Sikeston Herald, 2 June 1954.
Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 16 June 1953; “Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 19 June 1953; “Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 25 June 1953; “Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 13 August 1953; “Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 19 August 1953; “Hospital Notes” Sikeston Daily Standard, 21 January 1957; “Hospital Notes,” Sikeston Herald, 26 June 1958; Missouri Division of Health, Standard Certificate of Death, Isadora M. Channels, 16 July 1959.
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- ^ "Album Reviews – Folk Spotlight". Billboard. Vol. 79, no. 15. April 15, 1967. p. back cover.
- ^ "Sandy and Donna Rhodes: The Lonesome Rhodes". HiFi/Stereo Review. 19: 96. 1967.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2009). Music Stars: Brief Bios of Every Recording Artist Who Ever Charted. Hal Leonard Corp. p. 208. ISBN 978-0898201765.
- ^ R.C.R.: Awards – Billboard Singles at AllMusic. Retrieved January 21, 2014.
- ^ a b c d Tony Burke, "Neil Slaven Obituary", The Guardian, 11 January 2024. Retrieved 26 February 2024
- ^ Busby, Roy (1976). British Music Hall: An Illustrated Who's Who from 1850 to the Present Day. London: Paul Elek. p. 183. ISBN 0 236 40053 3.
- ^ Baker, Richard Anthony (2014). British Music Hall: An Illustrated History. Pen and Sword. pp. 118–120. ISBN 978-1-4738-3718-8.
= edit
Thomas Henry Marlowe (18 March 1868 – 3 December 1935) was a British journalist who was the editor of the Daily Mail between 1899 and 1926.
He was born in Portsmouth, and educated in Dublin before undertaking medical training at Queen's College, Galway and then at the London Hospital. However, he gave up his medical training for journalism, and worked as a reporter in Dublin and Manchester before starting work at The Star newspaper in London in 1888. After he married, his friend Kennedy Jones introduced him to Alfred and Harold Harmsworth, who gave Marlowe a job on their recently-acquired newspaper, The Evening News.
In 1896, the Harmsworth brothers launched a new newspaper, the Daily Mail, priced at one halfpenny and targetting a wider readership than previous newspapers. It became highly successful. In 1899, Alfred Harmsworth - who was later ennobled in 1905 as Viscount Northcliffe - sent S. J. Pryor, its managing director, to South Africa to organise coverage of the Boer War, and transferred control of the Mail to Marlowe.
With Marlowe as editor, the Daily Mail generally followed the political and stylistic approaches directed by Lord Northcliffe. In 1915, at the height of the First World War, Northcliffe wrote articles vigorously attacking Lord Kitchener for failing to provide troops with the right equipment, and as a result the newspaper dramatically lost readership. When Marlowe informed Northcliffe of the more than one million drop in circulation, Northcliffe stated: "I don't know what you men think and I don't care.... And the day will come when you will all know that I am right." On several occasions during the war, Marlowe attempted to moderate messages put out by Northcliffe, for instance over Northcliffe's campaigns in support of David Lloyd George and against Herbert Asquith.
By 1921, the circulation of the Daily Mail was far higher than any other British newspaper, and Marlowe was credited with much of its success. Hamilton Fyfe wrote that Marlowe "exuded a quiet masterfulness and possessed... all round ability in every aspect of newspaper work." However, he added: "He was not a great editor. Had he been so he would not have stayed long working for Northcliffe." Marlowe himself wrote to Northcliffe: "I have carried on your paper under circumstances of great difficulty… I have always endeavoured to carry out your wishes when I was informed of them".
Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, was suffering from streptococcus, an infection of the bloodstream, that damages the valves of the heart and causes kidney malfunction, died in August, 1922. In order to avoid death duties, in his will he left three months' salary to each of his six thousand employees, a sum of £533,000. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, now took over full control over the Daily Mail as well as the Daily Mirror. He also ran the Evening News, the Sunday Pictorial and the Sunday Dispatch. (37)
The Zinoviev Letter In the 1923 General Election, the Labour Party won 191 seats. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister. As MacDonald had to rely on the support of the Liberal Party, he was unable to get any socialist legislation passed by the House of Commons. The only significant measure was the Wheatley Housing Act which began a building programme of 500,000 homes for rent to working-class families.
Members of establishment were appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. As Gill Bennett pointed out: "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion." (38)
The most hostile response to the new Labour government was Lord Rothermere. Thomas Marlowe, the editor of The Daily Mail claimed: "The British Labour Party, as it impudently calls itself, is not British at all. It has no right whatever to its name. By its humble acceptance of the domination of the Sozialistische Arbeiter Internationale's authority at Hamburg in May it has become a mere wing of the Bolshevist and Communist organisation on the Continent. It cannot act or think for itself." (39)
Two days after forming the first Labour government Ramsay MacDonald received a note from General Borlass Childs of Special Branch that said "in accordance with custom" a copy was enclosed of his weekly report on revolutionary movements in Britain. MacDonald wrote back that the weekly report would be more useful if it also contained details of the "political activities... of the Fascist movement in this country". Childs wrote back that he had never thought it right to investigate movements which wished to achieve their aims peacefully. In reality, MI5 was already working very closely with the British Fascisti, that had been established in 1923. (40)
Maxwell Knight was the organization's Director of Intelligence. In this role he had responsibility for compiling intelligence dossiers on its enemies; for planning counter-espionage and for establishing and supervising fascist cells operating in the trade union movement. This information was then passed onto Vernon Kell, Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau (MI5). Later Maxwell Knight was placed in charge of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion. (41)
In September 1924 MI5 intercepted a letter signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, and Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Hugh Sinclair, head of MI6, provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect. (42)
Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson the head of Special Branch, were also convinced that the letter was genuine. Desmond Morton, who worked for MI6, told Sir Eyre Crowe, at the Foreign Office, that an agent, Jim Finney, who worked for George Makgill, the head of the Industrial Intelligence Bureau (IIB), had penetrated Comintern and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Morton told Crowe that Finney "had reported that a recent meeting of the Party Central Committee had considered a letter from Moscow whose instructions corresponded to those in the Zinoviev letter". However, Christopher Andrew, who examined all the files concerning the matter, claims that Finney's report of the meeting does not include this information. (43)
Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret until after the election. (44) Thomas Marlowe had a good relationship with Reginald Hall, the Conservative Party MP, for Liverpool West Derby. During the First World War he was director of Naval Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy (NID) and he leaked the letter to Marlowe, in an effort to bring an end to the Labour government. (45)
The Daily Mail published the letter on 25th October 1924, just four days before the 1924 General Election. Under the headline "Civil War Plot by Socialists Masters" it argued: "Moscow issues orders to the British Communists... the British Communists in turn give orders to the Socialist Government, which it tamely and humbly obeys... Now we can see why Mr MacDonald has done obeisance throughout the campaign to the Red Flag with its associations of murder and crime. He is a stalking horse for the Reds as Kerensky was... Everything is to be made ready for a great outbreak of the abominable class war which is civil war of the most savage kind." (46)
Ramsay MacDonald suggested he was a victim of a political conspiracy: "I am also informed that the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading abroad for some days that... a mine was going to be sprung under our feet, and that the name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine. Another Guy Fawkes - a new Gunpowder Plot... The letter might have originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign Office up to the end of the week thought it was authentic... I have not seen the evidence yet. All I say is this, that it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid the suspicion - I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing is a political plot?" (47)
The rest of the Tory owned newspapers ran the story of what became known as the Zinoviev Letter over the next few days and it was no surprise when the election was a disaster for the Labour Party. The Conservatives won 412 seats and formed the next government. Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express and Evening Standard, told Lord Rothermere, the owner of The Daily Mail, that the "Red Letter" campaign had won the election for the Conservatives. Rothermere replied that it was probably worth a hundred seats. (48)
David Low was a Labour Party supporter who was appalled by the tactics used by the Tory press in the 1924 General Election: "Elections have never been completely free from chicanery, of course, but this one was exceptional. There were issues - unemployment, for instance, and trade. There were legitimate secondary issues - whether or not Russia should be afforded an export loan to stimulate trade. In the event these issues were distorted, pulped, and attached as appendix to a mysterious document subsequently held by many creditable persons to be a forgery, and the election was fought on "red" panic (The Zinoviev Letter)". (49)
After the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter. It later became clear that Major George Joseph Ball, a MI5 officer, played an important role in leaking it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Christopher Andrew, MI5's official historian, points out: "Ball's subsequent lack of scruples in using intelligence for party political advantage while at Central Office in the late 1920s strongly suggests... that he was willing to do so during the election campaign of October 1924." (50)
In 1889, Marlowe married Alice Warrender, the daughter of journalist John Morrison Davidson.
https://spartacus-educational.com/Thomas_Marlowe.htm Thomas Marlowe Sections The First World War Removal of H. H. Asquith Daily Mail: 1918-1925 The Zinoviev Letter The General Strike Retirement Primary Sources Student Activities References Thomas Marlowe was born at 39 St James's Street, Portsmouth, on 18th March 1868. He was educated in Dublin, at Queen's College, Galway, and at the London Hospital. He did not complete his medical training, but abandoned medicine for journalism. After working as a reporter in Dublin and Manchester he moved to London and joined The Star in 1888. (1)
Marlowe developed a reputation as a "young hothead" who often got involved in fights in public houses. It is claimed that on one occasion he got involved in a dispute with a "boxer who had gone a hundred rounds" with John L. Sullivan and "was only saved from extinction by a fellow journalist, who dragged him, struggling, from the bar-room floor". (2) Another journalist described him as "a fierce-looking Irishman, unkindly described as a sheep in wolf's clothing." (3)
In 1889 he married Alice Warrender, second daughter of John Morrison Davidson, the radical journalist. They had four sons and four daughters. Marlowe was a friend of Kennedy Jones, who introduced him to Alfred Harmsworth and his brother, Harold Harmsworth. They were so impressed with him that he was given a job with the Evening News, a newspaper they recently acquired. (4)
The Harmsworth brothers decided to start a newspaper based on the style of newspapers published in the USA. By the time the first issue of the Daily Mail appeared for the first time on 4th May, 1896, over 65 dummy runs had taken place, at a cost of £40,000. When published for the first time, the eight page newspaper cost only halfpenny. Slogans used to sell the newspaper included "A Penny Newspaper for One Halfpenny", "The Busy Man's Daily Newspaper" and "All the News in the Smallest Space". (5)
Harmsworth made use of the latest technology. This included mechanical typesetting on a linotype machine. He also purchased three rotary printing machines. In the first edition Harmsworth explained how he could use these machines to produce the cheapest newspaper on the market: "Our type is set by machinery, and we can produce many thousands of papers per hour cut, folded and if necessary with the pages pasted together. It is the use of these new inventions on a scale unprecedented in any English newspaper office that enables the Daily Mail to effect a saving of from 30 to 50 per cent and be sold for half the price of its contemporaries. That is the whole explanation of what would otherwise appear a mystery." (6) It was later claimed that these machines could produce 200,000 copies of the newspaper per hour. (7)
The Daily Mail was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery. Most importantly, all its news stories and articles were short. The first day it sold 397,215 copies, more than had ever been sold by any newspaper in one day before. (8)
For the first three years Alfred Harmsworth edited the newspaper with the help of S. J. Pryor, who he appointed as managing director. On the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 he sent Pryor to organize the war coverage. While he was away Harmsworth gave the managing director job to Marlowe. "It was now unclear which of them was in charge, so they would race each other every morning to get to the editor's chair first and stay there, with Northcliffe looking on and enjoying the joke. Marlowe emerged victorious: it is said he got up earlier and had the foresight to bring sandwiches for his lunch; maybe he also had the stronger bladder." (9)
Lord Northcliffe was constantly writing to Marlowe about the newspaper: "No good printing long articles. People won't read them. They can't fix their attention for more than a short time. Unless there is some piece of news that grips them strongly. Then they will devour the same stuff over and over again." Northcliffe was also anti-Semetic: "Marlowe, would you see that the social editor keeps his Jews out of the social column. What with his Ecksteins, Sassoons and Mosenthals, we will have to set the column in Yiddish." (10)
This became an important issue in 1914 when Lord Northcliffe wanted to promote the need to go to war with Germany. Wickham Steed, the foreign editor of The Times, was often used to apply pressure on Marlowe. In 1914, when attempts by members of the government, to follow a neutral policy in Europe, Steed described these people as "a dirty German-Jewish international financial attempt to bully us into advocating neutrality". Northcliffe agreed with him but Marlowe urged caution against attacking the government on this issue. (11)
The First World War On the outbreak of the First World War the editor of The Star newspaper claimed that: "Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe has done more than any living man to bring about the war." Once the war had started Northcliffe used his newspaper empire to promote anti-German hysteria. It was The Daily Mail that first used the term "Huns" to describe the Germans and "thus at a stroke was created the image of a terrifying, ape-like savage that threatened to rape and plunder all of Europe, and beyond." (12)
As Philip Knightley, the author of The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker (1982) has pointed out: "The war was made to appear one of defence against a menacing aggressor. The Kaiser was painted as a beast in human form... The Germans were portrayed as only slightly better than the hordes of Genghis Khan, rapers of nuns, mutilators of children, and destroyers of civilisation." (13) In one report the newspaper referred to Kaiser Wilhelm II as a "lunatic," a "barbarian," a "madman," a "monster," a "modern judas," and a "criminal monarch". (14)
On 15th May, 1915, The Daily Mail launched an attack on Lord Kitchener and under the heading "British Still Struggling: Send More Shells" it argued that the newspaper was in a very difficult position for if it published "the truth about the defects of our military preparations". It claimed that under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) the newspaper could be accused of aiding the enemy; and if it didn't, it was not fulfilling its responsibility to keep the public informed of the situation. (15)
Lord Northcliffe decided to make a direct on Lord Kitchener for not supplying enough high-explosive shells. In an article he published on 21st May, 1915, Northcliffe wrote a blistering attack on the Secretary of State for War: "Lord Kitchener has starved the army in France of high-explosive shells. The admitted fact is that Lord Kitchener ordered the wrong kind of shell - the same kind of shell which he used largely against the Boers in 1900. He persisted in sending shrapnel - a useless weapon in trench warfare. He was warned repeatedly that the kind of shell required was a violently explosive bomb which would dynamite its way through the German trenches and entanglements and enable our brave men to advance in safety. This kind of shell our poor soldiers have had has caused the death of thousands of them." (16)
The following day The Daily Mail continued the attack. The paper stated that "our men at the Front have been supplied with the wrong kind of shell and the result has been a heavy and avoidable loss of life". A shortage of shells at the beginning of the conflict was understandable and excusable, but the inability of officials to supply adequate munitions after ten months for Britain's fighting men was "proof of grave negligence". (17)
Lord Kitchener was a national hero and Northcliffe's attack on him upset a great number of readers. Overnight, the circulation of The Daily Mail dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. A placard was hung across The Daily Mail nameplate with the words "The Allies of the Huns". Over 1,500 members of the Stock Exchange had a meeting where they passed a motion against the "venomous attacks of the Harmsworth Press" and afterwards ceremoniously burnt copies of the offending newspaper. (18)
Thomas Marlowe informed Lord Northcliffe of the more than one million drop in circulation. He was also given a copy of The Star that defended Kitchener from Northcliffe's attacks. Northcliffe responded by arguing: "I don't know what you men think and I don't care. The Star is wrong, and I am right. And the day will come when you will all know that I am right." (19)
The General Strike
On 30th June 1925 the Mine Owners Association announced that they intended to reduce the miner's wages. Will Paynter later commented: "The coal owners gave notice of their intention to end the wage agreement then operating, bad though it was, and proposed further wage reductions, the abolition of the minimum wage principle, shorter hours and a reversion to district agreements from the then existing national agreements. This was, without question, a monstrous package attack, and was seen as a further attempt to lower the position not only of miners but of all industrial workers." (51)
On 23rd July, 1925, Ernest Bevin, the general secretary of the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU), moved a resolution at a conference of transport workers pledging full support to the miners and full co-operation with the General Council in carrying out any measures they might decide to take. A few days later the railway unions also pledged their support and set up a joint committee with the transport workers to prepare for the embargo on the movement of coal which the General Council had ordered in the event of a lock-out." (52) It has been claimed that the railwaymen believed "that a successful attack on the miners would be followed by another on them." (53)
In an attempt to avoid a General Strike, the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, invited the leaders of the miners and the mine owners to Downing Street on 29th July. The miners kept firm on what became their slogan: "Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay". Herbert Smith, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers, told Baldwin: "We have now to give". Baldwin insisted there would be no subsidy: "All the workers of this country have got to take reductions in wages to help put industry on its feet." (54)
The following day the General Council of the Trade Union Congress triggered a national embargo on coal movements. On 31st July, the government capitulated. It announced an inquiry into the scope and methods of reorganization of the industry, and Baldwin offered a subsidy that would meet the difference between the owners' and the miners' positions on pay until the new Commission reported. The subsidy would end on 1st May 1926. Until then, the lockout notices and the strike were suspended. This event became known as Red Friday because it was seen as a victory for working class solidarity. (55)
Thomas Marlowe Thomas Marlowe Stanley Baldwin and his ministers had several meetings with both sides in order to avoid the strike. Thomas Jones, the Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, pointed out: "It is possible not to feel the contrast between the reception which Ministers give to a body of owners and a body of miners. Ministers are at ease at once with the former, they are friends jointly exploring a situation. There was hardly any indication of opposition or censure. It was rather a joint discussion of whether it was better to precipitate a strike or the unemployment which would result from continuing the present terms. The majority clearly wanted a strike." (56)
Considering themselves in a position of strength, the Mining Association now issued new terms of employment. These new procedures included an extension of the seven-hour working day, district wage-agreements, and a reduction in the wages of all miners. Depending on a variety of factors, the wages would be cut by between 10% and 25%. The mine-owners announced that if the miners did not accept their new terms of employment then from the first day of May they would be locked out of the pits. (57)
At the end of April 1926, the miners were locked out of the pits. A Conference of Trade Union Congress met on 1st May 1926, and afterwards announced that a General Strike "in defence of miners' wages and hours" was to begin two days later. The leaders of the Trade Union Council were unhappy about the proposed General Strike, and during the next two days frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement with the Conservative Government and the mine-owners. (58)
The Trade Union Congress called the General Strike on the understanding that they would then take over the negotiations from the Miners' Federation. The main figure involved in an attempt to get an agreement was Jimmy Thomas. Talks went on until late on Sunday night, and according to Thomas, they were close to a successful deal when Stanley Baldwin broke off negotiations as a result of a dispute at the Daily Mail. (59)
What had happened was that Thomas Marlowe, had produced a provocative leading article, headed "For King and Country", which denounced the trade union movement as disloyal and unpatriotic.The workers in the machine room, had asked for the article to be changed, when he refused they stopped working. Although, George Isaacs, the union shop steward, tried to persuade the men to return to work, Marlowe took the opportunity to phone Baldwin about the situation.
The strike was unofficial and the TUC negotiators apologized for the printers' behaviour, but Baldwin refused to continue with the talks. "It is a direct challenge, and we cannot go on. I am grateful to you for all you have done, but these negotiations cannot continue. This is the end... The hotheads had succeeded in making it impossible for the more moderate people to proceed to try to reach an agreement." A letter was handed to the TUC negotiators that stated that the "gross interference with the freedom of the press" involved a "challenge to the constitutional rights and freedom of the nation". (60)
The General Strike began on 3rd May, 1926. The Trade Union Congress adopted the following plan of action. To begin with they would bring out workers in the key industries - railwaymen, transport workers, dockers, printers, builders, iron and steel workers - a total of 3 million men (a fifth of the adult male population). Only later would other trade unionists, like the engineers and shipyard workers, be called out on strike. Ernest Bevin, the general secretary of the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU), was placed in charge of organising the strike. (61)
The TUC decided to publish its own newspaper, The British Worker, during the strike. Some trade unionists had doubts about the wisdom of not allowing the printing of newspapers. Workers on the Manchester Guardian sent a plea to the TUC asking that all "sane" newspapers be allowed to be printed. However, the TUC thought it would be impossible to discriminate along such lines. Permission to publish was sought by George Lansbury for Lansbury's Labour Weekly and H. N. Brailsford for the New Leader. The TUC owned Daily Herald also applied for permission to publish. Although all these papers could be relied upon to support the trade union case, permission was refused. (62)
The government reacted by publishing The British Gazette. Baldwin gave permission to Winston Churchill to take control of this venture and his first act was commandeer the offices and presses of The Morning Post, a right-wing newspaper. The company's workers refused to cooperate and non-union staff had to be employed. Baldwin told a friend that he gave Churchill the job because "it will keep him busy, stop him doing worse things". He added he feared that Churchill would turn his supporters "into an army of Bolsheviks". (63)
By 12th May, 1926, most of the daily newspapers had resumed publication. Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, was extremely hostile to the strike and all his newspapers reflected this view. The Daily Mirror stated that the "workers have been led to take part in this attempt to stab the nation in the back by a subtle appeal to the motives of idealism in them." (64)
At the end of the strike some people were highly critical of the way the government had used its control of the media to spread false news. The vast majority of newspapers supported the government during the dispute. This was especially true of the newspapers owned by Lord Rothermere. Thomas Marlowe in The Daily Mail suggested that "the country has come through deep waters and it has come through in triumph, setting such an example to the world as has not been seen since the immortal hours of the War. It has fought and defeated the worst forms of human tyranny. This is a moment when we can lift up our head and our hearts." (65)
Retirement Although he had followed the orders of the owner of the newspaper, it caused him problems and after the General Strike finished Thomas Marlowe, resigned from his post. Richard Bourne, the author of the Lords of Fleet Street: the Harmsworth Dynasty (1980), has argued that after he left the newspaper "lost its journalistic punch". (66) Later he complained to Howell Arthur Gwynne that "journalism has been killed by newspaper owners". (67)
Thomas Marlowe died on 3rd December, 1935.
By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated January 2020). ▲ Main Article ▲ Primary Sources (1) Paul Ferris, The House of Northcliffe: The Harmsworths of Fleet Street (1971) The Mail built up a powerful staff, attracting journalists with its high rates of pay and air of general excitement. A permanent editor was appointed at the end of 1899, Thomas Marlowe, a fierce-looking Irishman, unkindly described as a sheep in wolf's clothing. Alfred made the appointment a trial of strength. Marlowe's predecessor, S. J. Pryor, had been sent to South Africa to organise the Boer War reporting. When he returned, expecting to find himself still in the editorial chair, Marlowe had been made `managing editor', and thought this gave him seniority. A silent daily battle for physical possession of the editor's room ensued, watched with fascination by the office. Alfred must have found it almost as good as the goldfish and the pike. Each man tried to arrive before the other in the morning, then remain sitting at the desk all day. Marlowe proved the stronger; one version of his victory has it that he brought better sandwiches; another, that he had a stronger bladder.
(1) Christopher Farman, The General Strike: Britain's Aborted Revolution? (1972) What had erupted at the Daily Mail was an entirely unofficial dispute. The printers objected to an attack on trade unions made in the leading article, "For King and Country", and when Thomas Marlowe, the editor, refused to delete it workers in the machine' room, foundry and packing departments downed tools. Although George Isaacs, the NATSOPA secretary, "would have nothing to do with a strikel, Marlowe, whose services in connection with the Zinoviev letter were by no means forgotten, phoned Downing Street and was put through to the Home Secretary. While the Cabinet ultimatum to the T.U.C. was amended to deal with the new situation, one of Baldwin's aides phoned the King's assistant private secretary at Windsor. "The Daily Mail has ceased to function. Don't be alarmed. Tell His Majesty so that he should not go off the deep end. There was no need for concern, came the reply from Windsor. "We don't take the Daily Mail".
Did Marlowe's phone call provoke the Cabinet into sabotaging a chance of peace at the eleventh hour? Certainly, the Cabinet was still strongly divided over whether or not the time had come for Baldwin to hand over its original ultimatum to the T.U.C. when news of the Mail strike arrived. According to the Colonial Secretary, Leopold Amery, this "tipped the scale". W. C. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote in his diary that the news arrived "rather fortunately, as it brought the doubtful people right up against the situation that the General Strike had actually begun".
(2) Julian Symons, The General Strike (1957) The Government sub-committee retired at half-past eleven at night to report progress to the rest of the Cabinet, who had by now been kicking their heels for several hours, and were not in the best of tempers. Baldwin, exhausted, dropped into an armchair, and Birkenhead read out the second formula, and described the negotiations. There was a sharp division of opinion. `Some of us', said Amery, `would have been prepared to continue negotiations so long as there was the faintest chance of an agreement': others were determined that no concession of any kind should be made. The leaders of this second group were Churchill, Neville Chamberlain (who felt that the time had come for action) and Joynson-Hicks; on the other side it seems that Birkenhead was inclined towards a settlement, and Baldwin was thought by some of his colleagues to be more sympathetic than was proper to the cause of organized labour. While discussions were going on, a telephone message came through from the Daily Mail with the news that the Natsopa chapel had refused to print the paper.
This refusal was prompted by an editorial which came from the hand of the editor himself This editor, Thomas Marlowe, was an extreme Right-wing Tory (it was the Daily Mail that, nearly two years before, had given the news of the Zinoviev letter to the world) : and his editorial, `For King and Country', was regarded, not only by Natsopa members, but by other union chapels at the paper, as an incitement to strike-breaking.
(3) Thomas Marlowe, The Daily Mail (2nd May, 1926) The miners after weeks of negotiation have declined the proposals made to them and the coal mines of Britain are idle.
The Council of Trades Union Congress, which represents all the other trade unions, has determined to support the miners by going to the extreme of ordering a general strike.
This determination alters the whole position. The coal industry, which might have been reorganized with good will on both sides, seeing that some "give and take" is plainly needed to restore it to prosperity has now become the subject of a great political struggle, which the nation has no choice but to face with the utmost coolness and the utmost firmness.
We do not wish to say anything hard about the miners themselves. As to their leaders, all we need say at this moment is that some of them are (and have openly declared themselves) under the influence of people who mean no good to this country.
A general strike is not an industrial dispute. It is a revolutionary movement intended to inflict suffering upon the great mass of innocent persons in the community and thereby to put forcible constraint upon the Government.
It is a movement which can only succeed by destroying the Government and subverting the rights and liberties of the people.
This being the case, it cannot be tolerated by any civilized Government and it must be dealt with by every resource at the disposal of the community.
A state of emergency and national danger has been proclaimed to resist the attack.
We call upon all law-abiding men and women to hold themselves at the service of King and country.
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References (1) Hamilton Fyfe, Thomas Marlowe : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014) (2) S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (1996) page 26 (3) Paul Ferris, The House of Northcliffe: The Harmsworths of Fleet Street (1971) page 112 (4) Hamilton Fyfe, Thomas Marlowe : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014) (5) S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (1996) page 32 (6) Alfred Harmsworth, Daily Mail (4th May, 1896) (7) Kennedy Jones, Fleet Street and Downing Street (1919) page 138 (8) Francis Williams, Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers (1957) page 140 (9) Matthew Engel, Tickle the Public: One Hundred Years of the Popular Press (1996) page 68 (10) S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (1996) page 129 (11) Paul Ferris, The House of Northcliffe: The Harmsworths of Fleet Street (1971) page 194 (12) S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (1996) page 143 (13) Philip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker (1982) page 66 (14) The Daily Mail (22nd September, 1914) (15) The Daily Mail (15th May, 1915) (16) Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, Daily Mail (21st May, 1915) (17) The Daily Mail (22nd May, 1915) (18) J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe: Press Baron in Politics 1865-1922 (2000) page 241 (19) Hannen Swaffer, Northcliffe's Return (1925) page 24 (20) The Times (2nd December, 1916) (21) Tom Clarke, My Northcliffe Diary (1931) pages 105-107 (22) Alfred George Gardiner, The Daily News (2nd December, 1916) (23) Roy Jenkins, Asquith (1995) pages 440 (24) John Grigg, Lloyd George, From Peace To War 1912-1916 (1985) page 456 (25) The Times (4th December, 1916) (26) The Manchester Guardian (4th December, 1916) (27) H. H. Asquith, letter to David Lloyd George (4th December, 1916) (28) David Lloyd George, letter to H. H. Asquith (4th December, 1916) (29) David Lloyd George, letter to H. H. Asquith (5th December, 1916) (30) J. H. Thomas, My Story (1937) page 43 (31) The Daily Chronicle (7th December, 1916) (32) Alfred George Gardiner, The Daily News (9th December, 1916) (33) J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe: Press Baron in Politics 1865-1922 (2000) pages 264 and 265 (34) James Curran, Impacts and Influences: Media Power in the Twentieth Century: Essays on Media Power in the Twentieth Century (1987) page 29 (35) Hamilton Fyfe, Sixty Years of Fleet Street (1949) page 82 (36) Thomas Marlowe, letter to Lord Northcliffe (20th May 1907) (37) S. J. Taylor, The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (1996) page 221 (38) Gill Bennett, A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924 (1999) page 28 (39) The Daily Mail (30th November 1923) (40) John Hope, Lobster Magazine (November, 1991) (41) Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (2010) page 233 (42) Gill Bennett, Churchill's Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (2006) page 82 (43) Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009) page 150 (44) A. J. P. Taylor, English History: 1914-1945 (1965) pages 289-290 (45) Hamilton Fyfe, Thomas Marlowe : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014) (46) The Daily Mail (25th October 1924) (47) Ramsay MacDonald, statement (25th October 1924) (48) A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (1972) page 223 (49) David Low, Autobiography (1956) page 160 (50) Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009) page 150 (51) Will Paynter, My Generation (1972) page 30 (52) Christopher Farman, The General Strike: Britain's Aborted Revolution? (1972) page 40 (53) Tony Lane, The Union Makes us Strong (1974) page 121 (54) Alan Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin (1960) page 277 (55) Anne Perkins, A Very British Strike: 3 May-12 May 1926 (2007) page 53 (56) Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diaries: Volume II (1969) page 16 (57) Paul Davies, A. J. Cook (1987) page 95 (58) Margaret Morris, The General Strike (1976) page 214 (59) Hamilton Fyfe, Thomas Marlowe : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014) (60) Christopher Farman, The General Strike: Britain's Aborted Revolution? (1972) pages 139-140 (61) Paul Davies, A. J. Cook (1987) page 99 (62) Margaret Morris, The General Strike (1976) page 241 (63) John C. Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative (1969) page 238 (64) The Daily Mirror (12th May, 1926) (65) The Daily Mail (13th May, 1926) (66) Richard Bourne, Lords of Fleet Street: the Harmsworth Dynasty (1980) page 98 (67) Thomas Marlowe, letter to Howell Arthur Gwynne (20th May 1932)
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Pierre Cavalli (12 July 1928 – 28 March 1985) was a Swiss jazz guitarist and composer of film soundtracks.
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James Flewitt Mullock (1818–1892) was a Welsh painter, regarded as the most significant artist to emerge from Newport.
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Gordon Coutts http://www.gordoncoutts.com/
https://fineart.ha.com/artist-index/gordon-coutts.s?id=500013089 Gordon Coutts (American, 1880-1937) Paintings Birth Place: Glasgow (Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom) Biography: A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Gordon Coutts was an enormously versatile painter who specialized in Impressionist and Tonalist styles and diverse subjects ranging from California landscapes and Indian genre scenes to boudoir nudes and portraits of North Africans. He received classical art training in London and at the Academie Julian in Paris before teaching from 1896-1899 at the Art Society of New South Wales in Melbourne, Australia. Respiratory health problems forced Coutts to search out warmer climates, and during the 1920s he divided his time between Tangiers and Palm Springs.
https://www.ejportfolio.com/blog/2020/8/2/i-hope-this-year-black-woodstock-gets-its-own-name
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Camille Yarbrough (born January 8, 1938) is an American musician, actress, poet, author, television producer, activist, and former dancer. She is best known for the song "Take Yo' Praise", which Fatboy Slim sampled in his 1998 track "Praise You".
Yarbrough was born in 1938 and raised in the South Side of Chicago. She was the seventh child in her family.[1] In her teens, she became involved in a community musical program, and began performing as a dancer in local clubs including the Blue Angel. She was offered a job as a dancer with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, with whom she started touring in 1955. As a member of the company, she gained an understanding of various dance styles, including African and Latin American, and toured with the company in America, Asia, Australia and Europe before returning to Chicago. She continued to work in local clubs, and toured again with Dunham's dance company in 1960, before the troupe disbanded.[2]
In 1961, Yarbrough moved to New York City where she quickly established herself as a dancer and actress.
"Take Yo' Praise" was originally recorded in 1975 for Yarbrough's first album, The Iron Pot Cooker, released on Vanguard Records. Yarbrough stated that the song was written for "all the people who had come through the black civil rights movement, who had stood up for truth and righteousness and justice, because human beings need to praise and respect one another more than they do".[3] The Iron Pot Cooker was based on the 1971 stage dramatization of Yarbrough's one-woman, spoken word show, Tales and Tunes of an African American Griot. She toured nationally with this show during the 1970s and 1980s. Yarbrough's second album, Ancestor House, is a spoken word/soul/blues album that she released on her own record label, Maat Music, in 2003. Ancestor House was recorded live at Joe's Pub in New York City.[4]
Tales and Tunes of an African American Griot was produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan in 1973.[5]
A vocal sample from the opening of Yarbrough's "Take Yo' Praise" features prominently in the 1999 hit "Praise You" by Fat Boy Slim.[6]
Journalist Kevin Powell wrote, regarding her first album: "Without question, The Iron Pot Cooker is a precursor to Lauryn Hill's best-seller The Mis-Education [sic] of Lauryn Hill." Other reviews of this album include Billboard: "Yarbrough has stylish traces of Nina Simone and Gil Scott-Heron but her own style of singing and recitation... are outstanding. Her songs are all thought provoking", SPIN: "Nana Camille is a 'hip-hop foremother'", and CDNow: "The most important rediscovery of the year…"
She currently resides in New York City.[citation needed]
Views 2,470,764 Updated Camille Yarbrough 1938– Author, singer, educator, activist
Joined Katherine Dunham Dance Company
Stage Career Lead to Inspirational Album
Authored Children’s Books
Selected works
Sources
Camille Yarbrough’s multifaceted career has included stints as a dancer, an educator, a singer, an actress, a performer, a writer, and a radio show host. Known for her dedication to perpetuating cultural awareness among African Americans, Yarbrough has used her broad range of talents to serve as a voice of inspiration and hope within her community. Her 1975 album, The Iron Pot Cooker, has been heralded as a precursor to modern rap, and her four children’s books have received high praise.
Joined Katherine Dunham Dance Company At a Glance… Born in 1938, in Chicago, IL.
Career: Dancer, 1950s-61; stage performer, 1961–; songwriter, 1970s; singer, 1970s–; City College of New York, professor of African dance and diaspora, 1970s-1980s; WWRL-AM, talk show host, 1970s-1980s; author, 1979–.
Awards: Griot of the Year, Griot Society of New York. 1975; Woman of the Month, Essence, 1979; Coretta Scott King Award for Cornrows, 1979; Unity Award in Media, Lincoln University, 1982; Parents Choice Award, Summershine Queens, 1989.
Address: African American Traditions Workshop, 80 St. Nicholas Ave., Ste. 4G, New York, NY 10026.
Stage Career Lead to Inspirational Album Just six months after arriving in New York, Yarbrough landed her first part on stage, dancing in the Broadway show Kwamina, a story of an African man who falls in love with a white woman missionary. Later performances included Trumpets of the Lord, Cities in Bezique, Sambo, and To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. First staged at the Cherry Lane Theater, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black was Yarbrough’s most successful stage appearance. The company toured 56 cities, playing on college campuses around the country. Excerpts from a personal diary Yarbrough kept while on tour appeared in the New York Times on April 18, 1971. Yarbrough worked on television soap operas Search for Tomorrow and Where the Heart Is during the early 1970s. She also had a small part in the film Shaft, playing the part of Shaft’s sister.
Yarbrough bristled at the racism she encountered as an actress, and she was distressed by the stereotyped roles assigned to black actors. According to DuEwa M. Frazier’s “Taking Her Praise: Profile of Camille Yarbrough, A Renaissance Woman,” Yarbrough said of her acting days: “We were discriminated against as actors and performers. Even the shows you did, some directors would direct you gearing towards racial stereotypes. I was always in trouble for resenting those behaviors, so I would be out of work for a little while.” Her conflict with the image of blacks on stage and screen eventually led Yarbrough away from a career in acting.
After becoming seriously ill from contact with toxic chemicals, which required a stay in the hospital, Yarbrough began seriously studying her cultural heritage and writing poetry and music. Eventually she developed a show, entitled “Tales and Tunes of an African American Griot,” which she performed for two years. Out of that show she produced the elements of her album The Iron Pot Cooker, released in 1975 by Vanguard Records. The album title references the practices of female Nigerian doctors who traveled about with iron pots in which they would mix and cook herbs and healing mixtures.
The Iron Pot Cooker received renewed attention in February of 2000 when Vanguard re-released the album on compact disc. The 47-minute production featured the single “Take Yo’ Praise,” which appears on track 4, track 7 (remix), and track 8 (dance remix). Fatboy Slim’s extremely popular cover of the song, titled “Praise You,” ignited renewed interest in Yarbrough’s original version. Other songs on The Iron Pot Cooker include “But It Comes Out Mad,” “Dream/Panic/Sonny Boy the Rip-Off Man/Little Sally the Super Sex Star (Taking Care of Business),” “Ain’t It a Lonely Feeling,” “Can I Get a Witness,” and “All Hid?” Yarbrough’s only album later earned her widespread recognition as the foremother of rap.
Yarbrough incorporated songs from the Iron Pot Cooker into her performances, which were a mixture of song, dance, storytelling, and cultural history. She became known for appearing on stage in traditional African dress, complete with flowing African wrap gowns and long African earrings. Along with her highly acclaimed stage performances, Yarbrough served as a professor of African dance and diaspora in the African Studies Department of the City College of New York for 12 years. She also worked as a radio broadcaster, anchoring a late-night talk show on WWRL-AM, which focused on issues of concern to the African-American community.
Authored Children’s Books In 1979 Yarbrough published her first book, Cornrows. Aimed at children fourth grade and above, Yarbrough used Cornrows as a vehicle to tell the stories of great African-American activists. Mother and Great-Grammaw spend the day telling a young sister and brother of the great deeds of such heroes as Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks. The matriarchs also talk about black entertainers and writers, including Langston Hughes, Harry Belafonte, and Aretha Franklin. Great Grammaw also reminisces about her childhood days in Alabama, explaining the significance of the cornrows hairstyle. The day is ended when Father returns home from work, thus completing the uplifting image of the African-American family who thrives on their cultural heritage. Cornrows won the Coretta Scott King Award.
Yarbrough published her second children’s book in 1989. Winner of a Parents Choice Award, Shimmer-shine Queens is a novel that, like Cornrows, stresses the importance of cultural heritage. Cousin Seatta becomes the character through which knowledge is imparted to the story’s protagonist, a young girl named Angie. Angie learns from Cousin Seatta about the past struggles of the African-American community and the future opportunities that cannot be squandered by ignorance or destroyed by negative images within the community.
In 1994 Yarbrough published her third children’s book, Tamika and the Wisdom Rings. Written for third through fifth graders, the book tells the story of eight-year-old Tamika, who lives with her older sister and parents in an inner city apartment complex. When her father is murdered by drug dealers, the family must move into a much smaller apartment and struggle to overcome numerous obstacles. Tamika and the Wisdom Rings is an uplifting story of the importance of inner strength and perseverance.
Little Tree Growing in the Shade, Yarbrough’s fourth publication, once again aimed at children, was published in 1996. Horn Book Magazine reviewer Henrietta M. Smith noted, “Yarbrough has skillfully woven the variegated threads of African-American history into a memorable story for young readers that speaks of the rich culture of the Africans brought in captivity to America.” The little tree growing in the shade refers to the African-American people who refuse to give up despite ongoing struggles to survive. Set in a concert at the park, Sister asks Daddy, “Why are they called spirituals?” The question affords Daddy the opportunity to tell the family stories of their culture and its heroes.
Yarbrough remains a voice in the African-American community as songstress, poet, and activist. During the early 2000s she continues to stage her performance for numerous cultural events. In August of 2002 she hosted and sang for the annual African Voices Rhymes, Rhythms and Rituals Music and Poetry Concert in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. She is associated with The African American Traditions Workshop and continues to perform at multicultural events.
Selected works Albums The Iron Pot Cooker, Vanguard Records, 1975. Re-released in 2000 by Vanguard.
Books Cornrows (poems for children), Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1979.
The Shimmershine Queens (juvenile), G. P. Putnam’s, 1989.
Tamika and the Wisdom Rings (juvenile), Random House, 1994.
Little Tree Growing in the Shade (juvenile), G. P. Putnam’s, 1996.
Sources Books Black American Writers: Past and Present, Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1975.
The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Rollock, Barbara, Black Authors and Illustrators of Children’s Books, 2nd Ed. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.
The Schomburg Center Guide to Black Literature, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1996.
Periodicals Billboard, October 23, 1999.
Booklist, September 15, 1994; April 1, 1996.
Essence, January 2001.
Horn Book Magazine, September-October 1996.
School Library Journal, December 1979.
Online “About the Author: Camille Yarbrough,” Ancestor House, www.ancestorhouse.net (July 25, 2003).
“Camille Yarbrough,” Contemporary Authors Online, reproduced in Biography Resource Center, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (July 25, 2003).
“Camille Yarbrough Iron Pot Listening Party,” Start Up Music, www.startupmusic.com/listeningparty/camille (July 25, 2003).
“Taking Her Praise: Profile of Camille Yarbrough, A Renaissance Woman,” Ancestor House, www.ancestorhouse.net (July 25, 2003).
—Kari Bethel
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-iron-pot-cooker-mw0000254228 AllMusic Review by Amy Hanson [-] Whether you call Camille Yarbrough a street poetess, proto-rapper, or urban politico, there is no doubt that this woman contributed an enormous amount of fire, passion, and strength in all those guises. Neither is there any doubt that her 1975 album, Iron Pot Cooker, is a landmark work of great importance. Rapping in the style of the early era street poets, Yarbrough certainly set the bar for almost every woman in that vein who followed, and in that context, this album can be interpreted as feminist rhetoric -- the empowering vision of a young black woman who emerges from the ghetto, from her circle of women -- from the kitchen -- to impart her message. And, in speaking her mind, in speaking her truth, her words not only elucidate the unknown, they also permit her to just get this stuff off her chest. Absolutely outstanding in its breadth, Iron Pot Cooker's intentions spill out from the minimal instrumentation that frames the songs. From the opening "It Comes out Mad" and through the biting, claustrophobic epic poetry of the 14-minute "Dream/Panic/Sonny Boy the Rip-Off Man/Little Sally the Super Sex Star/(Taking Care of Business)" that rages, quiets and turns street-vendor shill-man on the turn of a dime, Yarbrough does what few other musicians have -- she has shouldered the mantle of epic warrior, of fireside storyteller, creating myth from reality and realism out of mythology. But in Iron Pot Cooker there are also the more traditional trappings of R&B, most notably evident on the deliciously smooth ballad "Ain't It a Lovely Feeling," while Yarbrough tackles the funk on "Can I Get a Witness?." Elsewhere, the now-classic "Take Yo' Praise" is still a treat and will probably be better recognized among the younger generation from Fatboy Slim's hit update. Without Yarbrough taking her stand and paving the way, many younger women probably wouldn't have dared to find and use their voices. Like Patti Smith's Horses, Iron Pot Cooker is woven into the tapestry of experience, of ideology, of just telling the truth like it is.
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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Lo%27Jo+site%3Arootsworld.com&ia=web
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http://folksongandmusichall.com/index.php/we-all-came-into-the-world-with-nothing/
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/107982231/person/430063280973/facts Joseph Tennyson (12 July 1861–5 September 1926)
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/107982231/person/430063280973/gallery
https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/collection/1030/tree/107982231/person/430063280973/media/6c968118-da67-4ac5-8ef8-6c1163ab04d2?_phsrc=YxX8882&usePUBJs=true The Stage, Thurs 9 Sep 1926
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Buck and wing https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002092356
https://www.britannica.com/art/buck-and-wing
https://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3buckw1.htm Buck Dance and Pigeon Wing Title This page deals with all things Buck or Wing. The history of the Buck dance, Flat Footing, Pigeon Wing, and Wings. Buck dancing is a pre-tap dance routine and was done by Minstrel and Vaudeville performers in the mid nineteenth century portraying the African-American males, known as "Bucks." Originally the Pigeon Wing steps (foot shaking in the air) were a big part of this early folk dance but later separated when variations began such as the shooting out of one leg making a "Wing."
The term "buck" is traced to the West Indies where Africans used the words po' bockorau (Buccaneer), and later the French term Buccaneer. Ship captains would have the men dance on the ships (dancing the Slaves) to try to keep the morale up as well as a form of exercise. It was one of the dances that became popular with the Irish Buccaneers who did Jigs and Clogs, reels etc. who would be known as Buck Dancers. These terms would eventually become dance steps.
The legendary dancer "Master Juba" did a Buck and Wing in the 1840's. It is said that the Buck and Wing 'routine' was first performed on the New York stage in 1880 by James McIntyre as well as inventing the 'Syncopated Buck and Wing.' king Rastus Brown is considered one of the best Buck and Wing dancers in history. During the dance craze of the 1920's, buck and wing dancers would be considered square and corny when compared to the newer style of tap dancing that was slowly replacing the buck and wing style of previous years.
The Buck and Wing was adapted to the Minstrel stage from the recreational clogs and shuffles of the African-American. The Buck and Wing is said to be a bastard dance, made up of Clogs, Jigs, Reels, Sand dance etc. which later gave birth to the "Time Step" and "Soft Shoe." The Breakdown is also related to the Buck dance. The Buck and Wing can and was used in Reels, Clog dance, Can-Can (Pigeon Wing,) Jigs and Tap dance. The modern Buck and a Wing is characterized by wing-like steps done in the air (known as "wings") done mostly on the balls of the foot and which is considered the forerunner of rhythm tap. The Hornpipe of England was a elaborate Pantomime of English sailors, mimicking their duties while patting the feet to a tune.
Buck: (Buck dance) ............................................. (Videos are not in any order to text). Rhythm and Percussive, originally just a stamping of the feet to interpret the music which later became more refined when mixed with the Jig and Clog. Buck dancers usually dance alone and in a small area of space. In Tap Dance it is known as the earliest version of the "Shuffle and Tap Steps." The basic Chug or Buck step is done by pushing the ball of the foot across the floor, at the same time dropping the heel, with or without weight. Buck dancing was the first known American Tap form performed to syncopated rhythms. These rhythms were performed on the "Offbeat or Downbeat" which came from Tribal rhythms in Africa. Buck dance was a type of countrified Clog or Tap dance. Usually associated with Barn Dancing or Country Dance. The Indians (Mainly Ute), also had a dance, participants would dress in Deer Skins (Buck) and do a ceremonial dance called Buck Dancing.
Originally the music used was 2/4 time and was of the Syncopated March type. The Mobile Buck was an ancestor of the common Buck Dance that later evolved into the Time Step.
Flatfoot: Flatfoot dancing is mostly Buck dancing in nature, but much more laid back in which the feet stay very close to the floor and without the soles of the dancers shoes making much noise, nor stomping. The flatfoot dancer seems relaxed and carefree while he or she dances, even though the feet are constantly moving. If you could imagine a "soft-shoe" Buck dance. This dance is a spot dance (done in place) with the arms moving only slightly to flow with the dancers balance which gives them a fluid look. If more than one person wants to dance at the same time, they each dance individually i.e. freestyle, but still adhering to the rhythm of the music being played.
Pigeon Wing: Originally (1830's) just the shaking of one leg in the air. Was also known as the "Ailes De Pigeon" in Ballet. For a time it was commonly referred to as "Pistolets" by the French and just plain ole "Pigeon Wing" by the Folk dancers, later being taken over by the Minstrel dancers. In the Can-Can the "Pigeon Wing" was bringing the bust into play by leaping forward, kicking high and throwing the shoulders back while "carrying on the arm" (or holding one leg up against the cheek, while hopping lightly on the other leg). Basically it's just the lifting of the leg (demi-Plie') and move the leg too beat the back calf of the other foot. Can be done in front of other leg or as in the variation of Michael Jackson's modern version of his front lifting leg swing. When Minstrel dancing came en vogue, many variations came about, namely a small hop on one leg while shooting out the other leg to form a "Wing."
Wings: Wings Evolved into a waving of the body with arms and legs flapping to appear like wings on a bird (see above clip) which makes the Buck, Tap, Hip-Hopper, Charleston, Jig dancer more animated. The more modern "Wings" started to become a basic stable to tap dancing around 1900. "Wings" are basically derived from the much older minstrel variations of the Pigeon Wing but no real air step. Eventually becoming what they'd call "air steps" (not adagio), and even later "Flash/Shine steps" that have the dancer springing up from one leg off the floor, and using the correct timing to do a certain amount of taps with the same foot before landing back down while the other "winging leg" usually remains motionless. There are variations such as the pump (winging leg goes up and down), double back, pendulum, Three-tap wing (one tap on the way up and two on the way down), Five-tap wings, etc. Today Wings are part of the Tap dance family.
Don't be surprised if you see a Buck or Flatfoot dancer bring a $mall portable dance floor or plywood, lay it down on the ground and start dancin' away. Music is often times a string band. A great DVD on this subject is "(2007) by Smithsonian Folkways dvd $ Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance - Flatfoot, Buck and Tap" (2007) by Smithsonian Folkways.
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Lily Lena, known as Lal, was a niece of the parents of Marie Lloyd and the other Lloyd sisters. Her mother died when she was ten and, as a result, she went to live with her aunt, known to everyone as Ma Wood. In 1893, she teamed up with her cousin, Rosie Lloyd, to become the Sisters Lena. They made their first appearance at a benefit at the Pavilion Theatre, Mile End, for the Sisters Lloyd [Alice and Gracie Lloyd], who were appearing there in Cinderella. Their performance secured themselves a place in the Pavilion’s next pantomime, Sindbad [sic], the Sailor, written by Joseph Tabrar. Lily turned solo in 1896, securing her first engagement at the London, Shoreditch. Before her first year as a solo artiste was complete, she had scored three hits, The White Silk Dress; Don’t I Wish It Was Me? and You Can’t Be Sure You’ve Married the Man until You’ve Been on the Honeymoon. She went to America several times and, in the mid-1920s, spent two whole years abroad. She was born Alice Mary Ann Matilda Archer. Her date of birth is given variously as 1873 and 1877. In 1903, she married William Newhouse, who died in Denver, Colorado, in 1911. In 1914, she married secondly Stanley Turpin. Lily died in Balham on 7 April 1958.
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Billy Randall, known as the Father of the Profession, was the son of a circus clown. As soon as he could walk, he was taught how to ride a horse; at the age of seven, he learned to play the violin; and, by the time he was eleven, he was singing in concert halls. For four years, he worked as a double act with a black-faced entertainer and big boot dancer, Fred Broughton; in 1842, he sang at the new Bagnigge Wells gardens in Bayswater; and, together with his wife and their trained dog, Lion, he staged a sketch entitled The Merchant and the Mendicant or The Dog of the Mountains at the Middlesex in 1853 and 1854. William Randall was born near Teignmouth, apparently on 1 October 1826. He and his wife had fifteen children. He died in south Norwood on 9 June 1898.
- ^ Frazier, DuEwa M. "Taking Her Praise: Profile of Camille Yarbrough, A Renaissance Woman". AALBC.com. Retrieved August 27, 2012.
- ^ a b "Yarbrough, Camille 1938–", Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 24 June 2021
- ^ Belcher, David (January 22, 1999). "Praise You Camille" The Herald.
- ^ "Ancestor House". CDBaby.com. Retrieved August 27, 2012.
- ^ La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: Tales and Tunes of an African American Griot (1973)". Accessed July 11, 2018.
- ^ "Presenting Camille Yarbrough: The Featured Voice on Fatboy Slim's Praise You ". thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
- ^ Paul Ritchie, "Poetry in Emotion", Shindig!, No.110, December 2020, pp.52-55
- ^ Charlton, Peter (2011). "She Was a Dear Little Dicky Bird". Music Hall Studies (7): 20–26.
- ^ Richard Anthony Baker, Old Time Variety: an illustrated history, Pen & Sword, 2011, ISBN 978-1-78340-066-9, pp.42-43
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Naughton and Gold were a comedy double act, consisting of Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold.
They started in the British Music Halls in 1908, and were still together as part of The Crazy Gang in 1962, becoming the longest period of two British comedians being in the same act. Both had Scottish accents and their act was fast but rather basic comedy.
Charlie Naughton, who was the bald one, was the butt of most of the physical comedy of the Crazy Gang.
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https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=immRAgAAQBAJ&pg=PR7&dq=%22stefan+wirz%22+blues&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOzLvUxuvsAhW0WRUIHc4_CmoQuwUwA3oECAYQBw#v=onepage&q=%22stefan%20wirz%22%20blues&f=false Robert Ford, A Blues Bibliography
https://www.wirz.de/music/about/grafik/fantasy4.jpg?fbclid=IwAR2nTfu0oDDzkOtSD7HjxszfAYtUZLDyRCob81xZQ1Lh051JgNiD39H777E "comprehensive... high quality..."
http://wirz.mobi/music/about.htm The discographies published on my "American Music" pages are a non-commercial labor-of-love and in no way associated with any business firm.
http://www.richieunterberger.com/turnlinks.html
Stefan Wirz: The American Music section of Stefan Wirz's website has discographies, Internet links, and interesting miscellaneous bits of information about numerous lesser-known folk-rock figures and folkies with ties to 1960s folk-rock, like Karen Dalton, Bruce Langhorne, Stefan Grossman, and Patrick Sky.
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Emlyn Evans Lewis (10 April 1905 – 14 May 1969) was an American-born Welsh plastic surgeon.
https://biography.wales/article/s2-LEWI-EVA-1905 LEWIS, EMLYN EVANS (1905 - 1969), plastic surgeon Name: Emlyn Evans Lewis Date of birth: 1905 Date of death: 1969 Spouse: Mary Lewis (née Cooper) Gender: Male Occupation: plastic surgeon Area of activity: Medicine Author: Emyr Wyn Jones Born in Pennsylvania 10 April 1905. While still young he was brought to Wales by his mother and he received his education at Monmouth School and then went to London to study medicine at St. Mary's Hospital. He was regarded there as the most brilliant student of his year and Qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1929 and F.R.C.S. in 1933. After acquiring extensive experience in general surgery he decided to specialise in plastic surgery. He gave exceptionally valuable service at the centre at Gloucester when treating airmen suffering from extensive burns received during World War I. The centre was transferred to St. Lawrence Hospital at Chepstow in 1948, and came under the administration of the Welsh Hospital Board. Lewis spent the remainder of his distinguished career in full charge of this Special Unit, and combined his responsibilities there with extra duties as consultant to various hospitals in Cardiff, including the Royal Infirmary. The excellent reputation of St. Lawrence Hospital extended throughout south and west Wales, and his skill and experience in the treatment of burns proved of inestimable value to miners and steel workers, who were particularly exposed to such hazards. He was an exceptionally talented pioneer and an untiring worker in his chosen field, and was greatly respected throughout the United Kingdom. Furthermore, he was a remarkably capable and determined administrator, and a persuasive lecturer.
Lewis was a man of short, stocky physique and an enthusiastic footballer — an activity that determined the shape of his nose. It was the recurrent damage to that organ that engendered his initial interest in plastic surgery. His kindness was legendary and his memory faultless. He was an avid collector of period clocks, and eventually became a very knowledgeable horologist. He was also a keen Freemason, being master of several lodges. He died in Cardiff Royal Infirmary, 14 May 1969, and was survived by his wife (Mary Cooper, when he married 28 October 1939) and daughter.
Author Emyr Wyn Jones, (1907 - 1999) Sources British Medical Journal, 1969, 2, 518, 829; The Lancet, 1969, 1, 1107; Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1965-73; personal knowledge.
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Robert Carl Cohen (born September 24, 1930) is an American cinematographer and writer.
https://prabook.com/web/robert_carl.cohen/627753 Robert Carl Cohen Edit Profile cinematographer Robert Carl Cohen, American Cinematographer. Chairman Citizens Committee to Preserve Beverly Hills (California) Landmarks, 1987-1988. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Writers Guild American, Dramatists Guild, Sierra Club. Background Cohen, Robert Carl was born on September 24, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Education Bachelor in Art, University of California at Los Angeles, 1952; Master of Arts in Cinematography, University of California at Los Angeles, 1954. Career Independent writer, producer, director numerous films, since 1954. Achievements Robert Carl Cohen has been listed as a noteworthy Cinematographer by Marquis Who's Who. Works Membership Chairman Citizens Committee to Preserve Beverly Hills (California) Landmarks, 1987-1988. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Writers Guild American, Dramatists Guild, Sierra Club.
http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no2003110613/
https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/4/resources/3740
http://www.china.org.cn/arts/2017-07/28/content_41304123.htm
https://jorvikpress.com/portfolio-item/robert-carl-cohen/ Robert Carl Cohen has a professional career spanning almost 60 years as a filmmaker, foreign correspondent, public lecturer and author. Born in Philadelphia in 1930, he moved with his parents to Los Angeles in 1939, earning his BA in Art and MA in Motion Pictures at UCLA. His master’s thesis film, a 10-minute documentary depicting the genetic-environmental basis for human skin color differences, later became the basis for his first book, The Color of Man. Published by Random House in 1971 and Bantam in 1973, it was adopted as a text by the California State Department of Education. It remains the only popular science book on the subject. As a US Army conscript, Bob served as a cameraman at Ft. Monmouth NJ and at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe near Paris. After military service he studied for a Doctorate in Social Psychology at the Sorbonne. While an observer at the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957, he was hired by NBC-TV to accompany and film a group of young Americans visiting China in defiance of the State Department’s travel ban. Returning home, he began a series of public film-lectures about China, and then produced Inside Red China, a nationally syndicated TV special for which he received a letter of commendation from the office of Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles in 1961. In addition to being the first US journalist to film in China, the popularity of his film lectures led to his being the first American permitted by East German authorities to film there in 1959. And in 1963-64 he became the first American to receive both US State Department and Cuban Foreign Ministry authorization to film in Cuba. Back in Los Angeles in 1967, he produced Mondo Hollywood, a two-hour color documentary, banned by the French Government in 1968 as “a danger to mental health.” Having become a psychedelic cult classic a half-century after it was made, Mondo Hollywood was honored by a special screening as part of the American Film Institute’s 2014 Festival. The father of daughters Dianna and Julia, he and his wife Kim have lived in Boulder, Colorado since 1993, where he continues to write, give public lectures and produce documentaries. His videos are viewable at http://www.radfilms.com/. and also at Snagfilms, Hulu-Plus, YouTube and Amazon.
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377101/
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Joseph Arnold Cave (1823–November 1912)
file:///C:/Users/Guy/Downloads/BMG_1953_07.pdf p.246 The Banjo in Britain By w. M. BREWER . THE earliest known British banjoist, not associated l with American minstrel ·// troupes, was Joseph · -~. Arno ld Cave , who claimed to have been the first imitator in England of Thomas D artmouth Rice of " Jim Crow " fame, who is credited with. having originated " negro " minstrelsy. J. A. Cave was born in 1823 and he made his first appearance with a banjo at the New Marylebone Theatre in Lo ndon on Whit Monday, 1843. Later, he introdu ced his banjo at a rendezvous frequented by journalists and men of letters ca lled "The Coal Hole " in Fountain Co urt, Strand, London. (Terry's Theatre was later erected on the site.) Cave also toured the Provinces and became associated with E. W. Mackney in . organising a minstrel troupe known as " The Lantum Serenaders. ,. He became a prominent figure in show bus iness as an actor -manager and died in 1912 at the age of 89. I think it well to quote the following extract from Cave's " Memoirs: - " The banjo which came into my possession was a very different instru - ment to those of the present day with their beautiful fittings and elaborateand in many instances-valuable ornamentation . Mine was rather rudely constructed , consisting of nothing more tha n a hoop abou t *four inches wide, with a piece of vellum fastened on with brass -headed nails and a light staff of wood running through the tambourine - like body forming the fingerboard. There were four strings and a smaller one, always tuned to the octave of the key the instrument was tuned in." The ban.io was given to Cave by his fr iend. C. Rivers. who had acquired it from the property man of a theatre in • A consensus of opinio 11 is that bv tire term " wide, " Mr. Cave meam the DEPTH of the hoop. His "A1emoirs" were, I 1111dersla11d. wri11e11 for him by a journalisr. A drawi11g by Cal. N . Pe,ers of a Swee11ey banjo i11 the Los Angeles Cou 11y Museum indicm es rhat rhe depth of the hoop is about four inches. The awhoriries of the museum have informed me i11 wri1i11g rhar the DIAMETER of the hoop is twelve inches 8.M.G. New York. It was a copy of Joe l Sweeney's. Like the majorit y of banjoists in American minstrel troupes , Cave used his instr ument fo r playing accompani - ments to songs which were a duplication of Sweene y's programme.
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7572/images/LNDRG11_5_10-0567?treeid=&personid=&rc=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=qBK3799&_phstart=successSource&pId=13036292 Joseph A Cave, theatrical manager, age 57 in 1881
https://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=9841&h=189631602&tid=&pid=&queryId=da2e71875bc0488dac4fed6166ab5830&usePUB=true&_phsrc=UtL14&_phstart=successSource Name: Joseph Cave Gender: Male Birth Date: 14 Apr 1822 Baptism Date: 10 Jul 1822 Baptism Place: Saint Andrew,Holborn,London,England Father: Thomas Cave Mother: Frances
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43504/43504-h/43504-h.htm
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp162046/joseph-arnold-cave
https://newspaperarchive.com/london-standard-nov-22-1912-p-11/ London Standard Newspaper Archives November 22, 1912 DEATH OF AN OLD ENTERTAINER. Mr. Joseph Arnold Cave, who died this week at the Charterhouse, having reached the age of 89, was an interesting figure in the old world of variety entertainment. Eighty years ago he made his début in burlesque at the Edgware-road Pavilion, and seven years afterwards he became the champion clog dancer. As a singer he was a great favourite m the days before the modern music-hall had come into being. He was known at the old tea gardens in Bayswater, at the Lambeth Bower, and at the Cider Cellars in Maiden-lane.
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Gregorio Félix Delgado (September 26, 1896 – May 4, 1965) was a Puerto Rican clarinet player who played jazz and calypso music. He was sometimes credited as Gregory Felix.
https://secondhandsongs.com/artist/122550
Gregorio Felix
Gregorio Felix
Aliases
Felix and His Internationals
Born
September 26, 1896
Died
May 1965
Country
Puerto Rico
Comments
Jazz clarinetist born in San Juan. In 1917 he came to New York and played with James Reese Europe. He recorded with the Hellfighters Jazz Band in 1919. After decades performing jazz he made the transition to calypso music in the 1940s and change his name to Gregory Felix.
http://lordinvestor.net/lip-syncing-in-1948/ Puerto Rico-born clarinetist Gregorio Félix Delgado (“The Benny Goodman of the West Indies”) who first came to New York in 1917. He went by at least four different names in musical contexts. When playing calypso, he seems to have preferred ‘Gregory Felix’, heading his bands Felix and his Krazy Kats, and later, Felix and his Internationals. Apart from Duke of Iron, he accompanied many of the famous calypso singers who spent time in New York at some point, like Wilmoth Houdini, Lord Beginner, Lord Invader, Bill Rogers, and Macbeth the Great. He died in 1965;
https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/3080/1/Cowley_WIBtext.pdf The Roles of Gerald Clark and Gregory Felix in New York There were further factors that supplemented Decca‘s cultivation of calypso for a wider audience. One was the Trinidad-born bandleader Gerald Clark (Fitzgerald Clarke). If not before, from 1927 — when he played guitar on Wilmoth Houdini‘s first session, for Victor — Clark was involved in a good proportion of the calypso sides recorded in America. Jack Kapp used his band to accompany Atilla the Hun and the Roaring Lion in 1934 and this unit became the house musicians for Decca when they recorded Trinidad calypsos in New York. There was a lull in Clark‘s Decca recording activities between 1938 and 1940, when the company sent their production team annually to Trinidad for calypso sides. Together with another colleague, Gregory Felix (who was also a bandleader), Clark sought to expand the interest in Trinidad music in the United States by staging events and extra recording dates.122 Felix, a clarinet player, had worked in the band of James Reese Europe before the latter‘s unfortunate death in 1919, and had possibly been with King Oliver circa 1931. Almost certainly, he was Gregory Felix Delgardo, one of the Puerto Rican musicians Reese Europe recruited for his U.S. Army 369th Infantry Band, and took to France at the end of the First World War.123 Decca employed Felix and his Krazy Kats, who often accompanied Wilmoth Houdini on his sides, for an unusual set of recordings on 21 February 1938. These were popular songs performed by the band in paseo (or calypso) tempo. Interesting for their lack of jazz influence, the six pieces reversed Jack Kapp‘s general practice for his calypso sequence — usually different performers were represented on either side of a release. The Krazy Kats, however, were coupled in three 78s for the series and, separately, two were paired in the company‘s popular line: Josephine and The Dipsy Doodle (Decca 1856). The singer was Cecil Anderson, a Trinidadian who was to make a career in the United States under the sobriquet Duke of Iron.124 Anderson was not a true calypsonian, never having achieved status in Trinidad calypso tents, but his diction was clear, and this made him a suitable vocalist for North American audiences as well as migrant West Indians. By August 1939, Gerald Clark had secured a position for his Calypso Serenaders at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, New York, and virtually remained in residence for a year. He used the Duke of Iron as narrator and vocalist for this cabaret. At the end of 1939 the group cut four sides for Varsity. This was followed in January 1940 with another four titles for the same company in which two more of Clark‘s vocalists performed: Sir Lancelot (Lancelot Pinard — a trained singer of lieder from Trinidad) and Macbeth the Great (Patrick McDonald).125 In April, Life magazine printed a story on this movement towards attracting a larger audience, with photographs that showed the Duke of Iron accompanied by Gregory Felix on clarinet and characters in masquerade costumes, taken at Shrovetide celebrations in New York.126 The closest parallels in jazz and blues at this time were the two Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall sponsored by John Hammond in 1938 and 1939 respectively. They form part of a process that was leading to greater acceptability of black culture among white people in the United States. Since the networked broadcasts by Atilla and Lion in 1934, calypsonians had been in the vanguard of this trend and Trinidadians missed no opportunity that presented itself to promote their island‘s music.
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John Denver Stanley (born 1960), known as Stano, is an Irish experimental musician and visual artist.
[1] STANO Born John Denver Stanley, Dublin 1960, Stano grew up in Artane and showed no inclination towards a 'musical' career as a child. Attending the local Christian brothers school and then the technical college, his first choice of lifestyle was that of the army. After five months there he settied down to become a carpenter But Stano had always been a non-conformist. His early schooldays had been chequered by a rebellious streak and at the tech. he had been noticed for his distinctive writing abiiities. Even though an avid fan of Bob Dylan's, it wasn't until punk happened that Stano took an active interest in rock music. During the late seventiff!early eighties, Stano hung around the Dublin punk scene, went to gigs, and befriended Johnny 'Rotten' Lydon of The Sex Pistols, who then often came to Ireland to get away from the hustle and bustle of London's whirligig music business. Stimulated by the energy of punk, Stano teamed up with Dublin combo The Threat and started to play synthesiser. Purveyors of a gritty ultrarealist sound their first single 'Lullaby in C'l'High Cost of Living, (Web 1980) was well received and made British radio airplay. Like a lot of groups of the punk period they didn't stay the course and broke up after a short time.
Not to be discouraged, Stano used all his free time away from his carpentry job to experiment with sound. Acquiring two tape machines he began recording from everyday sources, inventing his own version of musique concrete from television transmissions, gurgling tap water, walking footsteps, tinkling bottles and clattenng plates. Stano found that by walking around with a tape recorder on him he could chance upon interesting combinations of sounds Later these would be re-mixed into other things to make suitable collages. He was also wnting a lot of poetry--word associations that were not literally translatable. Open to much interpretation, Stano's wnting was intended to work on the level of the subconscious like a form of dream stimulus. Exploring many areas, he used his carpentry to design physical sculptures, visual constructions that could accompany the sounds he was hearing in his ears. Through a musician friend, Vinnie Murphy, Stano was encouraged to follow his muse in a studio context and early in 1982 his first solo record was released.
The single 'Room "/" Town' on Vox Enterprises was an interesting debut. Lyncally two icy observations of fragile, broken reality, the arrangements sound quite unusual. In a deadpan voice Stano sings of stagnant isolation in a room, to the accompaniment of Vinnie Murphy's plaintive piano. His own drum machine rhythms and crashing background noises enhance the gloomy mood of the piece. 'Town' is more in the traditional punk mould, Stano angrily evoking the sense of desperation in alcoholic street violence through a funky rhythmic sound. Its quirky drum-machine segments, synth parts and grand piano ending all help to communicate a chaotic scenario. On the strength of this one record Stano made a reputation for himself among the public and press of the rock underground. Saving his money he bought more time in the studio and with a deal from Deke O'Bnen's Scoff label completed an album's worth of material. Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft came out in 1983 and demonstrated to those who thought Stano a depressing artist how varied and lively his work could be. Including 'Room', the album has eleven tracks in all. Acting as Iyrical contributor, sound arranger and producer, Stano involved the talents of many musicians during the recording sessions. Ex-Van Morrison man Jerome Rimson plays a neat slap rhythm bass on 'White Fields (in Isis)', a real dance cut. 'Seance of a Kondalike' features the acoustic strains of 'Mo Chara' (my friend), a sitar-like instrument played by its inventor Michael O'Shea. Here Stano experiments with his vocals, screaming and screeching behind the Arabesque pattern of O'Shea's beautiful string tapping.
O'Shea's Eastern infuence is also felt on the poignant 'A Dead Rose' where he plays both Indian sitar and his Mo Chara to Stano's elegiac vocal. 'Whale' is equally sad; a short song about the cruelty of animal killing, it is unusually scored by a chunky mid-tempo acoustic guitar riff. This is an album of much variety--tape-loop experiments, heavy guitar sounds and BrechtlWeill-type burlesque tracks all snugly fitted together under Stano's direction. 'Out of the Dark into the Dawn' is the record's finest take and relies heavily on the emotively powerful piano playing of Roger Doyle. To this Stano adds an aquamarine-type drum sound, the sweet voice of Suzanne Rattigan, and a hint of other vocals. Almost Ambient in texture, this soothing composition has the effect of enthralling one to reverie.
Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft is a uniquely accomplished collection of music from an untutored, inexperienced 'non-musician'. Even the early experimental solo work of Brian Eno looks pale in comparison Wrapped in a simple, 'homemade' grey sleeve, the album made no impression whatsoever on the Irish or English record-buying public. Very few people actually heard it at the time, but those few critics who did raved about it. One English writer went so far as to label it an'eccentric classic'. Words like introverted, recluse and outsider were thrown around too readily by rock journalists who really couldn't see the enormous ground-breaking nature of Stano's work. Here was somebodly with little or no knowledge of avant-garde music and electronics who was in reality applying all the innovations of twentieth- century music to his vision of sound. In the studio, Stano would just let things happen. If an idea entered his head, then it would be tried Musicians were brought in not for their virtuosity in a particular style but because they made a specific sound. Positioning of micraophones, splicing of tape, backward tracking--whatever the studio threw up to him- -Stano woud incorporate into his compositions. Vocals were more important for their intonational qualities than their literal meaning. Few could have guessed the spontaneous methods in Stano's designs from the highly plolished music of Content to Write. In time the album would become globally recognised as exemplary of new directions in contemporary music.
Mixed-media performances, involving slides, film and other artists/musicians, as well as more advanced recordings using computer electronics, made up his 1984 projects. His unorthodox mixture of words and unprepared music became more rock-oriented on his second album, Seducing Decadtnce in Morning Treecrash (a record that did not receive a general release until 1986!). Although more Iyrical the eight-track Seducing Decadtncc is a much darker affair than Content to Wnite. Utilising the unusually treated guitar sounds of Gurdi (ex-Microdisney) and Donald Teskey, a harder rhythmic drum sound courtesy Sean Devitt and the multi-instrumental talents of Vinnie Murphy, Stano pushes his creations fully into the desolate territory of post- industrial decay. Full of chaos, sliding avalanches of sound, disintegrating images and junkyard/scrapheap elements, Stano's new visions chart a downward spiral of human alienation and confusion in the face of the problematic state of late twentieth-century Western capitalism. 'Destruction' acknowledges the negative side of man's make-up, his uncontrollable tendency to destroy life in the name of 'progress' and is potently delivered through a series of liquid textured guitar passages. 'Cry Across the Sea' relates to the damaging effect of the consumer society on individual integrity through a style of music that stitches familiar dance beats and mesmeric polyrhythms into a documentary-type soundtrack. The thunderous noise of 'Ascendancy' is so subversive that it communicates an aural recreation of the rioting, chanting hordes of Russia's 1917 Bolshevik revolution. And just to knock a few more noses out of joint, Stano weaves Arabic, Oriental, Arctic and Slavik stylisations into the album's overall music plan.
The sounds of Seducing Decadence lent themselves to film and othervisual media. For live presentations in Ireland and the UK, Stano collaborated with Dublin artist Donal Ruane. Instead of treating the stage like a normal performer would do, Stano chose to pre-tape his music and relay it back on a reel-to-reel in conjunction with Ruane's projected cut-up slide shows and film sequences. Stano would murmur and shout his 'poetry' into a microphone. sometimes sitting down, sometimes out of sight completely. Audiences were befuddled by it all, particularly the violent nature of Ruane's imagery. A thoroughly self-taught expert on media art, Ruane collaged several thousand excerpts from news-reel, film, advertising, documentary and other sources and re-edited them to synchronise with Stano's stage output. At times these images would become nauseatingly repulsive and the entire show resembled an audio visual compendium of the reality outlined by such writers as William S. Burroughs and Marshall McLuhan. This was the first time that an Irish rock artist had ventured into such territory and its only real equivalent was in the 'media rock journalism' of Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire.
Residing in London between 1985 and 1986, Stano maintained his association with Ruane. Through an independent outlet called Food Records, two tracks from his first album and two from his second (which was still unavailable) were released on an EP under the title 'The Protagonist 28 Nein'. The cover of Content to Write was re-designed and made available in Greece and Scandinavia. But like a lot of composers working in the avant-garde area, Stano found it very difficult to get large commercial record company backing. Disillusioned with the staleness of the English scene he returned to Dublin late in 1986 to find that interest in what he was doing had increased enormously during his absence. Scoff Records had acquired European distribution for Selucing Decadence through a Berlin label, Dossier. Playlist statements received by Scoff showed that Content to Write had been aired on the radio of twenty-seven countries world-wide, including Russia and America, Central and South America, Scandinavia, Eastern and Central Europe and the Far East. In response, RTE Radio featured a lengthy documentary on Stano's art, presented by serious music academic Dermot Rattigan. In this context Stano was given the incisive analysis that his work required. Here he spoke of his music as an attempt to provoke 'smells' and 'feelings' in the mind of the listener, as a way of painting memories, as a form of sculpting in time.
Similar attitudes to musical composition had been expressed by other figures in modern avant-garde music, most notably Brian Eno. The radio programme also included excerpts from Stano's third album Daphne Will Be Born Again (Dossier 1987). An entirely instrumental excursion, this record is a more relaxing and uplifting work than its predecessor. It is difficult to associate the optimistic tone of this selection with the unpredictable Stano's pessimistic 'Protagonist' product of 1984/1985. Most of the album's sound originates from his exploration of the Fairlight computer music instrument, a piece of equipment that seemed tailor-made for Stano's requirements. On 'Dream and the Little Girl Lost' he creates a tastefully romantic violin section to go with the bubbly funk riffing and spoken French dialogue of the track. 'Majestics of Majesty' is a spacey concoction of bells, flute and percussion that has very Japanese connotations. The sound of the Japanese koto can actually be heard on 'Nuit Blanche--Winter in Summertime'. A moody set-piece, which displays Stano's gift for getting the best out of any electronic equipment he touches, its Fairlight fabrication combines the shimmering strings of the koto with the sounds of waves, birds,screams and a fearful backing orchestra that aurally describes a sort of Gothic Little Red Riding Hood scenario.
Again the music had a powerful soundtrack quality. In fact a lot of Stano's m music had been licensed out for television, radio and film use. In 1987 a s election of tracks from his flrst two albums including the momentous 'Out of the Dark into the Dawn' were chosen for the French film Kalndostol)e. Addicted to studio work, Stano recorded another album before his third one had had the opportunity to make the record stalls. Titled Before May I Will Change (not released to date), he considered it the most 'accessible' vinyl proposition of his career. Not content with that he simultaneously began work on a classical piece with Dermot Rattigan as arranger. A multi-talented operator, Stano's contribution to Irish rock cannot in any way be ignored. He is the first Irish rock artist to play the studio like an instrument, the first to allow intuition with regard to electronics, sound and chance occurrences to govern his output. While professing no prior knowledge of historical movements in modern avant-garde music, his work easily slips into the mould of the world's foremost innovations in that field. For Stano it's his gift for the natural arrangement of sounds, no matter from what source, into a highly original music that is the key to his success as a recording.
https://stanoarts.com/bio/ Irish artist Stano has been a recording artist and composer since the early ‘80’s. With 14 albums (released on Berlin label ‘Dossier’, Independent labels ‘Scoff’, ‘Food Records’ London, ‘Egg Records’ Greece, ‘Hue’ and ‘Loscann’ and the debut album for U2’s Mother Records), numerous singles and film soundtracks to his credit. He is regarded as a true innovator, with an intense understanding of sonic structure and always ahead of his time.
Stano has a unique take on music production, he collaborates with musicians from all genres. His music is a hybrid of musical styles so if you’re looking for originality, Stano’s music has it all, beautiful melodies, powerful rhythms, other worldly layers and textures and extremely visual.
Stano’s paintings have been described as a visual representation of his music, detailed, layered and textured. Aged 18 he began to paint oil on wood, he was an apprentice cabinet maker at the time and used the offcuts of wood to create sculptures and paintings.
His first exhibition was in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in 1982 which coincided with the release of his first solo single ‘Room’. The visual side of his performances utilised backing tracks, film (Buñuel and Dali) and performance art.
https://thequietus.com/articles/25820-stano-content-to-write-in-i-dine-weathercraft-album-review
Stano CONTENT TO WRITE IN I DINE WEATHERCRAFT Eoin Murray , December 18th, 2018 07:54 Exuberant, outlandish and wry archival release from the Irish post punk experimental underground
Dublin’s All City has been doing a fine job of late in recovering and reissuing widely forgotten treasures from the Irish undergrowth, reinstating their significance to the country’s musical canon in the process. Last year, the label released Quare Groove Vol. 1, an eight-track collection of rare groove, post-punk, funk and disco from the 70s and 80s. The release celebrated a vital, versatile and brilliantly weird underbelly; one that shirked the outward facing ambitions of more “marketable” acts while leaning further into the studio experimentation and oddity that would go on to become the touchstone of Ireland’s musical landscape for decades to come.
One of the compilation’s standout moments was Stano’s ‘White Fields (In Isis)’. Dropped between the galactic videogame pop of Those Nervous Animals’ ‘Hyperspace!’ and Barry Warner’s yelping, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts -like ‘Losing Control’, Stano’s no wave cut swerved and bounced with a boyish arrogance, his open-gobbed vocals seeming eager to swallow the bass and drum patterns that trounced around them.
The track wielded the sort of brash confidence and exuberance that only someone with no restrictive formal training could produce and was, as it happened, just one of 12 outlandish, wry and lovingly off-kilter cuts that the self-professed “non-musician” included in his 1983 debut LP, Content To Write In I Dine Weathercraft.
Now, continuing their archival venture, the folks at All City have reissued that seminal album of Irish experimentalism. In doing so, they have shone a light on an artist whose significance runs deep and who, in many ways, prefaced the gnarled, accented and inflected authenticity that has since resurfaced in Irish artists like Kojaque, Girl Band, Fontaines D.C, Handsome Eric and Robocobra Quartet.
Stano’s approach to music at the time of recording was like that of a child playing Blind Man’s Bluff on Dublin streets to find musicians like sitarist Michael O’Shea or fumbling within the local scene to tag multi-instrumentalist Vinnie Murphy, audio engineer Terry Cromer, Jerome Rimson, Chant! Chant! Chant! Guitarist Robbie Wogan, pianist Dave Murphy and Daniel Figgis on keys. The method, he has explained, was to ask these musicians, from varying stylistic backgrounds, to simply play while being recorded; together or alone, with delay units or without. He would then pick from those recordings the bits he liked and proceed to chop and edit them into form. Same went for the drum programming, which he “learned” by sheer intuition, creating patterns that were unorthodox and built on instinct rather than conventional groove.
This crude and joyously chaotic process ends up feeling like something in between early hip-hop production and abstract collage. But through it, Stano made an album that touched on something both beautiful and raucous, its lo-fi grit being accentuated and elevated by his distinctly North Dublin spoken drawl. Everything about it lovingly shouts “Dublin” – from its mumbled poeticism and unabashed dog-eared musicality to its grey, cold, magnificent atmosphere.
‘A Dead Rose’ introduces the album with clicking rhythm and absorbing layers of sitar and guitar, which breathe life into Stano’s brittle poetry. The gradual, barely-there pitch alterations to his voice give the feeling of a meandering stream of consciousness, directed at some imagined figure before him or within.
From there, ‘Blue Glide’ and ‘Emma Wild’ cast a droopy eye to Stano’s equally disobedient contemporary across the pond: one Mark E. Smith, who, in the same year as Content’s original release on Scoff Records, released The Fall’s Perverted By Language. Distorted, turgid guitars fall on disjointed rhythms while Stano’s abstract vocals flail on top with an unlikely charm. It’s in these moments that it becomes hard to not to draw comparisons between this once-deemed forgotten voice and that of Girl Band’s Dara Kiely, whose sardonic and desperate vocals on 2015’s Holding Hands With Jamie propelled the similarly off-kilter noise rock band to lofty heights in before they were forced to cancel all forthcoming shows in 2017 due to health concerns for the singer.
‘Melting Grey’, ‘Out Of The Dark, Into The Dawn’ and ‘Seance Of A Kondalike’, by contrast, show a more reserved version of the producer, whose studio manipulations find guest vocalists, emotive piano layers, haunting keys and lethargic drum patterns crafting a uniquely absorbing mid-section to an album the likes of which were scarce in the era.
Content To Write In I Dine Weathercraft ends with ‘Young Colatic Child’, a heartrending ballad that feels as staggering now as it should have been in 1983. It is heartening to know that Stano is, to this day, a core fixture Ireland’s arts community and has, since this debut, released 12 albums on numerous labels. One can only hope that, with the help of All City’s continued work, Stano and the other forgotten progenitors of Ireland’s rich, diverse and distinct music scene will soon be ranked among the country’s most influential.
https://medium.com/learn-and-sing/stano-the-magpie-458a96b44f6f the story of STANO an oral history by Paul McDermott Paul McDermott Paul McDermott Follow Oct 14, 2018 · 16 min read
Musings on: Dublin punk and post-punk — Vox magazine —U2 and Mother Records — My Bloody Valentine —Michael O’Shea — Alto Studios — Roger Doyle —Micro Disney’s Giordaí Ua Laoghaire and more… Image for post Songs To Learn And Sing - Ep 751 (01 Apr 2020) Episode 751 of Songs to Learn and Sing has a career-spanning interview with Dublin musician and artist Stano. Chatting… www.mixcloud.com Introduction Stano’s 1983 debut album Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft is reissued this month by AllChival (All City Records’ reissue label). The original album has been exchanging hands for lots of money in recent years so this is a very timely release. Stano’s avant-garde electronic record was years ahead of its time and quite rightly deserves its place in the pantheon of seminal Irish post-punk releases. Stano started out as a member of Dublin’s legendary The Threat before releasing his debut single in 1982. Punk was the great enabler: Stano couldn’t play an instrument but he did write poetry, he also had two tape recorders. He would bounce field recordings from one tape machine to another and add spoken word performances. He recorded band rehearsals and cut up the jams he liked: by his own admission he was a magpie, soaking up influences and regurgitating them. Never one to sit still, he has since released over a dozen albums of startlingly, uncompromising original music. Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of chatting to Stano on a number of occasions. He joined me up in Dublin City FM for a really long chat one night and more recently he contributed to a documentary about Michael O’Shea that I’m producing. Over the Summer we spent a great afternoon revisiting the home of Alto Studios in Robert Emmet House in Milltown. Below is some of what transpired over the course of those meetings. Punk When I heard ‘New Rose’ it just clicked in. I was listening to Suzi Quatro, Status Quo all this rock stuff and then I heard The Damned. I got into punk around 1976, I first heard ‘New Rose’ on John Peel, hearing that twigged my interest in the music. Four or five weeks later I was watching the British press and came across The Pistols, that’s where my interest in the whole thing stemmed from. I ran into a few punks around Dublin, I hadn’t seen any punks in Dublin at all and they hadn’t seen another punk until they met me. I was making my own tapes at home, I had two tape recorders and I’d tape stuff off the television, I’d tape myself going to the pub, I’d be bouncing one tape recorder to the other so that’s what I was at, this was maybe six months before I knew about punk, so I was about 15 or 16 years of age. When I heard ‘New Rose’ it just clicked in. Everybody thinks about punk rock and the hair and all that, but there were all these really strange bands around at the time, experimental bands. Image for post Taken from a 1988 Stano bio. Image by Tom Mc Loughlin. Used with Permission. The Threat My role was playing the synth and generating noise basically, I couldn’t play the instrument. Myself and a friend called Shane O’Neill, not the guy out of Blue in Heaven, decided to get a band together and we advertised in Hot Press: [laughing] “People into Punk Rock and Bob Dylan.” One guy was curious, a guy called Vinnie Murphy, he was in a band called The Sinners. We went to meet them in a pub and met Maurice Foley. We got talking away and I just clicked with Maurice, I got on really well with him. Two others broke away and went on to form Chant! Chant! Chant! When the lads broke away I was just hanging around with Maurice. Image for post The Threat — ‘Lullaby In C’/’High Cost of Living’ (1980, One Web Reocrds, 7" — 001WE). Images by Tom Mc Loughlin from 45Cat used with permission. I used to be just hanging around outside the door listening to the music, I’d mention about this riff or that riff. Eventually the band broke up and I couldn’t play an instrument so I went out and bought a synthesizer. Maurice heard that I had one and asked me to join the band. That’s how I got involved in music. Image for post A & B Side Labels for ‘Lullaby In C’/’High Cost of Living’. Images Image by Tom Mc Loughlin from 45Cat used with permission. I used to go along to the rehearsal room, the band would jam, there were different drummers and the band was put back together again. Deirdre Creed from The Boy Scoutz played bass, she’d later join a band in England. My role was playing the synth and generating noise basically, I couldn’t play the instrument. I started arranging music, I’d pick up on the rhythm and the drums, they had a tape recorder and I started to tape things. I’d come back and say, I like that bit here, I like this bit there.
The Threat eventually put out a single. We used to play the Magnet, we played with The Outcasts. I saw Nun Attax once or twice in the Magnet and somewhere else in Dublin, I’m not sure. They were an amazing band. I went to see Micro Disney in the Magnet and the main thing that fascinated me about them was Giordaí (Ua Laoighre). They were a really powerful funk band. There was something really strange about Giordaí’s playing — he was playing with the band and sort of almost outside the band. Dark Space Dark Space/Project — to question the context for art in public space, 24 hour non-stop festival. Project Arts Centre, 16 February 1979 The Project ran a 24 hour gig, John Peel came over for it. PIL were meant to play but cancelled and then Throbbing Gristle also cancelled. Image for post In Dublin 9–22 Feb, 1979. Image from BrandNewRetro. Poster for Dark Space at the Project from U2theearlydayz. The Threat were playing, U2 were there, The Virgin Prunes were also there. It’s a bit of a haze now, lots of different bands, Casablanca Moon played, Gareth Lee’s (Jacknife Lee) first band. All our contemporaries were there, we were all sort of hanging around together, we were doing all different bits and pieces. “The crowd, John Stephenson of the Project told me, totaled about 800 over the 26 hours, but at the reduced price of £4 a head (owing to the non appearance of John Lydon & Throbbing Gristle) he said that the festival would lose a lot of money. Invariably, there were many small problems, such as the sound not always being correct or the music drowning out the soundtracks of the films which were shown throughout the festival. But these minor cribs amount to little when compared to the peace, the good music & the general good atmosphere which permeated the East Essex Street building. Even the Project workers remained in good spirits at the snacks counter though they were there for 12 hour shifts.” taken from a review by Joe Breen in The Irish Times “In fact, the non appearance of Public Image was a boon. Bereft of their presence and the weekend punks they would have attracted, the flow wasn’t distorted nor energies distracted by that overriding event, instead, but for the presence of The Mekons. “Dark Space” was a completely local event, allowing the bands to sow the seeds of self-conscious community… Those who were there know its importance, in five years time, those who weren’t will be clamouring to pretend they were there and Project will discover they’d had as large audience as filled the G.P.O. “Dark Space” was the first Irish rock gig for the eighties. Jump aboard.” taken from a review by Bill Graham in Hot Press. Vox magazine I was under the influence of punk and it was “be original, be yourself”, there were no rules. Around this time we ran into Dave Clifford, we became friends with Dave. He came over to interview The Threat. He was only a few issues into Vox magazine at the time. There were a few fanzines around at the time but Vox was really well put together, it looked really well. The Threat broke up, I was at a loose end and I decided to record a single and I’d become friends with Dave through The Threat. Image for post Dave Clifford’s Vox magazine — Issues: #1, #2, #3, #5 & #6. 15 issues were published between 1980 and 1983. Images Paul McD. All 15 issues are soon to be reissued by HiTone books — see tweet below. Image for post @dubwherewereyou I went down to Vinnie’s house and sat there one day in the sitting room, he was jamming away on piano, I said what’s that you’re playing? I came back the next day with a tape recorder and taped what he was doing. I went home and pieced something together from one tape recorder to another. I’d been writing poetry and bits of words but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was under the influence of punk and it was “be original, be yourself”, there were no rules. So I started to gather all of these musical ideas and ran into Dave Clifford. Dave interviewed me and put a few of my poems in Vox magazine. Dave started telling me about musique concrète and all this type of thing. He started introducing me to all these things, modern classical. Vox Enterprises I had a little poem and I just spoke over the noise. Dave set up a label and the first single was my debut single on the Vox label — ‘Room’. It was recorded in Alto Studios, in the basement of Robert Emmet’s house. Terry Cromer had the studio there and he had also recorded with Mircodisney. It was a grand piano and a drum machine and I was throwing wooden chairs around the room making noise. I had a little poem and I just spoke over the noise. Image for post Stano — ‘Room’/’Town’ (1982, Vox Enterprises, 7" — V.E.1). Images by Tom Mc Loughlin from 45Cat used with permission. I didn’t distinguish between music and art because I didn’t know any better really, when I was being introduced to all these things it was just music to me, I started to hear about Philip Glass and Steve Reich, I didn’t necessarily understand it but I was always interested, I was always drawn to it. Image for post A & B Side Labels for ‘Room’/’Town’. Image by Tom Mc Loughlin from 45Cat used with permission. When I was younger I didn’t have a record player and I wouldn’t have bought records. I would have been listening to the Top 40 basically. I can remember my sister bought a Bob Dylan record and she hated it so she gave it to me and I hated it when I first heard it but it started to sink in, I listened to that for about three months. The next album I bought was Horses by Patti Smith. Image for post Advertisement for Stano’s debut 7". Image from Vox magazine. I’ve been trying to trace back my interest in music and figure out the little threads and what came first but Dave Clifford was the real influence because he was the one that opened my eyes to all different types of music. Dave was interviewing The Fall and Lydia Lunch and all these left-field bands so I started to become aware of that music. Three hundred foot monster floating over Cork Then Giordaí plugged in his guitar and he started making these weird noises. The best piece of music that I ever heard was by Giordaí and I only heard it once. He blew my mind with it, he said I’m going to play you something and I’ll just explain to you what it is first. Image for post Giordaí Ua Laoghaire of Micro Disney on stage at the Magnet, Pearse Street, Dublin, 28 February 1981. Photograph by Nicky White. Used with permission. He said, “I woke up in the morning and there was a three hundred foot monster floating over Cork.” I said, “OK” He said, “Now have a listen to this.” He put on this cassette, and I heard this Bump, Bump, Bump noise of someone running down a stairs, the noise of dogs barking and howling and then the noise of a motorbike driving off in the distance and then coming back again. Then Giordaí plugged in his guitar and he started making these weird noises. I had this sort of Salvador Dalí image in my head of this big monster, and that’s all it was but to me that was the most powerful piece of music I’ve ever heard and it was nothing really — to me when I’m making music I’m looking for fragments of sound and little ideas and squeaks, that’s what I’m interested in. Debut solo gig So my reputation ended up being associated with the avant-garde, or the weird or the strange. My first solo gig ever was in the Project. Dave had put out the single ‘Room’ and he was putting on a night with Microdisney (Da Vox Irrational Cabaret). He said, I’m putting out your single so you have to do a gig. Image for post Taken from the Project Arts Centre’s listings flyer. Image from John Byrne. I was afraid of my life — I didn’t want to go on stage. I was thinking, how will I do a gig? A guy called Donal Ruane said, “I’ll make a film for you.” So I used to sit on stage or I’d be on my knees reciting poetry and you had these two Salvador Dalí movies being screened behind me. A lot of my early gigs were just like that with backing tracks, I played the October Gallery in London and toured around galleries with a backing track and a film. I can remember doing a gig in a place called the Tabernacle with Nigel Rolfe.
I had done a gig a few weeks previously with The Virgin Prunes and Bauhaus in Brixton and we went from there to doing this gig in The Tabernacle, a new great venue. We were sitting there at quarter past six and no-one had turned up, by seven there was still no-one there. There had been a few hundred people at the gig in the Academy, so we were thinking, “What’s going on?” We couldn’t figure it out, there was a few people who came in and said we paid in so you must go on stage. I went on stage and after about 10 minutes I just got bored and walked off stage and sat down and started looking at my own gig, [laughing] I hadn’t realised what Donal had been doing, he’d been using these really heavy film clips, fucked up pornography and post mortems and all this collage stuff. I was always wondering why people were shocked at my gigs, [laughing] I had never actually seen the visuals. So my reputation ended up being associated with the avant-garde, or the weird or the strange. But every time I met another musician their influence could seep into what I was doing. I never distinguished whether it was a guy from a cabaret band or a metal band or punk or a classical musician — it didn’t matter to me, it never mattered to me. I was like a magpie. Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft I didn’t play an instrument on it, I don’t play an instrument. I did my first album in Alto, I was just pulling in people that I knew, anybody that I liked. I had met Roger Doyle in the Project and I approached him. I had a drum machine with delays on it and he started playing piano. I didn’t play an instrument on it, I don’t play an instrument. The studio is my instrument really, I was doing stuff that would now be regarded as sampling. So I was sampling bits and pieces. I’d be sitting looking at guys jamming away and I’d be recording. I always thought that the jams were better, more interesting. I still work like that today, [laughing] get people in and we’re recording before they realise it almost. That’s where I get my ingredients from. Image for post Stano — Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft (Allchival — All CIty Records, 2018, ACSLPx1). Image from All City Records. I heard Dave Fanning play Michael O’Shea’s track ‘Kerry’, I thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces of music I had ever heard. There was something otherworldly about it. I was midway through recording my first album and I was walking around by Trinity College and I heard this amazing music drifting on the wind. I followed the music until I found it and it was Michael O’Shea, sitting in a doorway. I was just transfixed by what he was doing, he was bald, he looked like a Hare Krishna, he was wearing Indian robes and I waited until he was finished and I approached him and said, “How’re you Michael, my name’s Stano I’m recording an album.” He recognised my name because he’d done an interview two days earlier with Dave Clifford and myself and Microdisney had been mentioned. I met him outside Trinity the next day and we got on the bus out to the studio. People were staring at him. Image for post Stano at Robert Emmet House (former home of Alto Studios), July 2018. Photograph by Paul McDermott. I was programming drum tracks with Terry Cromer and Vinnie Murphy, it was an 808 drum machine, but as we were programming it I had been turning the buttons and we got a kind of warped Indian sound and I was running the drum machine through amps. Michael just came in and jammed. When he was doing his own stuff he used a lot of phasers and shifters and things like that. Because the basement of Robert Emmet’s house was so big you got a very natural reverb sound that was just beautiful. So we ended up recording Michael with nothing on it and I would have put effects onto it later. He had a few sandwiches, a cup of tea and we gave him a few bob, he was in and out in about two hours. I never saw him again.
Stano feat. Michael O’Shea — Seance Of A Kondalike [All City Records] The first album was picked up for distribution by Rough Trade in England. It was the early days of My Bloody Valentine and we used to hang around together, we used to gig around a lot together. They ended up going to Germany and I used to write to them. I had my second album finished, Seducing Decadence In Morning Treecrash, I had nobody to put it out. Colm Ó Cíosóig told me that they were involved in a label in Berlin so to send it over. Image for post Stano — Content to Write in I Dine Weathercraft (Back Cover) (Allchival — All CIty Records, 2018, ACSLPx1). Image from All City Records. Dossier Records then picked up my first album and then a label in Britain, Magnet Records picked up the second album. The first three albums came out on the Berlin label. Mother Records I just put my head down for about 10 years and didn’t want to be involved in music anymore. Image for post Newspaper cutting of Stano. Image from Tom Mc Loughlin. I was working away on Only, the fourth album, and U2 had set up Mother Records and Bono had heard one or two tracks and he approached me and I thought, great OK, here’s a big label a big band, there might be more exposure. Island Records wanted to license it but they wanted to see a band but of course I didn’t have a band. So I ended up with Garry Sullivan, Mark Young and Gerry Leonard from Hinterland. We did a gig in the Underground. It didn’t suit me though, I was just never comfortable on stage. Image for post Stano — Only (Mother Records, 1989, LP and CD, MUM891). Image stanoarts.com. The whole Mother Records thing, it just didn’t work out. The album got some great reviews but I just put my head down for about 10 years and didn’t want to be involved in music anymore, I just started to paint. In the last few years I’ve started to pick up old bits of equipment and that’s rekindled my interest in it. Image for post Flyer for Stano’s 1988 residency at Sides Dance Club, 26 Dame Street. Image from Tom Mc Loughlin.
When Life Slips Away — Stano (Only — Mother Records, 1989) In Between Silence In a way it’s very punk, it’s gone full circle. I’ve released four or five albums in the last 10 years. The latest project is In Between Silence. It happened by accident. I’ve a Dutch friend, a guitar player who comes over and plays with me now and again and we were building these instrumental tracks. Brian Palm from the Mary Stokes Band was coming in playing harmonica on some of the tracks. We were having a break, having a cup of tea and Brian said that himself and Mary were traveling across America and had stopped off at an Indian reservation. I stopped him and I asked the engineer to play one of the instrumental tracks, we opened up a new track and Brian told his story. There was just something about it. I took the piece home and played it to my wife and it just had a really great image about it, the music and the story really weaved together. Image for post John Duffy — Wet with Starlight Rain (2015) A friend called John Duffy ended up with leukemia and I called to him a few weeks before he died. He told me that he regretted that we had never recording anything together in the studio. So he came into the studio and I told him that I was doing a spoken word album, I had another of these instrumental tracks and it was such a powerful day but yet one of the worst days in the studio — listening to your best friend telling his end of life stories. It was so powerful, but it wasn’t self-pitying. We ended up doing an album called Wet with Starlight Rain and we had an exhibition of John’s paintings. That was really the start of In Between Silence. Image for post Stano — Selected Discography (In Between Silence, STANO 2017. Memory Distorts a Life, Loscann Records 2009. Blind Sound, Loscann Records 2010.) Images from stanoarts.com. So from there I recorded with Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Robert Ballagh and others. In a way it’s very punk, it’s gone full circle back to my first single which was just grand piano and spoken word.
Stano’s Content To Write In I Dine Weathercraft is available from Allchival Records.
https://boomkat.com/products/content-to-write-in-i-dine-weathercraft Boomkat Product Review: One of the year’s most crucial wave reissues, Stano’s debut LP ‘Content to write in I dine Weathercraft’ is a seminal and sought-after Irish post-punk album starring two rare appearances by the near-mythical Michael O’Shea. Nothing less than an essential recommendation to anyone familiar with the Michael O’Shea LP, Finders Keeper’s ‘Strange Passion’ compilation, or early Dome experiments!
We can barely contain our buzz over this reissue. From its wild DIY drum machine programming to the appearance of O’Shea’s cymbeline-like home-built instrument and the cut ’n splice, layered song arrangements, ‘Content to write in I dine Weathercraft’ is one of those blue moon reissues that, in hindsight, seem to blow away so much other, better known material from the era whence it came.
As spotted with ‘Town’, a highlight of Finders Keepers’ great Cache Cache compilation, ‘Strange Passion’, Stano’s mix of hands-on drum machine rhythms and bittersweet songcraft remain among the strongest examples from Dublin’s punk/post-punk scene of the early ‘80s. And judging from the 2nd hand asking prices of ‘Content to write in I dine Weathercraft’ in 2018, quite a few other listeners are patently aware of his prowess, too.
A former member of The Threat (also found on ‘Strange Passion’), John Denver Stanley or Stano recorded his first album in Dublin’s Alto studio, in the basement of late C.18th Irish Nationalist leader Robert Emmet’s house, where he made sublime use of the studio’s natural reverbs, inviting around pals and peers to work in a musique concrete-like method of playing, processing and editing to achieve the wickedly unpredictable, flowing chicanery of his first album.
The two appearances of Michael O’Shea and his Mo Chara (a self-built, 17-string, zither or cymbeline-like instrument with pick-ups) are noteworthy not just for their haunting beauty, but also their rarity, amounting to the near-mythical busker’s only known recordings outside an eponymous classic for Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis’ Dome Records. Whether meshed with Stano’s drum machine and echoplex FX in ‘Seance of a Kondalike’ or layered with his Sitar and Stano’s tabla-esque tweaks in ‘A Dead Rose’, the effect leaves us a shivering mess, to be honest and still scratching our heads why there’s no recent, significant reissue of O’Shea’s own work.
The rest of the LP is no less brilliant in it’s own way, roundly speaking to the diversity Stano, a self-described “non-musician”, and his intuitive way with sound. From the almost lusting funk of ‘White Field (In Isis)’, to the wild-pitching drum machine of ‘Blue Glide’, thru the icy elegance of the grand piano in ‘Out of the Dark, Into the Dawn’, to the sheer concrete sound design of ‘Melting Grey’ and again with that deadly machine swagger on ‘Emma Wild’ and ‘Room’, we’re left in no doubt this LP is a true, overlooked classic of its time.
https://www.irishrock.org/irodb/bands/stano.html
https://www.discogs.com/artist/209050-Stano
John Denver Stanley
Profile:
John Stanley (b.1960) AKA Stano was a member of The Threat before pursuing a solo career in improvised, experimental/electronic music. He received a lot of early coverage in Vox magazine, who published his poetry and eventually released his debut single in 1982. Rather than perform live, Stano experimented in private, collaborating with a number of different musicians including Roger Doyle, Michael O'Shea and Daniel Figgis, creating the recordings that would form his debut LP. By the time of it's release in 1983, he had reputedly made only one solo live appearance, at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. The debut LP "Content To Write In I Dine Weathercraft" was released in September 1983 on Scoff Records in Ireland, imported into the UK by Rough Trade. It was eventually given a full UK release by Magnet Records in 1985.
Subsequent releases on the German Dossier label helped raise his international profile in the mid-80s. His third LP, "Daphne Will Be Born Again", recorded entirely on Fairlight was a departure, and was panned by Graham Linehan in Hot Press, while his fourth "Only" (1989), recorded for Mother Records and more rock oriented, was considered a disappointment by some. His touring band for this LP included ex members of The Experiment. His next album "Wreckage" (1994) was recorded partly in collaboration with Colm O'Coisoig of My Bloody Valentine.
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Plummer Davis (January 27, 1921 – May 1988), usually credited as Pluma Davis, was an American trombonist and bandleader
https://www.discogs.com/artist/832382-Pluma-Davis
https://www.houstonpress.com/news/preservation-hall-6565948
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- 1 Sylvie Vartan, 2 Johnny Hallyday, 3 Jean-Jacques Debout, 4 Hugues Aufray, 5 Catherine Ribeiro, 6 Eddy Mitchell, 7 Danyel Gérard, 8 Claude Ciari des Champions ;
- 9 France Gall, 10 Serge Gainsbourg, 11 Frankie Jordan, 12 Michèle Torr, 13 Sheila, 14 Chantal Goya, 15 Dany Logan ;
- 16 Michel Paje, 17 Ronnie Bird, 18 Monty, 19 Sophie Hecquet, 20 Noël Deschamps, 21 Jacky Moulière, 22 Annie Philippe, 23 Claude François, 24 Eileen, 25 Guy Mardel, 26 Billy Bridge ;
- 27 Michel Berger, 28 Michel Laurent, 29 Nicole (Les Surfs), 30 Salvatore Adamo, 31 Thierry Vincent, 32 Tiny Yong, 33 Antoine, 34 Françoise Hardy, 35 Benjamin ;
- 36 Dick Rivers, 37 Monique (Les Surfs), 38 Hervé Vilard, 39 Jocelyne ;
- 40 Dave (Les Surfs), 41 Rocky (Les Surfs), 42 Coco (Les Surfs), 43 Pat (Les Surfs), 44 Le Petit Prince, 45 Richard Anthony, 46 Christophe, 47 peluche de Chouchou (la mascotte de Salut les copains).
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Goldsen
https://variety.com/2011/music/news/mickey-goldsen-dies-at-99-1118044897/
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https://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/h/hereweareherewearehereweareagain.html
http://www.dbopm.com/link/index/4201/1024
http://ww1.ens.unibe.ch/Documents/Arthur_Max_When_This_Bloody_War_Is_Over.pdf HERE WE ARE! HERE WE ARE AGAIN! Written in 1914 by Charles Knight and composed by Kenneth Lyle, this became a hugely successful song among the soldiers, and from innumerable sing-songs, the Tommies would know all the words. The poets, since the War began, Have written lots of things About our gallant soldier lads Which no one ever sings. Although their words are very good, The lilt they seem to miss; For Tommy likes a tricky song, The song that goes like this - CHORUS Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again! There's Pat and Mac and Tommy and Jack and Joe. -15- ~ t.•, When there's trouble brewing, When there's something doing Are we downhearted? NO! Let 'em all come! Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again! We're fit and well, and feeling right as rain. Never mind the weather, Now then, all together, Hullo! Hullo! Here we are again! When Tommy went across the sea, To bear the battle's brunt, Of course he sang this little song While marching to the front. And when he's walking through Berlin, He'll sing the anthem still; He'll shove a 'Vvoodbine' on, and say, 'How are you, Uncle Bill?' CHORUS Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again! (etc.) And when the boys have finished up With Hermann and with Max, And when the enemy' got it Where the chicken got the axe, The girls will all be waiting 'Midst the cheering and the din, To hear their sweethearts singing, As the ship comes sailing in - CHORUS Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again! (etc.) 'Uncle Bill' is Kaiser Wilhelm II - a grandson of Queen Victoria.
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https://www.jsf.hiddentigerbooks.co.uk/history_toptown_main.htm
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Zenas "Daddy" Sears (July 14, 1913 – October 4, 1988) was an American radio disc jockey, who was influential in promoting blues, soul and rock music
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22086174/zenas-sears BIRTH 14 Jul 1913 Akron, Summit County, Ohio, USA DEATH 4 Oct 1988 (aged 75) Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA Mr. Zenas "Daddy" Sears a Georgia Music Hall of Fame member who introduced black music to Atlanta radio in the late 1940's and 1950's died of respiratory failure Tuesday at Heritage Convalescent Center here. He was 75. He suffered a massive stroke six years ago and was confined to his home in Atlanta. Since suffering another stroke in 1985, he had been a patient at the convalescent center near his home. The body will be donated to Emory University Mr. Sears was an announcer, disc jockey and on-air personality with radio stations WATL. WQXI and WGST in Atlanta. He and hi business partner bought WATL 33 years ago, changing the call letters to WAOK. Mr. Sears, a white man from Ohio with a degree from Johns Hopkins University, made WAOK's format black-community oriented. He played rhythm and blues, soul music and early rock music, helping launch the careers of such singers as Ray Charles, James Brown and Piano Red Perriman. Surviving are his wife, Clare Holman Sears; three sons, Charles Sears of Powder Springs, Richard Sears of Atlanta, and Gerald Sears of Decatur; two half-sisters, Dr. Harriet Hardy and Jane Stewart, both of Holyoke, Mass.; and five grandchildren.
http://www.grhof.com/08%20LEGACY%20ZENAS%20SEARS.htm Zenas Sears
1914-1988 Zenas "Daddy" Sears was a white man known for his progressive views in regard to both music and social issues, began his career as a disc jockey after being exposed to black music via the Armed Forces Radio. After leaving the army in 1945, he took a job at WATL in Atlanta, and in 1948 he moved to WGST, a station located on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus. His show "The Blues Caravan" aired nightly on the station, and Sears soon moved into promoting and arranging live performances, including talent shows featuring local Atlanta artists like Tommy Brown, Billy Wright, and Chuck Willis, as well as regional performers like Little Richard.
In March 1954 Sears left WGST and, working with a group of investors, in 1956 purchased WATL (located at 1380 on the AM radio dial) from James Woodruff for $500,000. He changed the call letters to WAOK changed the format. It was one of the first in the nation to feature as its primary format such African American musical forms as blues, rhythm and blues (R&B), and soul.
Sears's program "Diggin' the Discs" became enormously popular and was eventually syndicated around the country, including markets in Newark, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; and Norfolk, Virginia.
In addition to Sears's show, WAOK featured programs hosted by such local Atlanta R&B luminaries such as 2007 Georgia Radio Hall of Fame inductees William "Piano Red" Perryman and Zilla Mays. Mays started on WAOK as "The Mystery Lady" in 1954, and in 1955 (after revealing her identity) she hosted the "Dream Girl Show." Sears, with help from Mays and Perryman, started the WAOK Road Shows, traveling revues that brought R&B and gospel music to venues around the Southeast. Sears was also involved in promoting and recording the concerts of the era's top R&B artists, including a 1959 appearance by Ray Charles that was eventually released by Atlantic Records as Ray Charles in Person.
During the early 1950s, in addition to his radio work, Sears became a representative of RCA Victor's Groove Records imprint and produced for the label records by Mays, Perryman, and other R&B artists of the period. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he became involved with the civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., and his social views were reflected in WAOK's programming, which included such programs as Two Worlds, a talk show that fostered dialogue between blacks and whites in and around Atlanta, and a show featuring Sears and James "Alley Pat" Patrick, a popular black disc jockey in Atlanta.
In 1968 WAOK altered its format from R&B to soul and in 1980 became a gospel station. Sears stayed on as program director until health problems forced his full retirement in 1982.
Sears also appeared in two movies, "Jamboree", a late 50's rock & roll film which featured 21 of America's top rock-and-roll deejays and "The Legend of Blood Mountain" in 1965.
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https://acerecords.co.uk/various-artists-london-american
Established in 1948 as a home for American recordings financed or purchased by its parent organisation, the Decca Record Company of England, London Records quickly outgrew its original brief to become the UK’s premier outlet for music from the USA and a local home for dozens of the independent labels that sprung up across America after World War II.
London issued its first licensed recordings in March 1951 – two 78s by popular entertainer Billy Daniels sourced from New York’s Apollo label. Nearly nine months passed before another licensed title appeared, but pianist Adelaide Wood’s tear-’em-up version of ‘Down Yonder’ sold enough copies to change the focus of London in favour of non-owned repertoire.
A deal with Lew Chudd’s Imperial label in 1952 brought early success with Slim Whitman and opened the door for hits in the coming years from Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson and Sandy Nelson. By 1955 Imperial had been joined on the London roster by such notable imprints as Jubilee, Dot, Cadence, Modern/RPM, Abbott/Fabor, Herald/Ember, Dootone, Kapp, Era, Savoy and, perhaps most significantly of all, Atlantic. Over the next five years Sun, Cameo, Chess, Liberty, Flip, Excello/Nasco, End/Gone, Specialty, Ace, Challenge, Del-Fi, Vee-Jay, Big Top and numerous joined the London family, many staying well into the 1960s.
It was repertoire sourced from these and other imprints that built London’s unbeatable reputation for rock’n’roll, R&B and American Pop. London was not the only company to issue American recordings during the 50s, but it was the only label dedicated solely to doing so – and if that meant a release schedule in which the Coasters rubbed shoulders with pianist Roger Williams and the orchestras of Lawrence Welk and Billy Vaughn shared catalogue space with Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, then so be it.
Almost anyone who started collecting records in the 1950s will rhapsodise about their purchases of the latest releases on the black-and sliver, tri-centre pressings that were common to all London 45s until the late 50s, and the enjoyment they derived from seeing a growing pile of the company’s blue and white house bags sitting side-by-side near the family gramophone. For most of us, London wasn’t so much a label as a musical education, which continued into the 1960s fighting off increased competition from other UK majors who’d established US-specific imprints after seeing how successfulLondonhad been. The label’s profile decreased as the 60s progressed, but it continued to be cherished by generations of collectors who, by the 70s, were looking to it as a source of great soul music from logos such as Hi and All Platinum.
London closed in 1979 but was revived in the mid-1980s, coming full circle as licensed repertoire from labels such as Philly World and Vanguard rubbed shoulders with homegrown hits from the Bluebells and Bananarama. Ace’s ongoing series of CDs chronicling London’s activity on a year-by-year basis is not going up that far, but by the time it’s finished it will have told the story of more than 20 years in the life of arguably the UK’s most revered label.
The series so far has more than delivered on its mission statement. Between them the CDs add hundreds of tracks to our catalogue that are not available on other Ace CDs. To preserve authenticity, wherever possible we have mastered from the same tapes used to make the production masters of the original 45s, and all singles that were originally released in mono appear on our CDs in mono, even if a stereo tape has since become available.
By Tony Rounce
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Robert Eugene Haynes (June 25, 1935 – July 31, 2018) was an American bass player.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?n=bobby-haynes&pid=190910294 Legendary Bassist Robert "Bobby" Eugene Haynes, Sr., 83, was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, moved to LA at 11, and attended Jordan and Freemont High Schools. He married Marianne in 1955 and began his career at 18 in R&B with Percy Mayfield, TBone Walker, Big Joe Turner and others. He moved into jazz with Dexter Gordon, Chico Hamilton, Barney Kessel, Larry Coryell and Jazz Crusaders writing title song on their "Jazz Waltz" album. He worked with Lou Rawls, Lena Horne, Della Reese, Dusty Springfield, Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, Raquel Welch's world tour and many more. He ended his traveling touring 6 years with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. There was always recording studio work including Ike & Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" and "A Fool In Love" with Phil Spector. He worked with HB Barnum and also Motown, such as Diana Ross and the Supremes' "These Boots Were Made for Walking" and "Supremes-a-Go-Go Album." Bobby attended Los Angeles City College, Dale Carnegie, Tepper-Gallegos, Jocelyn Ryan Modeling, auctioneer school, Pamela Ryan Acting, and studied martial arts. When he stopped traveling, Bobby stayed busy recording, playing local clubs and casuals, booking clubs and playing brunch for 9 years at a Bel Air hotel. Bobby loved doing film and TV work, sidelines, print ads, sound tracks, extra work, and commercials, including 2 2013 Taco Bell commercials: Super Bowl and Afternoon Delight; and more recently ESPN Bleacher Report "Up Your Game." Bobby just wrote a book that will be out soon. This intelligent, elegant, most beautiful man graced us all with his wonderful music from the homeless to royalty all over the world. How lucky we have been to have heard the very best. Bobby was preceded in death by his son, Bobby Haynes, Jr., in 2015. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Marianne, his daughter, attorney Leslie and her partner Jimmy Nkutu, grandson, DJ, brother Hampton, nieces, nephew, cousins and pets all of whom love and miss him dearly. Bobby passed away peacefully with his Marianne by his side on July 31, 2018. Private services were held August 16, 2018 at Holy Cross Mortuary.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Haynes&prev=search Haynes moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was eleven years old. There he attended Jordan and Freemont High Schools, then Los Angeles City College. At 18, he played in R&B bands with Percy Mayfield , T-Bone Walker and Big Joe Turner . He then shifted to modern jazz and worked u. a. with Dexter Gordon , Chico Hamilton , Barney Kessel , Larry Coryell and the Jazz Crusaders , for whom he wrote the title song of their album Jazz Waltz . Haynes also worked as an accompanist with vocalists such as Lou Rawls , Lena Horne , Della Reese , Dusty Springfield , Nina Simone , Shirley Bassey , Diana Ross and Raquel Welch . Most recently, he toured with John Mayall 's bluesbreakers for another six years. As a studio musician he worked u. a. at Ike & Tina Turners hits River Deep, Mountain High and A Fool in Love , which were created for Phil Spector . For HB Barnum and the Motown studios, he was also involved in the LPs These Boots Were Made for Walking and Supremes-a-Go-Go by Diana Ross & the Supremes . After completing his tour activity, he continued to work as a studio musician and at the local level, as well as for television and advertising. According to Tom Lord , he was involved in 13 recording sessions between 1960 and 1976. Under his own name, he presented the album Marianne in 2006. His son of the same name was also active as a musician. [3]
https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/117798391/person/292080120894/facts
https://www.discogs.com/artist/346661-Bobby-Haynes
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https://en.everybodywiki.com/Joe_Isaacs
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20180708/music-diaries-musicians-behind-hits
https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2419/101218/interview-joe-isaacs-in-kingston-part-1
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/joe-isaacs-to-be-lauded_14717080
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https://www.discogs.com/artist/423959-Ranford-Rannie-Bop-Williams
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John Ward Florez (born May 14, 1946) is an American record producer and multimedia developer
http://susantaffer.com/wcfaz/advisory-council-2/ http://www.thefoundationforlivingmedicine.org/meet_the_staff John Florez, Multimedia Developer John FlorezJohn began his career in the late 1960's as a record producer. Throughout his career, one of every three songs he produced was nationally charted, and among his many successes were the hits, Grazin' in the Grass by The Friends of Distinction (#3) and the #1 Billboard national success, Rock the Boat by The Hues Corporation. His clients included: A&M, Arista, Capitol, CBS, Elektra, RCA and Warner Brothers Records. In 1984, John became a PC software technical support representative and trainer. In 1996 and 1997, his knowledge of software applications led to training contracts with Intel Corporation and SkillPath Seminars, where he led 2‑day seminars across the U.S. and Canada for corporate and government technicians. For the past 20+ years he has developed websites, created educational software, and edited digital films/marketing videos.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/295506-John-Florez
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPUyncym-jc_pkLtthq9qfBrCLEVjC5_e
John Florez Former RCA Record Producer Digital Media Producer Scottsdale, Arizona
- ^ "Stano", Hue Records. Retrieved 22 September 2020
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The Bell Sound Recording Studios were established in New York City in 1950, and operated until 1976. The recording studio was the location of many successful rhythm and blues, pop and rock recordings over that period.
The studios were established by former Brooklyn Technical High School classmates Allen Weintraub (1927-2007) and Daniel Cronin (1929-1968), who set up the Bell Recording Company in 1950. It operated in different locations around Manhattan and Brooklyn until 1957, when it moved to 54th Street.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). In the 1950s, the studios produced a string of hit records for such artists as The McGuire Sisters, Buddy Holly, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Lloyd Price and Jackie Wilson, among others. Musicians from other parts of the country often recorded in the studio in the middle of nationwide tours, and producers often used the same pool of session musicians, including Mickey Baker (guitar), Panama Francis (drums), and Sam Taylor (saxophone). Songwriter and arranger Burt Bacharach considered it his favorite studio.
Cronin died in January 1968, when the private plane that he was piloting crashed. Soon afterwards, the studio was sold to Jerry Ragovoy, who reopened it as The Hit Factory.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Sound_Recording_Studio&prev=search The founders Allen Weintraub and Dan Cronin met as classmates in the Brooklyn Technical High School and started as trained radio mechanics with the "Bell Recording Co." in a shop in 73 Mott St, [1] which is located in New York's Chinatown . The studios were created in June 1950 with a start-up capital of US $ 600. Weintraub and Cronin initially started with recordings for weddings or radio test programs.
From April 1953 they expanded their business area to record music for record labels and on March 30, 1953 they recorded the gee produced by George Goldner with the doo-wop group The Crows , for which Weintraub was the sound engineer . The song became the first hit parade success of the new studios, because it reached 14th place in the US hit parade . In the future, George Goldner produced the majority of his doo-wop groups at Bell-Sound. Larger studio rooms were needed for such music recordings. The studio therefore moved to 89th West Street, where four songs were created for Faye Adams in August 1953. The first big hit was the later million-seller Shake A Hand . The song produced by Al Silver marked the transition between gospel and rhythm & blues and took first place in the rhythm & blues hit parade for 10 weeks. The next move to 46th St / 8th Ave was due in 1955. Increasing studio occupancy necessitated another move to 237 West 54th Street in 1957, where the studios took up the largest area of a five-story building [5] and had reached their final location. It was a former parking garage, in which four recording rooms (studio A to D) were created; Studio A was the largest, it was on the top floor and was suitable for the recording of entire orchestras . Studio B was slightly smaller than Studio A, could record about 20 to 25 musicians and had a small singing booth. Studio C could record up to ten people and was used for the production of demo recordings , while Studio D was used for quadrophony - and later for voice -over . Studio B and C were next to each other on the second floor, between the two recording rooms were the sound mixing and mastering rooms. [7]
Bell Sound was one of the largest studios in the United States as early as the 1950s. Here, in December 1955 in Studio A, the doo-wop classic Why do Fools Fall in Love for Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers was created , accompanied by Jimmy Wright and his band of 5 musicians. Wright's bluesy tenor saxophone - solo contrasted with the angelic voice of just 13-year-old lead singer Frankie Lymon . After its release on January 10, 1956, the single sold 100,000 pieces within 3 weeks; with a total of 2 million copies sold [10] and status as the first number one hit , the song made the recording studio widely known.
While the major major labels initially only used their own recording studios, independent labels like Old Town Records mostly booked independent studios like Bell Sound. But also the big labels started to integrate the Bell Studios in 1957. Decca Records boss Bob Thiele booked the studio for the McGuire Sisters on November 13, 1957, to record Sugar Time with a 16-member band. He appreciated Bell's innovative isolation options to record the rhythm as he heard it, and was impressed by the unusual clarity of each musical element. The song took first place in February 1958 for four weeks. Buddy Knox immortalized his Rock Your Little Baby To Sleep on March 28, 1957. On April 5, 1957, Jimmy Bowen was on the recording list with five titles, which resulted in three singles (including Warm up to be my Baby ; May 1957). Dion & the Belmonts first came to Tell Me Why in April 1957 and returned to the studios for I Wonder Why (April 1958) and the million-seller A Teenager in Love (April 1959). In September 1957, the monotones stood for the doo-wop classic The Book of Love with the striking single beat on the bass drum behind the microphones. A baseball ball flew into the studio during her recording, causing a thud. The noise was noticed during the sound control, but it fit as a bass drum replacement and was left unchanged. [12] Clint Miller recorded Bertha Lou here in November / December 1957. The Chantels came to the studio on October 16, 1957 to have Richard Barrett produce their first big hit with Maybe . Buddy Holly , whose main studio was operated by Norman Petty , recorded at Bell Sound on January 25, 1958, among other things, Rave On as the epitome of good feeling at Rock & Roll . [13] Petty (piano), his band and label boss Bob were present Thiele. The Flamingos had the Doo Wop classic I Only Have Eyes for You produced by George Goldner on October 31, 1958 in a three-hour session without overdubbing . Wilbert Harrison was on February 25, 1959 in the night for Kansas City in front of the microphone, accompanied by Ike Turner on the piano, among others. The big hit was created in less than 30 minutes and cost studio costs of just $ 40. [15]
Lloyd Price recorded his single personality produced by Don Costa on March 25, 1959, it reached number 2 on the pop charts. The Drifters booked Bell-Sound very often from 1959, here Ruby Baby / Forty Days (April 13, 1959) and This Magic Moment (December 23, 1959) were created. Lloyd Price returned for Stagger Lee (September 11, 1958), Where Were You on our Wedding Day (December 4, 1958), Lady Luck (December 8, 1959) and I'm Gonna Get Married (May 25, 1959). Ronnie Hawkins had Forty Days (April 13, 1959) and the LP Ronnie Hawkins (April 29, 1959) produced here. In June 1959, manager Harry Balk brought his instrumental band Johnny & the Hurricanes to Bell-Sound to record Red River Rock . During a recording break, he noticed how organist Paul Tesluk was experimenting. After the request to repeat these passages again, Red River Rock was created. The Everly Brothers made their first recording session outside Nashville at Bell Sound for Let It Be Me on December 15, 1959, on December 17, 1959, the drifters separated Ben E. King started his solo career in the studio with a show Me the Way (produced by Jerry Wexler ). His second solo session on October 27, 1960 produced Spanish Harlem , followed by Stand By Me on March 27, 1961.
Bill Haley & His Comets went to Bell Studios to record Candy Kisses after moving to Warner Brothers on January 7, 1960, and material for their first Warner LP Bill Haley and his was made between January 12 and 27, 1960 Comets (April 1960). With There's a Moon out Tonight (December 1958), the doo-wop band The Capris presented an unusual outro from falsetto to bass , rather than the other way around. Only when it was republished in December 1960 did it hit the charts (3rd place).
In June 1959, the studios moved into additional rooms on 135 West 54th Street. Fabian's weak vocal talents required many takes , such as his biggest hit Tiger (June 1959). Frankie Avalon , who was signed to the same record label Chancellor Records , recorded two top hits here, Venus (February 1959) and Why (November 1959).
Paul Anka was also a regular customer at Bell Sound. He started here on September 4, 1957 under producer Don Costa with I Love You Baby . While his biggest hit Diana was made in the Capitol Recording Studios a few blocks away, he remained loyal to Bell Studios from his second hit You Are My Destiny (September 27, 1957) until 1961. This was followed by Crazy Love (February 25, 1958), Put Your Head on my Shoulder (August 7, 1958; remained in the archive for almost a year until publication on August 5, 1959), Lonely Boy was the most successful hit (August 27 1958), (All Of A Sudden) My Heart Sings / Just Young (November 6, 1958), Puppy Love / Adam and Eve (December 4, 1959), My Home Town (April 15, 1960) or Dance on Little Girl ( February 1, 1961).
Drifters and Dionne Warwick The Drifters returned to the studios for their biggest hit Save the Last Dance for Me (May 19, 1960), followed by Some Kind of Wonderful / Please Stay / Sweets For My Sweet / Room Full of Tears (February 1, 1961), Up on The Roof (June 28, 1962), On Broadway (January 22, 1963) and I'll Take You Home (April 12, 1963). On July 13, 1961, Dionne Warwick sang for the Drifters in the background choir for Mexican Divorce . In August 1962, she first appeared in the studio as a soloist for Don't Make Me Over . For her producer and composer Burt Bacharach it was the most important recording studio. It was the beginning of a big solo career with hits that started with the title Anyone Who Had a Heart (October 1963).
other artists Doo-Wop came again from Little Anthony & the Imperials with Tears on my Pillow (recorded on May 29, 1958 on a 4-track tape machine [17] ) and Going out of my Head (November 1964). One of the first soul singers was Solomon Burke , whose Cry to me was created on December 6, 1961 by Bell Sound.
The great successes of Shirelles ( Will You Love Me Tomorrow , November 1960; Mama Said , April 1961; Soldier Boy , March 1962) and Del Shannon ( Runaway , January 21, 1961, Hats Off to Lary , May 11, 1961; Little Town Flirt , November 20, 1962) came from the studio. Ferrante & Teicher , two teachers from the Juilliard School , had their two pianos with large orchestra leveled here for the Instrumentals Apartment (July 1960) and Exodus (November 1960). Gene Pitney started his career in the studios with (I Wanna) Love My Life Away (January 1961) and Every Breath I Take (August 1961). [18] Further ballads followed with Town Without Pity (October 1961), Only Love can break a Heart (September 1962) or It Hurts to be in Love (July 1964).
Ray Charles recorded several LPs in the studio from which great hits were released, such as the single Unchain my Heart (July 5, 1961), the LP Modern Sounds in Country And Western Music vol. 2 (September 5, 1962), the LP Country And Western Meets Rhythm And Blues (the tracks were created in other studios, the mastering took place at Bell-Sound, in March 1965).
The original from Twist and Shout was created here for the top notes on February 23, 1961. When ten minutes of studio time remained on May 7, 1962 after a recording session with Chuck Jackson (LP Any Day Now ) had ended, music producer Bert Berns left the Isley Brothers come to resume Twist and Shout with them. [19] Since there was no longer enough time in the spontaneous recording session to record a B-side , the music track on the A-side was used and dubbed the Spanish twist . [20] Other studio clients included The Four Seasons ( Big Girls Don't Cry , October 1962), Wilson Pickett ( It's Too Late , August 1963), Lesley Gore ( It's My Party , March 30, 1963; Judy's Turn to Cry , May 14, 1963 and You Don't Own Me , December 1963). Phil Ramone - himself a studio operator - worked as a sound engineer under the producer Quincy Jones at Lesley Gore; in the way of the overdub , she sang again via her original voice, which had already been pre-produced in the Bell Sound Recording Studio.
Studio occupancy also improved Garnet Mimms ( Cry Baby , May 1963), The Band ( You know I Love You , September 13, 1961; Further On Up The Road / Nineteen Years Old , September 18, 1961; Who Do You Love , January 1963 ), Lloyd Price (LP Misty , September 1963), Dixie Cups ( Chapel of Love , May 1964) or Them ( Gloria , May 1965). The Rolling Stones , otherwise regular customers at London's Olympic Studios , came for the first time for Time is on my Side (June 1964) and returned for the mastering of the LP Their Satanic Majesties Request (November 1967). Bell's UK now included The Zombies ( She's Not There , October 1964), Ronettes ( Walking in the Rain , October 1964), The Impressions ( Amen , November 1964), The Strangeloves ( I Want Candy , April 1965), The McCoys ( Hang On Sloopy , July 1965; Fever , November 1965) or The Toys ( A Lover's Concerto , August 1965). Len Barry had all hits produced here, including his 1-2-3 (June 24, 1965), Bobby Hebb appeared in the studio on February 21, 1966 to record his much-covered ballad Sunny . On March 7, 1966, Ike & Tina Turner recorded River Deep Mountain High , with producer Phil Spector spending $ 22,000 on the backing track alone, and an additional $ 20,000 for Ike Turner to stay away from the studio. [21]
Producer Henry Glover ordered the band Tommy James & the Shondells , which had been hastily put together after Hanky Panky's surprise success, to Bell-Sound Studios, where recordings of the LP of the same name were made in June 1966.
In 1967, what was now the largest independent recording studio in New York, radio and television commercials accounted for about 40% of sales. The Temptations , whose home was the Motown Recording Studios in Detroit, came for their LP In A Mellow Mood ( Ol 'Man River / Hello Young Lovers , recorded between April 7 and October 7, 1967). On December 26, 1967, the studios introduced the 12-track device, which was also a problem in addition to the advanced technology. The Bell Studios owned the only device in New York for some time, so that the tapes recorded here could not be edited in other studios due to a lack of compatibility.
After co-owner Don Cronin was killed in a plane crash in January 1968, Weintraub finally sold the studios to Viewlex in November 1968, which had also been owned by Kama Sutra Records since November 1968. [22]
The new owners didn't really enjoy the studios. The Flamin 'Groovies recorded their LP Teenage Head (January 1971) or Roberta Flack their single Feel Like Makin' Love (June 13, 1973). The hard rock band Kiss started recording their first album Kiss on October 10, 1973, which was released in February 1974. The first payment difficulties arose at the recording studio in 1974, when Bell Sound Studios filed for bankruptcy in November 1977. This proved that the former studio founders succeeded in selling at the peak of their success. In December 1974, Viewlex sold a less profitable business, namely its Audio Visual Division (AVD). This created three operational groups with Buddah Records, Inc. , Electro Sound Inc. and Custom Services , which included Sonic Recording Products, Inc. , Monarch Record Mfg. Co. and some others belonged to. The Bell Sound Recording Studios finally ceased operations in 1976. [25]
Bell Sound Recording Studios had no legal relationship with the New York independent record label Bell Records , which was founded by Benny Bell in 1945. Bell Sound Studios , founded by Bill Bell in Hollywood in 1965, was also not related to the New York recording studio.
A & R Recording Bell Sound (later The Hit Factory) 237 West 54th Street Founded June 1950 by Allen Weintraub and Daniel Cronin (1929–1968), both classmates from Brooklyn Technical High School; studio was located at 135 West 54 beginning June 1959; Burt Bacharach's favorite studio. Bought by Jerry Ragovoy 1968 and reopened as The Hit Factory; sold 1975 to partner Eddie Germano (né Edward F. Germano; 1941–2003); now run by Troy George Germano (born 1962), his son
http://spectropop.com/archive/digest/d2090.htm BELL SOUND (later The Hit Factory) 237 West 54th Street Owned by Al Weintraub and Dan Cronin. Burt Bacharach's favourite studio. Bought by Jerry Ragovoy 1968 and reopened as The Hit Factory. Sold 1975 to partner Eddie Germano, who died in 2002. Now run by Troy Germano, his son.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bell-Sound Bell Sound WRITTEN BY: Charlie Gillett See Article History Al Weintraub opened Bell Sound in the early 1950s on West 87th Street, and when he moved closer to the midtown action (to 46th Street and 8th Avenue) in 1954, Bell became New York City’s busiest independent studio. Recording sessions in the city were closely monitored by the local chapter of the Musicians Union, which ensured that overtime was paid if a session ran a minute over the statutory three hours. Most label owners who came to Bell used the same nucleus of musicians, who could be depended on to find a groove with a minimum of run-throughs: Mickey (“Guitar”) Baker, Panama Francis on drums, and Sam Taylor on sax. Arranger Sammy Lowe was called in if strings were needed. In addition to New York City-based customers such as Roulette and Al Silver’s Herald and Ember, out-of-town companies often used Bell Sound to catch artists in the middle of their busy touring schedules. Henry Glover produced many sessions there for King Records of Cincinnati, Ohio (Little Willie John, James Brown), and King’s engineer, Eddie Smith, joined Bell Sound in 1957. Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” (1958) was recorded at Bell Sound, which continued to be the studio of choice into the 1960s, with Del Shannon’s “Runaway” (1961) a testament to the studio’s ability to capture atmosphere and excitement.
Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).
https://www.discogs.com/label/122360-Bell-Sound-Studios
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/great-recordings-at-bell-sound-studios.9587/
https://soulfuldetroit.com/archives/1/722.html?1022177609
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Adrian Nicholas Kerridge (March 1938 – 28 September 2016) was a British recording engineer and the owner of Lansdowne Studios in London.
https://www.audiomediainternational.com/2016/10/10/adrian-kerridge/
Adrian Kerridge
Colby Ramsey 10th October 2016 Studios & Recording 443 Views
Adrian Kerridge, the former owner of CTS Landowne recording studios, co-founder of Cadac and past APRS president passed away on 28 September 2016.
Kerridge had been part of the British recording industry for the past 50 years. He started his career at IBC Studios in Portland Place with Jo Meek and moved on to become owner of Lansdowne Recording Studios where he achieved success with The Dave Clark Five and many more well-known musicians. During the Lansdowne Jazz series in the 1980s Kerridge worked with artists such as Chris Barber, Ottilie Patterson Acker Bilk and Monty Sunshine.
He then opened CTS Lansdowne in Wembley in 1987, which became an internationally recognised film scoring stage used to record the music for several James Bond movies and others films and TV shows including The Avengers, All Creatures Great and Small, Inspector Morse and Shakespeare in Love. He was also known for his work with Roger Whitaker, Johnny Pearson and Laurie Johnson.
CTS Lansdowne relocated to Watford Colosseum in 2000, where the scores for all three Lord of the Rings films were tracked.
“Adrian was a larger than life person and will be sorely missed,” said Malcom Atkin, chairman of the APRS Fellows Academy. “Adrian was a major influence in positioning the UK on the international stage for film score. He was known for painting a picture in sound."
He was also one of only two people to receive the APRS’ Lifetime Achievement Award for services to the music industry. Sir George Martin was the other.
David Harries, another former APRS chairman added how Kerridge was “one of the best engineers there’s ever been."
https://ips.org.uk/fellows-rip/adrian-kerridge-rip/ Adrian Kerridge RIP 11/08/2019 When he retired as chairman of the Lansdowne group of studios in may 2010 Adrian told the IBS he had been 58 years in the business starting by sweeping up dog-ends at IBC studios. His connection with broadcasting began in the 1950s when he went touring the UK on behalf of Radio Luxembourg to record interviews for Bob Danvers-Walker assisted by Joe Meek and the connection continued throughout his national service when he worked for BFBS the British forces broadcasting service. During this period IBC jazz producer Denis Preston decided to set up his own studio and founded Lansdowne studios in 1958 with Joe Meek. Adrian joined the new company on January 1st 1959 and when Joe left after a row with Denis Adrian took over the operation of the studio. Lansdowne was London’s first independent music recording studio and Adrian was soon recording a string of hits by artistes including Dave Clark, Acker Bilk, Roger Whittaker and many more. Broadcasting clients included the BBC Black and White Minstrels and Yorkshire television The Beiderbeck Affair and a telecine suite was established in the 1980s.
In 1987 Adrian together with business partner pianist and composer Johnny Pearson negotiated the purchase of CTS studios in Wembley and when the redevelopment of Wembley stadium led to the closure of CTS Adrian negotiated the use of the Watford colosseum which in addition to being an excellent venue for orchestral recording provided a home for the BBC concert orchestra when Golders Green hippodrome was closed.
Adrian was a sponsor of the Institute for many years and supported several IBS microphone placement seminars by providing excellent facilities at both CTS studios in February 1994 and at Lansdowne in December 2003 and October 2004. Adrian received a lifetime achievement award from the APRS of which he was at one time Chairman in November 1998 alongside Sir George Martin.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/kUdTk_i02IMqEhepM_b8IGEqJqM/appointments
http://www.joemeeksociety.org/?page_id=1514
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tapes-Rolling-Take-One-Blockbuster-ebook/dp/B01NBE0SET
Adrian Kerridge was part of the British recording industry for the past 50 years. His revolutionary and often forthright approach within the music industry put him at the centre of the recording world for half a century. As owner of the eminent Lansdowne Studios - birth place of the Dave Clark Five, and home to numerous household name artists and session stories as well as the cofounding father of the CADAC console brand - he witnessed first-hand the technological changes of an industry transitioning from analogue tape to multi-track to digital recording and editing in the 80s and forwards; was a forerunner in the 60s of the then experimental practice of direct injection – now widely employed by sound engineers and laid the foundations for a more modern upfront sound that was lacking in the 50s and early 60s.
Renowned for creating unique sonic signatures for bands and other recording artists, Adrian’s approach to recording was unlike anything the industry had seen in the years previous. He recorded “hot”, clean and gutsy while his contemporaries were more conservative in their approach.
This book traces his personal and professional journey from war time Britain to the swinging 60s. Imparting his professional knowledge through his explanations and diagrams intertwined with the remarkable story of his life Adrian Kerridge 1938 – 2016
https://www.psneurope.com/studio/adrian-kerridge-funeral-details-released
Adrian Kerridge: funeral details released
His family have requested "no black" to be worn at the service
BY DAVE ROBINSON OCT 12, 2016
The family of Adrian Kerridge have released details of the arrangements for the funeral of the prolific producer/engineer and recording industry stalwart, who died of a heart attack at the end of September.
A funeral mass will take place at 1:30pm, on Friday 14 October, at St Peter’s Catholic Church, Marlow, and all are welcome. The family have requested that no black is to be worn at the service.
The funeral will be followed by a celebration of Adrian’s life at Marlow Rowing Club (Kerridge was a member there for over 40 years). The family have also requested that no flowers are to be sent, but donations to the Marlow Rowing Club are welcomed and appreciated.
The following is taken from his autobiography, Tape’s Rolling, Take One! which will be published in November:
Adrian Kerridge was part of the British recording industry for the past 50 years. His revolutionary and often forthright approach within the music industry has put him at the centre of the recording world for half a century. As owner of the eminent Lansdowne Studios – birth place of the Dave Clark Five, and home to numerous household name artists and session stories as well as the co-founding father of the CADAC console brand – he witnessed first-hand the technological changes of an industry transitioning from analogue tape to multi-track to digital recording and editing in the 80s and forwards; was a forerunner in the 60s of the then experimental practice of direct injection – now widely employed by sound engineers and laid the foundations for a more modern upfront sound that was lacking in the 50s and early 60s.
Renowned for creating unique sonic signatures for bands and other recording artists, Adrian’s approach to recording was unlike anything the industry had seen in the years previous. He recorded “hot”, clean and gutsy while his contemporaries were more conservative in their approach. Adrian’s first job was at IBC London, one of the UK’s largest independent recording studios at the time, which led him to work with the legendary and sometimes volatile Joe Meek. Working with Joe gave Adrian crucial insights into the talented engineer’s innovative techniques. After a brief stint of National Service, Adrian returned to the recording industry but instead of resuming his old job at IBC he was offered a job alongside Joe Meek at a completely new London studio – Lansdowne Recording Studios – with producer Denis Preston, who ran his own Record Supervision jazz label. Joe’s premature departure from Lansdowne meant Adrian suddenly found himself catapulted into the job of senior engineer and solely responsible for running the studios.
It was during this time that Adrian, along with the Dave Clark Five, led the
British “invasion” of the U.S. music scene in the 1960s pioneering new
audio techniques using equipment considered primitive by today’s
standards.
Adrian’s work in the early 1960s, when the Dave Clark Five first came into the studio, contributed to the band’s development and helped create their signature “Tottenham Sound”. He is one of only two people to ever be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Professional Recording Services (APRS), in recognition of a lifetime’s service to the music industry. The other was awarded to the late Sir George Martin.
Adrian went on to open CTS Studios in Wembley in 1987; the studios became an internationally recognised film scoring stage for several James Bond films, The Avengers, All Creatures Great and Small, Morse the series, the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love and much more.
Adrian later opened a studio at Watford Colosseum, which recorded the film music for Lord of the Rings.
In a statement, the APRS said it was saddened by the loss of Adrian, a past chairman of the association.
“Adrian was a larger than life person and will be sorely missed,” said Malcom Atkin, chairman of the APRS Fellows Academy. “Adrian was a major influence in positioning the UK on the international stage for film score. He was known for painting a picture in sound.”
David Harries, another former APRS chairman, noted Kerridge was “one of the best engineers there’s ever been”.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/376278-Adrian-Kerridge
https://ultraverse.fandom.com/wiki/Lansdowne_Studios Music production companies, Music publishing companies of the United Kingdom, Recording studios in London, and 6 more Lansdowne Studios EDIT
COMMENTS
SHARE Lansdowne Studios Lansdowne Studios is a British recording studio established in 1957, based in Lansdowne Road, Holland Park, London W11 3LP, England.
History Well known for its jazz recordings (even having its own branded series, the Lansdowne Series, on the Columbia label), Lansdowne Studios was set up by recording supervisor Denis Preston, with help from engineers Adrian Kerridge and Joe Meek who found the premises.
Denis Preston had supervised the recordings of many famous British jazz recordings in the 1950s (mainly whilst at I.B.C. Studios), and continued throughout the 1960s at Lansdowne. He was possibly the first independent producer in Britain (usually having a "Record Supervision" credit on releases). Records were often released by the Polygon (later, Pye) labels, and product was licensed to the UK majors.
The building that housed the studio was erected in 1902 by William Flodthart, a benevolent South African diamond millionaire who wanted to provide a place where struggling painters could work. The main recording studio was originally a squash court, and the control room the smokers room.
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Selçuk Alagőz (born 5 August 1944) is a Turkish singer.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&u=https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%25C3%25A7uk_Alag%25C3%25B6z&prev=search
Selcuk Alagöz
English eksik
Selçuk Alagöz , (b. 5 August 1944, [1] Istanbul ), Turkish pop-rock singer, composer, songwriter and arranger.
Selcuk Alagöz Birth August 5, 1944 (age 75) Istanbul , Turkey Jobs Singer · Composer · Arranger active years 1965- Contents Life After graduating from German High School , he studied at the Department of Economics at Istanbul University and then completed his master's degree in tourism management. He continued his music studies with his own orchestra and his sister Rana Alagöz , the soloist of the orchestra. Alagöz brothers joined the Golden Microphone in 1967 with an orchestra including Cahit Berkay and Engin Yörükoğlu .
brothers in 1970, has represented Turkey at Ali Rana and Alagöz along with 3 Appollonia International Music Festival.
He has written works for 23 45, 7 Albums (2 published abroad) and 6 collections. He has 4 gold records with his brother Rana Alagöz.
His memorable works include the Naphtha of the Arch , Lower Me from the Castle , Spring Arrived at the Gardens , Edremit Looks at Van, Malabadi Bridge and "I Love You Crazy".
Since 1979, he has been organizing touristic shows with his brothers Rana Alagöz, Ali Alagöz and Nilüfer Alagöz, who later joined the group, and is a Turkish musician who has made history in 80 languages.
In addition to his music career, he has been involved in foundation and association activities. He served on the Turkish Heart Foundation executive committee. In addition to the POPSAV presidency, he has successfully held the Music Interpreters Association ( MÜYORBİR ) founding chair for years. He also founded the Association for Fighting Cigarettes and became a pioneer in this regard by explaining all the harms of active passive smoking to the entire society.
He crowned his music career with the 2010 Golden Butterfly Special Award, which he added to numerous awards he received during his music life.
On August 4, 2010, when he was a young child, he made his book "I Lived Twice" (Dharma Publishing) for many years.
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"Shoorah! Shoorah!" is a song written by Allen Toussaint which was a hit single in 1975 for Betty Wright.
The song was originally recorded in 1973 by Scottish singer Frankie Miller, who had travelled to Atlanta, Georgia to record an album with Toussaint as his record producer. The album High Life, released in 1974, included seven songs written by Toussaint, and was critically well received although its sales were disappointing.[1]
https://www.discogs.com/Betty-Wright-Shoorah-Shoorah-Tonight-Is-The-Night/master/48804
https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/172900/versions
http://www.originals.be/en/originals/5517
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David Joe Stead (17 June 1941 – 28 March 2017) was an English folk singer.
https://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=60630&h=1956229&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=hci104&_phstart=successSource David Joe Stead
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1977218-Joe-Stead
https://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/bring-your-voices-joe-steads-send-1132355
http://www.livingtradition.co.uk/node/2088 Joe Stead - 17 June 1941 – 28 March 2017 Joe Stead passed away at the age of 75, after a brief spell in hospital close to his home in Sowerby Bridge. He was blessed with a life full of coincidences and opportunities grasped with both hands.
Joe was born in 1941 in Paddock Wood near Tunbridge Wells in Kent. His father was a strict disciplinarian who Joe recalled scared the living daylights out of him until he reached the age of about 15. That might go some way to explaining why at an early age Joe’s speech suffered, leaving him with a stutter. He could talk to his parents and other close relations ok, but struggled with strangers.
Like most lads of his age, Joe was a fan of Bill Haley and his Comets but in the spring of 1958 he discovered Pete Seeger and The Weavers. This was a result of his school friend Roy Duffin, who had discovered the pleasures of the folk clubs and coffee bars of 1958 Soho, with their heady mixture of left wing idealisms, jazz, poetry, blues and folk music. Roy introduced Joe to the music of Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Ewan MacColl, Dominic Behan, Bert Lloyd and countless other folk luminaries. Two LPs by the Weavers were available in Britain at that time and by the end of the year Joe was playing them in his bedroom constantly. He dreamed that one day he would sing and perform folk songs like Pete Seeger. At the time it seemed like an outrageous dream; how would somebody with a stutter ever get up on stage?
Then, within a month of leaving school Joe had not only met Paul Robeson, he had sung with him! This was the result of one of many coincidences in his life where doors were opened by friends. Peggy Middleton (Paul Robeson's world-wide secretary) was throwing a garden party. Peggy’s daughter Hannah was dating Joe’s friend Roy Duffin and both Roy and Joe were invited to her home in 1958. Joe was jiving with Peggy at the time when she suddenly summoned him to come and meet Joe. Paul Robeson sauntered over and after introducing them to each other Peggy hurried off and left the two of them talking. Joe recalled discussing Seeger, the McCarthy trials and the witch hunts throughout America that were probably still ongoing as they spoke.
Another ‘coincidence’ was Joe inheriting his grandfather’s banjo – a five-string – after he died in 1961. Joe tells the tale. “I remember popping down to see him a couple of days before the end. To my astonishment, he handed me his banjo. What a legacy to receive! Here was I, a Pete Seeger nutcase, being given a five-string banjo. But more importantly, I was being handed a family heirloom.” Joe was the first to admit that he wasn't the best banjo player in the world, but he could certainly communicate. Joe related to me the story of the fortune teller who had just seen him perform and receive an enthusiastic encore. After reading his hand, the teller announced that he had no talent whatsoever and told Joe that he would die in Yorkshire! Some people don't understand music. They think that it is all about virtuosity when really it is more about soul.
Joe was a gentle giant. He was a larger than life character who must have been an awesome sight - six feet plus, dressed in a ballerina outfit and silencing noisy crisp eaters in his audience by taking the bag off them, adding some beer and giving them a shake before handing them back declaring, “That’ll keep the noise down a bit!” He was a storyteller in many forms. He gave lectures on various subjects including the two which were particularly close to his heart - the lives of Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson. Later in his life when he embraced shanty singing, he produced a remarkable CD, Valparaiso Round The Horn, which put the shanties into the context of an imaginary voyage on a sailing ship. It was both entertaining and educational.
Like most comedians, Joe was a shrewd observer of what was going on around him. Ally that to a good memory for detail and a tendency to keep jottings, letters, press cuttings and photographs, and it is little wonder that in his later years he was able to compile such a detailed account of his life and times.
Joe was an enabler and nowadays would be described as a folk entrepreneur. He could spot talent and he wasn’t afraid to take risks. He started his own record label, Sweet Folk All, and later added Sweet Folk & Country, and he also ran an agency. He did this at a time when putting out an LP wasn't easy and to have published around 150 recordings from that era is an astonishing achievement.
Touring in America was probably the thing that he liked best. Having been initially inspired by American visitors to the UK, including Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson and Odetta, he was able to fill the role of the troubadour with a social message.
I only got to know Joe late in his life, firstly as a recipient of his monthly email newsletter, The Ramblings, and latterly when we met to discuss how he might publish his life story in a credible form. When Joe decided to pull his life story together over a year of Ramblings, I know that I was not alone in thinking that this was going to be something special. Most of us mean to get our life story written down at some point but few of us ever do. To his credit, Joe wrote his story. When talking to Joe about his book, I asked him what he thought his legacy would be. My observation was that he was gifting us memories, often shared memories. It is a story that many of us can resonate with and Joe's story is, in part, our story.
People came from far and wide to his funeral and there were heartfelt tributes from friends and fellow musicians. Joe made friends easily and would strike up a conversation with anyone. He was well known and well liked in his local community, one example being the additional catering provided after the funeral, free of charge, by the local Indian restaurant. Throughout his illness he remained cheerful and positive, always with one eye on any opportunity to promote his beloved book, even to the medical staff around his hospital bed.
This brief tribute to Joe barely scratches the surface of his life; he wrote songs; he was active in politics; he held strong opinions and wasn’t afraid to speak out – which he did regularly in his Ramblings; his friendship with Pete Seeger; his birthday celebrations which were a big part of Joe’s life; but to tell even a fraction of Joe’s life story you would need a book!
I can't finish this tribute with any better words than those which Joe signed off with in every issue of his Ramblings. Keep singing; Keep smiling. Joe wouldn’t want it any other way.
Pete Heywood
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Pau Riba i Romeva (born 7 August 1948) is a Catalan singer-songwriter, poet and writer.
He was born in Palma de Mallorca, moving to Barcelona with his parents and siblings as a young child. His grandparents included the poets Carles Riba and Clementina Arderiu, and political activist Pau Romeva, a co-founder of the Democratic Union of Catalonia (UDC). After failing in an attempt to join the folk group Els Setze Jutges in the late 1960s, he formed a new group, Grup de Folk, which took its inspiration from the American folk music scene of the time as well as from the musical traditions of Catalonia.
, born in Palma (Majorca) in 1948.[2][3][4][5] He started working during the 60s in the context of the counterculture.
- ^ Jim Worbois, Review of High Life, Allmusic.com. Retrieved 13 May 2020
- ^ "Pau Riba". www.lull.cat Retrieved 2016-2-23
- ^ "Galactic music. Culturcat. Generalitat de Catalunya". www.gencat.cat. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
- ^ "Barcelona Metropolis Karles Torra Pau Riba, High Precision Outburst". w2.bcn.cat. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
- ^ Canet Rock. Els temps estan canviant Enderrock Magazine, issue 224, June 2014, pages 38-44
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1094454-Pau-Riba
Catalan multitalented artist and songwriter, Pau Riba i Romeva was born in August 7th 1948 in Palma de Mallorca. Descended from a bourgeois family, grandson of the poet and humanist Carles Riba and the poetess Clementina Arderiu by father side, and also grandson of the founder member of Unió Democràtica de Catalunya Pau Romeva by mother side, he raised in a worship, puritan, christian and catalanist atmosphere; however, he has become an alternative cultural landmark: unclassifiable, iconoclastic, transgressive, heterodox... Begun in the late 60's and framed within the Contracultura (Counterculture) movement, his work has had a relative critical recognition and a limited impact on the massive public; despite his unique and untransferable artistical stamp.
He was married with Mercè Pastor, with whom had their sons Pauet Riba and Caïm Riba. He's also father of Pròsper Riba.
https://www.llull.cat/english/sectors/catalan_sounds_detall.cfm?id=3775&url=pau-riba.html A multi-faceted, veteran poet and singer-songwriter whose work defies classification. Founder of the folk group Grup de Folk (1967), “father” of Catalan rock (1969), our country’s leading glam star in the 1970s… Pau’s long career has embraced many genres and countless styles, and his interests now focus on recycling and on toy and invented instruments. Now working particularly with third-generation young musicians, Riba was a key figure in the late-20th-century Catalan underground movement. His vast discography features such titles as Dioptria, still considered the Number One Catalan pop-rock record, voted best album of the 20th century by the magazine Enderrock. Other outstanding efforts include Jo, la donya i el gripau, recorded in the open air on the island of Formentera, and Licors, a brilliant example of a sound collage.
https://www.diariodemallorca.es/cultura/2020/03/01/mallorquin-calma-tranquilidad-lentitud-isla/1490565.html Pau Riba: "Soy mallorquín y tengo la calma, la tranquilidad y la lentitud de esta isla" Pau Riba: "I am Mallorcan and I have the calm, tranquility and slowness of this island" "Neither Sisa nor me the censorship understood us. Ours was surreal and they thought we were innocent, innocuous." Palm Writing 29.02.2020 | 22:25 The musician and writer Pau Riba.
The musician and writer Pau Riba. Musician, writer and artist. The author of 'Dioptria', an album that raised him and that he will perform some songs in Can Lliro (Manacor) on March 6, talks about his connection with Mallorca, his hippy stage in Formentera and his relationship with drugs
He returns to Mallorca, the island that saw him born 71 years ago. What brought your parents to Mallorca? R Your honeymoon. My father found work during that stay and stayed a few years. That's how I was born in Palma . We are nine brothers and the first three are Mallorcan.
Q What did your father work for? A. He was a textile engineer and went to work in a raffia factory.
Q Up to what age did you live in Palma? R It would be a year and a half, or two, when I returned to Barcelona.
Q Do you have any Mallorcan, besides the DNI? R Calm, tranquility and ... slowness.
Q Do you believe in what they call homeland? A. No, I don't know, well yes, the country is the country, the place where you were born.
Q Are you a patriot? A No, I am not a politician.
Q Where do you currently live? R For 40 years I have lived in Tiana (municipality of Barcelona), in a 14th-century farmhouse, in the middle of nature, with a pine grove from which you can see the sea. But are you a journalist or a policeman? Do you already have me signed up?
P Almost. How will it come to Mallorca, by boat or plane? A. I don't know, the manager will tell me.
Q Will you travel with a mask, because of the coronavirus? A. Of course not. I am living all this coronavirus as something very distant, as something that does not affect me and I do not think it ends up affecting us.
P The desire to test the acid took him to Formentera, where he lived with 400 hippies, lived in a cave and had two of his children (his then partner, Mercè Pastor), by natural birth. Is the hippy utopia still valid? A. Yes, of course.
Q What did you discover in Formentera? R Things that in the city you do not find out, such as that flowers open and close every day, when the sun rises and when it sets, in short, I got a lot closer to nature than when we were in Barcelona.
Q How did you get to LSD? R Of free will. There was a totally uncontrolled alarm, all the newspapers and magazines, everywhere, talked about nonsense, that people threw themselves out the windows - was the jump of the Soft Machine drummer, Robert Wyatt, resident in Deià for years? And I do not know. There was a lot of talk about the new drug, and I told myself: I have to try it, this. So I asked, I learned that you could get it in Formentera and there I left.
Q Are you still experimenting with drugs? R Well, as much as experimenting? I get high regularly, like everyone else, with coffee, alcohol, tea and I smoke joints, weed normally.
Q There are young people who love him. Does it bother you, do you like it or don't you care? R I find it quite indifferent, I don't lose my ass for that.
Q Do you trust youth? A. Yes. With the young people I am looking forward to it. It is the first generation of different humans. Until now we have always lived in reality and with a reality. They live with two realities: the real and the virtual. It seems silly but it marks a lot. At first, when I saw my little son stuck all day in the computer, and always with the helmets on, all day, I couldn't speak to him. There was no communication. It doesn't seem bad to me, but I'm waiting for what kind of culture will come out of that situation.
Q Do you get along with new technologies? R In principle, yes. I have recorded my records in my house alone, with my computer and my devices. But lately it's starting to give me laziness. In the social networks and all this? I don't want to go in there. I don't want to be hanging all day from what they tell you, what they give you or what they take away from you. I like loneliness, I'm a fan of loneliness.
P Many young people have discovered him thanks to his review of 'Dioptria', a work that has been 50 years old. What did that double album mean for you, chosen by the magazine 'Enderrock' as the most important in the history of Catalan rock? R Dioptria was my first full-length album. I had done a couple of EP's, without experience, and with musicians more or less chosen by the record company, and in that sense that was my first serious work, for which I took my own musicians and asked them for the tone I wanted: a rock record, something that had not been done here before. It was a good choice because the chosen musicians, Toti Soler, Jordi Sabatés and Romà Escalas, turned out to be figures.
P 50 years later, do you think the world is still blind, without seeing reality? R Time relativizes everything and I think there are many people who are still blind but there are also a lot that see things clearly. And others who see them backwards. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat, and there are also creationists, imagine the nonsense.
Q What does 'Dioptria' have to keep him alive in the market? A. The fact that Dioptria is still alive and still on the market, selling and listening to each other, is because it is an exceptional record, with an international level. At that time here everything was four guitars and a couple of flutes, there was little interest in creating powerful music. And then there were the lyrics, in full dictatorship, with Franco making us study the FEN, the Formation of the National Spirit, and telling us that the family is the basic cell of society. The first thing that occurred to me was to point against the family. I was a teenager and that is what I had to do at the time: shit on my parents and in society. And the first thing is always the closest you have.
Q How did your parents react? R As they saw that the album was triumphant and me too, they were delighted. There was a song against my mother, but being older I wrote a book in favor. That song my mother listened to and laughed. "The boy, who is answering me," he said.
Q Did you ever encounter censorship? R No, as far as I know. That's like the SGAE, which they say sends people to control the concerts, although I've never seen anyone from the SGAE at a concert. In the case of Jaume Sisa and I, because we are in package, the censorship did not understand us because our style is surreal, we do not say exactly what we mean. They thought we were innocent, harmless.
Q Who makes surreal music today? A. I do not know, I am not very aware of what is being done today. The last musician who made my hair stand on end was Albert Pla. Pla has passed her hand over Sisa's face and me, it's as good as the two together.
Q He has always recognized Dylan as one of his influences, along with Papasseit and John Dos Passos. Are you still listening? A. No. For many years I have not put on a record, of anyone, to listen to it. As music plays everywhere, I am already served. I listened to Dylan well at the time. In addition, some of his last things, with very rare turns towards Christianity and such, have ceased to interest me completely.
P One of his albums, 'Astarot Universherba', which included the scandalous concert he offered at Canet Rock in 77, was released on a hermetically sealed CD inside a can of food in which there was, in addition to the text, information and some articles on the subject, a band-aid (in case someone cut himself when opening it), an aspirin (in case anyone listened to it) and the bad reviews of the time scattered and crushed by his own foot. Over time critics have surrendered to their songs. Do you forgive them? A No, it has taken too long. There has always been everything. Critics who from the first day have helped me and exalted me, and some who even turn me green, pulling black, every time they see me.
Q What has been the strangest thing that happened to you on stage? A. Once I acted alone, with my guitar, sitting in a chair, a meter and a half from the wall at the back, I saw that the audience responded very carefully. I thought: how good I am doing. At one point, I got up, and the whole audience released an "oohhhhh". That reaction surprised me greatly and I asked what was happening. It turns out that while I was singing the first songs the spiders had woven a cloth from my head to the wall, and with the spotlights that was very beautiful. I was thinking of training the spiders and taking them on tour to do the numbers at each concert.
Q What have you prepared for Manacor? R I will perform (in Can Lliro) with my young son, who plays the drums, with Anna Tobias, bassist and percussionist, and Noè Escolà, keyboardist, flute player and saxophone. We will play songs by Dioptria and maybe some by Jo, la donya i el gripau (1971), a record that was recorded in Formentera.
P 71 years old. Many of his generation retire and decide to get off the stage. A. Music is my profession, my way of making a living, of expressing myself and relating, and how I will not have retirement because I have never quoted, because I will have to die singing.
Q What projects are you involved in? A. I really like to write and lately I am with a book about the history of the universe.
https://utemporda.com/en/magazine-detail/pau-riba Pau Riba THE REVOLUTION THAT HAS LIVE, WHAT IS NOW, WHAT WILL COME TO By Marta Galán Photo Andrea Ferrés Pau Riba is known for his role as a musician and countercultural artist, as well as his bizarre and iconoclastic character (his album Dioptria is considered the twentieth century’s best album in Catalan), but he has also worked on essays, poetry, storytelling, graphic arts, critical journalism, performing arts, film... His latest essay La revolució que ara toca (The revolution now needed) (Pòrtic, 2016) gives us more thoughtful writings from Pau Riba. In its pages he describes how anti-ecological and poorly reasoned economic models are obsolete. And it gives alternatives for defending a new civilisation built on close ethical relationships with nature and a ceiling on wealth to redistribute it. “While there is even one in poverty, becoming rich should be a crime.”
We meet Pau on the terrace of Bar Galeón, in Cadaqués, the hometown of the Riba family and the village in which Sa meua mare (My mother) takes place, a book written in the form of a memoir in which he shares recent conversations with his mother Mercè Romeva. The story takes us with thrills and tenderness from Barcelona to the cool waters of the beach of Poal. “There came a time when the bedsores prevented her from getting up, but she wanted to return to Cadaqués. And I told her I will kidnap you, and for her it was no joke; one day when I went to her home, she had already arranged it... And once we arrived here the sickness left her, proving that the spirit is above matter!”
Yesterday in Cadaqués Les passanelles took place, the musical and poetic performance happening by the sea as stones are thrown on the water, making them jump. This has been orchestrated for the last twenty years by the architect Toni Gironès and, for this year, he has scheduled a concert with compositions by different musicians linked to the town, including Pau Riba. “You get a random melody and then you have to dress it, make it magnificent. It is a demonstration of how resourceful Catalans are.” He was commissioned to write a ‘classic piece’ and he says ironically: “I have done what I was asked to do, and I created a composition for string quartet and flute. Afterwards, I was told that everything can be a classic piece, even rock and roll.“
His creativity has no end. In the pipeline, he has a beautiful and experimental project to compose a musical work drawing on the similarity between a musical stave and the position of migratory birds on overhead electricity cables. Moreover, he just wrote the poetry collection Terra tremens, which was inspired by the 2015 earthquake, and is illustrated with engravings, which will be exhibited this summer at the Galeria Dieu. He tells us that, despite his forays into other arts, he considers himself a writer: “Literature has not posed me difficulties. It’s as if I had my grandfather inside... He was rigid and disciplined, but I have begun to turn literature into a game and I have fun playing with it. We should be able to replace the word work (treballar) with play (jugar), because work comes from the Latin word tripalium, meaning a Roman torture machine. Why should we earn a living? We should abolish money and advocate for a minimum income to ensure the sustainability of material conditions for everyone. We can only do this by putting a ceiling on wealth so that money flows to those who have less.” A new revised form of communism, he says. “Because, now, it is not only the men who work, but also, and above all, the machines. If the machine has replaced man, the yield of the machine should be for the worker, right? But it is not, it is for the owner of the machine. What grows endlessly is barbaric; because unlimited growth on a planet that is not unlimited in resources does not make sense at all. In nature everything grows, stabilises and decreases.”
We ask him about his vision of tourism and he said that he does not consider himself a tourist but a summer visitor. “Every time I come here it’s like I have come home. Cadaqués would not be what it is if in the fifties summer visitors from Barcelona had not made an agreement with the Council to preserve the town using natural and architectural planning measures (colours, materials, heights...). We can say that there are two opposing forces: tourists and summer visitors.” He believes that the days of compulsive tourism are numbered because of the depletion of fossil fuels and sees an era when “a plane will only be used once or twice in a lifetime”. I say that it seems a hopeful prediction, and at the height of noon, with the sun burning our necks and as we drink vermouth, we enter the realm of symbolism and macro-astrology, and he tells me that we are living in the transit between the age of Pisces, Christianity, and the age of Aquarius: “We are moving from an era of contradiction, sub-consciousness and opposed energies, to an era of super-consciousness and supermen. For this reason we need the return of man to nature. We need to embrace and recover the cyborg part of our nature which makes up 50% of ourselves. We cannot continue the conflict between the bio- and the techno-, but we must make ourselves aware of both forces and restore our relationship with nature. This was the key idea held by hippie utopians and we have to return to it.”
And at this point we close the conversation and walk to Poal to soak our feet in crystal waters, dodging dead jellyfish along the shore. “Now it is the jellyfish that eat the eggs of fish, and not vice versa. If we continue this way, we will get used to eating jellyfish instead of fish”//
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1094454-Pau-Riba
Pau Riba i Romeva ( Palma de Mallorca , August 7, 1948 ) is a Catalan artist and writer, recognized mainly for his musical career. [ 1 ]
Pau Riba Pau Riba.jpg Performance in 2007 in Tabernes de Valldigna General data Real name Pau Riba and Romeva Birth August 7, 1948 (71 years old) Palma de Mallorca , nationality Spanish Sons Caïm Riba Occupation Singer , guitarist , composer and writer Artistic information Genders) Rock , Folk , Psychedelia , Nova Cançó Instruments) Guitar Period of activity 1967 - Present Related artists Folk Group , Sisa , Pep Laguarda , Pastora , Enric Herrera Web Website www.pauriba.com [ edit data in Wikidata ] He was born in a Catalan bourgeois family - he is the grandson of the deputy and founder of Unió Democràtica de Catalunya , Pau Romeva , the poet and humanist Carles Riba and the poet Clementina Arderiu -, in a Puritan, Christian, cultured and Catalan environment. His work, framed in the counterculture movement , has a strong iconoclastic and transgressive character. He has five children.
Index Trajectory
Pau Riba at the Museum of History of Catalonia in 2005. In 1967 he asks to be admitted to the group Els Setze Jutges , but they do not accept him for lack of aesthetic-musical coincidence with the leaders of the group, since he was closer to Bob Dylan than to Jacques Brel or Georges Brassens . In response, he founded with a group of friends the Folk Group , with a variable number of members, defenders of a more popular and combative song. In this same year he releases his first single: Taxi Driver .
The concert given by the Folk Group in the Citadel Park in May 1968 became the reference of an emerging movement that tried to change the sexual and cultural customs of Catalan society and, later, of the Spanish as a whole. Noia de porcelana , of that same year, marked the beginning of the road of the reference work: Diòptria , double album in two installments of 1969 and 1970 , with resonances of the hippie revolution. The album is a fierce criticism of the petty bourgeois spirit and the progressive Christian family that they saw as the basic cell of society. The readers of Enderrock magazine chose it as the best record of Catalan discography at number 100 of it.
In 1971 he moved to Formentera , where he would live in a cave, and at that time his first two children were born: Pau and Caïm. In summer of 1975 he participated in the first Canet Rock , where he plays Licors and almost undressed in a performance recorded in the film of the same name directed by Francesc Bellmunt .
During the 1980s he collaborated in the Sunday supplements of the newspapers La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya , and participated in several films.
In the middle of this decade he proposed trans aesthetics and launched a manifesto in favor of transcançó ( transcanción ) and against "cultural closure and linguistic normalization". In 1986 he published the novel Ena .
In 1992, he participated as co-writer, director and presenter of the Trif tong program on TV3 . He participated in the design of the Day of Catalonia of the Universal Exhibition of Seville . That same year he presents the show Ribaibal where, with his son Pau, he recovers his first songs and publishes new ones. He made a floral carpet of more than 200 square meters in the Moll de la Fusta in Barcelona to receive the Olympic flame. La Magrana publishing house edited a biography of him.
In 1995 his son Caïm joined the show Ribaibal .
For San Jorge in 1997, Proa publishes Lletrarada , a book that brings together the lyrics of all his songs, some of them unpublished. In 1998 he published Al·lolàlia , a set of linguistic curiosities.
In 2001, he destroyed in Felanich - with the author's consent - a mural by Miquel Barceló to prevent it from passing into municipal hands. The book-CD Jisàs de Netzerit or zero chapter of the war of les galàxies was presented at the Espai de Música i Dansa de Catalunya . Did you collaborate with Albert Pla on the album Anem al Llit? .
In 2006 he starred in the autobiographical film Deixa'm en Pau , directed by Manel Mayol .,
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Jake Sollo (born Nkem Okonkwo, c.1950 – 13 September 1985) was a Nigerian guitarist and record producer.
He started his career in a beat group, The Hykkers, which he formed while studying at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. After they disbanded, he joined another group, the Funkees,
https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3120-jake-sollo Jake Sollo was one of the most prolific innovative musicians from Nigeria in the 70s and 80s. His talents as a rhythm guitar player saw him through much of his career where he played with several Nigerian bands of varying styles. After a stint in the beat group the Hykkers (which he formed whilst studying at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka) then went on to wider recognition as a member of the Funkees. Sollo then went on to play with famed Afro-rock group Osibisa. His stint working alongside group leader Teddy Osei. The Funkees had become very popular, not just in Nigeria where a rough demo of the track “Akula Owu Onyeara” was on constant rotation at the East-Central State Broadcasting Service, but the track was went on to be picked up by the BBC DJ John Peel. After successes in bands, Sollo went solo and found a steady stream of work in London as a session musician and a producer. He returned to Nigeria in 1981 where he produced “bouncy, high gloss boogie” which was incredibly in demand. He had a distinctive playing and producing style and was incredibly popular. He utilized synthesizers which were uncommon in Nigeria at the time The 1979 “Jake Sollo” self titled album was produced for Pye / Disques Esperance in London. Touches of pop, plenty of African groove, moments of psychedelica… all bound together with Jakes distinctive guitar playing and sleek production. These are sounds that are reminiscent of African music lovers contemporary of Sollo such as David Byrne and Talking Heads, and Paul Simon in Graceland, but with a glittering grooviness that is all Jake Sollo. Sadly Jakes career was cut short when he tragically died in a car accident in 1985. Depriving the world of no doubt what would have been decades of more innovative and creative music.
https://thenativemag.com/music/afro-rock-timeline/ NATIVE ROOTS: AFRO ROCK TIMELINE PRE-WAR (1950) The Nigerian Broadcasting Service is established from the British Owned Radio Diffusion Service, creating radio stations in Kaduna, Ibadan, Lagos, Enugu and Kano. The creation of radio stations would take the monopoly of radio broadcasting from British propagandists and introduce radio for entertainment purposes to Nigerian audiences.
This shift creates a demand for entertainment between news broadcasts and introduces teenage audiences of the era to the music popular in Great Britain and the Americas. American Jazz and Rock and Roll were crossing the pond at this time, driven by Hollywood and musicians like Chuck Berry. As Nigerian broadcasting looked to Britain and Britain looked to America, the trickle effect created the first generation of Nigerian rock and roll converts.
1965 After two years of performing as an informal troupe, the Hykkers earn a gig performing weekly on the television programme Saturday Square, targeted at a youth audience fed on a diet of American Rock ‘n’ Roll and British Funk, the Hykkers sound fed the new aspirations for a western lifestyle and positioned them as teen pop idols.
It takes two years and a pivot to traditional media for the Hykkers and by extension Afro-funk to get a foot indoor because of the overwhelming influence of Highlife music at the time.
1966 Hykkers meet Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the Koola Lobitos band, who are the default band for Jamaican pop star Jimmie Small as he tours the country. This is the Hykkers first major gig apart from television and the contact with Fela introduces a brass section to the band’s sound, changing its composition and making Afro-Funk more accessible to Nigerian audiences.
1967 Fractions gain prominence after opening for American rock and roll singer Chubby Checker. Checker was at the height of his fame in 67, and just coming off a tour across Europe. It had become customary for African American singers to make pilgrimages to the ‘motherland’ and perform sets in its burgeoning nightlife scene. Checker provided the Fractions with the momentum needed to introduce their gritter Motown influenced sound to Lagos’s audiences and spark a revolution.
Their fame in Lagos was short-lived, by the middle of their breakthrough year, a civil war would end their Lagos domination and see them repatriated to the East.
1967 The Nigerian Civil War brings to a head a year of political strife and forced allegiances. General Ojukwu makes a call for all Nigerians of Eastern descent to return to their home region and support the cause of Biafra. In response, the Nigerian government forces Nigerians of Eastern origin to leave the major cities, Lagos included.
Musicians like Jake Sollo, Rex Lawson and groups like The Hykkers and The Fractions all move to the east and take up residencies in renowned hotels like the Dolphin Cafe Hotel and the Plaza Hotel in Onitsha, performing to smaller and smaller crowds all through the war.
1967 Tony Benson starts ‘Soul Night’ and introduces his new group The Combos to Lagos’s nightlife. It is a full circle event for the younger Benson who was a former performer at the Bobby Benson and his jam session orchestra organized his father and a former bandmate of the Hykkers which he joined in 1963, drawn to their more flexible approach to music.
Tony Benson is not allowed to join his bandmates in the Hykkers and repatriate back to Eastern Nigeria. Afraid for his son’s future and influential enough to have the Nigerian government’s ear, the older Benson is able to sway government power to exempt his son from the forced repatriations that follow General Ojukwu’s calls for secession.
1967 The Postmen, one of the few Afrofunk bands based out of Eastern Nigeria becomes the first group to record an EP, marking the formal introduction of the genre into mainstream music. The EP is made in collaboration with renowned Hollywood director Bruce Beresford, then working with the Nigerian Film Commission in Enugu.
The war would make it impossible for any musicians during that era to record any EP’s and much of the music made during the period would be lost to posterity.
1968 Fractions regroup after being repatriated back to Eastern Nigeria and losing guitarists Cliff Agwaze and Sunny Okosun (yes that Sunny Okosun). They are replaced by Jerry ‘Ify Jerry’ Jiagbogu and Nkem ‘Jake Sollo’ In response to Sir. Victor Olaiya being conscripted into the Nigerian army and given an honorary rank in exchange for his services as the army’s official musician; General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu makes the Fractions the Biafran Armed Forces Entertainment Group.
The position allows the band tour all of the Eastern regions of Biafra largely unhindered during the war, boosting morale among the troops and performing for top Biafran dignitaries. That kind of access would make the Fractions the most famous group in the region by the end of 1968.
1968 Segun Bucknor begins his career as the frontman of the new group, The Soul Assembly. Inspired by the emotional soul of Ray Charles and eager to fill the chasm left by the highlife and Afro-funk musicians chased out of Lagos by the Civil War, and backed by a recording contract from the British record label Polydor, Bucknor arrives Lagos and introduces his new brand of music.
Bucknor’s music fails to reach critical mass because of its derivative sound and the growing influence of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who at the time is beginning to pioneer his own brand of music called Afro-beat, which fuses contemporary sounds with highlife. Bucknor and Kuti develop a rivalry that persists all through the 60’s and is superseded today only by the feud between Wizkid and Davido.
1969 Ginger Folorunsho Johnson shares a stage with the Rolling Stones in a British variety television event. Rivalled only by the Beatles in 1969, the Rolling Stones were musical royalty, able to demand the best time slots and sell millions of records, Folorunsho was best known for his attempts to document the underground Afro-rock scene dominated by African immigrants in London.
Johnson would leave for Lagos later that year and spend half a decade trying to decode the Lagos music scene, working on a film and releasing significant music in that time.
1969 The Fractions are finally disbanded and forcefully conscripted into active service in the Biafran war. At the tail end of the war and severely lacking active duty soldiers, the Biafran government began to arrest and conscript individuals they had formerly designated as high value into its infantry.
Tony Amadi, former Fractions bandmate would escape and with the help of Roy Chicago, find his way back to Lagos just before the end of the war.
1970 The Funkees play their last first official gig in the town of Nkwerre, even as the Nigerian Army closes around the town. The concert which lasts all night amidst sounds of shelling and deaths is a final act of defiance against the brutish power of the Nigerian Army and a final celebration of the ideals of the Biafra sovereign state.
One of the few Afro-funk bands that were formed in Eastern Nigeria during the war, the Funkees never had a classic line up of artists, with education, war and personal interest ensuring instrumentalists and vocalists were always joining and leaving the group. A few days after the war officially ends and the band mates of the Hykkers are taken into custody before being released to return to Lagos.
1970 Ofo and the Black Company debut at the Afrika Shrine. This was the first Nigerian band to shirk the uniformity of traditional music bands at the time, basing the performances on the mysticism of the ‘Ofo’ cult from Eastern Nigeria, rather than choreography and performative cuteness as was customary at the time. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was also experiencing a spiritual awakening at the time and had opened the Shrine to performers from across the country to come experiment.
Their music would form the basis for Nigerian performance artists like Twin Seven Seven, Quddus Onikeku and Bantu to incorporate contemporary performances into their sound.
1970 American drummer and guitarist, Ginger Baker, formerly of the group Cream would undergo a cross-continental trek to reach Nigeria. His fascination with Nigeria would lead to an informal residency characterised by performance rehearsals and session with the emerging Afro-rock musicians of the era like Jake Sollo, Ify Jerry.
Baker’s jam sessions helped introduce and connect many of the afro-rock artists would go on to create bands together or start bitter rivalries.
1970 The Fractions disintegrate, from pressure from the Nigerian Army, ending the biggest feud of the Afro-funk era. Ify Jerry and Jake Sollo leave the Fractions to join the Hykkers who had risen victorious from the years of the war and were keen to return to Lagos and restart their careers.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti then with his newly renamed Afrika 70 band would provide instruments and leverage for the group to make their comeback, complete with new performance material.
After-War (1973) Ofege releases Try and Love, their debut album. Heavily influenced by American blues and R&B and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the young group’s music becomes one of the first albums to gain mainstream acceptance primarily through radio airplay. Defined by its insistence on centring the issues of young Nigerians and distinguished by the relative youth of its bandmates, Ofege would start a revolution of young Nigerians either starting or joining bands to try their hands at earning fame and fortune via music.
1973 Blo, the Nigerian Afro-rock band formed by former band members of the group Salt, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu release their debut collaborative project ‘Chapter One’. Riding on the success of the album’s debut singles and the new interest in Nigeria by Western niche musical audiences, the album Chapter One would become an international success and separate Afro-rock from Afrofunk.
It would also give the band the leverage they needed to tour and perform in Warri, Lagos and Enugu.
1973 After being rough-handled by Nigerian soldiers during the war and forced to stay in Easter Nigeria as a symbol of the relative peace and unity the end of the War was supposed to bring, the Funkees leave Nigeria for England. But not before they convince, Jake Sollo, formerly of the Fractions and then the Hykkers to come play lead for their band.
A four-month travel gig would eventually extend into a four-year sojourn in England recording music and immersing themselves in the British Funk scene.
1977 After three years of false starts, the Nigerian government finally hosts the Festac 77 global arts event. More than 15000 artists and creators from 55 countries attend the event and while the general atmosphere is progressive, a feud between the Nigerian government and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti leads to a ‘Counter Festac’ at the New Afrika Shrine, where dignitaries and performers sneak off to perform or hang out at the Shrine.
The Funkees return from their four-year sojourn in the UK to perform at Festac ‘77, and they also perform at the ‘Counter Festac’ signalling their shortlived return to music in the country.
1978 Williams Onyeabor releases Crashes In Love, his debut album rumoured to be the soundtrack for an independent film he made of the same name. Crashes in love would introduce Onyeabor’s futuristic sound to the global house music scene, decades before the scene would gain mass appeal and crown Onyeabor as a cult-figure within the progressive dance and house music scenes.
Onyeabor would disappear from the scene after a few years and a handful of projects, signalling the official end of the Afro-funk movement.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1193217-Jake-Sollo Jake Sollo Real Name: Nkem Okonkwo Profile: Jake Sollo (Nkem Okonkwo) started his career in the 1960s with The Hykkers, a "beat" group formed at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. After they disbanded Sollo subsequently joined the Aba-based Funkees. By 1976, with creative and personal tensions The Funkees slowly disintegrating, Sollo was offered the golden opportunity to play a year with the creme de la creme of Afro-rock groups, Osibisa. Around the 1980s Jake Sollo made his career as producer, mostly at Tabansi/Taretone and spawned various artists as Felix Lebarty, Veno and Esbee Family, traveled to London and recorded various great solo Lp's. Jake Sollo died in a car accident along Ihiala Road Anambra State on 13th day of September, 1985.
http://combandrazor.blogspot.com/2008/10/jake-sollo-is-awesome-part-2-ken-eme1st.html
Friday, October 10, 2008 Jake Sollo is Awesome! Part 2: Ken Eme/1st Flight, Veno and the Prophet "V" Just so that there is no confusion, let us make this point perfectly clear right from the get-go: Jake Sollo was the hottest, the most prolific, the very best music producer in Nigeria during the first half of the 1980s... and perhaps ever. He is awesome!
A little background: Sollo (nee Nkem Okonkwo) started his career in the 1960s with The Hykkers, a "beat" group formed at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
The Hykkers - "Stone the Flower"
The Hykkers remained a popular draw across the country throughout the Nigeria-Biafra war but disbanded shortly thereafter. Sollo subsequently joined the Aba-based Funkees, who soon became instant superstars due to the East-Central State Broadcasting Service's heavy rotation of a rough demo called "Akula Owu Onyeara" (check out the more polished--but still raw and funky--officially released version on Soundway's Nigeria Special). The Funkees phenomenon spread across the country, into Cameroon and eventually to England where they were championed by legendary BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.
By 1976, with creative and personal tensions slowly disintegrating The Funkees, Sollo was offered the golden opportunity to play with the creme de la creme of Afro-rock groups, Osibisa.
Sollo's distinctive rhythm guitar graced hits like "The Coffee Song," but his tenure with Osibisa was short-lived: On July 19, 1977, as the band prepared for a historic performance at London's Royal Festival Hall (captured on the double LP Black Magic Night), Sollo and two other recent Osibisa recruits--keyboardist Kiki Gyan and conga man Kofi Ayivor--failed to report for duty. Gyan--feeling shortchanged by group leader Teddy Osei--had convinced his fellow newbies to join him in a work stoppage to force the management to grant them a raise.
The gambit backfired; at the eleventh hour, a furious Osei called the band's former keyboard player Robert Bailey, percussionist Darko "Potato" Adams, and BLO bassist Mike Odumosu to play the concert, and fired the three mutineers. Author Charles Aniagolu writes about the aftermath of the incident in Osibisa: Living In The State Of Happy Vibes And Criss Cross Rhythms: Like Wendell, Spartacus and Loughty before them, the three dissidents soon realised [sic] they'd made an awful mistake. They became regretful and penitent, appealing to Teddy to overlook their pertinacity and let them back into Osibisa.
Teddy refused. "We felt that clearly they had jumped into the fire with their eyes open and had no one else to blame but themselves for their misfortune". They later relented and reabsorbed Kofi Ayivor, but not the other two. Within a couple of years, a very frustrated Jake Solo [sic] was dead, killed in a car crash in Nigeria. After a series of fits and starts, Kiki Gyan moved back to Ghana and became a junkie--hooked on heroin.
Even recognizing that Aniagolu is an ardent Teddy Osei sympathizer who spares no efforts in his book to portray all who defy Osei as losers, I wonder if his decision to gloss over Sollo's subsequent career and describe him as "very frustrated" was motivated by any special insight into the man's life. Because from where I'm standing, Jake did just fine after Osibisa. He got steady work as a session man and producer in the London scene and his dance card stayed full upon his return to Nigeria in 1981, especially after the enormous success of Felix Lebarty's Lover Boy.
As the London Era drew to a close with the budgets (and visas) to record in the UK becoming increasingly scarce, Sollo set up shop in Enugu, recording at Tabansi Studios and Rogers All Stars Studio (located in the nearby commercial hubs of Onitsha and Awka respectively) and started cranking out records at a furious clip.
During this period, Sollo was the most in-demand producer in Nigeria. His specialty was bouncy, high-gloss boogie, though he occasionally produced artists in other genres as well. Regardless of which style he was working in, though, a Jake Sollo production was instantly recognizable: the fat, angular basslines... the chirping and chattering guitars... but the chief sonic signature of Jake Sollo records was probably the squiggly and squelchy sound of the Prophet "V".
While the Prophet-5 synthesizer had been introduced in the 1977 and quickly become a hot piece of hardware among art-minded rockers like Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Gary Numan and New Order, by the early 1980s there were still less than 2000 of them shipped and I believe Sollo had the only one in Nigeria.* The revolutionary polyphonic sound of the Prophet allowed it to be a more convincing replacement for horn arrangements. Sometimes Sollo utilized the synth sparingly, as an accent... and other times, he virtually slathered his tracks in it.
A fine example of Sollo's heavy Prophet style would be the work he did on the album Winner and Loser by Ken Eme (1st Flight). I wish I knew more about him/them; as it is, I'm barely certain about whether he was a solo artist or part of a group!
I first encountered this record in 1983 (or maybe early 84) when the music videos were played on NTA 9 Calabar. As I mentioned before, the immediate appeal of the video was the fact that they looked really cool. Unlike a lot of groups of the time, they seemed to have a coordinated style and gimmick (they wore boots and sweet flight jackets) and they had some awesome breakdancing (by this time, though, we still referred to this style of dancing as "Electric Shock!"--yes, with the exclamation point). The videos billed the artist as "1st Flight" (with a logo showing a low angle of an aeroplane taking off) and they seemed to be a trio... or at least a duo (it was a bit hard to distinguish the actual group members from the dancing extras sometimes). I recall hearing on the radio that the group's lead singer was named Ken Eme.
Now I have the album in front of me and it says both "1st Flight" and "Ken Eme" on the cover, and while he's pictured chilling with one of the other guys on the back, the other fellow remains unidentified. Apart from Sollo's semi-regular session men like bassist Modjo Isidore and pianist Sony Enang, the only person credited is Ken Eme and the LP label doesn't mention 1st Flight at all.
Oh well...
Anyway, here's one of my favorite cuts from the album--a funky neo-calypso banger called "Love is What You Need." (Listen to it over good speakers or headphones and dig all the cool stuff Jake's got going on with the guitars in there!)
Ken Eme/1st Flight - "Love Is What You Need"
I never heard of 1st Flight again after 1984, and they seem to have been erased from the popular consciousness, because apart from my boy Enyi, I cannot find anybody who remembers them. Even my older sister with whom I used to sing the title track, Donny & Marie style--I asked her if she remembered "Winner and Loser" and started singing it; she looked at me like I was crazy!
The style on display on "Love is What You Need" reminds me a lot of another Jake Prophet track: "Groove I Like" by Veno. This song (which has been a favorite among boogie lovers over the past year) is from the album Nigeria Go Survive, from 1985. The release of this album marked (for me, at least) a distinct detour in the direction of Nigerian popular music. Maybe because there wasn't as much Jake Sollo music around after it? Someone told me Jake died while working on this album, but I'm not sure that's correct. (The car crash that claimed Jake and Al Jackson Nnakwe was in late 1985). Anyway, this album was co-produced by Roy Obika of the Esbee Family, and much of it really doesn't sound like Jake's work. Is it possible that Obika completed Sollo's work after the accident?
Probably.
For now, enjoy the Jake Sollo awesomeness!
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The Man, KDHX DJ Gabriel, Has Died. RIP to a Radio Legend Posted By Roy Kasten on Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:22 am
R.I.P. - BRIAN HEFFERNAN BRIAN HEFFERNAN R.I.P. Gabriel, a beloved and influential St. Louis disc jockey whose exuberant personality and passion for blues and gospel entertained radio audiences from the 1950s to the present, died at Mercy Hospital South (formerly St. Anthony’s) on October 19. He was 88.
A mainstay on KDHX (88.1 FM), he hosted Gabriel's Tin Pan Alley every late-night Sunday (technically midnight to 3 a.m. on Monday mornings) for decades. The program began each week with the strains of Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra" and a sampled voice declaring, “The man. I mean the man! The sensational! The incomparable! The king of the blues! The dynamic! Gabriel!” His playlists knew no bounds save those of the soul. He segued effortlessly (and sometimes perversely) from James Brown into Sunnyland Slim into Roy Acuff. Doo-wop? Boogie-woogie? Rock & roll? Western swing? Swamp pop? TV sitcom novelties? The holy blues (as he memorably called gospel music)? He played it all. His knowledge of American music was encyclopedic and his joy in sharing it irrepressible.
See also: MP3 Stands for Monkey Paws: In the Studio with Gabriel
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Gabriel was born Mitchell Hearns in Louisiana in 1930, but grew up in East St. Louis, where he attended Lincoln High School at the same time as Miles Davis. Both learned to play the trumpet there. In East St. Louis, he came to know and worked with many of the legends of rhythm and blues, both regional and national, including a significant relationship with Ike Turner. In 1958, he released “Boxtop” by Turner on his own Tune Town label. Copies are among the holy grails of rhythm and blues, as it was the first recording of Tina Turner (under the name Little Ann).
“Ike would ask me to pick [Tina] up and take her to the gig or the studio or whatever,” he once recalled. “I was the only one he trusted to pick her up. He knew I wouldn’t try to hit on her.”
Gabriel owned a record store in St. Louis called the House of the Blues and had his own recording and performing career, releasing singles under various names — “The Flock-Rocker,” “Gabriel, His Trumpet and Band of Angels,” and “Gabriel & the Angels” — on which he often played trumpet and was sometimes backed by Ike Turner’s band and legendary St. Louis guitarist Bennie Smith.
According to the St. Louis Radio Hall of Fame, his career in radio began in 1952 with WOKZ in Alton, Illinois, and then WTMV in East St. Louis and KATZ, where he held down a five-hour Sunday night/Monday morning slot through the late ‘60s. He loved to joke with and quiz his audience. (“I don’t want to know the name of the song,” he’d say. “I want to know the singer.”) In 1969, he quit the station after a programming change.
“I can no longer with a clear conscience play the music which you have selected me to play,” he said in his resignation letter. “Radio stations are not the only ones to blame for this garbage, sharing the blame equally are record companies that take noise, distortion and in most cases people with little or no talent, make recordings and in turn the radio stations (including KATZ) play this so-called music 24 hours a day on the minds of the young.”
In the early ‘70s, Gabriel was part of KDNA, the short-lived, community-supported precursor to KDHX, and began broadcasting on 88.1 FM in 1989, two years after its launch. He influenced every DJ on the station (including this writer), many of whom remember him fondly.
In a message to a KDHX DJ email group, Dennis Clancy (former co-host of the blues show Blursday) wrote, “Gabriel never changed. He really was one of a kind. He loved music and shared it with all of us. He also kept in touch with his friends and never forgot where he came from. Ordering White Castles from the booth, having a cab driver bring them by the station. KDHX has done a service to the community by having people like Lou ‘Fatha’ Thimes, Bernie Hayes and Gabriel on our station.”
A June 2010 fire ravaged his East St. Louis home, destroying many irreplaceable records from the collection that formed the basis for his radio show. A benefit that summer at BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups featured local blues legends Marquise Knox, the Arthur Williams Band and Silver Cloud. He continued spinning delightfully unpredictable music on Gabriel’s Tin Pan Alley right up until the weeks before his passing, but it was the force of his spirit, his way of connecting with an audience that kept listeners returning. On-air he would read letters written by prisoners, recognize births and deaths, and give shout-outs by name to all-night truck drivers, cabbies and veterans.
Hound Dog Brown, host of Boogie on Down on KDHX, often subbed for Gabriel over the years. “I was part of the team that filled in for his time slot this past week,” he says. “Josh Weinstein [the KDHX DJ whose jazz show aired just prior to Gabriel’s], summed it up this way: ‘Gabriel was always there.’ It didn’t matter if you listened a little or lot. You’d turn on the radio and he was there. He was like a friend on the air. He was a constant in St. Louis. It didn’t matter what the year was. Gabriel was Gabriel. Some things in this world don’t change.”
“Gabriel was a shining example of something no longer heard on commercial radio,” says Tom Ray, host of the long-running Soul Selector program on KDHX. “He was a singular, regional eccentric personality, given to free-form programming, instead of rigid playlists with no more than 70 or 80 songs for an entire week. Gabriel's roots go back to the 1950s and even before that; he was witness to the sort of rhythm and blues music in the late ‘40s that a few years later was tagged 'rock & roll.' For Mr. Hearns, the likes of Motown was too pop, a shiny product with the raw blues and gospel rinsed away. Gabriel pre-dated black radio's ascendancy in the 1960s, harking back to when a strict playbook had not been written.
"The mold that gave us Gabriel has been broken," he adds, "and we won't see his like again.”
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Jack Sheldon Wiener (July 2, 1935 – October 19, 1999) was an American recording engineer who was responsible for the sound of many of the successful R&B and rock and roll records released by Chess Records in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and others.
http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/sheldon.html
http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/blog/archives/245-Jack-Wiener-and-the-Sheldon-Recording-Studios.html
https://nunncenter.net/ohms-spokedb/render.php?cachefile=2016oh187_chase019_ohm.xml
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Bobby Leecan (April 1897 – May 3, 1946) was an American blues guitarist and banjoist who recorded in the late 1920s and early 1930s, often in a duo with harmonica player Robert Cooksey (1893 – 1936).
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bobby-leecan-mn0000767173 Artist Biography by Eugene Chadbourne From Fats Waller and "yo' feet's too big" to country blues and you're "standin' at the crossroads" wasn't really such a great distance, at least if one was to judge from some of the characters who were part of the inner workings of the engine. Journeyman guitarist Bobby Leecan played in a country blues duo with harmonica player Robert Cooksey, the two East Coast bluesmen hardly playing the style straight out of the book (or the non-book). There was more than just a trace of ragtime influence, and even some subversive swing jazz influence. From the mid-'20s to the early '30s, these sorts of pseudo-country blues players were just as much a part of the fledgling big city recording scene as the jazz players, and were often encouraged to mingle. Sometimes sessions involved interesting combinations completely out of serendipity, because players who were coming and going happened to run into each other and hit it off. The recordings Waller made playing the organ are cherished by his fans, and Leecan is the guitarist on a batch of these numbers that were recorded in 1927. The combo at this session was organized by cornetist and bandleader Thomas Morris, and also featured drummer Eddie King and the flamboyant trombonist Jimmy Archey. The guitarist was also a member of Waller's Six Hot Babies, also with Morris as well as Joe Nanton on trombone and the interesting pianist Nat Shillkret. Leecan's harmonica partner, Cooksey, was based out of New York, and was unique in his clean approach to the harp. This does not mean he washed the insides of the instrument out -- you're not supposed to -- but that he favored a clear tone without utilizing many sound effects, more similar to Larry Adler than Sonny Boy Williamson. Leecan and Cooksey teamed up for the first time in 1926 to cut sides for Victor, their recording output inhabiting a borderland between blues, vaudeville, and jazz.
Leecan had a fine and subtle single-string style with clear tone and much flexibility in his picking, and also recorded as banjoist, vocalist, and huffing into the occasional kazoo. Most blues anthropologists think the duo was based out of Philadelphia. The harmonica player also had a short recording collaboration with another guitarist named Alfred Martin, and some unfortunate confusion was created by sloppy reissue projects that credit these Martin recordings to Leecan. As a result, some of the written analysis of Leecan's guitar style is corrupted by descriptions of Martin. Leecan recorded on his own for Bluebird in the early '30s, including the fast moving "Apaloosa Blues." The Times Ain't What They Used to Be compilations on Yazoo feature demanding tracks by Bobby Leecan & His Need More Band. One of the more unusual items from Leecan's career was his recording of a series of the traditional "Cornfield Hollers" for the anthology of Negro Blues and Hollers. These performances, once and for all, stress the rootsy rural background of this musician, who was just as comfortable in urban, sophisticated hot jazz settings.
https://www.wirz.de/music/leecooks.htm Bobby/Bobbie Leecan, b. about April 1897 in Philadelphia, PA d. May 3, 1946 at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, PA buried May 8, 1946 at the Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia, PA
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/4256/Leecan_Bobby_composer
https://secondhandsongs.com/artist/71199
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The National Association of Television and Radio Announcers (NATRA) was an organisation in the United States, initially formed in the mid-1950s by Jack Gibson as the National Association of Radio Announcers (NARA), to promote the interests of African-American broadcasters. It was set up in order to counterbalance what were seen as disciminatory actions by the long-established American Federation of Television and Radio Artists,[1] and operated until the early 1970s.
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George Kerr Jr. is an American singer, songwriter and record producer.
https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/moments-soul MOMENTS IN SOUL Philly and Detroit grab attention, but some soul fans prefer New Jersey sounds. With beautiful harmonies from The Moments, funkier vibes from Brother To Brother, and pioneering disco grooves with the bubbly feel of an Atlantic City arcade, NJ’s All Platinum label had it all – and even played a part in the birth of rap. Steve Bryant tells its story
MOMENTS IN SOUL All Platinum could never compete with the likes of Philadelphia International Records because its success was largely reliant on just one act, The Moments. I still remember the first day I heard their Love On A Two-Way Street on the Stang label. I was immediately stunned by the dramatic intro with crashing drums underpinned by a tinkling piano. I’d never heard of the group, nor indeed the label. I had to sift through several copies to find one that was up to par, not knowing that in its early days, All Platinum and its group of labels were renowned for poor-quality pressings. Yet still the music shone through and I fell in love with the sound: Billy Brown’s wonderful tremulous falsetto warbling over a gently swaying rhythm. Simplicity was the key.
It must have been the early 70s when I first heard the record, as the song had already topped the R&B charts in the US, and peaked at No 3 on their pop lists. Quite a feat for a small company.
Stang – what an odd name for a label – was part of the All Platinum group based in Englewood, New Jersey, headed by Sylvia Robinson and her husband, Joe. Stang was actually a contraction of Mustang, the car Joe Robinson was driving at the time they started the label for their new signing, The Moments. The group went on to become the mainstay of the whole shebang and the prominent act in forming what was later tagged The Sound Of New Jersey. They provided the company with 27 R&B chart entries between 1968 and 1978 (including two No 1’s), all but one on Stang. The exception was on the parent label All Platinum – a duet with Sylvia, Sho Nuff Boogie was one of only seven non-ballads from the group.
Both sides of the No 1 single had previously been recorded by Lezli Valentine, who history has dismissed as just a one-time secretary of the company, but she had sung with two New York groups, The Jaynetts (of Sally Go Round The Roses fame) and The Hearts, so she definitely warrants more consideration. Her claims that she co-wrote Love On A Two-Way Street shouldn’t be dismissed lightly as she co-wrote I’m So Lost for The Moments… and then she didn’t – Sylvia Robinson took her credit. In fact Lezli Valentine provided All Platinum with its first-ever R&B chart entry when her beautiful I Won’t Do Anything entered the charts on 31 August 1968. It might have only peaked at No 42, but at that early stage any chart entry would have been big news at All Platinum. She then left the label. Lezli’s previously un-issued recording of I’m So Lost can be found on the two-disc set put out by Castle in 2007, All Platinum Girls.
In 1969, looking for two songs to complete their first album, Not On The Outside, But On The Inside, Strong!, The Moments recorded Love On A Two-Way Street and I Won’t Do Anything. Released back-to-back on a 45, … Two Way Street’s status as an R&B No 1 eclipses the album’s title track Not On The Outside (No 13 R&B, No 57 pop). Eventually London released the single here (HLU 10378) but not surprisingly, it only sold to soul fans.
The line-up for this first album was John Morgan, Al Goodman and Billy Brown; however, neither Goodman or Brown were in the original Moments, who cut a single for Hog Records, Baby I Want You/Pray For Me, in 1965, nor indeed on Not On The Outside. The group originally consisted of Eric Olfus, Richard Gross (aka Horsley) and John Morgan, with Mark Greene, who sang lead on Not On The Outside, joining them when they signed to All Platinum. Greene, Olfus and Gross were quickly replaced by Brown and Goodman, citing “personal problems” as the reason for departure.
Olfus, Greene and Gross, together with one Donald Spriggs, recorded tracks in New York that ended up on the Stax subsidiary, Volt, in 1971 under the name of The Leaders. Neither of their two singles achieved success despite the involvement of Bert Keyes, an ace arranger and songwriter credited with co-writing Love On A Two-Way Street with Sylvia Robinson. Greene later emerged with his own albums, after regaining the right to use The Moments’ name.
Hog was formed by brothers Larry & Fonce Mizell with Freddie Perren (all from Englewood) and Toby Jackson (now a lawyer in Detroit where he manages gospel stars The Rance Allen Group). Fonce Mizell and Perren would later form part of The Corporation at Motown, which wrote and produced early hits for the Jackson 5, and The Mizell brothers had considerable production success with A Taste Of Honey and Donald Byrd among others. Post-Motown, Perren produced Tavares’ Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel plus two tracks on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack: More Than A Woman by Tavares and If I Can’t Have You by Yvonne Elliman. Perren also co-wrote, arranged and produced I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. The Hog single unfortunately shows none of that potential, though it was re-issued by Wax Poetics in 2008 as the original now fetches very high prices.
Billy Brown and Al Goodman had made records before The Moments. Brown was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but moved with his family to New Jersey at a very young age, where he sang with various groups before making his recording debut with The Uniques, who were produced by Eddie Singleton, an aspiring producer and songwriter who later married Raynoma Gordy and formed the legendary Shrine label in Washington DC, held in high esteem by Northern soul fans. Billy then joined The Broadways, who had two singles released on MGM before auditioning for All Platinum.
Goodman’s initial recording was with The Carvairs on Copa, a tiny label from his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. The Carvairs headed for New York but broke up en route. Still, Al Goodman made it all the way, working with several groups before joining The Vipers, who had one single on Duchess, and then auditioned for All Platinum. Goodman became an important figure in the early days of the label, co-writing some of The Moments’ hits, including 1969’s Lovely Way She Loves, and stood in for Mickey Baker as the other half of Mickey & Sylvia, Sylvia’s long-standing duo, about which more later. His is the lead voice on The Other Side Of The Moments LP of standards, which Goodman pithily described as “a piece of junk”, and he also sings lead on A Pocket Full Of Heartbreaks on The Moments’ first album.
John Morgan, who features on the cover of the first album, sang lead on Understanding (the flip of Not On The Outside) but was soon replaced by John ‘Moe’ Moore (Sylvia’s brother-in-law) who himself was replaced by Harry Ray in 1970 just as Love On A Two-Way Street was hitting big. Ray, born in Long Branch, New Jersey, previously recorded with The Valtairs on a tiny label called Selsom. By the time of his audition for All Platinum, Ray was singing with a group called The Establishment. The Moments’ classic line-up was now in place. Despite being dropped from The Moments, John ‘Moe’ Moore stayed with the company.
The Moments’ third album, On Top, featured 10 of their 11 R&B charters up to that point, leaving out I’m So Lost, as that only reached No 43. The song had also been released in 1969 on a single by Mark Greene as a B-side to My Confession Of Love, co-written and originally recorded by Donnie Elbert. When All Platinum’s Turbo imprint was launched in 1969, the first release was by DJ Frankie ‘Love Man’ Crocker. A spoken record utilising Mark Greene’s recording as the basic track, the other side was a Willie & The Mighty Magnificents’ instrumental, Ton Of Dynamite. I’m So Lost also appears on The Moments’ first album and could even be Greene’s recording.
On Top also includes the first song Harry Ray wrote for All Platinum, Candy Shack, which is a collaboration between Ray, Goodman and Brown. Ray and Goodman particularly were prolific songwriters, especially alongside Walter Morris, who was originally the guitarist with their band.
All Platinum’s head of music, Sylvia Robinson, had quite a history as a recording artist. At the tender age of 14, she cut Chocolate Candy Blues in 1950 as Little Sylvia with The Nelson Clark Orchestra. She recorded several more records, but by the mid- 50s she was running The Blue Morocco Club in the Bronx with her husband Joe where they probably heard some of the acts that would later appear on All Platinum; sister labels Stang, Turbo and Vibration; and lesser imprints such as A1 and Astroscope. Sylvia recorded with her guitar teacher Mickey (McHouston) Baker as Mickey & Sylvia, the high point of which was their recording of Love Is Strange for Groove (via RCA, No 1 R&B, No 11 pop). Love Is Strange was based on a Bo Diddley record, Paradise, and early releases show Ethel Smith (Bo’s wife) as its writer. The matter was resolved in 1961 in favour of Ben-Ghazi Music, owned by Joe & Sylvia Robinson and Mickey & Barbara Baker. The song is now ascribed to Sylvia Robinson, Mickey Baker and Ellas McDaniel – Diddley’s real name. The copyright was worth fighting for: Love Is Strange features prominently in the film, Dirty Dancing and crops up in more recent movies. Ben-Ghazi and All Platinum’s Gambi Music are now part of Universal.
In 1961 Sylvia and Mickey set up Willow Records, unsuccessfully re-cutting Love Is Strange, but scoring a minor hit with Baby You’re So Fine (No 27). In 1963 Mickey Baker relocated to France. He’s perhaps most famous for writing a book that remains the definitive primer in playing jazz guitar. In late 1964 the duo tried once more but two singles for RCA Victor failed to trouble the chart compilers. Mickey returned to France and died in Toulouse in 2012.
In 1968 Sylvia and Joe set up Platinum Records in Englewood, New Jersey – a short drive from New York over the Hudson River. The first release was by legendary New York soul DJ, Enoch Gregory, known as the “Dixie Drifter”. He was obviously a lover of country music, as Dear John Letter was a popular country song about the Korean War with the most successful version recorded by Jean Shepard with a monologue from Ferlin Husky, in 1953.
Platinum quickly became All Platinum when Joe Robinson realised that distributors paid in alphabetical order.
The next release on All Platinum was I Can’t Help It by Sylvia Robinson herself. The single was quickly pulled and then issued again, remixed. The new version was picked up by Dave Godin’s Soul City label for the company’s first UK release.
The occasional Mickey & Sylvia record appeared in ensuing years but in early 1973 Sylvia came out with another solo record which had apparently been rejected by Al Green. It prompted yet another new label, Vibration. Pillow Talk zoomed to the top of the R&B charts and reached No 3 on the US pop lists. Pillow Talk even reached No 14 in the UK and reignited Sylvia’s singing career but she never returned to the level of that freak hit.
At the start, All Platinum utilised Willie & The Mighty Magnificents, initially to help build the studio and then as session musicians. The collective had recorded for L Brown Records before All Platinum. The line-up was Willie Feaster, Billy Jones, Arnold Ramsey, Skip and Sonny McPhee, Ronnie and Lennie Pace, Tyrone Johnson, Donald McCleroy, and Valmon Burke who recorded as Val Martin for All Platinum with Donnie Elbert incorrectly included on the A-side with What Can I Do – the correct track with the same title can be found on the CD Play That Funky Beat. They had a little local success with All Platinum under their own name, such as Funky (8) Corners, plus two rare LPs, but never hit the national charts. To clarify, Willie & West, who recorded for Stang, was a different Willie: Willie (Hacker) Hoches with John West.
After Love On A Two-Way Street hit for The Moments, the frustrated band left to pursue their own careers with Feaster concentrating on his own label, Smog City, set up in 1969. Burke, Sonny & Skip McPhee, Ramsey and Ronnie Pace later turned up as members of Mother Night who recorded an eponymous LP for Columbia in 1972. Jones opted to stay at All Platinum as writer and producer and had one single under his own name on Vibration in 1975.
In came a new house band, The Rimshots: Nate Edmonds, Curtis McTeer, Mike Watson and Ronald Smith with Joe ‘Groundhog’ Richardson providing lead guitar throughout their album on the A-1 imprint. Groundhog issued a solo LP in 1971 on Turbo, one (Well Aged) in 1972 under his regular name and contributed extensively to the Johnny Acey LP (the bluesy My Home, Turbo). Edmonds produced the rare Susan Phillips LP on All Platinum and the equally scarce Sharon Soul album on Stang. He’d married Sharon Seiger (aka Sharon Soul) in 1968.
As the Soul Train TV show was so popular, The Rimshots thought they could succeed with an update of the Rindydinks’ Hot Potato – its theme song – written by sax star King Curtis under his real name of Curtis Ousley. But Bobby Robinson, who owned the original on the Enjoy label, renamed The Rinkydinks The Ramrods and quickly put out his version, stifling The Rimshots’ update. Sales of their Soul Train LP were therefore hampered. The band quickly put out Save That Thing, a vocal track similar to The Isley Brothers’s hit It’s Your Thing, backed with an old instrumental from The Mighty Magnificents, Concerto In F. At least it got them into the R&B charts at No 36. That was in 1972 and four years later The Rimshots returned to the charts, but by that time they had completely changed line-up and were essentially what had been The Moments’ live band. The “new” Rimshots were Jonathan Williams, Mozart Pierre- Lewis, Bernadette Randle, and two All Platinum writers and producers, Tommy Keith and Walter Morris. Morris cemented a close relationship with Ray and Goodman of The Moments. Keith had been a member of The Brothers Of Love, played guitar on the road for Martha & The Vandellas and was briefly a staff writer for Gamble & Huff’s Philadelphia International before crossing the state line to New Jersey to hook up with The Moments.
Despite its title, The Best Of The Moments wasn’t a compilation but a studio project. The album was released in the US in 1973 and the following year in the UK by London. For the first time in their career, the sleeve included a full list of musicians. The most notable names were two New York session players, Frankie Prescod and Yogi Horton.
The Rimshots’ Nate Edmonds also has quite a history: he was a member of Curtis Knight & The Squires from whence came Jimi Hendrix and saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood. Youngblood had three albums released on Turbo but his only chart single was Sweet Sweet Tootie, No 32 on the R&B lists in ’72 and written and produced by George Kerr. By then, Kerr (aka Mr Lucky) was an integral part of the All Platinum group after becoming Executive Vice President and producing several acts including the Optimistics and the far superior The New Sound (both 1971). He also co-produced The Moments on All I Have (No 9 R&B, ’70) and Just Because He Wants To Make Love (Doesn’t Mean He Loves You) (No 25, 1972). His major contribution, however, was bringing in The Whatnauts and Linda Jones, All Platinum’s only consistent chart performers outside of The Moments.
Kerr had sung with The Serenaders, alongside Sidney Barnes and Timothy Wilson, and Little Anthony & The Imperials, before signing to Motown as a songwriter and producer, learning his production skills from Raynoma Gordy in New York, alongside Barnes. Before joining All Platinum, he’d already had success with The O’Jays producing them for Bell and writing their hit Look Over Your Shoulder with Larry Roberts. Roberts was an unsung hero at All Platinum as he co-wrote several hits, including Not On The Outside. Sadly, he died of sickle-cell anaemia in 1973.
Kerr’s time at Motown had proved frustrating but ultimately worthwhile as the first Whatnauts single was their version of The Temptations’ Message From A Blackman, from their 1969 LP Puzzle People. Like War, a hit for Edwin Starr after being recorded by The Temptations on their Ball Of Confusion LP, Message From A Blackman was considered too political for The Temptations and may have adversely affected sales of the album had Motown chosen to release it. Instead they put out a version by The Spinners but it proved too late as The Whatnauts had already grabbed the airplay with their version on A&I (owned by George Kerr), which went to No 19 R&B. The Whatnauts would have three further hits on Stang and three albums before Kerr took them to GSF.
The Whatnauts comprised Carlos ‘Billy’ Herndon, Garnet Jones, Gerard ‘Chunky’ Pinkney and Ray Mitchell. Before their first LP hit the streets, Mitchell left. The flip of Message To A Blackman, Dance To The Music, sounds so close to the original Sly & The Family Stone hit that it could be a copy.
Kerr also became an artist at All Platinum where he had two albums and a No 15 R&B hit in 1970 with 3 Minutes 2 – Hey Girl, comprising a long rap into Goffin & King’s Hey Girl (which had been a hit for Freddie Scott in 1963).
The Whatnauts later returned to All Platinum to work with Tommy Keith for a proposed fourth LP, Lucky Charm, which may or may not have ever been released. A couple of the proposed tracks appeared on The Definitive Whatnauts Collection put out by DeepBeats in 1996, which included Help Is On The Way from the Harlem International label, their final R&B hit.
Kerr’s association with Linda Jones went back to 1965 when he signed her to his Tra- San Production Company (named for Tracy and Sandy, Kerr’s singing daughters). He produced both sides of Jones’ Blue Cat and Atco singles as well as all her hits for Loma including Hypnotized, her biggest hit (No 4 R&B, 21 pop). All Platinum’s Turbo label was just gearing up for Linda to be a massive star when she died on stage, aged just 28, on 14 March 1972. She suffered from diabetes and hadn’t heeded the warning signs. Two albums were posthumously released and a live CD was put out in the UK in 1997 by Castle. Her final R&B chart record was in 1972, a typically emotive rendering of The Moments’ Not On The Outside.
Songwriter-producer Gerald Harris alerted George Kerr to the wondrous emotive voice of Linda Jones and he co-wrote Fugitive From Love with Kerr along with several of her Loma sides. Harris, along with Toby Henry, wrote and produced the sought-after album by female group The Heartstoppers on All Platinum, which picked them up from the Quicksand label out of Newark, New Jersey. The Heartstoppers include relatives of Doris Duke (born Doris Curry), which is confirmed by the Betty Baker & The Jaxsis single on the Quicksand label, Love Show Some Pity On Me, which was written by Doris Dukes (sic) & Jerry (Gerald) Harris. The other act on the label is Mickey Whighams, his single co-produced by Kerr. The Heartstoppers’ tracks credited to ownership by London House are listed in the All Platinum tape vaults. Another obscure Gerald Harris and Toby Henry production is a 1970 album by The On Coming Times, Introducing, the only difference here is that they bring George Kerr’s contributions to the fore. They were a four-girl group from Chicago whose lead singer was the delightfully named Sheryl Swope, who, like the group, recorded for Duo.
The O’Jays would turn up via Horoscope (soon renamed Astroscope) which came into the fold first as a distributed label (as part of Saru out of Ohio, owned by a Chuck Brown, who ran a successful bail bonds business), and then became a fully owned All Platinum subsidiary. This brought in two LPs: one by the Ponderosa Twins + One – two members of which also recorded briefly as Alvin & Ricky for Stang; and an LP by Wood Brass & Steel, who featured Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald, later to turn up on the UK’s On-U Sounds label. There were also singles by Buster Brown and Pandella Kelly as well as tracks by The O’Jays. Like Linda Jones, The O’Jays had been left stranded by the sudden demise of Gamble & Huff’s short-lived Chess-distributed Neptune label. The flipside of the Pandella Kelly’s single, Stand In For Love, is an update of a 1966 The O’Jays hit.
Astroscope tried a couple of times to get a hit with its The O’Jays material after they exploded in 1972 with Back Stabbers on Gamble & Huff’s Philadelphia International. It took a while but Peace, backed with the George Kerr-written Don’t You Know A True Love (When You See One), eventually made the R&B charts but only for four weeks, peaking at No 65. The B side was released in the UK on Roger St Pierre’s Now label backed with That’s Alright from their Bell LP. This tie-up later prompted an LP titled The O’Jays Meet The Moments.
A youthful act, The Ponderosa Twins + One (and without) were obviously hoping to emulate the Jackson 5 but failed in that attempt. They did manage four national R&B chart records between 1971 and 1973 but couldn’t match their first; a teen revival of Sam Cooke’s You Send Me. They were produced by the O’Jays’ Bobby Massey and All Platinum’s Michael Burton. Around this time the credits on the sought-after LP This Is Eleanore Mills confirms that Astroscope had become a division of All Platinum.
The rare Astroscope LP by Wood Brass & Steel provided five tracks for the first Brother To Brother album on Turbo as the company had to quickly put out an album to support the surprise success of their version of Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson’s In The Bottle, which rose to No 9 R&B in 1974. The album bore the hit’s title. Future releases by Brother To Brother were more creative, with 1976’s Let Your Mind Be Free delivering two R&B chart 45s in the lead track and the more impressive Chance With You. The album was a strong showcase for Billy Jones but 1977’s Shades In Creation, despite similar input, failed to emulate its predecessor.
The All Platinum machine cranked up a few gears as it began to distribute a number of labels, including Johnny Brantley’s Maple, which provided sought-after albums by George Scott, The Chosen Few, Jimi Hendrix & Lonnie Youngblood, Gloria Barnes and Lee Moses. They also dealt with: Chanson, distributing singles by the Unlimited Four and their vocalist Evalen Braden; D’Ar – from which they picked up Give A Damn by The Internationals, who became The Persuaders; Snake Eyes – a comedy LP by ex-Coaster Billy Guy and a double album by four drag artists called The Pearl Box Revue; Ratcity – from which came The Good Rats, whose Peppi Marchello was one of the Company with Shirley Goodman, hitting with Shame, Shame, Shame; Sound Of Soul which brought in Larry Saunders (whose daughter is the Grammy-award winning Ledisi); and the US Charisma label (no relation to the UK one), whence came recordings of Malcolm X. Johnny Brantley had produced an early incarnation of The Ohio Players for Compass and utilised some of their songs for Maple, leading to dubious writing credits. Other than D’Ar and the Snake Eyes material, none of the distributed product became owned by All Platinum and didn’t sell on a national basis.
George Kerr reconnected with All Platinum in 1977, but couldn’t find his earlier success. He co-produced an album on Eddie Fisher as well as producing, with Sylvia, albums by Lonnie Youngblood and vocal group First Class, plus a single by Chuck Jackson, One Of Those Yesterdays. He also produced two 1978 singles by Sassy Charlie and BBP (Business Before Pleasure).
Donnie Elbert is a bit of an enigma because he didn’t hit with All Platinum until ’71 but he was clearly involved with the company before, otherwise What Can I Do wouldn’t have appeared in 1968 by Val Martin, nor would his song, My Confession Of Love, have been recorded by Mark Greene that same year. A year earlier he’d cut his first Motown cover, Get Ready, which was recorded in England, where he was based from 1965-70. A further Motown cover became his All Platinum hit, Where Did Our Love Go, which was Top 20 in the US and Top 10 in the UK in 1971. After Sweet Baby, the follow-up, he had a falling out with the company and went to Avco where he hit with yet another Tamla tune, I Can’t Help Myself. After Avco he returned for a few lesser hits but left again in 1975, insisting he had written the disco smash Shame, Shame, Shame and that Sylvia had wiped off his vocals and replaced them with Shirley Goodman’s. Certainly, despite the gender difference, Elbert’s high tenor isn’t too far removed from Goodman’s shrill soprano. His Shame, Shame, Shame soundalike, You’re Gonna Cry When I’m Gone, released in the UK on Bradley’s, now forms part of the company’s vaults.
In 1977 he returned yet again. Unfortunately his LP, Dancin’ The Night Away, was all cover versions and didn’t produce one hit. His final R&B chart record that year was another cover, Will You Love Me Tomorrow.
After its UK deal with London expired in October 1974, All Platinum signed with Phonogram, The initial release by Brother To Brother, In The Bottle, was on Philips but for the next release, and until the deal expired in 1977, the US company had its own UK logo heralding the coming of the The New Jersey Sound. In 1975 the label could do no wrong in the UK. The initial release on the newly formed label was Shame, Shame, Shame, which stormed to No 4, followed quickly by Girls by The Moments & The Whatnauts which rose to No 3. Retta Young, the soon-to-be wife of Al Goodman of The Moments, made No 28 with (Sending Out An) SOS, while The Rimshots’ 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle) rose to No 26. The Rimshots’ hit was based so closely on Blue Mink’s Get Up that the entire writing credit went to Blue Mink’s Roger Cook. (Concidentally, Blue Mink’s Madeline Bell was born in Newark, New Jersey.) Other than The Moments’ Dolly My Love, which went Top 10, the UK hits dried up awhile for all. Unfortunately, not in tune with the UK market, The Moments’ Look At Me (I’m In Love) only reached No 42.
The subsequent Shirley & Company LP wasn’t released in the UK despite the single’s success, and The Rimshots’ wasn’t either, though it did appear elsewhere in Europe.
To clarify, The Whatnauts’ name was added to the Girls disc so that The Moments could have two records hitting at the same time in America, beating rules about such matters. What’s Your Name was already creeping up the charts when Girls was released. The Whatnauts’ odd name stuck in people’s minds and may have added to the single’s success.
Perhaps blinded by their international inroads, All Platinum made the worst decision it could have made and bought Chess Records for $950,000, with some financial help from Polygram. The catalogue was too sprawling for a small company to handle, though they had one small R&B hit with Etta James, Jump Into Love, before she signed to Warner.
The Moments returned in 1977 with Jack In The Box, which reached No 7 in the UK, but it was asking a great deal of the group to produce hits for their home market and abroad given that commercial tastes were so dissimilar on either side of the Atlantic. Dolly My Love had been released in the US on All Platinum, not Stang, and it flopped. Jack In The Box came out in the US credited to The Rimshots and again made no impact. The Moments’ last four R&B chart records were drawn from their 1976 With You LP and were all written or co-written by Carole Bayer Sager. The B-side of the album featured songs from the Ray-Goodman-Morris team that had provided Look At Me (I’m In Love) and, with Venus Dodson, Girls. The Moments’ final LP for Stang was 1977’s Sharp. Though the title had been used for a 1975 UK album, the track listing is very different. Included are UK hits Dolly My Love and Jack In The Box as well as their final chart hit for Stang, I Could Have Loved You (already on With You). It reached No 20 R&B.
With All Platinum holding onto the name, the three vocalists became Ray, Goodman & Brown and signed to Polydor, where they hit first time out with their third No 1, Special Lady, written by Ray, Goodman and Walter Morris (credited as L Walter; his full name was Lee Walter Morris).
After Ray Goodman & Brown left, The Moments were Paul Everett Bronner Jr, Tamy Smith and Cliff Perkins (who had been a member of a Newark, New Jersey group The Soul Generation). Smith had co-written songs for The Jackson 5. The new Moments hit with Baby Let’s Rap Now in 1980.
The company had brought in organist Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez in 1973 as an established name but he only had one brief US charter with the superb vocal, Someone Has Taken Your Place, which wasn’t even on his largely instrumental album, Soul Vibration. They tried again a year later with Chuck Jackson but once more could only deliver one US hit with I’m Needing You, Wanting You. MOR vocalist Brook Benton proved he was past his prime, despite one LP and one UK-only single. Funky soul vocalist Bobby Patterson enjoyed a fleeting hit with Right Time, Wrong Place, but it was now 1977: wrong time, wrong place. Poor Timothy Wilson wasn’t really given a chance as his single was never properly released. The Needing You, Wanting You album from Chuck Jackson was largely written by the Ray-Goodman-Morris team with assistance from Sammy Lowe Jr, and includes an overlooked gem in Cover Up Or Get Ready. Chuck, however, was given two dire songs for All Platinum’s soundtrack album Patty, based on the true-life story of Patty Hearst, though Retta Young does a surprisingly good job on her cut of The Moments’ Look At Me (I’m In Love). A rumoured second LP for Chuck Jackson never materialised. After leaving All Platinum, he signed to a tiny label, Channel, before moving on to EMI America where he had his final chart record, reaching No 90 on the R&B lists in 1980 with I Wanna Give You Some Love.
By the end of the decade, All Platinum had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The hits had stopped coming so the company was in dire financial straits. Chapter 11 allowed it to reorganise and continue trading. Just as All Platinum was floundering, Sylvia Robinson spotted an opportunity in a new sound: rap. She founded Sugar Hill Records, named after an upmarket section of Harlem, and signed three rappers that she called the Sugarhill Gang, and Rapper’s Delight became a domestic and international hit in late 1979. Co-written by the Sugarhill Gang and Sylvia, it shifted a reputed eight million copies worldwide.
The Sugar Hill label, built up a significant roster of hip-hop acts, most notably Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, West Street Mob (who included Joey Robinson Jr), The Sequence, and Funky Four Plus One along with soul troupers like Harry Ray (briefly solo before he rejoined Ray Goodman & Brown), ex-Spinner Phillippe Wynne and Candi Staton. They also reissued some of the previous All Platinum material. Sylvia herself had a minor hit in 1982 with It’s Good To Be Queen. The TV show Empire is supposedly based on Sugarhill.
Sylvia, who died in 2011, aged 75, became known as “the mother of hip-hop” – her earlier contribution to the Sound Of New Jersey all but forgotten.
Thanks as always to Trevor Swaine
https://www.georgekerrmusic.com/
George Kerr is a legendary R&B/Soul Producer, Songwriter, Arranger, and Singer. His career spans over six decades beginning in the late 50's, singing in The Serenaders. He later replaced Little Anthony in The Imperials and went on to have hit songs as a singer. His production and songwriting credits are numerous. Containing some of the most classic recordings of the 60's and 70's golden age of soul, with groups like The Escorts, The Moments, The Whatnauts, Linda Jones, The O'Jays, Florence Ballard, and many many many more...
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-kerr-mn0000650026/credits
https://www.discogs.com/artist/189456-George-Kerr
http://www.soulfulkindamusic.net/georgekerr.htm
https://www.radionewark.co.uk/on-air/70s-soul-funk-and-disco/george-kerr-interview/
https://eastcoastmusichalloffame.org/nominees/auto-draft-105/
https://www.musicvf.com/songs.php?page=artist&artist=George+Kerr&tab=songaswriterchartstab
George Kerr was born in Ocilla , Georgia. He relocated to New York City where he auditioned and won the vacant slot by Little Anthony the lead singer for the world famous Imperials and toured with the group for three years. After his tour he was introduced to Berry and Ray Gordy of Motown Records. Ray Gordy saw the potential in the new arrival at Motown and began to groom him as a record producer. The rest is history. George Kerr went on to produce records with The O'Jays, Linda Jones, Marvin Gaye, The Moments, Ray, Goodman and Brown and the Manhattans , Jill Scott, Phyllis Hyman , The Chilites , The Main Ingrediant( Cuba Gooding) just to name a few. The song Hypnotized that was produced by George Kerr for Linda Jones went on to sell over one million copies. George produced the CD Sacha( a play on Broadway ), for Phillip Michael Thomas and Sandy Moralis. He is currently working on releasing a DVD with The O'Jays ,Ray Goodman & Brown . The Delphonics , Blue Magic, The Main Ingrediant and the Manhattans. He is also working on a CD with The Serenader's and his artists Andre and Timothy Wilson at Bad One Studios . Read more: http://www.myspace.com/georgekerr#ixzz13DAxzrsS
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Triangle was a French progressive rock band, active between 1967 and 1974.
https://www.rockmadeinfrance.com/encyclo/triangle/3073/
Triangle
Posted on September 21, 2008 - 09:40by Hervé in 1970s , Encyclopedia of Rock , Paris , Progressive , T 0 Comments
Triangle is not born from the last rain. Judge: Jean-Pierre Prevotat has already set the pace for Nancy Holloway, Jean-Jacques Debout ... Pierre Fanen, formerly Kelton , was guitarist of Ronnie Bird, Chuck Berry or Antoine. Gerard side « PapillonFournier is the same CV: bassist Dick Rivers, Dany Logan not to mention Johnny Hallyday for 3 years (at the time of Mick Jones!). But, between two recordings, the three men like to meet to repeat their compositions. And the sauce takes. Switching to a full-time activity is inevitable. Pierre Fanen decides to stay with Claude François and Alain Renaud replaces him. For these three "sharks", the doors of Pathé Marconi open widely. The trio releases a 45t in English produced by Claude-Michel Schoenberg, future husband of the presenter of the 20h. From the second 45th (" Elegy to Gabrielle "In reference to the case Gabrielle Russier, this thirty year old teacher sentenced to prison for falling in love with his student of 17 years ... She commits suicide after her conviction, Today, she would be first lady of France!) Triangle sings in French and becomes a quartet with jazz saxophonist François Jeanneau who played for 4 years with Claude François. Side guitarist, the training is finally stabilized with the arrival of Marius Lorenzini also a renowned musician. In 1970, released the first flamboyant album album (the piano of Jean-Pierre Prevotat's grandmother caught fire for History) and followed a tour throughout France.
Strangely, the band takes advantage of that same year to record a record with Martin CircusThe new formation thus created will publish an album under the name of Experience . At the same time, Triangle buys a house in the Marne. An adventure that will last only 6 months: the tax authorities have lowered the desire of the musicians community " It took them 3 months to peel the brothel (the justifications for fees, ed)," says François Jeanneau to Serge Loupien in his book La France Underground . " There were black notebooks on every page of which was written: def. Triangle 1200 balls, or def. Triangle 800 balls, etc. And the puzzled guys, asked, "What does that mean, shedding, that's it? "In fact, it meant stoned "
The year 1972 is marked by the release of the LP "Come with us "to the prestigious guests (today) like Jean-Michel Jarre or jazzmen Aldo Romano, Georges Locatelli and Henri Texier that will be featured in Total Issue . A year later, the 45th " The June tree " is published where we find the choirs ... Daniel Balavoine. That same year (1973) Papillon leaves the group, not tasting the jazzy orientation taken by François Jeanneau. Replaced by Denis Duhazé on vocals and René Devaux on bass , this is a quintet that will be released " Homonyme " with another guest Stéphane Grapelli. The album will not find its audience. Then things get faster. Supports infallible group since the beginning, the Director of Pathé Marconi leavesthe society. Their manager Coco Ameziane does the same. Triangle is nevertheless preparing an album that will never see the light of day. Note that in 1977, the entire group participates in the solo album " With a foot in rock'n'roll " Jacky Chalard, former bassist of Dynasty Crisis and Magnum .
https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_(groupe)&prev=search
Triangle (group)
group
Absent en English
Traduction automatique
Contribuer
Help page on homonymy For homonymous articles, see Triangle (disambiguation) .
Triangle
Native country Flag of France la France
Musical genre Progressive Rock , Jazz Rock [ 1 ]
active years 1967 - 1974 , 2018
labels EMI , Pathé
Group composition
Former members Jean-Pierre Prévotat (deceased)
Pierre Fanen
Gérard Fournier (Papillon, deceased)
Alain Renaud
Paul Farge
François Jeanneau
Marius Lorenzini (deceased)
Denis Duhaze
René Devaux
editCheck the model documentation
Triangle is a French progressive rock band . The group was formed in 1967 and active until 1974 . It is one of the first French progressive rock bands to make itself known to the general public at a time when France copies a lot on the Anglo-Saxon side [ 2 ] , [ 3 ] . The band has 300,000 albums sold [ 1 ] .
Summary Biography Beginnings (1967-1968) The group, which was formed in mid- 1967 , was originally a trio formed by Gérard Fournier (known as "Papillon") on bass and vocals, Pierre Fanen, on guitar and future member of the band. Jazz Zoo and by Jean-Pierre Prévotat on drums. This training does not record any disc and has for only merit that to have given the name to the group.
During 1968 , Pierre Fanen left the group, he was replaced by Alain Renaud on guitar and vocals. It is this training that comes out the first single, with lyrics in English. The success is not at the rendezvous and Alain Renaud goes in turn. To replace him arrive François Jeanneau , with keyboards and saxophone, and Paul Farges on guitar. This new formation publishes a single singing for the first face in French and the second in English. Face A, Elegy to Gabrielle , is based on a news item, the suicide of Gabrielle Russier , a high school teacher in love with one of her students [ 4 ] .
Success (1969-1973) The group only holds from the end of 1969 to the beginning of 1970 , during a difficult period. Triangle again loses its guitarist and this departure marks the arrival of Marius "Mimi" Lorenzini and his guitar. This new quartet is the group's "official" band, the most sustainable, from 1970 until mid-1973, it publishes two albums, the first album is still sung mostly in English, as well as a handful of singles .
Triangle finally meets the success with the title Maybe tomorrow , that the group interprets in the film of Claude Zidi , the Bidasses in madness - in which we also find Martin Circus [ 5 ] . The film is the best film success of 1971 , in France, with more than seven million admissions.
The press of the time opposes the groups Triangle, described as intellectual and Variations , considered more carefree, a bit like the previous decade around the Beatles and Rolling Stones in England. For journalists, Triangle and Ange share the title of "Best French Group". François Faton Cahen de Magma and Jean-Michel Jarre participate in the second album, commonly called Come with us , the title track of the album that comes out in 45 laps [ 2 ] . A year later released the single The Tree of June which involves Daniel Balavoine for the choir [ 2 ] .
In 1972 , the group is in Bobino and Olympia, in the first part of Robert Charlebois . The commercial success induces tensions, disagreements and divergences of orientation within the group that Gérard Fournier (bass) leaves. He tries a solo career but without success. To replace him, the remaining three members, of whom only Jean-Pierre Prévotat (drums) has been present since the beginning of the adventure, recruit René Devaux on bass, but he does not sing, Denis Duhazé, on guitar and to singing, also joins the group. With the contribution of this second guitar, the sound of the group hardens, without losing the jazzy sounds, due to the brass François Jeanneau. The quintet publishes the first album to receive a title, Homonymy , and four singles. The album is recorded in part at the Abbey Road Studios , and Stéphane Grappelli participates in the title Praise of Folly .
Separation (1974) The group dissolves during the year 1974 , after the publication of a last single A ticket for ... / Tell me , very poorly distributed. Gérard Fournier dies prematurely January 3 , 1989 following septicemia of pulmonary origin. Jean-Pierre Prévotat, born in 1945, died on January 27, 2011 [ 6 ] . He was one of the many drummers of Johnny Hallyday .
Mimi Lorenzini, born in 1949, died on 12 December 2014 from a heart attack [ 7 ] . A box released on CD in 1997, taking over the entire band.
Return (2018) The group reformed, in a very ephemeral way, the time to interpret the main successes of the group, the evening of Monday, August 20, 2018, during the jam which took place at the end of the festival Crescendo of Saint-Palais- on-Sea , with Denis Duhaze (vocals), Gerard Gabbay (guitar), Robert Gabbay (bass), Jonathan Lamarque (drums), Mario Gilgert (keyboards). [ ref. desired]
Discography
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http://www.gracyk.com/charleshart.shtml
https://davidneale.eu/elvis/aylt/aylt-labels/charles-hart.html
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George Wiltshire (October 21, 1900 – December 4, 1976) was an American actor.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0934386/bio
https://sanfordandson.fandom.com/wiki/George_Wiltshire George Wiltshire Born: October 21, 1900 Died December 10, 1976 (aged 76) Deathplace: Los Angeles, California, U.S. Occupation/ Career: Actor Years active: 1938-1976, his death Family/Personal information Character/series involvement Appeared on/ Involved with: Sanford and Son Grady Character(s) played: Elroy Pitt Sanford and Son retro Wiki Script Veteran actor George Wiltshire (October 21, 1900- December 10, 1976) appeared as Elroy Pitt, a sidekick of Hutch (Arnold Johnson) and Fred's in two episodes, appearing in "The Escorts" (Season 5, episode #19), in which George Foreman also guest starred, and "The Director" (Season 5, episode #21). A pioneering black veteran actor who first appeared in the 1930 Broadway revue play "Hot Rhythm" at the Times Square Theatre, he made his first film appearance in the 1938 all-black film "Keep Punching" opposite fellow veteran negro actor Canada Lee, he appeared in several films from the 1940's, appearing in such films as It Happened In Harlem (1945), Midnight Menace (1946), Junction 88 (1947), and also in the 1967 film Sweet Love, Bitter. He also appeared in the pilot episode of the short-lived Grady spinoff series titled "Be It Ever So Humble". Wiltshire died in Los Angeles.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85957618
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Zoo was a French progressive rock band formed in 1969.
https://www.rockmadeinfrance.com/encyclo/zoo/
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROCK
Zoo
Posted on November 3, 2009 - 14:01 by Hervé in 1970s , Encyclopedia of Rock , Nantes , Progressive , Z 9 Comments
Club Med leads to everything on the condition that you leave it. And when three ex-Club (Joel Daydé, Daniel Carlet and Michel Hervé) lovers of Blood Sweet & Tears cease the condition of GO, they naturally turn to music and join three studio musicians (Pierre Fanen, Michel Ripoche and Tony Canal ) and some friends, to form ... Question ! A group that, after a few dates in Paris and Switzerland, enter the studio in 1969 and records eight titles that remain on the shelf. When leaving, no disk but a new name: Zoo . The album ends, however, out, but in absolute discretion. And as we must eat, Zoo accompanies David-Alexandre Winter (the future father of Ophélie).
A few months later, after a shaken presence at the Festival of Amougies under their name, Tony Canal cracks and finally joins Joe Dassin. The soundtrack of the movie " Mushroom " is barely dry as the bleeding continues. In 1970 Joël Daydé tries the solo adventure while Pierre Fanen leaves to accompany Eddy Mitchell. If he is not replaced, this is not the case of the singer. Renamed Ian Bellamy, English Ian Stuart holds the microphone after a small announcement at the Melody Marker. It is with him that the second album is recorded in September. An opus that will serve as an indication to two radios New York. An unexpected promo that drives RCA to compile both albums for the US market.
Zoo then collaborates with Léo Ferré for two titles (" Le chien " and " The nana " »published on the album" A mour, anarchy, Ferre 70 Vol 1 ") then released a joint 45t with Eddy Mitchell" Dodo, metro , work, sleep ". After a few dates in England, it's Michel Bonnecarrere's turn to bow. So it is without him that are produced the soundtrack of the film " The legs in the air " with Francis Blanche and the SP " Hard times, good times " which will know its small success. The same year 71, the group crossed again the road of Léo Ferré for the album " La solitude " then that of Nicoletta for the album " Visage ".
In 1972 released the third album " Hard times, good times ". An album sometimes Rhythm & Blues that has a distribution in Great Britain and the United States. But lack of international success, in October 72, the group ceases all activity not without having released a last 45t " Life is living ".
Nearly forty years later, in 2009, Morbihan Michel Hervé, Joël Daydé and eight other musicians bring Zoo to life! A live album released in 2010 bears witness to this new beginning.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/487243-Zoo-4 Initially to be called La Question, this French band was created in April 1969 during the studio sessions of their eponymous album. Internal discrepancies will appear quite fast in the band. The problem is simple: playing progressive rock or sticking to jazzy and blues music? Tony Canal will be the first to leave the band, followed by Michel Bonnecarrère, both in 1969. Pierre Fanen & Joël Daydé will leave in 1970. The same year, they'll meet with Léo Ferré. Together they will record "Le Chien" and La The Nana, and Zoo will also be responsible for the orchestration the next year on Ferré's album La Solitude. So huge is the success both for Zoo and Ferré that the whole band will be invited again to play on Amour Anarchie - Ferré 70. In parallel, Zoo will replace Daydé by recruiting the English Ian Bellamy, simply through the magazine Melody Maker. September 1970, Zoo records its 2nd opus. 1971 will be a year seeing great collaborations, Ferré, as already stated, but also Nicoletta (2). Their last album Hard Times, Good Times will be released in 1972. They then disbanded as they were not duly promoted by their label. Some of their members then formed the band Z.O.U.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_(groupe) Zoo is a French progressive rock band from Paris . It is formerly located in Nantes , Loire-Atlantique and active between 1969 and 1972 . It is reformed in 2010 under the name Zoo Tribute Original.
Beginnings (1968-1970) Zoo is formed in 1968 [ 1 ] , and comes from the group New Strangers, Joel Daydé (vocals), Daniel Carlet (tenor saxophone, violin) and Michel Hervé (bass) approaching studio musicians Pierre Fanen (guitar), Michel Ripoche (tenor saxophone, violin, trombone), Tony Canal (trumpet), André Hervé, Christian Devaux (drums) and Michel Bonnecarrère (guitar and composition) [ 2 ] .
In 1969 , nine musicians participated in the tours and formed a particular repertoire, colored by the multi-instrumentalists constituting the orchestra, firmly seated on a very jazzy rhythmic basis. The group entered the studio on April 16, 1969. After two days, the recording of the first eight songs was completed. Barclay will release this recording only after the commercial success of the Chicago Transit Authority and Blood, Sweat and Tears albums. The deep and hoarse song of Joel Daydé characterizes these titles. In November 1969 took place the festival of Amougies where Zoo coexist notably Pink Floyd , Colosseum , The Nice , East of Eden and Frank Zappa [ 1 ] .
In 1970 , musical, relational and financial differences led Joël Daydé and Pierre "Pierrot" Fanen to leave the band. Private singer, Zoo goes through an ad in the Melody Maker , recruit English singer Ian Bellamy [ 1 ] . The second album is recorded from June 12 to September 9, 1970 [ 1 ] . In this new opus, the violins take power, relegating the brass on some titles despite the success, especially the saxophone, on Endless Words . The album is programmed and serves as an indication for American radios such as WOR-FM and WABC-FM, two of the largest stations in New York. Pierre Fanen birth 1946 dies April 28, 2000 Christian Devaux battery birth 1945 dies 2003 André Hervé birth December 19, 1946 dies March 9, 2004 organist Ian Douglas Bellamy birth 1949 vocals Daniel Carlet birth 1943 saxophone violin Tony Canal birth 1951 dies february 2016
First successes (1970-1972) A 33 rpm compilation of excerpts from the first two albums, directed by Robin McBride, was released in the United States under the RCA label. The group participates in the recording of two songs by Léo Ferré , Le Chien and La "The Nana" , published in singles and on the album Amour Anarchie [ 1 ] . A single , Dodo, job, subway , is also recorded with Eddy Mitchell just after their album [ 3 ] , [ 4 ] .
The end of 1970 saw them perform in England in several clubs and universities, especially at Ronnie Scott's in London where they share the poster with Charlie Mingus . They also give concerts in France, at Les Halles de Paris, during November. The year 1971 is charged in collaborations, which limits the exits of the own titles of the group. Ranked second at the French Pop Grand Prix, he participated in the Saint-Gratien festival in early April, with Dynasty Crisis , Ergo Sum, Voyage, Triangle , etc. Then comes the Olympia in October, with Caravan and Seatrain.
Only two singles produced in 1971, the first is the soundtrack of the film The Legs in the air with Francis Blanche [ 1 ] . The second is a harbinger of the future album since it includes the first version of Hard Times, Good Times . Released in May, the single is the band's biggest success (12,000 copies sold) [ 1 ] . Léo Ferré produces the album La Solitude , with the contribution on a majority of the titles of the orchestrations of Zoo. The collaboration with the artist concludes with a tour and seven days of sold-out concerts at Mutualité .
In 1972 , released the band's best-selling album. He enjoys appearances across the Channel (RCA) and across the Atlantic ( Warner Bros. ). Apart from the titles already mentioned and the second version of Hard Times, Good Times , the album contains some successes, tending to the rhythm and blues . After taking part in MIDEM at the beginning of the year, Zoo returns to the scene for a tour in England during the month of May, then in Strasbourg at the Wacken festival.
Separation (1972) The release of the latest single Life Is Living / Stiggy Poo makes no difference to the inevitable separation in October 1972 [ 1 ] . The group was unable to achieve international recognition, often playing bad luck, especially during tours, abortions or stillbirths, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, under the law of a narrow national market, which condemned many of groups of the time.
An album called Zou (Zön Orchestra Unlimited) was released in 1975 at Polydor . He associates the Hervé brothers (André, Michel, Joël and Stéphane) and Maria Popkiewicz on vocals. The cover of this disc is designed by Bernard Buffet . The majority of Zoo members will then make a career in the world of music. André and Michel Hervé and Maria Popkiewicz join Magma in 1979 .
Back (2009-2010) Zoo is back under the name Zoo Tribute Original. In 2009 , Michel Hervé discovered musical pieces of his brother André Hervé, missing; these pieces, listening, are waiting for the energy of motivated musicians. Michel Hervé decided to go back on stage with the original members - including Joël Daydé - remained faithful to the group, completed by famous and unconditional Zoo musicians since the first hour.
Zoo Tribute Original records the January 19 , 2010 , on the lands of Lorient family Hervé, the album Live Episode 1 , which includes a dozen titles of Zoo, a title tribute to Leo Ferré and unreleased tracks including the single of the live album, Rummy's Saga , signed André Hervé and Maria Popkiewicz [ 1 ] , [ 5 ] . Zoo Tribute Original consists of three founding members: Michel Hervé (bass), Joël Daydé (vocals) and Maria Popkiewicz (vocals) and seven newcomers: René Lebhar (guitar), Cyril Zardé (violin), Bertrand Richard (piano) , Brenda Hervé (vocals), David Rusaouen (drums), Patrick Bourgoin (saxophone) and Jean-Marc Welch (trombone).
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Jean-Claude Camus
https://www.gala.fr/stars_et_gotha/jean-claude_camus Jean-Claude Camus Profession: Producer Sign: Scorpion Date of birth: Friday, October 28, 1938 (age: 80 years) Country: France
BIOGRAPHY Born October 28, 1938 in Bernay in Normandy, Jean-Claude Camus began his career as a producer in the early 1960s.
At a springboard of young rock bands at Golf Drouot, he discovered the Wild Cats, Dick Rivers' band, which he decided to take charge of by organizing their first tour. He does the same with the Vultures, a training conducted by Vic Laurens. From meeting to meeting, he stands out as a producer through his professionalism and the eclecticism of his choices. He produces Sheila, Sylvie Vartan, Gall France, Florent Pagny, Patrick Bruel, Thomas Fersen and Michel Sardou, but he is best known as a producer of Johnny Hallyday.
Jean-Claude Camus also produces many shows: The Cardboard Suitcase with Linda de Suza, The Legend of Jimmy with Diane Tell, Starmania and many other musicals and shows. In 2001, he became director of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, which plays pieces by Francis Veber, such as L'Emmerdeur and Le Dîner de Cons , but also the piece They are loved by Pierre Palmade and Michèle Laroque.
In 2010, Jean-Claude Camus productions join the Warner Music group. In September 2010, Johnny Hallyday announces that he is ending his collaboration with Jean-Claude Camus.
In 2011, the producer bought the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris.
In October 2017, he publishes his autobiography; Not born for that: my life with the stars, at Plon's.
On the private side, Jean-Claude Camus has a daughter, Isabelle Camus, born in 1964.
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https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Plana
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Fran%C3%A7ois
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Verchuren
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Perrin_(compositeur)
https://www.discogs.com/artist/324540-Crazy-Horse-2
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Vivienne Corringham (born 1951) is a British vocalist and sound artist.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/vivienne-corringham-mn0001779283 Artist Biography by Michael G. Nastos Viv Corringham is a multifaceted performance artist and creative improvising vocalist, incorporating sounds of nature, technology, and existential art. Born in 1951 in Scunthorpe, Lincs, England, she initially studied at Christ's Hospital High School for Girls in Lincoln, U.K., and moved on to receive her Bachelor of Arts degree in theater design at Nottingham Trent University in 1974, and earned a master's with distinction in sonic art at Middlesex University in London in 2002. She has performed in England, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia, presenting not only vocal performances but also establishing audio installations and what she terms "sound (or shadow) walks." The theory behind such walks is that not only do we remember certain nuances and events surrounding everyday occurrences, but also in a way the walk remembers us, and resonates with every passing happenstance. Corringham records these walks with audio equipment, incorporating conversation, natural sounds, and traffic noises, turning them into improvisational discourse. She studied with Pauline Oliveros, attaining a Deep Listening teaching certificate in Switzerland in 2003. Major performances or residencies include the Sirius Art Center and Art Trail in Ireland; the International Society for Improvised Music conference at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, in 2007; and Cal State University's Women in New Music Festival. Musicians she has enjoyed include Oliveros, Sotiria Bellou, Giacinto Scelsi, Nico, Belkis Akkale, Steve Reich, Hildegard Westerkamp, Arvo Pärt, Trevor Wishart, and Janet Cardiff. The many musicians she has worked with include Gino Robair, Milo Fine, Pat Thomas, Eddie Prevost, Maggie Nicols, Lol Coxhill, and Peter Cusak. Corringham received a McKnight Composition Fellowship in 2006. As of the late 2000s, Corringham resided in Minnesota, appearing on Minnesota Public Radio and performing at a variety of events such as the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music in Minneapolis.
http://vivcorringham.org/biography
VIV CORRINGHAM is a British-born US-based singer who for the past 40 years has been cutting her own distinctive path as a singer and vocalist ranging across free improvisation, Greek Rembetika, Turkish folk and other styles of music, often combined with environmental field recordings made during solo walks. Her work includes concerts, soundwalks, radio works and multi-channel installations. She is interested in exploring the sense of place and how it links with personal history and memory. Her many awards include two McKnight Composer Fellowships through the American Composers Forum. She holds an MA in Sonic Art from Middlesex University, London. She also studied and performed with Pauline Oliveros and holds a Teaching Certificate for Deep Listening. She facilitates workshops in sounding and listening, most recently in Hong Kong, London, Bangalore, New York, Kolkata and Manila.
Her work has received international recognition and been presented in many festivals and venues including Issue Project Room New York, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Onassis Centre Athens, Institute of Contemporary Art London, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum Portugal, Ftarri Tokyo, Ohrenhoch Sound Gallery Berlin, Arts University Taiwan, Shantou University China, Soundworks Festival Brussels, Tempo Reale Festival Florence, and Soundout Festival Canberra.
Articles about her work have appeared in many publications, including In the Field (UK), Art of Immersive Soundscapes (Canada), Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), Catskill Made (US), Playing With Words (UK) The Wire (UK) and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland).
“musically impressive:…long ornamented vocals perfectly punctuated by the…woodpecker’s hammering…a chordal drone in sync with a close-up bee…channeling an ancient crone, splitting vocal tones in some…essential ritual prayer.”(Review of On the Hour in the Woods - the Wire, March 2019)
Viv Corringham "croons, like Annette Peacock teleported into an Arthur Machen story"(Review of Until I Learn the Language of Vegetable Mineral -We Need No Swords, April 2019)
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/an-audio-introduction-to-viv-corringham Since the late 1970s Viv Corringham has been singing a wide range of music: free improvisation, Greek rembetika, Turkish folk and spontaneously created songs that often include field recordings. Walking has long been an essential part of her work. She leads group soundwalks and listening workshops based on her studying and working with Pauline Oliveros. On solo walks she improvises with environmental sounds, and in her ongoing series Shadow-walks she responds to the memory of walks that individuals chose as special for them. This playlist serves as an introduction to her work and various side projects and collaborations realised over the years.
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http://www.sunfood.net/straight-edge.html
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https://secondhandsongs.com/work/154993
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Abner B. Kenon (March 23, 1917 – date of death unknown) was an American R&B singer and pianist, sometimes credited as Little Abner.
He was born in Ormond Beach, Florida. During World War II he was a sailor in the merchant fleet. As a singer and pianist, he recorded two tracks, including "Looka What You Did to Me", with producer Joe Davis in New York in the mid-1950s, backed by a band that probably included Mickey Baker on guitar and Sam Taylor on tenor saxophone.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/abner-kenon-mn0002159483 Artist Biography by Eugene Chadbourne The career of pianist Abner Kenon began in the mid-'50s when an enterprising producer picked him up to lead a quintet recording session that featured excellent R&B sidemen such as tenor saxophonist Sam "The Man" Taylor and guitarist Mickey Baker. A winning combination is suggested by the pianist's smooth good looks in publicity photos and the tough combo sound achievable with players of that quality. Perhaps in keno but not in Kenon do indications lead to jackpots. The treasures left behind by Kenon and various sidemen have largely not even been transferred to the more accessible vaults of compilations some 50 years after the fact, despite the swirl of activity regarding vintage R&B and roots rock. Meanwhile, collectors toss around respectable amounts of money in order to own any or all of three Kenon singles in float. The debut focused on the usual romantic problems, respectively blaming and pleading with "Looka What You Did to Me" and "Baby Come Back to Me." A subsequent Ormond platter takes emotions to the level of impatience, "Waiting" while realizing "It's the Same Thing All the Time." The latter certainly cannot be said about either the saxophone or guitar solos on this single, yet the real winner appears to be good old Hebra single number 101, a bridge from yesterday to today combining "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Hallelujah Let's Rock."
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/?name=abner_kenon&birth=1917&count=50
http://www.45cat.com/record/psp0015
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https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/grandad-still-laugh-minute-1622786
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1735616-Denny-Boyce-His-Rhythm
https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2004/no-end-of-work/ When Denny Boyce moved to his wife’s hometown, Whitley Bay, after 50 years of bandleading at the Lyceum, Streatham Locarno and on the QE2, plus a lot of TV and radio work, he little thought that 14 years later he should be contemplating a career as a stand-up comedian. It began in March when, visiting London, he visited the Comedy Store near Leicester Square and on the spur of the moment – despite the fact that he is now 83 – decided to chance appearing in the King Gong Show, when brave souls try to remain on stage for five minutes without being booed off. Much to his surprise he won, first out of 30 contestants and was booked by two comedy club producers on the spot. He later won the Gong Show twice more, once in Leeds and then again in London. He is not thinking of touring the comedy clubs but on the other hand it is another useful tool in an armoury of entertainment that is far from being used up. Since settling in the north-east, Boyce has remained active on a number of fronts. To begin with, he is an entertainer at the keyboard. Then he is a speaker on the Dance Band Days. He has been writing poems, songs and parodies for himself and other entertainers and his singalong party show has entertained the residents of 160 rest homes. Small wonder that he hasn’t got time to go on the road.
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https://www.discogs.com/Bernard-Bresslaw-Mad-Passionate-Love-You-Need-Feet/release/1232010
http://www.musicvf.com/songs.php?page=artist&artist=Richard+M.+Sherman&tab=songaswriterchartstab
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The Thunderbirds were an Australian rock and roll and beat group. They formed in 1957 and disbanded in 1965, though there have been several later reformations.
The original group was formed as a six-piece band in Melbourne in 1957 by drummer Harold Frith and guitarist Laurie Bell. The line-up played for regular dances in Ascot Vale, before splitting up. Early in 1958, Frith and Bell put together a new line-up with Tommy Clark (vocals), Murray Robertson (piano), Peter Robinson (bass), and Bill Hamilton (saxophone). This band made recordings of rock and roll songs, which were unreleased. By the start of 1959, Clark had left and been replaced by three featured vocalists, Billy Owen, Billy O'Rourke, and Judy Cannon. The group continued to perform regularly in Melbourne, becoming one of the city's top groups, and were used as a backing group by local singers. They signed to the Rex record label, for whom they recorded two singles and three EPs. Founding member Bell left to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist and was replaced by Charlie Gauld; Hamilton was replaced by saxophonist Henri Bource – whose band the All Stars had recorded Australia's first rock and roll album in 1958 – and Robinson was replaced on bass by Gordon Onley.
This 'classic' line-up of the band – Frith, Robertson, Gauld, Bource and Onley –
The Strangers (Australian band)
http://musicminder.com.au/the-thunderbirds-vic/
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
The Thunder Birds
On of the first Australian rock’n’roll groups from Melbourne formed in 1957. The group released instrumental singles on the w&g LABEL like Wild Weekend, New Orleans Beat,Machine Gun, Royal Whirl and other swhich they are australian rock classics.
The Thunderbirds backed up Melbourne singers such as Johnny Chester(who played on his early rock singles including Shakin All Over, hokey Pokey, california Sun). Betty McQuade(whom played on Midnight Bus & tounge Tied), The Thin Men,Colin Buckley,Bobby cookson and others on stage as well as Johnny O’Keefe,Lucky Starr, Lonnie Lee etc and toured with Roy Orbison, Jack Scott,Dion,Cliff Richard and The Shadows,Helen Shapiro,Fabian and others.
The Thunderbirds included: Charlie Gauld on guitar Harold Frith on drums Murray Robertson on piano Henri Bource on Sax Gordon Onley on bass Laurie Bell guitar(1957-59) Peter Robinson on bass(1958-60) as well on sax Colin Cook who would become an successful singer in the 60’s. They recorded 3 EP’s and 2 singles on the rex label that featured Billy Owens,Billy O’Rourke and Judy Cannon which they sang with the group for a time and then recorded the singles on W&G label.
The Thunderbirds played around the Melbourne Dance Circut at places like Preston Town Hall, Earls’s Court,Ormond RSL and others and in 1962 they recorded an live album @ Preston Town Hall called Quiet A Party which was released on GEM label that featured Noel Watson,Jillian Buckley and Johnny Chester and also Normie Rowe and Marcie Jones had their start performing with the thunderbirds.
The group lasted until 1965 and various members went to play with other acts. Peter Robinson did a stint with Ray Hoff and the Offbeats and formed the strangers in 1961 who would become an very successful group and featured John Farrar, Murray Robertson played with Merv Benton and The Talmas and the Allstars, Harold Frith played with the Charlie Gauld Trio, Nite Trane,Saltbush,Doctor Feelgood,Brandi and the Badcats and Stackfull(with Les Stackpool), Charlie Gauld played with the Charlie Gauld Trio, the W&G house musician and played with the Brian May band on ABC show band and Henri Bource played with the Planets and the Johnny Donohue Quartet but his career was interrupted by a near fatal attack which in November 1964 he was attacked by a great white shark off Lady Julia Percy Island which he lost his leg and went on to directed and produced the documentary Savage Shadows.
In 1983, the thunderbirds with Harold,Charlie,Gordon,Murray and Henri reformed to play an 60’s revival concert and in 1996 at the suggestion of Melbourne promoter Greg Lynch the group with Harold,Murray,Peter,Henri and Lauri played at the Moorabbin town hall at the Elvis Presley fan club to an raptrous reception which more concerts and recordings were added.
In 1998 the thunderbirds released the album “The Thunderbirds” on the canetoad label which featured an track called “Bell Boogie” that was recorded @AWA studios in Melbourne in 1958 and sadly in September Henri Bource passed away after battling Leukemia.
In 2007 the thunderbirds celebrated 50 years of formation and played around Melbourne to promote the new album “The Thunderbirds In the 21st Century” which added a few new songs. The Thunderbirds were one of the popular rock groups in Australia with a great sound and they were one of the first groups from Melbourne.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160912095150/http://thethunderbirds.com.au/beatofthe50s.html Big Beat of the Fifties, December 1998 Back By Eddie Leahy Melbourne's legendary rock 'n' roll group, The Thunderbirds, have recently reformed and are enjoying a musical renaissance from both fans "old" and "new" You can't keep old rockers down and Melbourne group, The Thunderbirds, are a classic example. The Thunderbirds were formed way back in 1957 when a few friends got together to form a rock and roll band. The original lineup comprised, Laurie Bell (guitar and vocals), Harold Frith (drums and leader), Mickey Borg (lead vocal and guitar, Marian Grossman (piano and lead vocals), Frank Tenni (saxophone) and Don Henderson (rhythm guitar).
Coming originally from a solid musical Jazz background, The Thunderbirds did not have too much trouble making a transition to the early rhythm and blues styles of the early rock 'n' roll bands and popular American artists, such as Little Richard, Ray Charles, Big ,Joe Turner and Larry Williams.
Early material popularized by The T-Birds (as they were affectionately known with Melbourne audiences) drew heavily on converted Be-Bop tunes and riffs, with vocals built around the style of artists like Louis Prima, The Treniers and Freddie Bell and The Bellboys.
The band's first ever performance was on 29th August, 1957 when they opened their own dance at the Progress Hall, Ascot Vale West. The dance ran for a couple of months until the police closed it down as was the fate of so many other rock 'n' roll dances at the time.
The Thunderbirds had a falling out after entering a "Battle Of The Bands' at the Maison de Luxe in Elwood which was won by the resident group, The Henri Bource All Stars and did not work again until early 1958 when the remaining members were approached by Kevin McLellan to play at the dance he ran at the Ormond RSL. The band at that time comprised Laurie Bell, Harold Frith, Mickey Borg, Murray Robertson (piano), Peter Robinson (bass), Billy Hamilton (saxophone) and singer Tommy Clarke.
As a consequence, Kevin McLellan became the group's manager, running dances at Prahran RSL, Atherton Hall, Oakleigh and the Carnegie Memorial Hall, It was here that Colin Cook sat in with the band on alto sax. and baritone sax and as a result of this impromptu performance, Colin was invited to join the band.
The band's first recordings were made in 1958 at A.W.A. Studios, Melbourne, but were never released and remained on acetate until recently when one of these recordings, Bell's Boogie made it's way onto The Thunderbirds 1998 release on the Canetoad label, "The Thunderbirds", complete with clicks and hiss, However, these recordings paved the way for later recordings on Festival Records' Rex label.
When the band moved to Earl's Court, St Kilda, Graeme Lyall joined the group on tenor sax and the line-up at that time included vocalists, Billy Owens, Billy O'Rourke and Judy Cannon as well as Henri Bource on saxophone. The line-up contained three saxes on stage producing quite an amazing sound. This was unheard of for an Australian rock'n roll band although this was a little more common in the States.
It was this line-up, minus Henri Bource, that went to Sydney to lay-down tracks for Rex Records which at the time included Dig Richards and The RJ's on it's roster. The group recorded a couple of 7" EP's featuring Graeme Lyall on Peter Gunn and vocals by Judy and the two Billys. Graeme Lyall left at about this time and was not included on the publicity photograph for Rex Records which features the current line-up of Harold Frith, Murray Robertson, Henri Bource, Laurie Bell and Peter Robinson, but, for some reason, does not include any of the vocalists. This remains a little bit of a mystery.
Another well known Australian artist to take pride of place in The Thunderbird' s lineup is Noel Watson who was invited to loin the band after winning a talent quest held at Earl's Court. In fact, the number of different personnel changes from the group's formation until today has resulted in 6 saxophonists, 3 pianists, 3 guitarists, 2 bassist's and 1 drummer plus a never ending stream of vocalists.
The Thunderbirds quickly became Melbourne's premier rock 'n' roll band in the late 50s and early 60s and were heavily in demand for concerts as well as recording and backing up Australia's fledgling and now famous stars including Johnny Chester, Johnny O'Keefe, Merv Benton, Betty McQuade, Noel Watson and Normie Rowe. Some of the international acts they have appeared with include Roy Orbison, Dion, Jack Scott, Fabian, Ray Peterson and Helen Shapiro.
Johnny Chester had been running a dance at the Preston Town Hall which Kevin McLellan took over and it became the biggest dance in town apart from Earl's Court. The Thunderbirds were later to record one of their Saturday night performances at the Preston Town Hall featuring their instrumentals and vocals by Murray Robertson together with vocalists Johnny Chester, Jillian Buckley and Noel Watson for the W & G label who released it as the album "Quite A Party" on their GEM label.
The group continued to perform and record on the W & G label up until the mid -60s when they disbanded as so many other rock 'n' roll bands did when the British Beat invasion took place, but, all the members continued to contribute to the industry in individual roles, playing, singing, arranging, performing "live" and making records with contemporary artists such as Russell Morris, John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richard and The Seekers.
At the suggestion of promoter, Greg Lynch, in 1996, Harold Frith, Laurie Bell, Henri Bource, Peter Robinson and Murray Robertson got together for a one off concert at The Elvis Presley Fan Club dance at the Moorabbin Town Hall. The reception the guys received was so enthusiastic that further concerts were booked including a second "reunion" concert at which I had the pleasure of attending to see far myself these rock 'n roll legends which I had never had the opportunity to see "live" before, being just a little nipper when the group was in it's "heyday".
It was very clear to me that the band had not lost any of their touch and it was hard to believe that the band had not played together for so long. As Peter Robinson, the group 's bass player, put it, "We started jamming and it fell into place so easily. It sounded so good we decided to cut a brand new album" and so, in 1997, The Thunderbirds once more entered the recording studio to cut a swag of recordings- some "old", some "new". Faithful reworking of The Thunderbird classics and more music of the 50s given the T-birds own treatment.
What is pleasing is that the recordings were made in an "almost" live situation with the whole band in the studio at the same time in much the same way as their earlier recordings.
Today, The Thunderbirds are enjoying a much deserved renaissance and are packing `em in everywhere they perform, playing to "old" fans as well as "new". Their popularity is such that their new CD "The Thunderbirds" is selling like "hot cakes" and a further "live" CD and video are set for release shortly, If you haven't had the opportunity to catch the band in action then do so as soon as you can. You won't be disappointed.
Story compiled by Eddie Leahy from articles and newspaper reports supplied by The Thunderbirds. Our thanks go to the guys for their assistance.
http://www.milesago.com/artists/thunderbirds.htm THE THUNDERBIRDS Melbourne, 1957-65 and later reformations
Original lineup, Sep. 1957 Laurie Bell (lead guitar, vocals) Mickey Borg (guitar, vocals) Don Henderson (rhythm guitar) Marion Grossman (piano, vocals) Frank Tenni (sax) Harold Frith (drums) 1960-62 Harold Frith (drums) Murray Robertson (piano) Charlie Gauld (guitar) Henri Bource (sax, flute) Gordon Onley (bass) plus Ken Jones (baritone sax), Norman Robertson (tenor sax), Ivan Cocking (trombone) 1958 Tommy Clark (vocals) Laurie Bell (lead guitar, vocals) Harold Frith (drums) Murray Robertson (piano) Peter Robinson (bass) Bill Hamilton (tenor sax) Colin Cook (sax) recording only Graham Lyall (sax, flute) recording only 1963-65 Harold Frith (drums) Terry Clark (piano) Charlie Gauld (guitar) Tony Buchanan (sax, flute) Gordon Onley (bass) 1959 Laurie Bell (lead guitar, vocals) Harold Frith (drums) Murray Robertson (piano) Peter Robinson (bass) History
The Thunderbirds was one of the first rock'n'roll bands in Australia, and they are widely regarded as one of the best bands of the era. This pioneering Melbourne group was in the vanguard of rock'n'roll in Australia, alongside other now-legendary bands like Melbourne's The Phantoms, The Planets, The Knights, The Chessmen, The Breakaways, The Saxons, The Blue Jays, The Marksmen and The Playboys, and Sydney's The Dee Jays, The Joy Boys, The Leemen and The Denvermen.
The musicians from these groups collectively became the "engine room" of Australian pop-rock music in the 1960s and beyond. All were highly skilled and very versatile performers, most of whom had a solid background in jazz. It's no exaggeration to state that these early Aussie rock'n'roll bands were as good as (and often much better) than their more famous overseas contemporaries, as Peter Cox records in his article on Dee Jays guitarist Lou Casch. The talent and versatility of their members enabled many of these bands to survive the dramatic changes of the Beat Boom, and several groups evolved into the regular backing bands for solo vocalists like Tony Worsley and Normie Rowe.
Both individually and collectively, The Thunderbirds have exerted a significant influence on Australian music. Victoria's feeedback kings The Elois, for example, were just one of the young groups who were influenced by them -- in fact, one of the very first numbers they learned was The Thunderbirds' "Wild Weekend", and Elois guitarist Dennis Fiorini is one of many who consider it "a classic".
Drummer Harold Frith formed the original version of The Thunderbirds in September 1957; they ran their own dances at Ascot Vale Progress Hall for several months and played opposite Henri Bource's All Stars at Maison Deluxe in Elwood before breaking up. In early 1958 Frith and Bell were approached by promoter Kevin McLellan to replace The Planets at Ormond RSL, so they put together a new lineup of The Thunderbirds with Mickey Borg, Murray Robertson (piano, vocals), Peter Robinson (bass), Bill Hamilton (tenor sax) and Tommy Clark (vocals, and hip-shaking). During this period the band recorded an unreleased acetate at AWA Studios in Melbourne, which contained "Hard-headed woman" (sung by Billy O'Rourke), "Twenty Flight Rock" (sung by Laurie Bell), "Rebel Rouser" and "Big fat woman" (sung by Mickey Borg).
By early 1959 The Thunderbirds had added three permanent featured vocalists -- Billy Owen, Billy O'Rourke and Judy Cannon -- and they took up a residency at the Earl's Court venue in St Kilda, playing three times weekly on Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons and Sunday nights. They became very popular during this period, and were soon being described as one of Melbourne's top groups, and they were also much in demand as a backing band for the many solo singers on the Melbourne dance circuit. Interestingly thuogh, they were not the first Melbourne rock'n 'roll act to record -- that honour goes to the Henri Bource All Stars, who are credited with the very first Australian rock'n 'roll album, Rock'n 'Roll Party, issued on the Planet label in 1958.
Their successful stints at local dances like Earls Court and Preston Town Hall led to a recording offer in late 1959 from Festival's subsidiary label Rex, for whom The Thunderbirds recorded two singles and three EPs. Owen and O'Rourke sang one side each on the T-birds' debut single "Running Bear" / "Blue Woman" (1959), and on their first EP Owen and O'Rourke had a song each and Cannon two songs. The three singers had one song each on the band's next EP, Rex 4 Star, which was rounded out by their instrumental version of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" theme (featuring Graham Lyall) and two songs each on their second EP, The Thunderbirds. Judy Cannon sang on their second single, "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me" / "Laughing on the Outside" (April 1960). Founding member Laurie Bell left shortly after these sessions to pursue a career as a jazz guitarist and Musical Director, and he was replaced by talented 17-year-old guitarist Charlie Gauld.
During 1960, The Thunderbirds' settled into the "classic" line-up of Frith, Robertson, Gauld, Henri Bource (sax, flute; ex-Henri Bource All Stars) and Gordon Onley (bass, ex Malcolm Arthur & The Knights), the personnel that recorded the famed W&G instrumentals that cemented the band's reputation. Colin Cook went on to enjoy a successful solo career, while Peter Robinson joined Sydney's Ray Hoff & The Offbeats before founding The Strangers in 1961, who became one of the top Mebourne bands of the Beat Boom, the resident group on The Go!! Show and the mainstay of the Go!! label.
With the help of leading Melbourne DJ Stan Rofe, The Thunderbirds signed a new deal with the W&G label, and they became one of the most prominent bands of the surf music boom; they released a string of excellent instrumental singles and also backed many W&G vocalists on record. The Thunderbirds' W&G recordings include their classic cover of The Rockin' Rebels' "Wild Weekend" / "Theme from the Rat Race" (Feb. 1961), "New Orleans Beat" / "Delilah" (April 1961), The Riptides' "Machine Gun" / "Teen Scene" (June 1961), The Royaltones' "Royal Whirl" / "Yippee Hoedown" (Dec. 1961) and "Dardanella" / "What Me Worry" (1962).
Three of these singles were Top 20 hits -- "Wild Weekend" reached #13 on its first release in 1961, and when reissued in 1963 it peaked at #31, spending a total of 18 weeks on the charts; "New Orleans Beat" fared even better, peaking at #10, and "Machine Gun" reached #16. English label Oriole also issued the "Wild Weekend" and "New Orleans Beat" singles in the UK and W&G also issued "Wild Weekend" in the USA, and rock historian Ian McFarlane rates "Wild Weekend" alongside The Atlantics "Bombora" as one of the best and most successful Australian instrumental singles of all-time. All six sides of the three hit singles were compiled on the EP The Thunderbirds' Play Their Big Six released in July 1961.
At the end of 1961, The Thunderbirds supported and provided musical backing for a package tour featuring Roy Orbison, Jack Scott, Ray Peterson, Dion and Johnny Chester, followed by a support slot on another package tour headlined by their idols Cliff Richard & The Shadows, with The Allen Brothers, Andy Ellis and Judy Stone. They appeared at many "big shows" at Festival Hall from 1960 to 1962, backing many visiting overseas acts including Jack Scott, Dion, Ray Peterson, Fabian, Helen Shapiro, and Australia's own Col Joye and Johnny O'Keefe.
In 1962 The Thunderbirds featured on the live album Quite a Party, issued on W&G's budget label Gem, contributing three instrumental tracks, as well as providing backing for singers Johnny Chester, Noel Watson and Jillian Buckley. The Thunderbirds regularly backed leading Australian solo artists, both on record and on stage, including Johnny Chester, Lonnie Lee, Colin Buckley, Betty McQuade ("Midnight Bus"), Bobby Cookson, The Thin Men, Johnny O'Keefe, Lucky Starr and The Bee Gees.
Both Normie Rowe and Marcie Jones began their singing careers fronting The Thunderbirds at the legendary Preston Town Hall dances, where the band was regularly augmented by the brass section of Ken Jones (baritone sax), Norman Robertson (tenor sax) and Ivan Cocking (trombone). The group continued working through 1963-64, but they made no more recordings, and there were several personnel changes -- Tony Buchanan (ex-Premiers, Planets) replaced Henri Bource, Terry Clark replaced Murray Robertson on piano and Clark and Onley both left during 1965.
The Thunderbirds eventually called it a day at the end of 1965. Gauld and Frith then formed The Charlie Gauld Trio with Frank McMahon (bass, ex Chessmen), later expanding to a quartet with the addition of by Noel Tressider (ex-Premiers) on keyboards. Gauld became the resident guitarist at W&G studios, and later became the lead guitarist and arranger for the Brian May ABC Show Band. Frith played with Nite Trane, Doctor Feelgood, The Promised Band and 1970s country-rock band Saltbush. Murray Robertson became musical director for Merv Benton until Merv's forced retirement in 1967. In 1983 he and Bource formed the aptly-named Allstars, whose lineup included a veritable "Who's Who" of Australian rock'n'roll, with former members of The Planets, The Blue Echoes, The Chessmen and Jigsaw. After leaving The Thunderbirds, the remarkable Henri Bourne played with The Planets and The Johnny Donohue Quartet, but his career was dramatically interrupted by a near-fatal shark attack. Bource, a keen skin-diver, was swimming with seals off Lady Julia Percy Island in November 1964 when he was attacked by a Great White shark, which tore off his left leg. He barely survived, losing more than three litres of blood in the attack, but he recovered and produced and went on to direct the film Savage Shadows, the pioneerng action-adventure doucmentary which screened successfully in Australia and was sold to many other countries.
Nearly twenty years after they split The Thunderbirds re-formed briefly in 1983 for a Sixties revival concert, with the 'classic' line-up of Charlie Gauld, Henri Bource, Murray Robertson, Gordon Onley and Harold Frith, featuring guest performances by old friends Judy Cannon, Betty McQuade, Malcolm Arthur and Billy Owen. In 1989 the Canetoad label began its project to reissue the W&G catalogue with The W&G Instrumental Story, which included two Thunderbirds tracks, alongside by The Strangers, The Cherokees, The Phantoms, The Breakaways, The Marksmen and The Saxons. Canetoad subsequently compiled the bulk of The Thunderbirds' W&G recordings on the companion record, The W&G Instrumental Story, Volume Two.
In the mid-1990s Frith, Robinson, singer Danny Robinson (Wild Cherries) and legendary guitarist Les Stacpool (Chessmen, Tamlas, Levi Smith's Clefs, Doug Parkinson In Focus, Greg Quill, Rockwell T. James' Rhythm Aces) joined forces to form Rite On The Nite. In 1996, at the suggestion of promoter Greg Lynch, the core of the classic Thunderbirds lineup -- Frith, Bell, Bource, Robinson and Robertson -- reunited for a one-off concert at The Elvis Presley Fan Club dance at the Moorabbin Town Hall to a rapturous reception. Further concerts and recording were scheduled and to date over 40 tracks have been laid down. In 1998 Canetoad released a new CD combining archival and newly-recorded material, although sadly the year was marred by the loss of the inimitable Henri Bource, who died of leukemia in September.
In 2007 the Thunderbirds celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, playing concerts at leading Melbourne venues to promote the release of their CD The Thunderbirds in the 21st Century, and they continue to perform and record. For more information and recent news on The Thunderbirds, we encourage you to visit the band's official website at http://www.thethunderbirds.com.au
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/rarecollections/judy-cannon/5500170
Judy Cannon
Sunday 8 June 2014 9:30PM
Judy Cannon was part of the seismic transitions in the music business that began in the late ‘50s and continued into the ‘60s. She sang with one of the countries first rock and roll bands before moving into television and club performances, she travelled to the UK and built a successful club and stage career there and in between made recordings with everyone from Johnny O’Keefe to Jimmy Page and Joe Meek.
She’s been singing for as long as she can remember. As a kid she appeared in school concerts and balls and became involved with children’s radio in Melbourne. Later she joined a girl’s choir and began singing at social events and she made her TV debut at 17.
In 1958 she joined The Thunderbirds, one of Melbourne’s first real rock and roll bands. Together they made regular appearances at the big dances of the day at venues like Preston Town Hall, Arcadia and Earls Court and she eventually cut a couple of records with them too.
The early ‘60s saw a move to Sydney and with encouragement from Col Joye and Johnny O’Keefe she was quickly appearing regularly on Bandstand, Six O’Clock Rock and The Johnny O’Keefe Show.
When Channel 7 refused to give her a pay rise in 1963 she followed the advice of friends and moved to the UK to try her luck at a time when London was just beginning to swing. As one of the top club and TV performers of the day she got the opportunity to sing with and meet all the big names of the era. For example, close friend and Record Mirror critic Peter Jones introduced her to the Beatles ahead of their first Australian tour and she encouraged them to enjoy themselves on the trip. Who drummer Keith Moon called her the Director of the Grand Order of Lunars because she had connections all over town and knew where the best parties were happening.
In the early '70s she played Electra and was understudy for Angela Lansbury’s lead role in the London stage production of Gypsy. When Lansbury left the successful production and her replacement Dolores Gray fell ill Judy took the lead role of Rose for a time.
This episode features Judy Cannon reflecting on her successful and varied career with Jordie and David.
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John W. F. Woods (c.1888 – unknown), who performed as Johnnie Woods, was an American vaudeville comedian and musician who, in 1910, was the first reported to have performed blues music on a public stage, with his ventriloquist's dummy Little Henry.
Woods grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and by 1908 was touring as a member of the Plant Juice Medicine Company, performing as a ventriloquist, dancer and female impersonator and working with banjoist and clog dancer C. C. Cook. On April 16, 1910, the Indianapolis Freeman reported of Woods' performance at the Airdome Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, that "he uses the 'blues' for little Henry in this "drunken" act". According to researchers Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, this is "the earliest known document of blues singing on a public stage"; they comment that "ventriloquism afforded a certain distance, a refractive channel, through which vernacular culture was acceptably conducted from the street to the stage." In Philadelphia in 1912, a report stated: "Little Henry is an ignorant vagabond, drifting aimlessly through the world, very fond of liquor, and will stop at nothing to get it. He is not slow in telling how he is abused, and winds up with "Yea! Hoo! I've Got the Blues"." (Sampson p.281).
Woods continued as a ventriloquist in vaudeville until at least 1923, and for a time was married to Essie, one of the Whitman Sisters. His later life is unreported.
http://paulmerryblues.com/2014/08/can-you-cats-guess-when-blues-as-music.html
http://blackinfla.com/tag/john-w-f-johnnie-woods/
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The Distin family was a family of British musicians in the 19th century who performed on saxhorns and were influential in the evolution of brass instruments in then popular music. Henri Distin, son of John Distin eventually became a celebrated brass instrument manufacturer in England and the United States.
John Distin and his family constituted a musical group that toured in the mid to late 19th century. They performed on Saxhorns from the company of Adolph Sax. The Distin family quintet was importantly responsible for popularizing Saxhorns,[2] and influenced further evolution of brass instruments.[3] The Distins [sic] toured in the United States in addition to Europe. They accepted a 40 concert booking in New York for the 1849 season, but the venue burned to the ground while they were crossing the Atlantic. While critically hailed, their tour was plagued by illness, a Cholera epidemic that scared away the audience, and unrelated riots. A brief tour of Canada went no better.[2]
Following the acclaimed but financially failed American tour, Henri Distin established an instrument manufacturing and sales concern, Distin & Co., in London after 1849.[4] He sold Adolph Sax’s instruments alongside his own traditional brass instruments. Following receipt of a prize medal for the superiority of his instruments over European competitors at the Paris World’s Exposition,[4] in 1868, he sold the business including a shop on Cranbourne to what would become the Boosey company and later Boosey and Hawkes.[5] The acquisition of Distin’s brass instrument manufacturing positioned Boosey to become a well-respected brass instrument company in the late 19th through mid-20th century.[3] Distin would subsequently lose most of his money on concert schemes and other ventures within a few years.[4]
In 1876, Henri Distin returned to the United States and set up a small business manufacturing cornets in New York. In 1882 he relocated to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to produce instruments in partnership. The company would take his name in 1885[4][6] as the Henri Distin Manufacturing Company making a full line of brass instruments.[7]
Henri Distin remained a performer and marketer of brass instruments. At the age of 70, he was still performing, playing "Tis the Last Rose of Summer" on an E-flat Tuba with the Gillmore Band in 1889 while attending the concert for the original purpose of presenting one of his company’s horns to Gillmore.[4]
http://www.scottishmusicreview.org/index.php/SMR/article/viewFile/20/18
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5576/1/Distin_Dissertation_Part_A.pdf
- ^ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ePZ4AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348&dq=%22National+Association+of+Television+and+Radio+Announcers%22+NATRA&source=bl&ots=ChDH_Sg0kH&sig=ACfU3U3rajEC5UYvPwdN7ipmggKpy7lmig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA6o_ixfHmAhX5VRUIHTpIDuUQ6AEwBHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22National%20Association%20of%20Television%20and%20Radio%20Announcers%22%20NATRA&f=false
- ^ a b Our Portrait Gallery: Mr. Henri Distin, The British Bandsman, April 1889, P.154
- ^ a b Grove, Sir George, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The MacMillan Company, New York, New York, 1904, P.362
- ^ a b c d e Our Portrait Gallery: Mr. Henri Distin, The British Bandsman, April 1889, P.155
- ^ Hemke, Fred, The Early History of the saxophone, University of Wisconsin, 1975, p. 368
- ^ Spillane, Daniel, Orchestral Musical Instruments, The Development of American Industries Since Columbus, The Popular science monthly, Volume 40, 1892, P.803
- ^ List of Distin horns at http://www.horn-u-copia.net/display.php?selby=%20where%20maker=%22Distin%22%20&sortby=key_pitch retrieved 5/31/2011
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Sarah Bilas "Babe" Connor (or Connors, c.1857 – August 4, 1899) was an American brothel keeper and businesswoman in St. Louis, Missouri, "known for her extravagant lifestyle and wild establishment". https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=L1pAFXCeGZUC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=%22Letitia+Lula+Agatha+Fontaine%22&source=bl&ots=P6BpG5CdOB&sig=kd2VNbTl1gXl-nRBV89HEeXkz2I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxjM-N1p_TAhXjKcAKHb53BpMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22Letitia%20Lula%20Agatha%20Fontaine%22&f=false
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=22253226
https://www.trivia-library.com/b/prostitution-biography-of-madam-babe-connors.htm Prostitution Biography of Madam Babe Connors About the famous Madam Babe Connors, biography and history of the St. Louis prositute and her specialties. RENOWNED CALL HOUSE MADAMS
Babe Connors
Babe (1856-1918) was a plump, bronze-skinned lady of mixed blood who stood 5 ft. 7 in. tall and usually weighed in at around 165 lb. By the time she had opened her first famous parlor house at 210 South Street in St. Louis (about 1890), she was in her mid-30s--an outgoing, fun-loving businesswoman who liked to dress elegantly (complete with feather boa and parasol) while taking drives in her open carriage through fashionable Forest Park, where her diamonds outshone the sun.
Her Houses: "The Castle" on Sixth Street was a three-story structure of white-painted bricks. It was abandoned in 1898 for a "double house" in the new red-light district on Chestnut Street. Called "The Palace," this building featured the finest of rugs, tapestries, and objects d'art. Inside were a number of $250 crystal chandeliers and at least a dozen fair-skinned octoroons, who sometimes danced in nothing but their stockings. Although the decor and the ladies were elegant, Missouri segregationist attitudes kept the prices low in a "mixed house," and a quick sprint upstairs could be obtained for as little as $5. Longer, more elaborate sessions were four to five times that.
Specialties and Eccentricities: Babe Connor's houses were famous for a fantastic old singer named Mama Lou, a "gnarled black African of the purest type," who generally wore a calico dress, a gingham apron, and a big bandanna about her head. Nine tenths of her songs were obscene, and all were revelations to visiting whites who'd never heard down-home field songs, blues, and ballads before. It is said that Mama Lou provided pop song writers with the original melodies for such famous tunes as "Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" and the "Bully Song." Many guests came just to hear Mama Lou perform, including the great Polish artist and statesman Ignace Paderewski, who played along with Mama Lou on the parlor piano back in the early 1890s.
Babe Connors was also famous for shows in which the most beautiful of her girls--attired in evening gowns but wearing nothing in the way of underclothes--would dance on a huge mirror. Before her death, Babe was converted to Catholicism by Harry Bridgewater, a St. Louis saloonkeeper. She was buried in St. Theresa's Cemetery.
https://www.stlmag.com/arts/literary/babe-%26-priscilla/
Babe & Priscilla
By Jeannette Cooperman September 19, 2014
Babe Connor had an easier time of it. She was born in 1857 in Nashville, Tennessee, and her father, the plantation owner, freed her and her mother immedi-ately after emancipation. At age 16, she came to St. Louis and found work at a brothel. Soon, William Mara, who’d sponsored the famous madam Eliza Haycraft, took an interest in Connor’s career.
When she bought the house next door, Henry was furious. Connor was glamorous (Hunter would cast Halle Berry) and high-spirited. She painted her three-story town house bright white and called it the Castle. Men murmured in code as they smoked their after-dinner cigars: “Are you storming the castle tonight?”
Connor pulled the curtains back and had girls dancing in the windows long before Amsterdam did. She wore gowns from Paris, feather boas around her neck, and diamonds in her teeth. She kept $30,000 worth of jewelry in her bedroom safe—and a .45-caliber revolver nearby. She laid a mirrored floor, and her girls danced on it without underclothes. She turned her place into a club with $50 annual dues and gave members gold coins as admission tokens. “Everything else,” Hunter says, “was a la carte.”
That included the entertainment, which began with Mammy Lou. Dressed in calico with a gingham apron and a bandana covering her head, she leaned her girth on the piano and belted out risqué lyrics. When men sidled up during her breaks, she brushed them off with clipped British speech that they hadn’t expected: Her real name was Letitia Lula Agatha Fontaine, and she’d grown up, with great dignity, in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.
Maxwell Marcuse, author of Tin Pan Alley in Gaslight, says the famous cancan song “Ta! Ra! Ra! Boom De Ay!” and “A Hot Time in the Old Town” both came out of Connor’s brothel in 1893. But Mammy Lou didn’t bother with musical notation, so the white songwriters who scribbled down the melodies and registered them as sheet music reaped the profits.
On fine days, Connor gathered up her hat and parasol and climbed into her big Victorian carriage with a few scantily clad employees. A driver in a top hat clucked to a white horse and guided him around Forest Park as Connor’s courtesans blew kisses to passersby. (Hunter imagines married men, out for a stroll with their wives, ducking in fear of recognition—although he did find that some women, terrified of another life-threatening pregnancy, had urged their husbands to frequent the brothels.)
Connor became so famous that when Oscar Wilde came to town to speak at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, he asked if Connor would receive him. “Hell no. I ain’t got nothin’ up in here he’d be interested in buying, so it’d be a waste of my time and his,” Hunter imagines her saying.
Connor did, however, entertain Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a piano virtuoso who later became prime minister of Poland. “Only 53 people turned up for his concert,” Hunter says. “He said, ‘Is there anything else to do in this one-horse town?’ And they said, ‘Well, there’s Babe’s place.’ He went and had the time of his life accompanying Mammy Lou.
”Not everybody loved the Castle, though. William Marion Reedy complained that “the mohogany-colored [sic] proprietress and her coterie of saffron-hued cyprians make night hideous in their revels.”Yet money poured in, and Connor bought a second house in the new red-light district on Chestnut Street. She painted it white and called it the Palace. It opened just in time: The Great Cyclone of 1896 destroyed Henry’s houses and the Castle.
Connor outlived Henry by only a few years; she died in 1899, at age 41, of kidney disease. The funeral was held at St. Teresa of Avila church near Grand Boulevard. “She’d always had a line out in back of her houses, giving away food,” Hunter says, “and she never passed a priest or a nun without slipping them a hankie of money.”
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Alfoncy Harris (born Alphonse Harris, March 5, 1876 – December 9, 1942) and his wife Bethenea Harris were African-American blues and vaudeville performers and musicians who recorded in the 1920s and 1930s.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alfoncy-harris-mn0000001860
Artist Biography by arwulf arwulf
Alfoncy Harris was an old-styled big-voiced blues singer active during the 1920s and '30s whose legacy amounts to a small number of recordings, some of which have been reissued in connection with more famous artists, or on widely circulated historic blues collections. His first records appear to have been made in Memphis, TN, on January 31, 1928, for the Victor company with his wife, Bethenea Harris, and a trio consisting of clarinetist Douglas Williams, pianist Blaine (some sources say Elaine) Elliott, and drummer Sam Sims. According to the discographies, Alfoncy briefly blew into an alto saxophone on this session. "I Don't Care What You Say" was followed by "That Same Cat," a song credited to Alfoncy but clearly patterned after "That Same Dog" by Butterbeans & Susie, the better-known and more successful vaudeville blues duo after whom many a husband-and-wife team patterned their acts. On November 26 and 27, 1929, Alfoncy and Bethenea recorded a pair of duets for Victor in Atlanta, GA. On "Teasing Brown" b/w "This Is Not the Stove to Brown Your Bread," the two were backed by banjoist William Shorter and 12-string guitarist Blind Willie McTell. Four additional titles, "Lucaloosa Blue Front Blues" (on which Alfoncy played clarinet), "Get Back Blues," "Learn Something Blues," and "What Do I Care?," were also waxed at these sessions but remained unissued. Alfoncy's last known recordings, "No Good Guy," "Absent Freight Train Blues," and "South Land Blues," were made for the ARC label in Dallas, TX, in October 1934 with pianist Curtis Jones. These were included as bonus tracks on Document's Complete Works, Vol. 4 Curtis Jones collection in 1995. The originally issued McTell titles have cropped up on a number of collections under that guitarist's name. The Douglas Williams selections made their CD debut in 1997 on a Document anthology of duets by George Williams and Bessie Brown among examples by five other vaudeville and blues duos from the same time period. They were then presented by Jazz Oracle among Williams' complete works in 2000, followed by unprecedented exposure via inclusion on Bluebird's highly acclaimed When the Sun Goes Down: The Secret History of Rock & Roll compilation in 2002.
http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/42294/Harris_Alfoncy_vocalist
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John Snipes http://www.wirz.de/music/snipefrm.htm
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Louis Vasnier (November 12, 1858 – January 24, 1902) was
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James "Jim" McKune (c.1910 – 1971) was an American record collector whose identification and collection of early blues recordings was influential...
https://ourblues.net/category/authors/james-mckune/
https://newhumanist.org.uk/1535/natural-truth Natural truth Marybeth Hamilton celebrates the passion of a record collector – by Marybeth Hamilton – WEDNESDAY, 18TH JULY 2007 On an undistinguished block in Brooklyn, New York, a few minutes walk from the Williamsburg Bridge, near a synagogue, a Portuguese grocery, and a Muslim community centre, stands an unrecognised landmark in American music. The building gives no sign of historic importance: its front door is boarded, its brick walls scarred and pitted, its windows encased in metal and grime. Yet decades ago it was a lodging house run by the Williamsburg branch of the YMCA, and it was here, in a single room on the uppermost floor one unknowable day in the mid-1950s, that the Delta blues was born.
Robert Crumb's sleeve art for The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, a compilation of early blues and country music (Yazoo Records)Born, that is, in the imagination of one of the YMCA’s long-term residents, a record collector named James McKune. A journalist turned postal worker, reclusive, homosexual and alcoholic, McKune conducted his life as a long downward spiral: moving into the Y around 1940, losing job after job as his drinking intensified, and eventually ending up on the streets, where he died at the hands of a violent stranger in 1971. Yet during his years at the Y he scavenged junk shops and used record stores to build up an extraordinary collection of blues 78s. In time that collection became the driving force behind the 1960s blues revival, when white Americans and Europeans discovered – one might say invented – a tradition that they called the Delta blues, constructed out of scraps of old recordings that African-Americans had long left behind.
I stumbled across McKune’s story while writing a book about the Delta blues, and his life intrigued me as a means to untangle a musical form too long enveloped in misperception and myth. For the last forty years the Delta blues has been revered by its largely white fans as a music of transcendent spiritual power, echoing with the voices of the huddled black “folk” and the harsh, anguished truths of the African-American past. As the eminent historian Leon Litwack puts it, to listen to the searing voices that comprise the tradition – Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James – “is to feel – more vividly and more intensely than any mere poet, novelist, or historian could convey – the despair, the thoughts, the passions, the aspirations, the anxieties, the deferred dreams, the frightening honesty of a new generation of black Southerners and their efforts to grapple with day-to-day life, to make it somehow more bearable, perhaps even to transcend it”. For filmmaker Martin Scorcese, Robert Johnson was a “haunted prophet” condemned to roam the blighted landscape of the Mississippi Delta and voice his people’s pain and privation, “possessed” as he was by “the spirit of the blues”.
Yet that vision of the Delta blues as a – perhaps the – primal form of African-American music sits uncomfortably alongside the facts. The awkward truth is that Delta sounds were never embraced by black listeners: in the twenties and thirties when they were recorded, Charley Patton’s discs sold only moderately; those of Son House, Skip James, and Robert Johnson sold not at all.
Even in the Mississippi Delta, the so-called Delta bluesman had limited appeal. A survey of the black bars of Clarksdale in the early 1940s found no local musicians on the jukeboxes; the most popular tracks were by Louis Jordan, Count Basie, and Fats Waller, no different from Harlem or the South Side of Chicago. Late one night in the Delta in 1941, the song collector Alan Lomax stumbled across a juke joint on the edge of a cotton field and opened the door to find a blaring jukebox and a roomful of people jitterbugging to Duke Ellington.
I wanted to track the hidden tastemakers who pushed those obscure Mississippi singers into the spotlight, and setting out on that trail took me to James McKune. “Jim McKune was like a grand doyen, if you will, a real mentor,” recalls record collector and blues historian Lawrence Cohn. “I mean, he was listening to Charley Patton before any of us even knew who Brownie McGhee was.” Collector Pete Whelan remembers: “He had all his records in cardboard boxes under his bed. And he would pull out one and say, ‘Here’s the greatest blues singer in the world’ [and] I’d say ‘Oh yeah?’, cause I had just discovered this guy, Sam Collins, who was great… Jim pulls out this Paramount recording by Charlie Patton, and, of course, he was right!”
The facts of McKune’s life are hazy. Born sometime around 1910, in Albany or Baltimore or North Carolina, he seems to have moved to New York City in the late 1930s, taking a job (which he soon lost) as a copy editor on the Long Island desk of the New York Times. In 1943, for reasons that are unclear, he began collecting what were then called “race records”, combing the pages of record trading magazines and poring through the bins at used record stores, like the Jazz Record Center near Times Square, where he turned up every Saturday afternoon.
He cut a striking figure: extremely thin, with sandy hair greying at the temples, wearing a white button-down shirt, black trousers, white socks, and black shoes, by all accounts his lone set of clothes. Engaging him in conversation was risky. “McKune had this way of talking,” Whelan remembers “he’d make these abrupt gestures, he was very intense, and everybody that he was talking to would be backing up against the wall, because he’d be, not pushing you back, but you’d be afraid of the hands and elbows coming at you.” In his pocket he carried a wants list that he distributed to other collectors: 1,300 78s recorded in the 1920s and 1930s on the most obscure labels by performers of whom no one else had heard.
At the top of that list was an itinerant Mississippi singer called Charley Patton. In 1944 McKune bought a scratched, worn copy of a 1929 Patton recording, “Some These Days I’ll be Gone”, and from the first notes he was hooked. What transfixed him were Patton’s rough-edged vocals, which to his ears sounded peculiarly delicate, a style at once ferocious and subtle, with “an intensity devoid of dramatic effects”.
He began hunting for records like Patton’s, marked by spare, sparse music, oblique, artful lyrics, and voices supercharged with emotion. From those searches he filled the cardboard boxes under his bed with what he came to call great “country blues” singers.
On principle, and out of necessity, he refused to pay more than three dollars per record, but most of these discs came far cheaper. McKune scorned every form of black recorded music that had any kind of popular following, be it the raucous sounds of Louis Jordan’s “jump jive” that appealed to an urbanising black population or the “hot jazz” of Louis Armstrong, whose recordings many white collectors prized. The records McKune hoarded came from the bottom of the discard pile, “considered worthless,” as one collector put it, “by everyone but McKune himself.”
In time, all that would change, and 78s by Robert Johnson and Charley Patton would fetch thousands of dollars, a transformation due in large part to his fellow collector Pete Whelan. In 1961, at McKune’s urging, Whelan made taped reproductions of the prize recordings from their collections, producing a series of blues LP anthologies (The Mississippi Blues; Really the Country Blues) released on his own Origin Jazz Library label. Almost immediately, the OJL reissues became the bible of a small but highly influential group of enthusiasts, among them the guitarist John Fahey, the rock critic Greil Marcus and the historian Lawrence Levine. For the journalist Robert Palmer, who would later write Deep Blues, a highly regarded Delta blues history, they were “the definitive country blues anthologies”, with their scratched, grainy sound and their unvarnished singers whose very obscurity seemed somehow testament to their integrity, to the raw authenticity of the songs that they sang.
Yet as the buzz around the OJL albums intensified, McKune slipped further into the shadows. He played no direct part in the accelerating blues revival, neither setting up record labels nor opening blues clubs nor writing chronicles of Delta blues history. Instead, he seems to have stopped listening to music altogether. In 1965 he moved out of the single room at the YMCA where he had lived for twenty-five years and began drifting the streets of Lower Manhattan, “sockless”, recalls one collector, “and apparently brain-damaged from alcohol”. In September 1971 his unclothed body was found bound and gagged in a welfare hotel on the Lower East Side. There was no trace of a record collection; he had either sold it or given it away.
Perhaps McKune’s retreat from the blues was inevitable. He had long recoiled from the sounds of popular music, devoting his life to connoisseurship, by its nature cultish, exclusive, even hermetic, whose pleasures lay in creating an alternative universe of aesthetics and taste. By the 60s he had lost control of that universe; his private passion was private no longer. Little wonder that his pride and exhilaration ebbed away, that he descended into frustration, depression and despair.
In its distaste for contemporary black popular music, its obsession with the authentic, primal sounds of black suffering, McKune’s brand of connoisseurship was in many ways troubling. Yet what drove it was the same quest for transcendence that has propelled the histories of religion and art. In a deeply secular age, McKune took refuge in a personal faith, in which poring through record bins in junk shops became a kind of pilgrimage and listening to old recordings became an act of devotion. “Only the great religious singers have ever affected me similarly.” he wrote of Charley Patton. In the end, he should be judged by what he left behind: a legacy of salvaged voices whose intense, mournful beauty has transfixed the world, voices he invested with wonder and reverence, by listening “silently. In awe.” ■
http://www.bkmag.com/2014/03/06/on-his-way-down-williamsburg-and-the-birth-of-record-collecting/ On His Way Down: Williamsburg and the Birth of Record Collecting BY AMANDA PETRUSICH 3.6.14. 10:12am Share on Facebook Tweet on Twitter Photo by Jack Whistance, courtesy of Gail and Bruce Whistance By Amanda Petrusich
There’s a pervasive, romantic notion of the Outsider as Omniscient Loner: preoccupied, brooding, mumbly. He is human—for example, he might read a paperback book that he tugged from the back pocket of his jeans, or gaze intently into a woman’s eyes for a beat too long—but he doesn’t celebrate holidays or use the toilet. He is usually leaning against a wall. This is one way of thinking about it.
Then there are the men—outsiders, also—who routinely congregated at the Jazz Record Center, a long-defunct music shop that once existed on the north side of West 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan, a now touristy stretch better known for its approximations of pizza and dubious (if well-lighted) electronics shops. In the 1940s, the Jazz Record Center became the default clubhouse for a cabal of distinctive gentlemen: exiles, recluses, characters so outsize in their eccentricities that they felt invented, except better. Here there was not a sense—as with the archetypal Outsider—that a choice had been made. Here, the earliest collectors of 78 rpm records found each other.
BK13_RecordFeature_v0 The Jazz Record Center was operated by Big Joe Clauberg, a chunk of a man with a deeply creased face (his skin appears to fold back on itself, like the underside of a poorly reupholstered chair) and black eyes that expressed a deep aversion to certain kinds of nonsense. He came to New York from the Southwest, had worked as a circus strongman, and stumbled into the used-record business after being offered a few truckloads of cheap records from a wholesale jukebox operator.
“He was a giant,” the collector Pete Whelan told me. “He was very overweight. He would just listen to everybody, hardly saying anything. And he was very generous in his prices. Records that were really worth $10 or $15 then and that would be worth hundreds or maybe thousands now, he would sell for $1.”
Clauberg settled at the 47th Street location in 1941, bolstering his jukebox supply by selling new stock from smaller jazz labels. The store was originally called Joe’s Juke Box, then the Jazz Record Corner, then the Jazz Record Center. Its inventory was jazz heavy but eclectic, including “Everything from Bunk to Monk,” as a 1949 ad in the Record Changer, an early jazz collecting magazine, read. (The “Bunk” in question was almost certainly Bunk Johnson, the beloved New Orleans jazzman who lost both his trumpet and his two front teeth in a bar fight in Louisiana in 1931, but it’s tempting to consider its more colloquial use—one collector’s bunk being another’s prize, after all.)
Clauberg courted (and indulged) a perfect outcast harem. Many of the shop’s most beloved denizens weren’t even patrons, or at least not in the traditional sense. A Greek dishwasher and janitor named Popeye helped keep the place clean, rubbing oil into the floorboards as necessary. According to the collector (and former employee) Henry Rinard, who chronicled his experience working with Big Joe for 78 Quarterly, Popeye was a short, well-muscled man with no teeth, hair, or eyebrows, prone to mumbling to himself for hours “in gibberish not even another Greek could understand.” Clauberg let Popeye crash on the floor at night, and in exchange, Popeye performed additional odd jobs, like bringing Clauberg food from the joint where he washed dishes, cutting his hair, and helping him yank a rotten tooth from his gums using a pair of pliers (that’s what friends are for). Another regular, Abbie the Agent, wore “thick-lensed eyeglasses, smoked continuously, and was seldom sober.” An outcast from a wealthy Connecticut family, Abbie fetched cigarettes and wine for Clauberg, and periodically became so inebriated himself that he passed out on the Popeye-oiled floor. (His other nickname—and I think it’s the better of the two—was Horizontal Abe.) Rinard also wrote about one of Clauberg’s old hobo friends, a guy known mostly as the Sea Captain, who wore a wool hat, raincoat, and heavy, too-big, laceless boots, even in June. The Captain was something of an enigma, even to Rinard: “He was either Swedish or Norwegian; he understood English, but never spoke,” he wrote.
The clientele was no less unique. “It was very interesting,” Whelan recalled. “It was a stop on the way. There would be these characters that would be there. Specialists. One guy who just collected European jazz, named Hal Flaxer. He’s probably still around. I think he went through three or four wives and they all looked identical. I couldn’t tell the difference. They looked like twins of each other.” In her book In Search of the Blues, the scholar Marybeth Hamilton includes what might be the single greatest description of early record collectors flourishing in their natural habitat: “Saturday afternoons they met at Indian Joe’s, where they thumbed through the bins in between swigs from the bottles of muscatel that Pete Kaufman brought along from his store, suspending their searches briefly at three, when a man called Bob turned up with a suitcase of pornographic books.”
BK13_RecordFeature_h0 There’s only one published photo of the shop, which first appeared in Jazzways and was later reprinted in 78 Quarterly; it’s not even of the interior, but of the rickety wooden stairs leading to the door. The face of each step is painted with an incitement (records, hot jazz records, records 4 sale, step up save a buck, popular bands, hot jazz records), and I can only imagine the half-furious, half-wheezy sounds eager collectors made clomping up them, balls of cash wadded up in their pockets. Regardless of what the inside of the shop actually looked like—and chances are, it was fairly mundane—I like to imagine it crammed with weirdoes bickering in high-pitched voices, nostrils expanding, slowly swarming Bob and his suitcase. I like to imagine myself there, with a record or two tucked under my arm.
James McKune showed up at Big Joe’s nearly every Saturday night at six, and stayed until the store closed at nine, wandering off, on occasion, to eat supper at the Automat around the corner on Sixth Avenue. McKune was likely born somewhere on the East Coast in or near 1910, although no one knows precisely when or where (depending on whom you ask, he was from Baltimore, or North Carolina, or upstate New York). That McKune has no clear origin story—and that his end was equally inscrutable—only amplifies the mythic place he occupies in collecting lore. Maybe more than any other collector, James McKune was defined by his records.
McKune wasn’t the first 78 collector, but he was one of the earliest to single out rural blues records as worthy of preservation, and is arguably the field’s most archetypal figure. At the very least, he established the physical standard. He was flagpole skinny and otherwise nondescript (medium height, tapering hair), prone to wearing the same outfit nearly every day (a white shirt with rolled sleeves, black pants, white socks, black shoes). He had a tough time holding a steady job, and during his time in New York, he worked briefly as a subeditor for the New York Times, a desk clerk at the YMCA, a checker at a South Brooklyn beer distributor, and a mail sorter in a Brooklyn post office. He seemed generally irritated by the necessity of employment, and in a June 1944 letter to the collector Jack Whistance, wrote: “During the day (when it doesn’t rain) I continue my quest for a suitable job in [an] essential industry. In N.Y.C., be it said—not in Newark. I am a particular guy, perhaps alas. The jobs I can have I don’t want. And those I want I can’t get.” (Ironically, US unemployment was at an all-time low in 1944, at just 1.2 percent—about as close to “full employment” as economists believe is possible). According to all reports, he drank like a pro. In his letters to other collectors, he was exacting but not unlikable; his missives are impeccably punctuated and endlessly readable, packed with peculiar asides and unexpected jokes. Although he was constitutionally private—a loner in the most nonromantic sense—and wrote almost exclusively about which records he wanted or had recently acquired, McKune did seem to savor his correspondence. In a 1951 letter to Henry Rinard, he even mentioned his glee about receiving an Easter card from a pal for Christmas. “A delightful variation, which I would have copied but for the lateness of this melancholy December,” he wrote in neat, minuscule script. (He was also prone to hastily changing tone by writing NEW SUBJECT midletter, an underused literary device I aspire to someday employ.)
BK13_RecordFeature_h02 “Not that it means anything particularly, but he was gay, and I didn’t know that at the time,” Whelan explained to me one night. He and McKune first met at Big Joe’s. “I was at the time interested in getting blues on this particular label called Gennett. There was this guy Sam Collins on Electrobeam Gennett that I liked very much—he was an impassioned tenor. So I met this guy McKune,” he continued. “I was like 23 or 24 and he was 50. He had been collecting since probably the late 30s. Blues. One of the very few. He looked like a scarecrow. He would gesticulate when he talked, very excitedly. You’d find these elbows coming at you, and you kept backing up. I think in the late 1930s he was a reporter for the Long Island Star, and then became, I think, city editor. And then he gave it up and worked for the post office. And then he became an alcoholic.”
Unsurprisingly, McKune was also a bit of a crank. He was wildly discerning, even by collector standards, and owned just 300 records, all tucked into cardboard boxes and stored underneath his single bed at the YMCA on Marcy Street in Williamsburg. He often referred to his listening sessions as “séances” and was required to play records at a low volume so as not to enrage unsympathetic neighbors (thin walls). He fretted endlessly about his own taste. McKune’s desires were expansive, and he didn’t just want to collect the music he loved the most—he wanted to collect the best possible permutations of sound, and for those decrees to be definitive.
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McKune supposedly never gave up more than 10 bucks for a 78 (and often offered less than $3), and was deeply offended—outraged, even—by collectors willing to pay out large sums of money, a practice he found garish, irresponsible, and in basic opposition to what he understood as the moral foundation of the trade. He didn’t like the notion that records could generate profit for their handlers: in the fall of 1963, in another letter to Rinard, he referenced his skepticism of a fellow collector, writing, “Somehow, I distrust him. He bought some records from the Negroes in Charleston, S.C. He spent $19 or $20 and sold the records for more than $500.” For McKune, collecting was a sacred pursuit—a way of salvaging and anointing songs and artists that had been unjustly marginalized. It was about training yourself to act as a gatekeeper, a savior; in that sense, it was also very much about being better (knowing better, listening better) than everyone else. Even in the 1940s and 50s, 78 collectors were positioning themselves as opponents of mass culture, and McKune cultivated a fantastic disdain for pop stars as well as the so-called protest singers of the era. He thought, for example, that Woody Guthrie was bullshit, although by 1950 he’d come back around on folk music as a genre, a shift he attributed to getting older. (The career of Glenn Miller, though, was a constant source of jokes.)
I’m not sure what McKune was looking for, exactly. Maybe the same thing we all look for in music: some flawlessly articulated truth. But I know for sure when he found it.
In the 1940s, 78 collecting meant jazz collecting, and specifically Dixieland or hot jazz, which developed in New Orleans around the turn of the 20th century and was defined by its warm, deeply playful polyphony (typically, the front line—a trumpet, trombone, or clarinet—took the melody, while the rhythm section—banjo, guitar, drums, upright bass, piano, and maybe a tuba—supported or improvised around it). Because of its origins, collecting rare Dixieland records in 1942 was not entirely unlike collecting Robert Johnson records in 1968, or, incidentally, now: deifying indigent, local music was a political act, a passive protest against its sudden co-optation by popular white artists. As Hamilton wrote, “it meant training the spotlight on a distinctly black, definitely proletarian art form in an era when, as they saw it, jazz had been tamed, sweetened, and commodified, with white performers like Benny Goodman and Paul Whiteman praised as its consummate practitioners.” But for whatever reason, blues records weren’t of any particular interest to early collectors. “The original 78 collectors despised country blues. They just liked jazz, and there were few exceptions,” Whelan explained. “It was a sharp divide. They thought it was less artistic. They were intellectuals.”
According to Hamilton, in January 1944 McKune took a routine trip to Big Joe’s and began pawing through a crate labeled “Miscellany,” where he found a record with “a sleeve so tattered he almost flicked past it.” It was a battered, nearly unplayable copy of Paramount 13110, Charley Patton’s “Some These Days I’ll Be Gone.” Patton had recorded the track in Grafton, Wisconsin, 15 years earlier, and he’d been dead for less than 10 when McKune first picked it up. Patton was almost entirely unknown to modern listeners; certainly McKune had never heard him before. He tossed a buck at a snoozing Clauberg and carted the record back to Brooklyn. As Hamilton wrote, “… even before he replaced the tonearm and turned up the volume and his neighbor began to pound on the walls, he realized that he had found it, the voice he’d been searching for all along.”
“Some These Days I’ll Be Gone” is one of Charley Patton’s more staid tracks, in both rhythm and narrative. According to Gayle Dean Wardlow and Stephen Calt’s King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charley Patton, “Some These Days I’ll Be Gone” was “likely conceived for white presentation: it used diatonic intervals and featured the keynote as its lowest vocal tone, a technique Patton usually avoided in singing blues and gospel material.” Wardlow and Calt suspect the tune was conceived for “white square dances and sociables,” where Patton was likely accompanied by a fiddler who’d been tasked with playing lead over his strums. Lyrically, it’s a sweet imploration: don’t take me for granted, Patton warns. “Some these days, I’m going to be leaving / Some these days, I’ll be going away,” he slurs, strumming a faint, bouncing guitar line. For once, he sounds more amused than angry. You’ll see, he seems to grin. Just wait.
Charley Patton changed everything for McKune. I can run an assortment of scenarios—recounting all the fireworks-type stuff I imagine happened when he first dropped a needle to “Some These Days I’ll Be Gone”—but those particular moments of catharsis are too weird and too personal ever really to translate. What’s important is that McKune’s discovery of Patton set off an avalanche of cultural events, a revolution that’s still in progress: blues records became coveted by collectors, who then fought to preserve and disseminate them. In the liner notes to The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, a collection of 78 rarities released by Yazoo in 2012, Richard Nevins called McKune “‘the man’ who set it all in motion, who led blues collectors away from the errors of their wayward tastes… a fantastic, brilliant young man… [his] perspectives had profound influence and resound even today.” In the same notes, Dick Spottswood—in conversation with Nevins and Whelan—spoke about how McKune raised the stakes for everyone, about how things changed: “All I’m saying is that the records themselves as collectible artifacts were not buy or die [before]. They were desirable records but they weren’t life or death. You know, the way they have since turned into.” After McKune, collectors became invested in rural blues. They sought those records with fury, the music was preserved and reissued, and the entire trajectory of popular music shifted to reflect the genre’s influence. A guy from no place, saving music from the same.
James McKune’s naked, strangled body was found, bound and gagged, in a grimy welfare hotel—the Broadway Central—on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in September 1971. Detectives concluded that he had likely been murdered by a man he had solicited for sex; Whelan later called the perpetrator a “homosexual serial killer” with, he thought, five or six other homicides on his record. By then McKune had moved out of the YMCA and was living primarily on the streets of the Bowery among prostitutes and thieves. For those on the lookout for such parallels, McKune’s death did ultimately mirror Robert Johnson’s—who, as Hamilton pointed out, also died under “violent, mysterious, and sexually charged” circumstances. (The itinerant Johnson supposedly keeled over after taking a slug of poisoned whiskey, provided by a man whose wife he’d been eyeing or maybe worse.) Nobody knows for sure what happened to McKune’s record collection, although rumors still flutter up from time to time. It was likely sold, or stolen, or maybe given away bit by bit.
Excerpted from Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records by Amanda Petrusich. Copyright 2014 © Amanda Petrusich. Reprinted with Permission from Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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http://www.rockabilly.nl/references/messages/fabor_robison.htm FABOR ROBISON
Born 3 November 1911, Beebe, Arkansas Died September 1986, Minden, Louisiana
Fabor Robison was an influential (and controversial) independent record owner and talent scout in the 1950s. He played a crucial role in developing the early careers of Jim Reeves, Johnny Horton, the Browns, Mitchell Torok, Floyd Cramer, and others. After a tour in the army in World War II, where he had been a cook, Robison settled in California. There he worked for a time as a talent agent, with Johnny Horton and Les Anderson as his main clients. Robison started Abbott Records in 1951 (with funding from Sid Abbott, proprietor of Abbott Drugs), with the express purpose of recording Horton. The first ten releases on Abbott all featured Johnny Horton. Robison was unhappy with 4-Star's distribution of these records, so he considered peddling Horton's contract to a major label and Horton was signed to Mercury in mid-1952.
Robison also began working as a song hunter for American Music, travelling the country to find new talent and songs. He soon discovered a hotbed of young talent in Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the KWKH Louisiana Hayride. Not only did he find some of his best singers, but he also used the studios of KWKH and some of its staff musicians to make his records. These regular studio men included a young Floyd Cramer, steel guitarist Jimmy Day, and fiddlers Big Red and Little Red Hayes. Abbott released two # 1 country hits in 1953: "Mexican Joe" by Jim Reeves and "Caribbean" by Mitchell Torok.
The money was starting to pour in and Robison thought another label would be a wise investment. In October 1953, after having purchased full control of Abbott Records, Robison launched the Fabor label, on which he recorded important sides by the Browns and Ginny Wright. He soon expanded his recording activities to include his own studio in Southern California, where he used West Coast instrumental greats such as Speedy West and Roy Lanham. Like most independent record owners, Robison ultimately saw most of his biggest finds move onto major labels.
The Radio label was started in 1958 to handle the pop and rock & roll that now overshadowed country music. Some of Robison's Abbott and Fabor artists such as Bonnie Guitar, Ned Miller, Billy Barton and Johnny Russell appeared on the label, but mostly it was young hopefuls. While Robison had no hits with these youngsters, it showed his keen eye for talent as Bobby Lee Trammell, Dickie Podolor (as Ritchie Allen), Bonnie Guitar and Robert Luke Harshman (as Bobby Hart) would have long and significant careers in the music industry.
In 1959, Robison sold his music publishing and some masters to Jamie/Guyden Records. One correction (to my Mitchell Torok BTBWY piece of last week) is in order here : the version of Torok's "Caribbean" that made the pop charts in 1959 on Guyden was not a re-recording, but an alternate take from the 1953 Abbott sessions. Robison restarted Fabor in 1962 and scored a giant hit with Ned Miller's 1957 recording of "From A Jack To A King".
Then he sold all of Miller's catalog and his contract to Capitol in 1964. He produced Miller again in the late 1960s and then went to Brazil. ("When everything went sour, Robison would disappear for a while" writes Colin Escott in his Bear Family book on Johnny Horton.) In the 1970s or 1980s, he sold off whatever was left (together with some masters he had previously sold elsewhere) to the Shelby Singleton Corporation.
Further reading and recommended listening: CD: That'll Flat Git It, Vol. 8 : Rockabilly from the Vaults of Abbott/Fabor/Radio Records (Bear Family BCD 15936, released 1996).
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http://www.charlestonjazz.net/carolina-cotton-pickers/ Carolina Cotton Pickers The Carolina Cotton Pickers was the seminal touring band created in the 1920s from the roster of Jenkins Orphanage Band musicians. Some of the earliest musicians included Alonzo Mills, Walter Bash, John “Shadow” Wilson, Thaddeus Seabrook, Walter Hills, James “Buster” Anderson, William Blake, the Jenkins Orphanage Band music instructor and band director from 1920-1958, and Joseph Smalls. Later members included Clifton Smalls, Julian Dash, Julius Watson, and many others.The Carolina Cotton Pickers recorded Irving Berlin’s “Marie” and Bennie and Buster Moten’s “Western (Moten) Swing” on several albums — The Territory Bands: 1935-37, (2001, Jazz Band), The Real Kansas City (1925, Columbia/Legacy), and Kansas City of the 20s, 30s, 40s (1996, Columbia).
http://www.redhotjazz.com/carolina.html Hal Denman's Carolina Cotton Pickers were one of the more popular bands in Indiana in the 1920s, but they didn't record until 1931. Denman was from North Carolina and had been leading a band called the Carolina Cotton Pickers before joining a band called The Pirate Entertainers in 1923. When he moved to Indiana in 1924 he still had some old Carolina Cotton Pickers stationery laying around so he revived the band name. The band broke up sometime around 1932.
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[2] Léo Chauliac Données clés Nom de naissance Léon Louis Marius Chauliac Naissance 6 février 1913 Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) Décès 27 octobre 1977 (à 64 ans) Paris Activité principale Compositeur Style Chanson française Activités annexes Chef d'orchestre Pianiste Années d'activité 1938-1977 Collaborations Django Reinhardt Charles Trenet Éditeurs Paul Beuscher Raoul Breton Francis Salabert Formation Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Marseille Élèves Claude Bolling Œuvres principales La Romance de Paris Que reste-t-il de nos amours ? Douce France modifier
Léo Chauliac, de son vrai nom Léon Chauliac, est un pianiste, compositeur et chef d'orchestre français né le 6 février 1913 à Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) et mort le 27 octobre 1977 à Paris.
Pianiste de jazz dans les années 30, Léo Chauliac fut le pianiste accompagnateur de Charles Trenet de 1941 à 1943 dont il lui composera de nombreuses chansons populaires. Il côtoie et joue avec les plus grands musiciens de l’époque : Hubert Rostaing, Aimé Barelli, Alix Combelle ou Henri Crolla. Un temps chef de l’orchestre du célèbre restaurant Le Maxim’s, il sera le compagnon pour quelques disques d’André Claveau ou Jacqueline Danno. Mais c’est surtout avec Jean-Claude Pascal qu’il tissera un long parcours musical dans les années 60, orchestrateur entre autres de Nous les amoureux, Prix de l’Eurovision en 1961. Il est aussi l’auteur de quelques disques instrumentaux dont l’un dédié à la musique des Beatles. Il a aussi enseigné le piano à Claude Bolling.
Biographie Né en 1913 à Marseille, Léo Chauliac commence ses études de piano au Conservatoire de Marseille où il obtient un premier Prix au bout de deux ans. Puis, il vient à Paris où il travaille avec José Iturbi et surtout sa sœur Amparito Iturbi et suit les cours du Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique. Il est admis le 15 novembre 1930 dans la classe de piano de Santiago Riera qu'il suivra jusqu'en 1935. Il a obtenu en 1931 la 2ème Médaille de solfège, en 1932 le 2ème accessit de piano et en 1933, le 1er accessit de piano.
Il se met au jazz et joue alors dans un club parisien, Le Fétiche. En 1934-1935, il est pianiste dans l'orchestre Grégor et ses Grégoriens. Il fait ensuite des tournées avec des orchestres commerciaux comme celui d'Eddie Foy. Avec ce dernier, il se produit, fin 1936, au Bœuf sur le toit. Il joue en 1937 au Swing Time au sein de l'orchestre d'André Ekyan.
En 1938, il fait la connaissance de Charles Trenet et travaille avec lui jusqu'en 1943 comme pianiste accompagnateur et il compose des chansons. En 1939, il participe à l'élaboration de la mélodie de La Mer, mais, absent le jour de la présentation aux éditions Raoul Breton, c'est Albert Lasry, pianiste des éditions qui cosignera avec Charles Trenet la musique de ce futur succès international. Parmi les chansons écrites par Léo Chauliac, notamment pour Charles Trenet : Marie Marie, Tout ça c'est pour moi, Douce France et Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?. En février 1941, il fait partie du Quintette du Hot Club de France qui accompagne Charles Trenet lors d'un enregistrement.
En novembre 1944 il enregistre Django's Music au sein de la grande formation de Django Reinhardt et de celle de Noël Chiboust.
A la Libération, Léo Chauliac fait partie de l'orchestre du Schubert avec André Ekyan, Emmanuel Soudieux, Pierre Fouad et Henri Crolla. Il figure également dans la formation d'Alix Combelle. Il sera aussi, en 1945, le professeur de Claude Bolling. Dans les années 40, il donne des concerts de jazz à Gaveau et à l'école normale de musique, notamment avec Emmanuel Soudieux et Pierre Fouad. Il se produit en trio en 1946 Chez Carrère et au Palm Beach à Cannes.
En 1949, il dirige un orchestre d'une dizaine de musiciens se produisant sur la Côte d'Azur. À l'époque, Boris Vian le situait au même niveau que Bernard Peiffer et Jack Dieval et au-dessus d'André Persiany et Claude Bolling.
Il joue en 1954 avec son grand orchestre au Maxim’s. Au cours du 3ème Salon International du Jazz qui a lieu du 1er au 7 juin 1954 à la Salle Pleyel, il interprète aux grandes orgues en première audition, La messe gitane de Django Reinhardt.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/576552-L%C3%A9o-Chauliac
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Travis "Moonchild" Haddix (born November 26, 1938) is an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/travis-haddix-mn0000015312/biography
Artist Biography by Jim O'Neal Winners Never Quit Blues guitarist Travis Haddix was born on November 26, 1938. A native of Walnut, MS, Haddix was inspired in his early years by B.B. King's broadcasts on WDIA out of Memphis. In Cleveland, OH, where he has lived since 1959, Haddix developed into a fine modern bluesman and songwriter with an original and soulful touch. While he had been developing his chops in front of rowdy audiences at juke joints and blues festivals throughout the '70s, he didn't begin his recording career in earnest until he signed with the Ichiban label in 1988. His stylish and poppy albums Wrong Side Out (1988), Winners Never Quit (1991), and What I Know Right Now (1992), were, incredibly, released while Haddix continued his job as a postal worker in Ohio. As his popularity continued to grow, he began traveling to Europe several times a year and won numerous blues awards in both Europe and the States. Haddix resumed recording in 1994 with Big Ole Goodun' and also began to develop his interest in other areas of the entertainment business including the formation of his own publishing company and his own record label Wann-Sonn Records. In 2002, Haddix even became an author, releasing Caught in the Middle, a book of his musical memoirs. A quote Travis Haddix uses to close out many of his performances sums up his positive philosophical attitude: "I am the best that I can be, and since no one else can be me, there's none better."
http://www.clevelandblues.org/index.php/cbs-events/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-2010/travis-moonchild-haddix Travis "Moonchild" Haddix
travis-haddixTravis "Moonchild" Haddix was born November 26, 1938 in Hatchie Bottom, Missisippi to a family of sharecroppers. When he was 9, his family moved to Walnut, Mississippi, a "big city with a bank, a post office, a Western Auto store, and a cotton gin." Travis was taught guitar by his father, Chalmus "Rooster" Haddix, a Delta Blues style player. Travis was also inspired by B.B. King as a youth. He attended the local "colored" high school in Walnut, where he starred in basketball.
The Haddix household was ten strong, with five boys and five girls. All the boys were musicians. Travis graduated high school in 1957, and his family moved to Milwaukee a year later, where Travis played in several bands, including one with his brother Al, who for a while played with Brother Jack Mcduff. Travis attended Marquette College in Racine,Wisconsin, where he again played basketball. He finished his degree years later at Cuyahoga Community College.
He was drafted into the Army in 1961, and became a missile track radar operator stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Fort Bliss, Texas, and Pforthiem, Germany. Playing in the service club at Pforthiem helped Travis avoid guard and KP duty. Travis was discharged from the service in 1963, and came to Cleveland, where he took a job at Severance Shopping Center as an electrician. He played with the band Chuck and the Tremblers at several clubs on Euclid Avenue, including Tito's, The Red Carpet Lounge, The Music Box, and the Birdland Ballroom. He also played with Ernest and DL Rocco, and occasionally sat in with Eddie Baccus and Duke Jenkins.
Travis started his own band, The Now Sound, in the late '70s, but in 1985 his band bolted for a chance to play with Johnny Taylor. The nickname "Moonchild" stuck after Travis recorded a song of the same name. The Travis Haddix Band followed, and included Marvin Young, Eli Thomas, Scanlon "Scatman" Sharp, Tyrone Pierce, and the late Frank "Silk" Smith. They appeared often at the Plush Entertainment Center on Miles Avenue, and opened for many touring acts: Clarence Carter, Artie "Blues Boy" White, Johnny Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland, Latimore, Denise LaSalle, Joe Simon, Tyrone Davis and Little Milton. The band's first recording for Ichiban Records, "Wrong Side Out", was released in 1988. They did five albums for Ichiban, some with Gary "BB" Coleman.
It was around this time that Travis' songs began to get noticed by other artists such as Jimmy Dawkins, Son Seals, and Michael Burks. "Begging Business", "Bag Lady", and "Everything is Everything" are among his songs that have been recorded by others. "Everything is Everything" is featured in the film April's Fool.
In 1989 Travis started Wann-Sonn Records, named for his daughters Wanda and Sonya, and he made fourteen records for his label. In 1990 Travis started touring in Europe, and he has played clubs, concerts, and festivals in 22 different countries while keeping Cleveland as his home base. His recordings and performances have received glowing reviews in publications such as Living Blues Magazine and Big City Blues, and he has been honored with numerous awards: Best Male Blues Artist, Best New Blues Artist, and in 2007 he won the Gay Rose Productions Keeping the Blues Alive Award. With insightful and sometimes humorous lyrics, and a horn-driven sound reminiscent of the Stax-Volt era, Travis Haddix remains a powerful force in the blues, and he is a true Cleveland musical icon.
http://www.travishaddix.net/home.htm
Travis Haddix began playing the piano at the age of seven in his home town of Walnut, Mississippi, located thirty miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The turning point in his musical learning experience came when he was eight, when the legendary B.B. King came to Memphis and began playing daily at the studios of WDIA. Travis was awed by King;s guitar virtuosity and he hung around the radio station every day to learn all he could. Soon, Travis' piano playing fell by the wayside and was replaced by the guitar, which he plays on stage and in the studio.
Years later, the Haddix family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Travis, now a budding star, continued to refine his craft by singing and playing throughout the North. The original "Moonchild", he earned the nickname from his beaming presence on stage and his always broad smile and energetic, sexy performances, In 1959, Travis moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he joined the D.L. Rocco Band and achieved regional notoriety that led to a prominent spot with the Little Johnnie Taylor group. Travis also contributed material to five albums by Artie "Bluesboy" White. His material is also covered by Artie “blues boy” White, Dickie Williams, Jimmy Dawkins, Michael Burks, Charles Wilson, the late Son Seals, and Lee Shot Williams.
Haddix has received rave reviews in Living Blues Magazine, Blues Revue, Real Blues, Big City, Jefferson and Audience Magazine, and he has toured Europe since 1992. His style evokes the sounds of the great Stax-Volt days, when the likes of Sam & Dave ruled the urban blues roost. His fifth release on Ichiban Records is A Big Ole Goodun', featuring the Travis Haddix band (together since 1988). He proves, once again, that he is a fixture in the modern blues industry with songs like. "Make Me Say Please" , "From Bad to Worse", and the made-for-jukebox single, "(She Called Me) Knucklehead".
Travis received 4 awards in 1999. Best Male Blues Artist, Best New Blues Artist, Best Blues Entertainer and Contemporary Blues Artist Of The Year. In 1989 he founded Haddix publishing Company and Wann-Sonn Records, and recorded ten CDs under his own label. in 2007 travis won the Gay Rose Production Keeping the Blues Alive Award.
Next time you have a chance, check out the movie April's Fool which features Travis' hit song, Everything Is Everything.
In 2007, Travis' single, "Dick for Dinner" from "Mean Ole Yesterday" was nominated Best Blues Song by the Blues Critic Awards 2007 Readers Poll-Comtemporary Blues. Travis was in great company; the prize was awarded to Omar Kent Dykes & Jimmie Vaughan.
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Freddy Powers (October 13, 1931 – June 21, 2016) was an American country music songwriter.
http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/outlaw-country-jazz-singer-freddy-powers-has-passed-away/ June 21, 2016 Outlaw Country Jazz Singer Freddy Powers Has Passed Away Trigger News 15 Comments
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“Anybody that don’t like Freddy Powers, I put ’em under immediate suspicion.” –Merle Haggard
One of the most creatively-rambunctious artists in the history of country music, a well-respected and prolific songwriter, and maybe most importantly, one of the best friends artists like Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard ever had, has passed away. Freddy Powers, known for so many contributions, but known best as an aficionado of country jazz passed away on Tuesday, June 21st. Powers had been battling Parkinson’s disease for many years.
Born October 13th, 1931 in Duncan, Oklahoma, he moved to the small town of Seminole, Texas when he was six. It was there his family band would play Dixieland jazz tunes for locals, and Powers got his start in the music business. Eventually Powers would go on to receive some of the highest songwriting recognitions in country music, including the Triple Play award from the CMA for writing three #1 songs in a year. But in between, Freddy Powers would live a life that was like something out of a Hollywood script.
After a short stint in the Marines, Freddy Powers fell in with noted instrumentalist Paul Buskirk, and began fusing country music with jazz. Before Willie Nelson became famous for writing songs for others, Powers cut a Willie Nelson tune called “Heartaches of a Fool” all the way back in 1955, and Willie even played bass in Freddy’s band for a while. Freddy Powers became known for his strange style of country that included a tuba player to give it that Dixieland flair, and made appearances on The Tonight Show and other high profile gigs with the outfit.
The 60’s saw Freddy Powers taking residency in Las Vegas at the Riviera Casino during Sin City’s mafia era, where he cavorted with many of the town’s most notorious gangsters of the time. His Dixieland band, blazing banjo, and hilarious stage wit made him one of the most famous entertainers of his time in Vegas, where Freddy stayed until the mid 70’s when the Outlaw movement in country was turning everything upside down. It was Powers’ participation as a producer on Willie Nelson’s record Somewhere Over The Rainbow in 1981 that put him on Merle Haggard’s map, and that’s when his country music career really took off.
merle-haggard-freddy-powersThe Freddy Powers / Merle Haggard friendship is the stuff of legend all to itself. The story goes that in 1981, Merle Haggard asked Freddy to move onto a houseboat beside him on Lake Shasta in northern California. Merle wanted to know more about jazz, and Freddy wanted to study more about country music. If you want to know how and where the horns and other jazz influences crept into Merle’s music later in his career, it was his friendship with Freddy. Both men had just gone through divorces, and for the good part of a decade, the Freddy / Merle days and nights were reportedly filled with wild parties and trips across Lake Shasta in a open air homemade plane the pair made together. The two even built their own houseboats.
Also during this time, a lot of music was made between Freddy Powers and Merle Haggard. Powers became a mainstay in Merle’s backing band, and he wrote half the songs on Merle’s album It’s All in the Game from 1984. Merle and Powers also co-wrote the song “I Always Get Lucky With You,” which became a mega hit for George Jones, and Freddy also wrote material for Ray Charles. All of this success led to Freddy finally being able to release his own opus as a frontman, The Country Jazz Singer. There was also an appearance on Austin City Limits, and soon Freddy Powers was a legend in Outlaw country circles and beyond.
Freddy Powers moved back to Texas in 1994, and continued to collaborate with his friends as a songwriter, player, and producer. When he broke his hand in 2004, it resulted in a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease of which Powers suffered from for the rest of his life. It took away his ability to play music, but he continued to produce and collaborate, including participating on Mary Sarah’s 2014 record Bridges, and he also worked with the Austin-based band Stop The Truck. “Just lost my second father today,” Mary Sarah said on Tuesday. “He believed in me when no one else would.”
Freddy formed the Freddy Powers Parkinson Organization which helped raised funds for research into the disease, and many benefits and other functions were held in Freddy’s honor throughout the years.
Freddy Powers’ health continued to fail him, but his spirit never did, nor did his friends and collaborators who kept his influence on country music alive in their songs and albums. If you knew Freddy Powers, he was the funniest man you knew, even as he fought off the deteriorating affects of Parksinson’s. Though not as well-known as many of the artists Freddy Powers went on to influence and inspire, country music would not be as fun, off-kilter, and the jazz influences wouldn’t be as strong if it weren’t for Freddy Powers.
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Freddy Powers has a memoir called “Spree of 83” with contributions by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard scheduled to be released via Waldorf Books in February 2017.
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Cynthia Leonie Schloss (April 12, 1948 – February 25, 1999) was a Jamaican singer.
She was born in Kingston, the third of six children, and attended Ardenne High School.
http://www.nlj.gov.jm/REGGAE%20EXHIBITION/cynthis_schloss.htm CYNTHIA SCHLOSS (1948 - 1999) Veteran female singer, Cynthia Schloss, is generally referred to as Jamaica’s songbird. She was the third of six children and attended the Trench Town Elementary and Ardenne High School. Schloss got her big break at the Merritone Amateur Talent Exposure in 1971, where she won the finals singing First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. She then became a regular at shows and on the hotel circuit. Later, she ventured into recordings and made a memorable impact with songs such as Surround Me with Love, As If I Didn’t Know, You Look like Love and Love Me Forever which sold over 100,000 copies.
Schloss is well known to the newer generation for her regular performances at oldies shows such as the Heineken Startime series. Schloss died in the arms of her husband and veteran musician, Winston ‘Merritone’ Blake, on February 25, 1999.
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"Do What You Gotta Do" is a song written by Jimmy Webb. First recorded by Johnny Rivers in 1967, later versions have been released by many artists including Nina Simone, Bobby Vee, and The Four Tops.
http://secondhandsongs.com/work/20035/all
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Willie James "Billy" Gayles (October 19, 1931 – April 8, 1993) was an American R&B singer and drummer, best known for his recordings with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm in the 1950s and early 1960s.
He was born in Sikeston, Missouri, and as a teenager moved to Cairo, Illinois. He became involved in the local blues scene there as a drummer, and toured with Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker, before settling in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1951. There, he associated with, and then joined, Ike Turner's band, usually known as the Kings of Rhythm, as a featured vocalist and drummer. He made his first recordings with Turner's band in Memphis, Tennessee in 1953, and the following year recorded "Night Howler", credited to Billy Gale [sic] and his Orchestra and issued on the Flair label..
https://www.bear-family.com/lexikon/detail/groupid/7/id/7522 Billy Gayles Ike Turner had an incredible feel for the discovery of vocalists - and we're not just talking of the hot young singer, he called Tina. Billy Gayles was the front man of Ike's Kings of Rhythm mid-50s, as they were the best R & B band in St. Louis. Their records the years 1956-57 for the Federal sub-label of King Records included with Ike's crazy whammy bar tremolo electric guitar solos on his Stratocaster, Gayle 'full, loud vocal cords and the rocking, blaster-driven monitoring of the Kings to the Wildest what was the biggest to offer the genre. Gayle was born in Sikeston, Missouri, was born on October 19, 1931 He grew up in poor circumstances, became blind as a child for six years and had the same work in the field, as he regained his eyesight with twelve. His mother moved with him to Cairo, Illinois, and the local blues scene seduced the boy. The guitar wizard Earl Hooker Gayle bought a Schlagzeugset- at this time he also played with another slide guitar ace, Robert Nighthawk. As Hooker south to Clarksdale, Mississippi, migrated, Billy went with. There he met some of the master musicians of the Kings of Rhythm - Raymond Hill, Jackie Brenston, Clayton Love, Johnny O'Neal, Dennis Binder - and then joined the band of Ike. Billy 'The Kid' Emerson gave Gayle's 1953 session for Sun Records, but in which nothing came out. When Billy Gale with Ike's band in Clarksdale, he recorded his debut single Night Howler for the sub-label flair of Modern Records. Then, wrote Turner in Federal: Ralph Bass directed the production, the Kings of Rhythm (Hill, Brenston and Eddie Jones to the saxophones, pianist Fred Sample, Jesse Knight Jr. on bass and Eugene Washington instead of Billy on drums) rocked the King -own studio in Cincinnati to its foundations! Gayle smashed on March 12, 1956 I'm Tore Up, as if his hair caught fire. It was a regional hit, but somehow missed the national charts. On the plate Federal wrote his name correctly. Three other Federal singles, leaving even fewer traces in the charts, although the thunderous Do Right Baby and Sad As A Man Can Be delivered his roaring vocal chords and some of the wildest guitar solos in Ike's entire career. Turner's use of 'Wummerhakens', the tremolo arm on his Strat, was something completely new. 'I knew nothing about the guitar and I thought that was why he was there,' said Turner died in 2007. 'The lever was for a tremolo since, and I used it to throb, to make you cry (guitar)!' Gayle sat down at the drums, as the Kings of Rhythm in Chicago at Cobra Records landeten- Billy and Ike sang a duet, Walking Down The Aisle, one half of the last publication of the label before it was sealed in 1959. Apart from a single '61-single for the obscure Shock label, in Washington, DC recorded with Ike's band, Gayle made no more records with the Kings of Rhythm. He left Ike in 1963 and returned to St. Louis, where he had hardly made its appearance. In 1982 he played on an LP by guitarist Larry Davis for Rooster Blues drums. On April 8, 1993, he died in St. Louis of cancer. Bill Dahl
https://www.discogs.com/artist/901099-Billy-Gayles
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Donald Ross Pfrimmer (September 25, 1937 – December 7, 2015) was an American country music songwriter.
http://www.cmt.com/news/1760999/hit-songwriter-don-pfrimmer-dead-at-78/ Hit Songwriter Don Pfrimmer Dead at 78 Songs Recorded by Ronnie Milsap, Lonestar, Tim McGraw, Diamond Rio by edward morris 12/9/2015
Songwriter Don Pfrimmer, whose hits ranged from Mickey Gilley’s” raucous “The Power of Positive Drinkin’” to Lonestar’s homey “My Front Porch Looking In,” died Monday (Dec. 7) of leukemia at the age of 78.
A native of Montana, Donald Ross Pfrimmer moved to Nashville in 1973. Over the ensuing years — and in league with a legion of gifted co-writers — he turned out a steady stream of skyscraping chart singles.
Pfrimmer’s versatility was evident in the range of acts that succeeded with his songs. Among these were George Jones (“You and Me and Time”), Ronnie Milsap (“She Keeps the Home Fires Burning,” “My Heart”), Diamond Rio (“Meet in the Middle”) and Tim McGraw (“All I Want Is a Life”).
Also Tammy Wynette (“Let’s Call It a Day Today”), Steve Wariner (“By Now”), Jim & Jesse (“North Wind”), Chris Cagle (“My Love Goes On and On”), Sylvia (“The Matador,” “Drifter”), Doug Stone (“Come In Out of the Pain”), Wayne Newton (“Our Wedding Band”), Jo Dee Messina (“Always Have, Always Will”) and Darin & Brooke Aldridge (“Lonely Ends Where Love Begins”).
In addition to the above, Pfrimmer co-wrote Lonestar’s No. 1 single, “Mr. Mom,” which held that position for two weeks in 2004.
In 1975, Pfrimmer collaborated with Gene Autry and Dave Burgess in writing the novelty tune “Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.”
Unlike the equally mythic “Rudolph,” “Frosty” and “Little Drummer Boy,” Nestor never gained seasonal traction. It was, however, recorded by Hank Snow and Marty Robbins and turned into animated TV special in 1977, with voices by Roger Miller and Brenda Vaccaro.
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=344506 Donald (Don) Ross Pfrimmer
Nashville, TN
passed away quietly at his home in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, December 7, 2015. He was 78 years old.
Don was born in Great Falls, Montana, on September 25, 1937 as the eighth and youngest son of Robert Bell Pfrimmer and Lillian Green Pfrimmer. He spent his childhood in Whitefish, Montana, on the western side of the Rockies near the Canadian border, hunting, fishing, swimming, skiing, and generally getting into mischief.
Don was preceded in death by his parents and his siblings, Patricia, Jack, Glen, Sylvia, Bruce and Mickey. He is survived by his loving wife of 39 years, Gail, two children, Michael Blade and Tinsley (Dan) Morrison, four grandchildren, Lizzy Blade, Jake Blade, Tom Morrison and Lilly Morrison, and his brother Charles Pfrimmer.
Don was "the Fonz" before anyone knew who the Fonz was. In high school, he wore a leather jacket, rode a motorcycle and was known to participate in the odd street fight. He also was a prize-winning Golden Gloves boxer. But beneath the leather jacket, was the heart of an artist. Don's beautiful singing voice landed him many lead roles in high school musicals.
Don was a veteran of the United States Army from which he received an honorable discharge after injuring his back in a surfing accident. During his time in the service, he won multiple marksmanship awards.
Don graduated from the University of Montana in 1965, with an English major and Art minor. After college, he spent many years in Alaska where he taught school to Native Inuit children, guided hunting and fishing expeditions, trapped arctic fox, and spent time commercial fishing out of Kodiak Island. Don had a great love of the outdoors, and was an expert hunter and fisherman—despite claims to the contrary by his brothers and children.
Don was a renaissance man. While he could hunt, fish and rabble rouse with the best of them, he could also paint, sing, sculpt, draw, and write poetry. Woodworking was a big hobby and he made beautiful homemade furniture in his basement shop.
It was this artistic side that led Don to think he could make a living writing music. In the early 1970's, Don moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. Like many before him, his career didn't immediately take off, but by 1978 he had a top ten, The Power of Positive Drinking by Mickey Gilley. Don had a top ten hit almost every year in the 80s and 90s, and 2000s including "She Keeps the Home Fires Burning," "Meet in the Middle," "The Front Porch Lookin' In," "My Heart," "All I Want Is a Life," and "Love Without Mercy." In all, ten of them went to number 1. "Mr. Mom," by Lonestar in 2004 was his most recent #1 hit.
Beyond top 40s and number 1s, Don was a beloved mentor to many other songwriters. He was well known for his big heart. The fact that he has so many friends in such a tough town is a testament to his willingness to help anyone with a guitar and a dream.
In 2015, Don was nominated for the Country Music Songwriters Hall of Fame, and while he didn't get in this year, his family believes his body of work may still get him in some day.
In the last year's of his life, Don wrote screenplays for movies and a book. The book centers on a boy in Alaska, a spot that always held a special place in his heart.
Read more: Songwriter Don Pfrimmer 1937-2015 - Sitcoms Online Message Boards - Forums http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=344506#ixzz44Bmugabh
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Bobby Wood (born Robert William Woodman, January 25, 1941) is an American keyboard player, session musician and songwriter.
He was born into a musical family at Mitchell Switch, a farming community near New Albany, Mississippi. His grandfather taught shape note singing, and his father, Leslie Wood, hosted gospel music programs on radio station WELO in Tupelo.[1] Bobby Wood learned to play the organ and played with his family in a musical group, before moving to Memphis in 1960. There, he was befriended and mentored by Stan Kesler, an engineer and producer at Sun Records. Kesler wrote and arranged "If I'm a Fool for Lovin' You", which Wood recorded; issued as a single on Joy Records, the record rose to number 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. However, when touring in support of the record, Wood was injuredin a road accident and hospitalized, effectively ending his career as a solo performer.[1][2][3]
He returned to session work at Sun, before rival producer Chips Moman chose him
- ^ a b Pamela Mays Decker, "'From Elvis To Garth' - Bobby Wood & The Memphis Boys", ElvisNews.com, February 22, 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2016
- ^ Steve Kurutz, Biography, Allmusic.com. Retrieved 6 January 2016
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 776. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.
[1] Born January 25, 1941 Genre Country Also Known As Robert William Woodman
Artist Biography by Steve Kurutz A former member of one of the most successful studio groups ever, the 827 Thomas Street Band, keyboardist Bobby Wood has been influential in both Memphis and Nashville, playing on some of the most vital soul and country records ever released, as well as writing several number one country hits.
Heavily influenced by Jerry Lee Lewis early on in his career, Wood moved to Memphis in 1960 in hopes of becoming an actor (acting? In Memphis?). In any case, the young keyboardist was befriended by Sun Records engineer Stan Kesler who fostered Wood's talent, eventually helping him release the 1964 hit "If I'm a Fool for Lovin' You" on Joy Records. It was while touring in support of "Fool" that Wood was injured in a car crash that laid him up for over half-a-year, effectively ending his career as a solo performer. Yet in retrospect, the setback turned out to be a positive one as Wood began devoting more time to studio work. When he was one of a half-dozen top players chosen by producer Chips Moman to form the American Studios House Band, Wood embarked on not only one of the most creative periods of his life, but of the music industry as well. Between 1967 and 1971, American Studios was responsible for 120 hits. Among the artists Wood backed were Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Herbie Mann, Wilson Pickett, and the Sweet Inspirations.
After Moman relocated to Atlanta, Wood made the move to Nashville and started playing country sessions. Because of his exceptional talent and track record with American Studios, Woods soon found himself in the list of Nashville's "A" musicians, playing on sessions by Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, and Tammy Wynette. In the early '70s, Wood also began writing and penned the hit "Still Thinkin' About You" for Billy Craddock in 1974. Since then he has written, or co-written, several hits including "What's Your Name, What's Your Number," "Talkin' In Your Sleep," and "Half the Way." In 1989, through mutual friend Allen Reynolds, Wood and Garth Brooks met and formed a musical partnership. Wood has played keyboards on all of Brooks' releases and, in turn, the singer has recorded one of Wood's compositions to date.
- ^ Steve Kurutz, Biography, Allmusic.com. Retrieved 6 January 2016
- ^ Pamela Mays Decker, "'From Elvis To Garth' - Bobby Wood & The Memphis Boys", ElvisNews.com. Retrieved 5 January 2015
http://www.elvisinfonet.com/spotlight_fromelvistogarth.html 'From Elvis To Garth'
Bobby Wood - & The Memphis Boys
- An EIN Spotlight by Pamela Mays Decker -
Extraordinarily the 40th anniversary of Elvis' pivotal recordings at American Studios sessions has essentially passed without so much as a whimper.
EIN contributor Pamela Mays Decker turns a much-needed spotlight on Bobby Wood, keyboardist and a musical inspiration behind these important Memphis sessions.
The Memphis Boys, as the studio group, with their natural abilities and dedication cranked out some great sounds which resulted in 122 hits emerging from the studio – a feat yet unmatched.
Mississippi farm boy, Gospel aficionado, solo artist, songwriter, collaborator with Nashville A-list stars, member of the most successful studio group in history – and very soon, published author. Throughout his remarkable life, Memphis Boys keyboardist Bobby Wood has worn many hats in the music world. Fortunately for fans, he will soon release a book in which he candidly discusses his faith, family, frailties and his phenomenal career spanning six decades that has found him working with a range of prominent stars "from Elvis to Garth" and just about everyone in between.
But what lay ahead was far beyond anything he could have ever visualized in his wildest dreams or asked for in his humblest prayers. As Wood is quick to share, "The Lord has really blessed me." And to music fans, those blessings wrap our world in an array of sounds that stir our very souls and deeply touch our hearts. The devastation that would have easily turned a man of weaker character toward a life wracked with torturous self-pity and brooding echoes of "what might have been" was indeed conversely the genesis of a new phase of success for the very grounded and resolute Bobby Wood. The stability of studio session work better suited his needs, so he became Sun’s staff piano player. But it would be his motorcycle riding buddy from another Memphis studio who would soon offer the opportunity not only to make records, but also to set records.
Wood met ace guitarist, Rockabilly veteran and soon to be iconic producer Lincoln "Chips" Moman, a Georgia transplant to the Bluff City, in 1962 while he was still manning the board across town at Stax Studios. After an acrimonious split from Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton over their failure to properly credit and fairly compensate him for his role in the studio’s successes, Moman embarked with Don Crews on a venture that would attract some of the industry’s most prominent and beloved performers as well as turn raw talent into hot international acts.
The unrivaled success of American Studios was a phenomenal combination of Moman’s uncanny abilities as a sharp, plainspoken producer, the poignant product of his assembly of talented, expressive songwriters… and the seamless sounds of the rhythm section comprised of a half-dozen Southern music men who moved the earth in a way the region hadn’t experienced since the New Madrid Fault Line temblors that caused the Mississippi River to flow backward some 155 years earlier.
In addition to Wood on keyboards, the Memphis Boys were rounded out by Reggie Young on lead guitar, Bobby Emmons on organ and keyboards, Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leech on bass and Gene Chrisman on drums.
With the utter ease of an autonomic bodily function, this talented smattering of country boys spewed forth the funky, signature Memphis mixture of Soul and Country – a sound as rich and gritty as the delta soil beneath their feet and as murky, rhythmic and rollicking as the muddy river that snaked southward at the edge of town just blocks away.
(Above:Bobby Wood, Mike Leech, Tommy Cogbill, Gene Chrisman, Elvis, Bobby Emmons, Reggie Young, Ed Kollis & composer Dan Penn.)
Together, their natural abilities and dedication to cranking out some great sounds resulted in 122 hits emerging from the studio at Chelsea and Thomas from 1967 to 1971 – a feat yet unmatched. To this day, the strong bond of brotherhood they forged more than 43 years ago remains unyielding.
Of all the successful artists fortunate to have been backed by the Memphis Boys over the years – including Dusty Springfield, Neil Diamond, Wilson Pickett, The Box Tops, B.J. Thomas, the Sweet Inspirations, Dionne Warwick, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Merrilee Rush, Sandy Posey, Billy Swan, Joe Tex, Herbie Mann, James and Bobby Purify and countless others (gracing four separate charts in the process) – they are most proud of their role in helping usher Elvis back to chart-topping prominence during their January-February 1969 collaboration that served as his creative rebirth.
But that wasn’t Bobby Wood’s first meeting with Elvis. Around the time "That’s All Right Mama" was released, the Wood family was recording demos at Sun. Sam Phillips introduced the Union County boy to the young man from Lee County – who no one could have possibly fathomed at the time was about to change music history and turn popular culture on its ear. A few years later, Elvis invited him and the future Mrs. Wood to one of his infamous overnight excursions at the fairgrounds.
Beyond the obvious connection in their rural upbringing in neighboring counties, Wood and Presley felt a kinship. They shared a deep Christian faith, love of spiritual music and they were both intimately acquainted with hard work and hard times. Elvis often spoke in somber tones of how his mother kept him on the straight-and-narrow. His loss left an abyss of loneliness – and Wood knew he was reaching out, seeking a deeper friendship from his fellow Mississippian. In his forthcoming book, he relates many touching stories about their initial meeting, subsequent friendship and his recollections of several personal experiences with Elvis’ generosity – many of which he has never before shared publicly.
Many fans have read about the tremendous honor Wood received when Elvis recorded the song that had been such a hit for Wood. He recalls, "He brought Vernon with him (to American) one evening, and Elvis said, ‘Daddy, I'd like you to meet somebody here.’ He brought him over to shake my hand and he said, ‘Do you know who this guy is?’ Vernon said, ‘No, I'm not sure.’ So Elvis asked him, ‘What's your favorite record?’ Vernon said, "If I'm a Fool." Elvis told him, ‘Well, this is the guy who sang it.’ And his dad just said, ‘Whoa!’" On February 20, 1969, after a long night of recording with standouts such as "It Keeps Right On a Hurtin’" and "Any Day Now," he and Wood were sitting at the piano, talking about spirituality and music around 4:30 a.m. Everyone else in the studio was tired and there were few remaining numbers on their song list. It was then that Elvis recorded "If I’m a Fool (For Loving You)" – and even played the piano – because it was his father’s favorite song.
Wood observes that one other entertainer with whom he has worked for the past 20 years shares the same generous spirit Elvis displayed. "Garth Brooks is like that," he said. "He’d give you the shirt off his back. If he knows people are hurting, he’d do anything for them. He’s a lot like Elvis in that respect." In his memoir, he draws interesting parallels between the wellsprings of talent both those superstars were blessed with. From his unique – and to some, quite enviable perspective, he delightfully shares numerous heart-warming personal recollections of his work with so many beloved acts. As he is quick to self-effacingly demur, it is a position he is lucky to have. From a fan’s viewpoint however, one could argue that conversely, they were the lucky ones to have worked with a man like Bobby Wood.
Many times, Elvis told Wood that he was his favorite piano player, and he even asked him on several occasions to join him on tour. He felt conflicted. His friendship with Elvis was important, but he also had a very busy studio recording schedule that he felt he needed to concentrate on. While Elvis fans surely would have enjoyed Wood onstage during Elvis’ blockbuster concerts, music lovers at large would have missed out on the pure magic that Wood helped make on the many records since the late 1960’s/early 1970’s that speak for themselves. (Right;Elvis and Bobby Wood at American Studio)
American Studios wasn’t the only time he worked with Elvis. In addition to the two successful albums and four hit singles generated from those early 1969 sessions, his work with Elvis is featured on other releases. The album "Elvis Now" was released in January 1972, but actually featured some songs from the American sessions. He worked with Elvis again in Memphis during his July and December 1973 sessions at STAX Studios, and the results appear on "Raised On Rock" (released in October 1973) and "Good Times" (released in March 1974).
A devastating event that occurred across town on a hotel balcony at 450 Mulberry Street on April 4, 1968 not only stunned the world, but it also dealt a stultifying blow to R&B music as it had been played within the studios of Muscle Shoals, Alabama and in Memphis up until then. Beyond that point, the feeling was different – with a thick, stifling tension hanging in the air like a negative vibe.
For decades, the impoverished and working-class throughout the rural agrarian South labored side by side in fields, sharing the same oppressive lot whether they were of Scots-Irish, Native American, African or other descent. The work was backbreaking… the living was hard… and toiling shoulder-to-shoulder, skin color was of little to no significance. No one had either the time or the condition to pass judgment. Under the hot sun’s glare, laborers sang to pass the time and ease their burdened bodies and souls. As Wood recounts, "There was great singing in those cotton fields. Everybody worked hard."
Bonds of friendship were shared – as was the sorrow, pain, joy and exaltation of their shared God. By stark contrast, the media images viewed by the rest of the world did not show this side of Southern living, but instead shaped long-standing, narrow perceptions that all white Southerners were seething racists. Those heavily circulated images did not accurately or fairly reflect the unity that was pervasive in so many areas.
It was from that sense of hardscrabble concomitance that emerged the shapings of mid-century popular music through the melding of traditionally "white" music and traditionally "black" music. In the 1950’s and 1960’s studios of Muscle Shoals and Memphis, Caucasians and African Americans worked as equal players, just as they had done together in the fields under the boiling Southern sun. The resulting sounds reflected the tightly intermeshed culture, faith and sense of unity that existed between so many of all races. (Further adding to that musical menagerie – a veritable Mulligan stew of cultures, it was an atheist Jew from New York City named Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records who would be instrumental in the wide distribution of this sound to the masses during this time.) These facts may very well fly in the face of some long-held perceptions of life in the American South. But those who lived it know it well.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination deeply affected African American artists – and the devastating crescendo of tension that ensued in Memphis and resonated everywhere beyond drove a wedge among the racially diverse R&B champions who had together worked harmoniously for so long. There was no way to turn back the clock. The brotherhood… the mixing and melding… was permanently altered. It is profoundly ironic that the soul that Wood proudly reflects "was born in Memphis" was altered permanently by the shattering events in Memphis in spring 1968. It wasn’t very long until all the American Studios players made a reluctant, heart-wrenching mass exodus from Memphis to begin the next stage of their careers in another Tennessee city some 210 miles due east.
Nashville, Memphis-Style
In the early 1970s, Wood was invited to Nashville by Elvis’ Blue Moon Boys guitarist Scotty Moore as well as by all-around Music City mogul Buddy Killen. Then, he invited fellow American Studios alum Johnny Christopher (who wrote "Mama Liked The Roses" and co-wrote "Always On My Mind") to join him. Before long, the Memphis Boys were doing their thing in Nashville – and often on projects with their American Studios producer Chips Moman – for stars such as Willie Nelson, B.J. Thomas, Johnny Cash, Ronnie Milsap, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Royal, Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette and a parade of Country and Pop luminaries while they still cut sides with the occasional R&B star. While their careers resumed in middle Tennessee, there is no doubt they had taken their Memphis-born magic with them as another stream of #1 and Top 20 hits poured from their efforts.
It was during this time Wood put pen to paper to begin songwriting, which he said was inspired by another American Studios brother-in-arms, R&B master Dan Penn (see photo above). In 1974, Billy "Crash" Craddock covered his "Still Thinkin' About You," taking it to #4 on the Country charts. Since then, he has written or co-written many tunes such as Andrea True Connection’s 1978 Top 10 Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play hit, "What's Your Name, What's Your Number" (co-written with Roger Cook), Crystal Gayle’s Top 20 Pop and Country hits "Talkin' In Your Sleep" and "Half the Way" and Ronnie Milsap’s 20th #1 Country and Adult Contemporary chart hit "He Got You" (co-written with Ralph Murphy) among many others.
By the end of the 1980’s, a mutual friend introduced Wood to Garth Brooks, and thus emerged yet another longstanding musical partnership and close friendship. Wood has played keyboards on all of Brooks’ recordings – and in February 1998, the Country megastar and his future wife Trisha Yearwood won a Best Country Collaboration with Vocals Grammy for their #1 hit duet, "In Another's Eyes," co-written by Brooks, Bobby Wood and John Peppard. The song, from Brooks’ RIAA-certified Diamond album "Sevens" (as well as Yearwood’s #1 album "Songbook: A Collection of Hits") also received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song. When the Memphis Boys were one of six inaugural groups inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007, Brooks introduced them with his deferential observation, "There's very few records an artist makes, but there are a hell of a lot of records musicians make." Making his mark in Memphis and continuing with 36 years of success in Nashville, the Gospel-bred Bobby Wood has played on some of the most vital R&B, Pop and Country records ever released – even making a foray into Disco and Jazz. Looking back on a lifetime of music, this north Mississippi boy remains a genuine soul, ever close to his spiritual roots that have guided him on a fascinating ride through music history. He may have Nashville dirt beneath him, but the heart of a musical Memphian beats inside him.
And this gentle spirit is quick to express his appreciation of the fans – sharing that as the 40th anniversary of those landmark sessions with Elvis have come and gone, the group has often reflected upon their time in the studio with him. Approaching five decades after they first came together, they not only remain very busy as highly sought-after working studio musicians, but most importantly, the Memphis Boys remain true friends; a clan of musical brothers, of sorts. Of the many accolades showered upon Wood and the entire crew from that funky studio at 827 Thomas Street, it is their strong, deep bond of true friendship that is no doubt their greatest gift and proudest accomplishment.
Long content with his role of helping some of music’s biggest stars sound great, this gracious, humble man steps forward with plenty to say about his trials, triumphs and the grace that has long guided his path. Bobby Wood’s forthcoming book will surely be an eagerly anticipated must-read not only for Elvis fans, but certainly for ardent fans of all music the world over – and anyone who seeks to be inspired. A survivor in the truest sense, Wood is a walking miracle whose gifts and contributions go so much deeper than his musical talents. The words of this man who overcame great suffering to achieve even greater success truly touch and uplift the spirit.
The expected release of Wood’s memoir (the title yet to be announced, but definitely subtitled "From Elvis to Garth") is slated for later this year, with no firm date as of yet. As more news develops, updates will follow.
Psalms 150:4: "Praise him with the tambourine and choir! Praise him with stringed instruments and the organ!"
http://www.discogs.com/artist/293222-Bobby-Wood?filter_anv=1&anv=Bobby+Woods
http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/bobby_wood
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John Lester Standberry Jr. (February 7, 1935 – May 29, 1985) was an American soul singer and songwriter
Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Standberry grew up in Jacksonville, Florida.
He died in Jacksonville, aged 50.
Lead singer of King Krooners who recorded on Hart and Excello 1959/60 She's Mine All Mine / Lonely Nights Now That She's Gone / Won't You Let Me Know Memories / School Daze
https://www.discogs.com/artist/2426305-John-Standberry-Jr
- Lonely Man / Marie both written by Standberry Barry Records distrib by Old Town Records, NY 1965
- Help Me Now / I Don't Care What They Say both written by Standberry, prod by Wendell Parker Josie Records, NY 1966
- I Can't Believe (She Took The Whole Thing) / Sunny Day both written by Standberry, directed by Johnnie B Garrett Jr., prod by Standberry and Tom Markham Stanlos Records NV52573 1973
- Oke-e-Poke-e-e / Open Up Your Heart A-side written by Garrett, B-side by Standberry Recorded in Jacksonville, Fla Shade Tree ST 53178 1978
- Run Sally Run / In The Storm Both written by Standberry Arr by Ray Riley, prod by Grady Spires Sumpter 1102 Shelby Singleton Productions, nashville
- Thru Life Step-By-Step / You Came Into My World Both sides co-written by Standberry and Walter Solomon Jayville Records 45-1001 Unknown
- Keep On Working / As Long As I Have You Both written by Standberry Engleside SR12665 Unknown
- Forth Session - Would You Love Me Too / She's Gone Both sides written by Standberry and Garrett Jayville Records - in Jacksonville Jayville Records – 45-7147