Brown Eyed Handsome Man

It's A Long Walk To DC, But I'm On My Way

2009-01-18T10:15:00.006Z

An elderly man wakes up one Monday morning and remembers something he planned to do a long time before. He puts on a winter jacket and a grey cloth cap. Like he used to do, he stops at the hallway mirror, looks at his reflection, and sets the cap at a jaunty angle. That's more like it, he thinks, and chuckles, raising one eyebrow as he recognises the face staring back at him. The one who, with the confidence of a younger man, set out to do this same thing 40 years ago.

His children and grandchildren came by yesterday to see off their grandpa. They are not here right now on this cold icy morning as he opens the front door and steps off the porch - but the old man knows that they will be waiting for him somewhere in the center of Petersburg, ready to join him for the first stretch of his journey, and they won't be the only ones. As the journey contines, more and more will join him for a time, and others will converge on his destination by different routes leading from across the nation. This time.

The first time, 40 years ago, the journey ended before it began. They were waiting for a good friend, but he couldn't make it. Someone made sure of that. The old man thinks about him for a moment. It is his birthday soon, he'd like that, he muses.

The old man takes one last look up at the house, and thinks upon the number on the door. 244 is sure a lot less than 65000, and it's a long walk to DC. But you do it one step at a time, Carl Winfield reminds himself, like we did all those times before. He steps out onto the frosty sidewalk and the crisp crystals crunch beneath his feet, announcing the first step. At times it feels like he is going to fall, but neighbors are coming out now to see him alright. I'm going to see the President, no matter what it takes, he laughs!

The Staple Singers - Long Walk To DC (Stax 1968)

To everybody setting out for Atlanta this Martin Luther King Day or for Washington for Inauguration Day, I hope that it proves to be an unforgettable moment in your life and the life of your Nation! Happy Birthday Dr King, and Godspeed President Obama!

Eartha Kitt 1927-2008: I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

2008-12-28T16:29:00.015Z

In January 1968, Eartha Kitt was invited to a luncheon at the White House. The subject was "What Citizens Can Do To Help Ensure Safe Streets." Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, was hosting the event.

When asked by the First Lady, Eartha Kitt responded: '"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the streets. They will take pot and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

There was a general commotion amongst the fifty ladies present, and comments of shock that Ms Kitt could bring up the subject of the war in such a way. Several ladies spoke to assert their pride that sons and husbands were doing their duty and serving in the armed forces. The group applauded each time, and Eartha stood, arms folded.

Mrs Johnson answered her guest. "Because there is a war on - and I pray that there will be a just and honest peace - that still doesn't give us a free ticket not to try to work for better things such as against crime in the streets, better education, and better health for our people. Crime in the streets is one thing we can solve. I am sorry I can't speak as well or as passionately on conditions of slums as you, because I have not lived there."

Eartha Kitt, realising that she was in a minority of one in her opinions, but deciding that she had to persist, told Mrs Johnson: "I have to say what's in my heart. I have lived in the gutters."

The First Lady was reportedly either visibly shaken or on the verge of tears, according to different witnesses. She finally turned to Eartha Kitt and brought the conversation to a close: "I am sorry. I cannot understand the things you do. I have not lived with the background you have."

The Johnsons were keenly aware of what needed to be done to change America. They were not like Mr Dalton in 'Native Son', the liberal benefactor who can never understand that his donations to the South Side Boys Club will never change how his own companies refuse access to housing in other areas of Chicago and then overcharge on the rent due to 'high demand'. The Johnsons had tried to do many important things to promote greater equality for black Americans, and the meeting itself was supposed to discuss issues such as housing and employment, at the core of those inequalities. But they were unable to accept in their minds that a war had an impact upon their domestic agenda, despite the 30 billion dollars spent on it in that year that even saw the Defence Department request spending cuts on non-frontline military equipment to compensate. The Great Society was in peril. Which was the greater issue for them? One young woman had asked them.

Eartha Mae Kitt, January 17th 1927 - December 25th 2008

Events related by Mark Kurlansky in his book "1968", based on reports in TIME magazine, January 26th 1968 and other press coverage. Photos from the White House Museum.

Pantomime At The Apollo: Sleeping Beauty!, or We Had A Dream!

2008-12-26T15:38:00.105Z

A Merry Christmas to one and all, and a belated return for Brown Eyed & Handsome Blog! essentially, due to pressures of work and a squeeze on funds for new sounds, it simply became impossible to keep to any kind of a schedule. However, I hope to start afresh with more time set aside for what I want to do - listen to and love the music!

We return, as we did last Christmas (see Barefootin', or How Cinderella Got Her Shoes Back), to the Apollo Theater, where they have decided to create a festive pantomime. For those over the pond who do not know, pantomime is a form of fun theater, where a well-known fairy tale is retold, mixed in with a lot of slapstick and broad satire.

It seemed a good idea at the time! On with the show!

Sleeping Beauty!

The CAST

Ole King Coleman, emcee for the Apollo Theater
Liberty, a Princess and Beauty
Abraham, a kindly old man in a log cabin
Jim Crow, our villain and a master of words
‘Poor Richard` Pryor, who will open the door!
Prince Martin, a hero who has a dream
Prince Malcolm, his brother in arms
A Bush, a piece of scenery that gets in the way
A Fox, who is cunning and a master of talk
Bill and Hillary, an arguing couple
The Ice Queen, a witch from Alaska
Prince Obama, a hero and everyman
A Fashionable Pig, it wears lipstick
Judge Pigmeat Markham, here come da judge!

The overture music ends, and our host, King Coleman, walks on stage.

KING COLEMAN: Welcome all to the Apollo,
I, Ole King Coleman, say hello.

The Fairy Godfather has granted your wishes,

So Please, Please, Please, ladies, prepare your kisses!

We're gonna make light out of the last election -

Everybody gets fun poked in their direction.

The jokes are bad, I mean they just ain't funny.

But its too late y'all coz I gots your money!

Everybody can shout out, everybody gets to sing

Everybody gets to do their thing!
So what's the jive you've come to see?
Well, we're gonna tell you about a Sleeping Beauty!

And if you think asleep she's great,

you should see her when she's awake!

Liberty, a fair lady, has wandered onto the stage.

KING COLEMAN: Well ain't that form just fine;

if the Prince don't take her, man, she's mine!

This is the story of a fair lady, Liberty
Arriving in a land of the free.
She finds that a spell hangs over us
A vile and inauspicious curse!
One half are chained, while half are free,
but the other half this will not see.
Others still do not want to know,
Thanks to the magic of Jim Crow.

Jim Crow appears! Costume by Disney out of Dumbo.

JIM CROW: I am the villain of this piece,
Although think hard upon what hides beneath.
For all I does is tell you things,
And they listen as I softly sings.
Perhaps I am a kind of wizard,
That gnaws upon this nation’s gizzard.
Jim Crow pecks and caws
As I busily rewrite the laws
And turn what fools do and says
Into ancient inviolable folk ways.

Jim Crow hears Liberty approaching, and hides himself away behind the Bush. Liberty appears, searching for something.

KING COLEMAN: One day Liberty finds a field in spring
Where birds of justice have begun to sing
She taps the door of a log cabin,
And hastily is welcomed in.

Liberty goes inside the cabin, and Jim Crow appears. An old man in a beard and stove-pipe hat comes out of the cabin.

KING COLEMAN: The old man come out into the world,
He spies Jim Crow, and shoos the bird!
ABRAHAM: Go to another door than mine.
You can’t fool all the people all the time!

Jim Crow pecks at Abraham and begins chasing Abraham away. Liberty enters confused…

LIBERTY: Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham? Can you tell me where he’s gone?

The audience holler out warnings, "He's behind you!" and Jim Crow appears. He puts Liberty to sleep and begins to gloat on stage. Boos and hisses! King Coleman, on the stage right, comes back on horrified.

KING COLEMAN: Liberty is put to sleep and dreams,
That all is not as it here seems,
That a better world exists somewhere
But time will pass in getting there.

Another friend Liberty does require
And so with that I do retire,
And introduce Poor Richard - Pryor!

Richard opens the cabin door and enters the scene, while Jim Crow continues to gloat over sleeping Liberty.

POOR RICHARD: Good God! Boy, a lot of brothers here today, and some white folks too … come in a bunch didn't y’all? - 'Stick with me, don't worry about a thing.’ Hey, who's this, Big Bird's ugly mother? Hey, where do you think you are?

Jim Crow looks startled.

POOR RICHARD: I may be Poor Richard in this thing, but you are hard of hearing!

JIM CROW: I'm terribly sorry, but I believe that you are standing in my place.

POOR RICHARD: Well you ain't standing there right now, motherf*****!

JIM CROW: Ok, now, that's nice, it's like that is it, ok, you want a piece of this, peckerhead!

He shakes his feathers, menacingly.

POOR RICHARD: I ain't the one standing there dressed like Woody Woodpecker! Come on, shake a tailfeather!

Jim Crow is about to challenge Richard, when he spies two handsome princes appearing. Jim Crow runs for it, and Richard chases him away for now...

KING COLEMAN: Two brothers, Prince Martin and Prince Malcolm, come,
And discover Liberty undone. They try to wake her from the curse,
But despite their efforts things get worse.

PRINCE MALCOLM: What happens to a dream deferred
Does it ripen like a raisin in the sun?
Or sag like a heavy load?
Or does it explode?

PRINCE MARTIN: Wait, I think she is giving me a dream.
I wonder about what it could mean…

Visions - Stevie Wonder

PRINCE MALCOLM: Then quickly now, here is the hour,
Let’s stop Jim Crow and fight the power!

Fight the Power - Isley Brothers

Jim Crow sneaks up upon the Princes.

JIM CROW: Like the raven at Poe’s door,
I will caw, Nevermore!

Prince Martin and Prince Malcolm fight with Jim Crow. But he tricks them both, and they fall to his spells and bullets. The audience are horrified!

KING COLEMAN: Liberty stirs and looks
For the princes whom bullets took.

LIBERTY: Has anybody seen my old friends Martin Luther and Malcolm? You know they freed a lot of people, but it seems the good die young.

Jim Crow puts Liberty to sleep once more. He laughs and comes to the center stage.

JIM CROW: Old Abraham used to say this line:
“You can fool all of the people some of the time”
This has the ring of truth to me
But Jim Crow sees things differently.
I have set it as my aim to make a very different claim.
I put together this daring rhyme,
“You CAN fool all the people all of the time.”

JIM CROW: I’ll begin to tell people things
That make them fear what changes bring,
That makes them shun their neighbours hall,
And turns them against the victims’ call.
I put to sleep your Liberty,
So that the powerful should be free,
To take your money to give back to you,
To bend round lies and make them true!

A Bush is placed upon the stage. It does nothing for eight years. Ho ho ho.

KING COLEMAN: All this is done in a state of hush -
Our Jim Crow has hidden in a Bush!
Here he hides and he can watch,
His words come out of a cunning Fox!
In this way none shall know,
The dangers of the way they go!

Crow and Fox reenact scenes of chaos and mayhem, TV soaps and action movies, in puppet form, from behind the Bush. Richard returns, sees what has happened to Liberty, and watches what Crow and Fox are doing. Then he tears his gaze away in anger.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scott Heron

POOR RICHARD: One week of truth on TV could just straighten out everything. One hundred and twenty-seven million people watch television every night; that's why they use it to sell stuff. They've misused it a long time so now it's just a business, that's all. They're not going to write shows about how to revolutionize America. The top rated shows are for retarded people.

Act 2: We now tune in to Court TV

OFFICER OF THE COURT: Hear ye, hear ye, this court is now in session - Judge Pigmeat Markham presidin’!

Pigmeat Markham - Here come da judge!

POOR RICHARD: They give brothers time like it's lunch down there. You go down there looking for justice, and that's what you find - just us.

DEFENDANT: Knock Knock!
JUDGE: Who’s there?
DEFENDANT: Your neighbor!
JUDGE: Not any more, I’m repossessin’ your house!”

KING COLEMAN: Jim Crow thinks it would be awful funny,
If he were to steal our money!
Next of all he cancels our loans,
And then he takes away our homes!

JUDGE: Who we got here today?
OFFICER: There’s a man here, he’s a nudist.
JUDGE: How long you been in your house, son?
DEFENDANT: Three years, your honour.
JUDGE: Three years. And how much of your mortgage have you paid?
DEFENDANT: Nine years, your honour.
JUDGE: Nine years? Officer, release this man.
OFFICER: But sir, he’s a nudist!
JUDGE: No he’s not.
OFFICER: Yes, sir, he’s a nudist! He‘s isn‘t wearing any pants!
JUDGE: No he ain’t. Paying those loans, he can’t afford to buy any pants!

JUDGE: Well now comes election time - you’ll vote your way, and I’ll vote mine.
This is the time the money gets spent - will they notice it’s the government?

Everybody in the cast puts in the vote. Some votes are snatched away by Jim Crow, some are pecked full of extra holes by Jim Crow. Some people can’t get to the voting booth.

JIM CROW: All these people in such a rush,
But one vote in here is worth two in the Bush!

He throws a whole bunch of ballot papers into the Bush, which rustles appreciatively.

JUDGE: Some of the people are getting shifty;
But the votes for Liberty are 50:50! 4 MORE YEARS!

The audience groan! The cast are reduced to poverty

ACT 3: The Prince Appears

KING COLEMAN: Now the setting of Act Three,
The window where lies Liberty -
Under the care of fair Hillary…
But lo, does now our hero return?
From our troubles have we learned?

Bill appears, with partygoers in tow.

BILL: Here I is, Hillary, drunk again! Open the door Hillary!

Hillary appears at the window, and shakes her head. She throws a shoe at him to chase him away. Come on, it’s tradition to throw a shoe at a president … I think? Bill slinks off!

KING COLEMAN: But wait, at last our hero comes,
Is he one of Martin or Malcolm’s sons?
Here to complete our saga,
Comes the young prince Barack Obama!

PRINCE OBAMA: Here I is, Hillary, drunk again!

He climbs up a precarious ladder to lean to a window…

PRINCE OBAMA: Open the door Hillary!

Hillary leans out the window but she shakes her head. Obama waves a letter offering her the Secretary of State post, and she climbs out the window after it. Richard climbs up the ladder and to the window.

PRINCE OBAMA: Open the door Richard!

Jack McVea - Open The Door Richard!

Richard Pryor tries to let the Prince in, but someone is shooting at him in the backside. It is the Ice Queen!

POOR RICHARD: What you doing there, Ice Queen? You act like one of them police that ain't never arrested nobody before!

KING COLEMAN: But now to interrupt our scene,
Rides in the indestructible Snow Queen
She can thrill you with icy shivers,
And reflect you in her many mirrors.
Smiling smiling, she begins to stare,
And catches Obama in her glare!
The mirror darkly obscures our sight
And reflects him in many different lights!

The prince is frozen by the Ice Queen's spells. Each time she shoots him with her rifle, he is transformed into another costume.

ICE QUEEN: Here is the sinister Hussein,
Subverting us for Arab gain!
Or is he in reality a Brit,
Who should have nothing to do with it!
He talks to the poor? Now what is this?
He must be some kind of Communist!
And to top off all the drama,
He stands clothed as dread Osama!

Meanwhile, Richard has casually gone into to the house, opened the door, walked outside, stood at the Ice Queen’s shoulder, looked with puzzlement at the scene, and then approaches the Prince.

POOR RICHARD: Hey man! Say brother! What you doing peeping in them people's window? What's your name boy? Obama? What kind of name is that for a brother? What you mean, your grandma is white? Like my dad, your grandpa must have sure loved the pussy! Where you from fool? Hawaii! Brothers don’t need to go to Hawaii to surf - we got the all over tan going on, leave that to the white dudes to get sunburnt and shit! What? Where’s that, now - Indonesia? Now you don’t know if you wanna be seen with the Reverend Wright or with the Nation of Islam! I know where it is - you ain't the smartest mother in the world, you know!

The Ice Queen is about to pounce on the hapless Prince, when Richard stops the action for an announcement. The Prince is able to make an escape.

POOR RICHARD: For an ice queen, she is kinda hot! Now, ladies and gentlemen, at this trying time, there now will be a short sermon from the one and only Reverend Jeremiah ... James! The Reverend James L Wright! White! James L White! Don't reckon some folks can tell the difference, anyhow!

Richard distracts the Ice Queen and offers to 'guide' her to the Prince...

Richard Pryor - The Reverend James L White's Back To Africa Telethon

Act 3a - The Snowy Wilderness of Alaska

The Ice Queen and Richard are searching for the Prince, or anything, to shoot, in the snowy wilds of Alaska.

RICHARD: Illinois, right up ahead, Governor! (To the audience) I know I told her we found Chicago first, but this is too damn cold for any brother!

They spy something. Could it be her prey?

ICE QUEEN: There he is! Quick Richard, hand me the rifle...
RICHARD: The what? (He smirks)
ICE QUEEN: Now quit playing around. Give me the rifle!
RICHARD: I don't have it. I thought you had it. And if you don't, you're screwed.
ICE QUEEN: And why is that? He's just a Junior Senator, and I'm a Governor!

RICHARD: Yeah, but there's a whole lot of Republicans behind you who look like they wanna kill you!

A mob of enraged Republicans, ravenous and hungry, chase the Ice Queen away, as Richard dusts himself down, and goes to find the Prince once more.

Act 4: The Ending

As the Prince gets to his feet, a crowd of people gather around to help him up. The Prince thanks them and talks to them all.

PRINCE OBAMA: I may be a mystery
I have an enchanting history
Where am I from, none can tell
Which for most voters is just as well!
Try to classify me if you can,
But I will stand for everyman!

KING COLEMAN: What the Ice Queen does not expect,
Is her spell to have the opposite effect!

It does not toe the party line,

It transforms her into a swine!

The Ice Queen's spells reflect upon her, and she becomes a well-groomed pig.

PRINCE OBAMA: Through her distortions the people see,
What Liberty means to you and me.
As they look upon the maiden more,
An end they want to hate and war
To poverty and repossession,
And most of all to the recession!

Can You Read Between The Lines - Charles Whitehead (Raw Spitt)

The Republicans try to grab a pile of cash, but the Prince steps forward and takes it from her hands.

PRINCE OBAMA: Drop that money before it’s too late!
Help us all, let the dollar circulate!

The Prince throws our money around! Hey, it’s a satire, everybody gets a go!

Billy Paul - Let the Dollar Circulate

Liberty begins to awaken.

LIBERTY: The Ice Queen’s fractures divide us forever,
What we must do is come together!
Then We The People will finally be -
And we will remember:
This is our country!

We The People - Staple Singers

PRINCE OBAMA: Sleeping beauty is awoken
Now at last is the spell broken?
Can we finally give a damn?
You know the answer: “Yes We Can!”

Everybody gets to sing!

Yes We Can

ACT 5: The Epilogue

RICHARD: I think it's time we heard from our new President!

Cheers! The Prince steps forward, but then Richard pushes the Prince out of the way, ties his tie and puts on his suit jacket.

Richard Pryor - Conference with the 40th President of the United States

JUDGE: All is well and done,
Now is the time to have some fun
The is just one thing that does not jig -
Who put lipstick on that pig?

The pig in makeup oinks. It sings to the Prince, a lament of love.

Tina Britt - Hawg for You (Minit 32082 - Hawg For You / My Lover's Prayer – 1969)
Richard is standing solemnly, worrying about the pig.

JIM CROW: Hello there, Richard
RICHARD: Hi there, Crow
JIM CROW: Congratulations on winning that election thing, there
RICHARD: Oh, thanks, thanks a lot. Hey, my pig, it’s got lipstick on it!
JIM CROW: Oh yeah, sorry about that, won’t happen again. I'll pick somebody else for 2012.
RICHARD: I appreciate it.
JIM CROW: Just so you know - I will be trying to bite your ass off again tomorrow morning, ok?
RICHARD: Well, now then we might have to use Plan B

KING COLEMAN: And so we end this festive tale, and the moral of it be:

"What once is told to you in jest, maybe the future you can see!" Pay attention now!

Jokes adapted from Richard Pryor, Pigmeat Markham, Langston Hughes, Open The Door Richard, and Malcolm X. All statements attributed to King Coleman et al are I think all pure invention (didn't spend enough time on research this year, last year I did better!) Happy Holidays!

I 'll Change If You Vote Me In As The Pres...

2008-04-05T07:13:00.005Z

Out of all of the images of yesterday's events in Memphis that were broadcast in Britain, the most surprising for me, but also ironically the most heart-warming, was the sight of Republican nominee John McCain standing at the balcony where Dr King was killed and being shown around the museum. The fulsome praise which he heaped upon Dr King and the admiration for his legacy which he expressed was exemplary, and I imagine they took quite a bit of political courage from a man who, throughout most of his life, had not in his own words "even considered" the significance of the Civil Rights Movement, and had frequently in his career campaigned and voted against the institution of a National Martin Luther King Day, and also the establishment of that holiday in his state of Arizona.

How did Senator McCain come to this point of view? Well, I imagine that his early upbringing was typical of many white suburban Americans in the 40s, still in a time when segregation was considered by much of white America as an acceptable fact of life. In his own words in an interview, the Senator described further:

"I had not been involved in the issue. I had come from being in the military to running for Congress in a state that did not have a large African American population."

So for Senator McCain, other issues such as Cold War foreign policy and economics occupied his mind at that time. The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s did not inspire or interest him. By the 1960s, he would have been heavily involved in the military - which he describes as having been an equal-opportunities environment. Compared to the rest of America at that time, he would have been right (though it was far from a paradise), and I can understand why at the time he might then have thought that civil rights protest was unnecessary and divisive. It is an uninspiring story, and reveals a deep lack of empathy and ability for analysing social issues, a disturbing tendency to go along with the flow and follow the herd of opinion, to blame the victim of injustice for not being strong enough to sort out their own problems, but it fits with where many similar young white men might have been at that time.

After this, the Senator was a POW in Vietnam, and he has described how his torturers used events like protests and race riots to try to sap the morale of the prisoners, portraying a nation in turmoil. I can understand how this might emotionally turn the Senator against expressions of admiration for the Civil Rights Movement, as the effects of torture do not make it easy to judge and evaluate events gleaned from patchy scraps of news easy. It is a shame that he had not thought more deeply about the numerous images of the fight against racial injustice which he had been exposed to on televisions and simply walking around any American town before his capture.

However, from his entry into politics, Senator McCain had the means, advice and political duty to learn the truth. His record stands up to now as a sorry testament to his ability for self-reflection. It took him literally decades to abandon his trenchant position opposing Martin Luther King Day, and in the meantime, because he had political position, he was able to add his vote to preventing Arizona joining the rest of the Union in celebrating Dr King's life.

It seems that in the meantime, John McCain has grappled with how his experiences of imprisonment and the experience of racism in America both highlight injustice and indignity. I hope that his conversion is a heartfelt and a genuine one. To be sure that Senator McCain remembers, I have chosen a song from an old nemesis, Stevie Wonder, one of the originators of the idea of Martin Luther King Day, which will serve as a reminder.

Stevie Wonder - Big Brother (from Motown LP 'Talking Book STMA8007) 1972

For this post I read an interesting debate at the Chicago Tribune website.

Funny How Time Slips Away ... But I Could Never Leave You!

2008-04-05T06:22:00.004Z

Well, it's been a while... Life has intruded on our moments together. I didn't want it to be such a long time away from you, but a couple of weeks turned into months as work and other things took up more and more of my time. It's gotten me down more than the other problems I've been sorting out. More than once, I tried to come back to you, but each time I was pulled away. Don't be mad, don't be sad. Your brown eyed handsome man is back, here to entertain your ears, and I won't ever leave you. Let me make it up to you with some smooth talking from Joe Tex, singing a classic country track written by Willie Nelson.

Joe Tex - Funny How Time Slips Away (from Atlantic LP 'Soul Country') 1968

... Well, I am going on holiday today, but I will leave you with a bumper crop of posts to reward your patience! And until you hear The Manhattans singing Kiss And Say Goodbye on this blog, my official break-up song, believe I will return to you!

The Dream Marches On...

2008-04-04T23:55:00.001Z

A phenomena is taking place in Memphis today. Thousands of Americans of all kinds are congregating at the Mason Temple Pentacostal Church and near the National Civil Rights Museum, housed in the Lorraine Motel, to celebrate the memory of a man who changed the face of America and the world, before his life was taken from him by an assassin's bullet.

In his last speech before his death, Martin Luther King Jr almost prophetically said, "Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

This is a day then for contemplation of the way Dr King's legacy has been continued, by others working in their own ways for equality and freedom and justice, up to the present day. Have we reached the mountaintop?

Dr Martin Luther King Jr - I Have Been To The Mountain Top (April 3rd 1968)

The recording of this speech is hosted by DrMartinLutherKingjr.com. Photograph taken by Mike Segar.

Out Of Time, Out Of Sight: Chris Farlowe Live At The Half Brick!

2008-02-04T20:15:00.001Z

Ah, this will stand as one of those great events in my life, and I only hope that the little audio clip will give you some of the flavour of a night in the presence of a British soul legend, Chris Farlowe!

Accompanied by Blue Eyed Handsome Dad once again, we embarked on a musical journey into British soul history. Dad recalled the last time that he was lucky enough to hear Chris Farlowe sing, which he believes may well have been at The Flamingo Club in Soho in the height of 1966, when Chris was most definitely Number 1 amongst blue-eyed soul artists. He was riding high with his hit Out Of Time on Immediate Records, and Jagger and Richards, not to mention Mike D'Abo could not help but proffer him amazing material to record. This followed an outstanding year 1965 on record, releasing his EPs of soul classics which showcased his roaring and soaring, soul-shaking sound.

Well, we set off from the shores of town, west towards the nearby town of Worthing, arriving at a small seafront inn called The Half Brick, renowned for a regular line-up of local blues artists and rock tributes. This was something slightly more important, however. All the more bizarre, then, to discover that the headline act had been shunted into a cramped corner of the bar to make way for a wedding reception in the function room! The bar was absolutely jam packed, and at first we wondered if we would be able to make our way around the corner to view the stage.

No matter, we were here because for some they had been there. Blue Eyed Handsome Dad bumped into at least two old friends who remembered the days of modishness and could not resist the pull of Chris Farlowe. We endured the slightly over long set by the support act and watched the man himself, who had been relaxing comfortably at the front, stand up and take his place.

The band cranked up, and began to play "Ladies and gentlemen, Stormy Monday Blues!" cries Chris, then stops! ... "Wait a minute! They've forgotten how to bloody play it!" ribbed Chris, abruptly breaking away from the mike to turn and stare at the band. With a smirk he folds his arms and observes the guitarist and bass, as they realise their mistake and try to crawl the chord progression back to the correct key. Well, they make it, and off they go into Chris' first British hit record.

A slower and more reflective song next, Handbags And Gladrags, his hit from 1969. It was written especially for Chris by Mike D'Abo of Manfred Mann. It touches many in the audience tonight, who reminisce about those years ago. But not to let the maudlin set in, Chris livens thing up again with a defiant gesture against the passing years, Never To Old To Rock, Never Too Young To Roll.

Fired up by that, how could they but follow Chris as he berates the out of touch and old at heart with the astonishing Out Of Time? Well, at least the crowd are keeping up, singing along for all its worth. For some it seems the pace is getting to them: "I said baby, baby, baby .. you're out of tune!", adlibs Chris at one point, giving the band a worried glance.

Chris lets us pick anything we like for the encore, then immediately proceeds to sing exactly what he had prepared anyway, Johnny B Goode. Then he finishes with a storming rendition of Route 66 effortlessly better than Jagger could churn out.

I'm only sorry I couldn't share that one with you, but here is a taste of Friday's rendition of Out Of Time to give you a flavour of the night. "We hope you've had a good night, and you feeling alright; we thank you for coming along, hope you enjoyed the song, alright."

Chris Farlowe - Out Of Time (Live at the Half Brick, Worthing, Friday 1st 2008)

Thanks for a great night organised at the Half Brick by Bob. You can contact the Half Brick for other events at www.thehalfbrick.co.uk

Happy Birthday!

2008-01-21T09:01:00.001Z

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr - All Here And Now

I Could Never Be President!

2008-01-20T09:02:00.000Z

Race in US politics has always determined the heights of possible ambition. Is this about to change at the highest level? Jesse Jackson succeeded to the Democratic Party nomination. Will Senator Barack Obama first take the nomination and then the Presidency? That brings up very exciting possibilities. Mr Obama has strong family ties to Kenya, and supports local schools in his grandmother's town. I feel that such a man, if elected President, would therefore have a radically different perspective on the USA's relationship with the Third World. Then again, I feel less comfortable with his blanket praise for Ronald Reagan's ability to 'change' the entire nation. Ronnie, and even more so Nancy, have many great achievements in their favour, particularly in the sphere of the conclusion of the Cold War. However, domestically, the USA could not have been further from the goals of the Great Society during his Presidency. Maybe this comment by Obama explains what happened next...

On the other side, is the warning word of the cynic. Ironically, it was the Come-Back Kid himself, Bill Clinton, sometimes nicknamed 'the first black President' who, by referring to the rise of less experienced Obama as a 'kid' in 'the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen' left himself open to the charge of having a paternalist attitude. Don't set your hopes too high, he seems to suggest. I think it was the Reagan jibe that made him snap. To his credit, Bill did then make an attempt at amends, telephoning Rev Al Sharpton's radio show to tell him that "He [Obama] had put together a great campaign... he might win." Ah, Bill, you charmer. I can never stay made at you. You'd still make a great First Man. And when I look at certain policy proposals supported by Hillary, such as a health care or insurance scheme for all Americans regardless of wealth, I am of the view that Hillary too could make a President who made a difference.

However, Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff had by this time already proceeded much further in their politicking, in a manner that must leave her husband despairing. She discussed the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the run up to the anniversary of his birth, and decided to give an ad hoc lecture on the importance of President Johnson in implementing civil-rights reform. Be it true that Martin Luther King could not alone in 1963 sway the politicians to support change. And it is one of those ironies of history that it was actually the career southern politician Lyndon Johnson, and not the dashing John Kennedy, who would actually turn out to care about civil rights and have the political skills to push them through Congress. Yet, to deny one of these facts over the other is to deny the obvious interplay between them. Historical factors do not work in isolation. Johnson knew very well his chance to pass the Civil Rights Act on 1964 depended on the up-swell of despair and human idealism that followed the death of a President and the mobilisation of that idealism by activists inspired by the speeches of hope given by Martin Luther King. Every one of those ordinary, extraordinary people who stood up and did something made a difference, as Johnson could refer to the popular movement and apply pressure to the stalwarts and cynics in the Congress.

Now, maybe Hillary Clinton, when she reflects a little out away from Washington, will come to see this, and the contribution of so many. What to say about the Clinton staff member, though, who briefed journalists that one reason not to choose Barack Obama as presidential candidate is that someone might want to assassinate him? Can the currency of civic duty be so debased that some would accept meekly the authority of an assassin to determine who should or should not stand in democratic election? And once again, skin colour stands as the shibboleth that America is too afraid to confront? No, too many times that has been allowed. No more, not this time.

I'm going to play Johnnie Taylor's I Could Never Be President, recorded in 1969. Johnnie is having one of those dilemmas we all have - should he be President and end discrimination and poverty, or spend time loving his woman. Or, in Bill's case, women. Now, I've gone through a half dozen changes of mind on what exactly this song is trying to infer in the light of recent events. It has the word President in it. Listen, then make a difference in your community, by using your voice and your vote. I Could Never Be President? Why the hell not?

Johnnie Taylor - I Could Never Be President (Stax 0046) June 1969

I'm sure this has been all over the press in the USA, but here is a link to a news report if you haven't heard the furor: Daily Telegraph report

Barefootin'! Or, How Cinderella Got Her Shoes Back

2007-12-31T14:16:00.000Z

UPDATE: All the songs should be up now, including the most excellent Miss Black America. Enjoy!

"Happy holidays and a Happy New Year! We hope you have enjoyed our program of westerns this afternoon. Now its time for our main feature of the evening. With apologies to the original rapper and Apollo MC, King Coleman, the Apollo Theater presents Barefootin'! "

"KING COLEMAN": "Thank you! Thank you! It's a joy to be here! If you don't dig it, don't knock it! Somebody else might wanna rock it! ‘Tis the season to be jolly, when Poison Ivy meets Buddy Holly. So find a seat that suits you fine, and enjoy a strangely soulful pantomime. Our story tonight is a real bestseller, about Cinderella and her fella. Though if she leaves that ball without a soul, man, look no further than this ole’ King Coleman! Now if things get crazy, holler out and tell her, let’s hear the tale of Cinderella!...

We begin our story here, in a dark and tragic room. Who’s this, about to dust my broom? Now, keep it clean, fellas – this is our future princess, Cinderella! You mind your mouth, she has some moves in her! With that broom she's her own Executioner!

She is clothed in rags, smudged in dirt and grime, she cleans the stage floor in double time, with a tear in her eye, and a weary sigh."

CINDERS: "I've been working on this stage for an age, earning less than a maid. All my life I've been shucked and shirked. A Fair Day's Pay For A Fair Day's Work!"

KING COLEMAN: "Now, you know me, I'm a real gent - but that don' t go likewise for the management! This hard life for Cinders, it takes me back - to Tennessee, to a cropper’s shack. Nutbush is the name they give it, and with it Cinders had reached her limit!”

Ike & Tina Turner – Nutbush City Limits (1973)

“Yeah, that’s right people! There's songs about this, and songs about that -- There's songs about people, big and fat!

In Kansas they have rainbows to take you far away; in Tennessee you have to deal with it, and live from day to day. This ain’t no fairytale, with ruby slippers, dogs and twisters! Aw hell, here they are, those put-you-down sisters!"

SISTERS: “Where you be at, baby sister? Scrubbing at floors? You gonna get blisters! Prince Charming just gave us a call, he says tonight we’re gonna have a ball. So you gonna help us, make us nice and fair, first of all, straighten out our hair! We don’t want to give him a fright, so make us out to be just like Snow White!”

KING COLEMAN: "So off they go, full of jubilation, while Cinders attends to her station."

CINDERS: "You know, I could do without that strife. Tomorrow is a new dawn, a new day, and a new life."

Nina Simone - Feeling Good

KING COLEMAN: “You know, Cinders ain’t got nothing to fear, ‘cause this is the time when I appear! There’s plenty a trick, Cinders, that I know – you shall go to the Apollo!”

CINDERS: "But my sisters, they all straight and fair; and I haven’t got a stitch to wear!"

KING COLEMAN: "I know what you’re really after, and I’ll give it like I was a Fairy Godfather! Come here, momma, quick, and I’ll bring you my magic stick!"

CINDERS: "Ole King Coleman, now you behave! I don’t need your magic stave! My Prince awaits me at the ball – I just need a dress and shoes, is all!"

KING COLEMAN: "Like an alley cat chasing a rat across a railroad track ... stay tuned, I will be right back!... now, here I am back again, before you knew I was gone – wear these high heeled sneakers and put that red dress on!"

Ike & Tina Turner – Hotpants/High Heeled Sneakers

"So you gonna have a ball, but remember this one thing right – the magic will end at ‘round midnight!”

"Put your left foot on the floor -- get out the front door. Rush, rush, rush -- get on that bus! If you wasn't on your heels -- you could be driving a brand-new automobile!"

The Kings Of Rhythm – Rocket ‘88

"So here we are at the Apollo, ready to enjoy the show! I’ll MC this thing, of course, and rock this pantomime by force! Cinderella is dressed to look alarming – and catches the eye of her Prince Charming! But by others she is also spied, by fine Jim Dandini at the Prince’s side!"

JIM DANDINI: “Be wild and free, but save the last dance for me!”

The Drifters – Save The Last Dance For Me

KING COLEMAN: "There she stands, in fine shoes and dress, yeah, and everyone gives cries of ‘Bless her!’”

Curtis Mayfield – Miss Black America

KING COLEMAN: "She has eclipsed, I should mention, her snow-white sisters, by hair extension!

Now, Everybody get on your feet. You make me nervous when you're in your seat. Take off your shoes and stamp your feet, and do the dance that can’t be beat!"

Robert Parker – Barefootin’

"The Prince has crossed the stage, after checking she is of legal age! Jim Dandy, looking quite dismayed, decides to end his Prince's masquerade. As Cinders begins to look closely, he is not what he appeared to be!"

PRINCE APOLLO: "Why look at you, I must confess, you are the image of a fine princess! Fine and dainty from head to your toes, you remind me of a fragrant rose. You are surely Harlem’s finest flower - I shall pluck you in the midnight hour!"

Wilson Pickett – In The Midnight Hour

CINDERS: "Can you keep up ‘till the midnight hour? I’ll take a rain check – you take a shower! Who’d have thought this Prince would be a creep – all your talk puts me to sleep! You got to be at least twice my age - I ought to sweep you right off 'a this stage!""

PRINCE APOLLO: "Come on, honey, don't be sore - what you think I pay you for?"

CINDERS: "Do you know why I really came here? To get what's owed to me fair and square. I came here tonight to sing and dance, but now that I have got the chance, although my clothes are rearranged, I see that nothing's really changed! You've got the money - we all doled it out - so treat me fair or I'll walk out!"

CINDERS: "All your patter makes my toes curl – the Prince Apollo is just the Duke of Earl. Amidst all this finery and bustle, all you got to show me is a Harlem shuffle! You really think that I would choose you? - I want to know is, who's behind you?"

KING COLEMAN: "Now while you all enjoy the pantomime, our Cinderella forgot about the time! Cinderella, you take flight! The clock strikes twelve, its ‘round midnight!"

Miles Davis & John Coltrane – ‘Round Midnight

"Look at that! I ain't gotta say nothing! Cinders is off and rushing! Put your flappers on the floor -- head out that front door!

In all her rushing out the door, she forgot her shoe upon the floor. Sparkling, shimmering, shining bright, Jim Dandy picks up the slipper light. For while he watched the prince preen and pout, he realised Cinders is something to shout about!"

The Rivileers – Who Is The Girl? (1954)

"Now the Prince Apollo has awoken, and these are the words that he has spoken:"

PRINCE APOLLO: "I woke up this morning/I was all alone/Because I discovered my woman had packed up and gone."

KING COLEMAN: "Feeling no pain, he scratches his head - and pushes the two sisters out of bed! For a moment, he thinks to linger – then spies a ring upon each finger! He hollers out to hail a carriage, to make escape from a sudden marriage!

Jim Dandy know what he has to do, he really should report the shoe. But rather than play second mate, he hides the shoe and changes fate! Leaving the Prince in the lurch, Jim Dandy goes to start the search! Leaving the Prince in the arms of others, Jim Dandy searches for his new lover! True love ain’t just for the boss; he deserves the double-cross! The Prince realises he has been cussed – who will find Cinderella first?"

Sam & Dave – Hold On, I’m Comin’!

"The sisters have made their own way home, and find Cinderella all alone. They see Cinder's dress, now all in tatters, and decide to scorn instead of flatter:

SISTERS: "They said the ball is over
And love is here to stay
You kitchen-working women
Sure did have your way
But it’s all over baby
Now you girls have got to pay"

KING COLEMAN: "Nothing has changed, no dream came true?
Hey wait – here’s Jim Dandy to the rescue!

Getting them both out the way, Jim steps right in to save the day!"

JIM DANDY: "Sisters, listen - if you show off a rock, you have the Prince in a marriage lock! If he wants two for the price of one, make him pay for what he's done. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- Hit 'em in the head with a cornbread crust!"

KING COLEMAN: Go Jim Dandy! You know what to do!
Go Cinders! Try on that shoe!"

LaVern Baker – Jim Dandy

JIM DANDY: “Cinderella, I’ll be your fortune teller – forget the Prince, I’m your fella! Muscle ain’t your hustle, your mind is your thing. Get up off of that floor, you can do anything. From this life you're freed, and for me, you're all that I need!"

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – You're All I Need To Get By

KING COLEMAN: "Everyone ends up together, Jim Dandy with his Cinderella. Everyone makes it, at a pinch – the sisters team up against the Prince. Now it isn't quite so funny, his money's spent on alimony. The moral of this story, as you already knew, to get what you want, to thine own self be true!"

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Bad puns and rhymes my own fault, of course - don't blame the real King Coleman! With some better ideas and rhymes from interviews with King Coleman, Shipyard Woman by Jim Wynn, and Weeping And Crying by King Coleman & The Griffin Brothers Orchestra. Apologies also for some missing songs at present - i've gone on holiday without them! They'll be up on Jan 2nd when I get back home! Also, read this interesting feature about the upcoming Disney cartoon "The Princess And The Frog" by Alan Jenkins at Tompaine.com, a film which will star their first black heroine. How will she be portrayed?

Ike Turner RIP: Kings Of Rhythm

2007-12-22T14:18:00.000Z

Ike Wister Turner, born Clarksdale, Mississippi, 5th November 1931, died December 12th 2007.

It is a wet Wednesday, March 3rd 1951, and Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm are travelling up from Clarksdale into Memphis in the back of a Chrysler. An acquaintance of theirs, Riley King, has just got signed to play blues at Modern Records, and they have been jamming with him at a club in Chambers, Mississippi. Riley, or B.B. as he is now calling himself, tells them to go visit Sun Studios, a record label run by Sam Phillips. They have a song that Ike has written the first verse for and the rest of the band are trying to come up with an ending before they get there, as they have nothing else to record. It is about Jackie Brenston's favourite car, the Oldsmobile Rocket '88. While they are throwing around ideas, there is a loud bang, and Johnny Dougan swerves the Chrysler to the side of the road. They hear a thud, and Willie Kizzert sees his amplifier lying in the road. The tire has burst and everything has come loose. After packing again, they continue, only to hear the siren of a patrol car a few miles further down Highway 61...

...The band begin to set up at 706 Union Avenue. Willie checks his amplifier and finds it damp and cracked, and rain has leaked into it! It starts to buzz and crackle as Willie plugs in his guitar, but there's nothing to be done, and when Willie plays a few licks, everyone kind of likes the 'fuzzy' sound. Ike sets himself up at the piano, while band saxophonist Jackie Brenston steps up to sing the vocal. Ray Hill, a young addition to the group, picks up the saxophone this time. Blow your horn, Raymond! They need some bass, but the double bass is too quiet, so Willie starts to pick out a bass line on his electric guitar strings, and the sound makes the room vibrate. Ike starts to play a stand-out piano intro, and the band kicks in...

Jackie Brenston And His Delta Cats (Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm) - Rocket '88

They cut a couple of more tunes, and they flip for whose name will appear on which side. Jackie gets his on Rocket '88. No problem, says Ike, you have that one, mine will be bigger. Sam releases it with another track with Ike's name on, but he knows already which side is going to hit... It's an r&b smash - and that rankles Ike for years, as he gave Jackie all of the song-writing credits too!

Now, nobody picks it up on the white radio, but Sam has heard something - a mix of jump blues and boogie-woogie - that he likes, and others, like Bill Haley and his Tennessee Boys, are listening hard too, taking it for a new sound.

They call it rock and roll, but Ike says its just what we always played, r&b, they just call it something different because when we play we're black and when they play it they're white. The Kings Of Rhythm are the hottest thing in Clarksdale, then Memphis, Granite City, then St Louis. They play with Ike pushing them on, in places where you mostly play non-stop, just one set, no breaks. It's a tough life, and the Kings of Rhythm change personnel from gig to gig. When somebody has to leave, somebody else has to jump in, play that part. Raymond subs for Jackie on sax, Bonnie Turner covers Ike on the piano, and Ike tries his hand at the guitar when Willie leaves. Ike's never really played guitar before now. In less than a year, Ike can play just like B.B. King, like John Lee Hooker, like Elmore James, like everyone he has played piano behind, and he still sees it as just something he has to do because he can't find someone else. He and Bonnie, his girlfriend, record tracks with different Kings Of Rhythm in a studio in Clarksdale that the Bihari Brothers have set up for Ike...

Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm - All The Blues, All The Time (Modern Records) 1954 (released on Crown Records LP Ike Turner Rocks The Blues 1963)

Ike Turner RIP: Growing Up In Clarksdale

2007-12-21T12:27:00.000Z

Ike Wister Turner, born Clarksdale, Mississippi, 5th November 1931, died December 12th 2007.

Let us go back to Clarksdale, Mississippi, back to around the year 1935. Ike lives in a small house ... Ike looks up. Somewhere outside in the street there is a disturbance. People are yelling for his father, baptist minister Izear Luster Turner. His father goes to the door and out onto the porch. He tries to reason with the assembled mob of white men, but they don't want to listen. They drag Reverend Turner and pull him onto the front lawn, where they begin to beat him mercilessly. Young Ike can see everything from his vantage point at the window, until his mother, Beatrice, drags him away. Finally, the men leave, satisfied that the minister will never again 'mess around' with white women. The Turner family emerge to tend to his grievous injuries, while a neighbour runs to find a telephone to call for an ambulance. None is willing to take him to the hospital nearby, because he is black. The family are forced to tend to him themselves, in their back yard, erecting a small tent over him as some kind of protection because he is too weak to move. Reverend Turner lasts three years like this, before finally submitting to his wounds...

It is 1940. Ike is on his way home out of school with is friend Ernest Lane. They get to Ernest's house, and there is a heck of a noise! Young Ike and Ernest stare through the window and see Mr Lane laughing and cheering, for Pinetop Perkins is banging the heck out of a piano! Soon Lane and Ike are inside the house at the end of the piano looking at him... Ike runs home to tell his mama, 'Mama, I want a piano!' Beatrice tells him: "Pass the third grade and bring me a good report card - I'll get you one." Ike works hard and one day there is a piano. Pinetop himself teaches both Ike and Ernest to play. Ike never forgets his kindness, for the rest of his life...

Pinetop Perkins & Ruth Brown - Chains Of Love

It is 1940, and home is full of surprises, but they are not always the kind you want. There is the woman who lives next door, the one who says she is his mother's friend. She says she will look after Ike when his stepfather comes home. Ike doesn't know which is worse anymore. Ike and his mother Beatrice live with one of a series of stepfathers. This one, like the rest, doesn't seem to want Ike around, and one night lashes out at him with a length of barbed wire for the yard fence. This time, Ike isn't going to take it. When the man drops his guard, Ike is ready with the nearest object to hand, and the nine-year old boy starts to pummel the grown man to the floor. If it is a father figure that Ike seeks from now on, it can be found in Pinetop, and the young blues players he starts to spend his time with around Clarksdale...

Young Ike has found a job manning the elevator at the Alcazar Hotel, working in the evenings after school. He thinks he was 8 years old, which makes it 1939, but others think he was at high school at Clarksdale High, which makes it at least around about 1947. It has to be because of what is about to happen. He takes a ride up to the second floor, where he sees a glass door leading into offices. The lettering on the glass door reads WROX Radio. There is a man, an African-American, behind the window.

His name is Early Wright. He is also known as 'The Soul Man' to his many night-time listeners, and is the first black radio announcer in Mississippi. "Hey, come in kid!", says Early to Ike, and the youth enters cautiously, yet fascinated by the surroundings. "Would you like to see how you 'hold a record'?", asked Early, and Ike just nods, staring at the turntables. "Sit there and hold this switch until the 45 that's playing stops, then turn the knob." Ike waits and turns, and the next record starts to broadcast across Clarksdale. "Good, kid, you got it." Early reaches over and presses the mike button to talk over. "That was a beautiful record I dropped on you for your listening pleasure." Ike is concerned. "Shouldn't you tell em the name of the record?", he queries nervously. "Nah," replies Early," They ought to know it already, and if they don't they'll phone in to find out, they'll beg us to tell them. You'll see. Try it again. I'm going over to get me some coffee..."

More Nugetre's Nuggets: Whatcha' Gonna Do?

2007-12-07T08:55:00.000Z

The tribute concert to commemorate the life of Ahmet Ertegun has been postponed until December 10th. The announcement that Led Zeppelin would reform to headline the show sent rock fans into a frenzy for a furious ticket lottery earlier this year, perhaps to the detriment of the memory of Mr Ertegun himself, who sometimes was barely mentioned in the news reports.

So here for your enjoyment are some more nuggets of Nugetre ("Ertegun" backwards), r&b authored by Ahmet himself, continuing the series I ran last November. Well, this selection has a few twists and turns, which took it past Ahmet along the way...

Whatcha Gonna Do by The Drifters was recorded on 2nd April 1954 and was released in February 1955 and featured Clyde McPhatter on lead vocals, and was to become the last single featuring him, as several other recorded tracks were then canned and kept for rainy days and b-sides. It reached No.2 on the R&B chart. It marked the end of Clyde's tenure with the group, as it had been intended to promote it as a commencement of his solo career. Then in July 1955 he was drafted.

This was the third time that the Drifters had recorded the song, the first time having been with the short-lived Mount Lebanon Singers line-up, the next time when Bill Pinkney and the Jerusalem Stars had come in to replace the Mount Lebanon Singers on 9th August 1953. So in a way the song had a history that spanned the entire period of the classic Drifters line-up. It also had a gospel past.

Whatcha Gonna Do was originally recorded by The Radio Four, and written by their lead singer Reverend Dr Morgan Babb. Ahmet had heard the gospel tune perhaps on the legendary radio show Ernie's Record Parade, John Richbourg's show on WLAC on a 50,00 watt signal out of Nashville, as Dr Babb also acted as a gospel A&R man for Ernie Young, founder of Nashboro and Excello Records, who was the show's sponsor.

This 45 was recorded at 535 Fourth Avenue South in Nashville and released in April 1953 on Tennessee Records subsidiary label Republic. The new subsidiary had been set up in summer 1952 on the back of the success of Christine Kittrell's single Sitting And Drinking. The five brothers in the group, of whom Dr Babb was the youngest, had been performing in various line-ups since the late 1930s. The Radio Four had an enviable reputation in the gospel circuit, regularly sharing billing with R.H. Harris' Soul Stirrers, and by chance happened to be double-heading the bill for Sam Cooke's first outing with the Stirrers. They recorded a kind of country gospel style, which related very much to the older brothers' former days in a popular jug band before their conversion to religion (appparently due to a bolt of lightning that nearly killed their father.) When Dr Babb joined his older brothers in 1950, he brought a emotive, soulful style of singing, which set them apart from the emphasis on technical singing found in the jubilee singing groups of the era.

This particular track also bore the name of Madame Edna Gallmon, a bone of contention for The Radio Four. Morgan Babb had helped her to get a chance singing with them at Tennessee, and coached her in technique to develop an up close and personal style of performance. The first recordings were released released as just by The Radio Four, as Tennessee were unsure whether to even sign her to a contract. When she was finally signed, not for the first time Tennessee wanted to use them as a backing group for the new 'star', and so The Radio Four stated that they would not be backing her in the future. Despite this, tracks like this one were later released and promoted with both Gallmon and The Radio Four's names. To add further salt to the wound, Dr Babb was never paid any royalties for the songs , like this one, that he wrote for Republic.

Listen to a rollicking, boogie-woogie number:

Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters - Whatcha Gonna Do (Atlantic 1055) 1955

And here is the gospel original:

Mdm Edna Gallmon Cook & The Radio Four - Whatcha' Gonna Do? (Republic Records 7067) 1953

OK, I can understand Led Zeppelin being on the bill. But Paolo Nutini?

I really enjoyed researching this little post, as I discovered so many connections between this and other artists I had researched in the past year. Information and images about The Drifters from Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks, a site I cannot stop reading! Information about The Radio Four comes from the liner notes of CD The Radio Four 1952-1954, written by Opal Louis Nations, which is also where I took the featured track from. The great gospel site Recordconnexion, written by Robert Termorshuisen, who got details from ''Gospel Music 1943-1969' by Cedric Hayes and Robert Laughton, is also a great resource. I also read about Dr Morgan Babb on the WLAC Fan Site. The Radio Four label scan and images come from Big Joe Louis and Robert Termorshuisen. The development of gospel in Tennessee is well documented by PBS in the article From Jug Band To Gospel by David Evans & Richard M Raichelson Also, visit this post at Red Kelly's gospel blog, Holy Ghost, to read a bit more about Nashboro Records.

The Night Beat: I'm Lost And Lookin' For My Baby

2007-11-30T09:17:00.000Z

Recorded for the Night Beat album in 1963, this song has an utterly compelling quality, as, just embellished by a bass and cymbal, the lilting voice of Sam Cooke perfectly putting across the sensation of a man haunted and put to distraction by love lost.

That is one of the remarkable qualities of Sam Cooke - his lyrics are always so direct. They simply tell you exactly what he wants to say, and his delivery is always meticulously pitched to convince you that he means it.

H W Saxton, writing at BC Music, suggests a similarity here between Sam's singing and that of Reverend Claude Jeter of the Swan Silvertones.

Written by Sam's faithful friend and partner J W Alexander, it was based upon a gospel song Alex had sung. You get the feeling that Sam is so much more comfortable with the material from these sessions. In some ways, Hugo and Luigi were perhaps hoping to package it as a kind of Frank Sinatra after-hours collection, but they too must have sensed that it was more than that. Here was Sam Cooke releasing an album even more firmly rooted in r&b and gospel, divested of the strings and things, and soaring at the top of the mainstream pop market. It was a testament to Sam's achievement and a stake to a claim to respect for black artists that went beyond the next 45. Some see a link between these February 63 sessions and the recording of A Change Is Gonna Come, possibly Sam's most transcendent song, a few months later.

Sam Cooke - Lost And Lookin' (from 'Night Beat' RCA LSP 2709) 1963

Information for this post garnered from Dream Boogie by Peter Guralnick, album liner notes and H W Saxton. Photo scanned from album back cover. Listen to the hiss from the vinyl!

It Was Just Past Closing Time: Laughin' And Clownin' With Sam Cooke

2007-11-23T18:55:00.000Z

"It was just past closing time when we dropped into the club to talk with Sam Cooke that night. 'Mr Soul' was singing for himself and for the small group of musicians who accompanied him. Standing to the rear of the club, we watched the young singer - tie off, jacket slung on a cane-backed chair - settle into a mood. We heard him sing through a smoky after-hours haze. The night's work was done. This was for the pure pleasure of performing..."

This was the way that Hugo And Luigi, successful hit-making pop producers working for RCA, described their first encounter with the live sound of the artist they had been trying to generate a pop hit for in the classic mould. They had gone to the Town Hill Club in Brooklyn in April 1960 to listen to Mr Sam Cooke:

"One song, two songs, and then even the waiters, busy with get-home chores, stopped work to listen. One by one they paused for a cigarette, pulled up a chair. Conversations lowed and ceased."

Hugo and Luigi were more accustomed to making mainstream pop that was successful and catchy. While they had dabbled in the r&b field with Della Reese, scoring a spectacular success with a r&b No. 1 and Pop No. 2, they had been struggling to understand what it was exactly about Mr Cooke. What were they not bringing out in the studio? Now they were experiencing the side to Sam's music that was not captured on any number of their records together to date...

"It was an experience to live through, to see Sam singing to a black audience... it seemed like it was effortless, the audience just loved every nuance, they fed on every little thing, they were enwrapt", recalled Luigi in an interview with renowned author Peter Guralnick.

Hugo and Luigi had been chosen by Sam because they could provide production values to complement Sam's music, make it successful in a mainstream pop market, without drowning it in traditional pop production. They sometimes did not necessarily connect with the deeper messages in some of Sam's songs, but on this occasion, they could sense that this was more than pop music for the sake of it. Soon after seeing Sam perform, they returned to the studio with a small band, like the one Sam had played with, and rerecorded Chain Gang, a pop classic with a personal message about the pain of incarceration. The hits, and a connection with the concerns of Sam Cooke, had been established...

Last summer, I did a post on poetry for a change. I chose Paul Lawrence Dunbar's classic, We Wear The Mask. I discussed briefly how Dunbar's work had impressed well-known black disc-jockey and black history collector Magnificent Montague, and set him upon his life-long and continuing journey to conserve the cultural heritage of African-Americans. What I did not know then was that it had also made an impact on his friend Sam Cooke, whose brother LC had sung in Montague's band The Magnificents.

In Peter Guralnick's frank and absorbing biography of Sam Cooke, Dream Boogie, he explains how Wear Wear The Mask inspired Sam to write Laughin' And Clownin', a track for Night Beat, the album he recorded in February 1963. It was his first LP with a small group backing, organised by close associate Rene Hall (as opposed to the strings arrangements Sam had gone for with most of his albums up to that point.) As an aside, Billy Preston, then just sixteen years old, is playing organ.

The song echoes the poem's themes of a hidden aspect of character for African-Americans, at a time when survival in white-dominated society required they conceal their true opinions. It was a way of coping with discrimination that everybody associated with Sam Cooke agree he simply would not accept. That was the truly inspiring thing about Sam Cooke, who had succeeded in becoming the most successful singer since Elvis on RCA, owner of his own record label, without ever compromising his beliefs or dignity.

Recalling that first time they went to meet Sam in a club, three years before, Hugo and Luigi wrote:

"What we witnessed that night was not a performance in the accepted sense. The effort had all of Sam's artistry and style, but there was something more intense and personal about it. Actually, we were eavesdropping on a top singer in those dark hours...
This, we know, is it. It's just past closing time, and Sam is singing for himself. There's an empty table over there. Welcome to Night Beat."

The mask is off, and it won't be worn.

Sam Cooke - Laughin' And Clownin' (Night Beat LP RCA LSP-2709) 1963

Liner notes written by Hugo and Luigi from the LP Nightbeat. Other information and quote from Luigi from Dream Boogie by Peter Guralnick, and Burn Baby Burn by Magnificent Montague and Bob Baker.

2007-11-23T18:00:00.000Z

Dear Reader, An Apology: Thank you for your patience in awaiting this latest post! I see each week how many people return regularly hoping to read and listen to some more good music, and I appreciate it. It has been an exhausting month! Sudden changes at my place of work lead to a phenomenal rush of activity and a heavy workload. I thought to post a few things I had been working on, but to be frank they were half-done, and it wouldn't have been fair not to put my best effort into the writing - after all, I can't take credit for the music! The majority of work tasks have now been done, and this means that I shall be posting more regularly from today!

"Dusty" Liverpool Soul: Chanting A Lover's Story

2007-11-04T13:07:00.000Z

This week, I'm featuring another single from Liverpool soulsters The Chants. I'm glad to be making a bit of a fuss about these guys, and I've noticed a little bit of interest in their music growing on both the Soul Source and Soulful Detroit forums. It seems that some of their RCA singles were a popular dancefloor hit on the Northern Soul scene back in the 70s. I'm brushing off a dusty, and slightly crackly 45 (yes, I believed an ebay vendor when they said VG++) But as it happens, dusty is exactly how it was supposed to sound...

This time, it's a single from 1967. The Chants' relationship with Pye had broken down very quickly, and they had moved on to Fontana Records and then to Decca. The producer here is Ivor Raymonde, who was a well-known arranger and former BBC musical director who had devised the arrangement for Dusty Springfield's 1963 hit I Only Want To Be With You, with its Phil Spector-like overloud orchestration giving it the impetus it needed, and had been guiding Dusty's career since then.

All the auspices might appear good, with a proven, experienced hit-maker producing Eddie Amoo's composition A Lover's Story, and providing one of his own, Wearing A Smile, for the b-side. Eddie Amoo has written a wonderful love song, with what may well be the first soul reference to a 'science-fiction book', though no George Clinton funk workouts here! The resulting single does sound lush and polished, and Raymonde gave the Chants the space on A Lover's Story to develop some interesting backing vocal lines on A Lover's Story to show off their harmony skills. However, the guys have to sometimes fight with the violins and flutes of Raymonde's powerful orchestral arrangement. Wearing a Smile is a more conventional pop tune, clearly in a Dusty style, that they perform magnificently, bringing it roaring to life, adding power and versatility to the singing that allows Raymonde to do away with some of the brasher orchestral musak. Sadly, once again, none of this made a difference when it came to getting a hit. Perhaps the Chants should have taken a leaf out of Dusty's book and moved on from Raymonde to try their luck in Memphis...

Instead it was time to move on, to Page One Records, home of numerous British psyche bands such as The Paramounts (soon to become Procul Harem) and The Troggs. However, once again, this move turned sour when Page One's first album release failed to sell, and seriously dented their available cashflow to release other records. The Chants were again not a priority, and moved on to RCA...

The Chants - A Lover's Story (A-side Decca 40923) 1967
The Chants - Wearing A Smile (B-side Decca 40925) 1967

Moving back to the present, Eddie Amoo has been recording with various local 'grime' and hip-hop artists from Toxteth, Rawface from Souls Rest, Laura Leigh, Chan, and The Grime Family to produce a CD of his Liverpool musical named after his Real Thing smash hit "Children Of The Ghetto", which I notice was dramatically less downloaded in my last Chants post (always scroll to the end!!!) Go to this MySpace site "Liverpool's Own" to keep up to date with news about this and other current Liverpool r&b trends (warning for us old folks, these youngsters do seem to enjoy their 'booty') ... Photos courtesy of Bill Harry and Spectropop.

Keep Believing, Keep Pushing: The Story Of Lou Pride

2007-10-21T11:48:00.000Z

The story of George Lou Pride begins in Chicago's North Side on 24th May 1950, when he was born. He performed a solo at grade school and became hooked on music! Along with his family, support came from local pastors Reverend Charles L Fairchild, and Reverend Edward J. Cole of the First Baptist Church. Father of singer Nat King Cole, Reverend Cole gave Lou advice about music as well as spiritual advice, and encouraged him to sing in the choir, directed by his wife Perlina. Lou recalls meeting Nat many times and greeting him in the street, and spent many days at the Cole house playing marbles with Natalie Cole, but it was BB King who was his biggest influence.

In the late 60s, Lou was drafted into the US Army, and spent two years on bases in Germany, where he joined a group called The Karls. After leaving the army, he returned to Chicago, and formed a Sam & Dave style duet with a friend called LC, called LC & Lou (some sources claim that Lou was singing with and married to a woman known as 'JLC', but in Drew Vergis's interview Lou clearly states otherwise). After LC left the group to get married, Lou's manager Jim Dorman persuaded Lou to start a solo career. He decided to move to a new life in El Paso, Texas, where they thought they could get a deal with some friends.

Lou met a friend of Jim's, Kenny Smith, in an El Paso restuarant. Kenny was sure from the start that Lou was going to make fantastic music: "Lou Pride is one of the best people I have ever dealt with over the many years I have been involved in the music business." He decided to sign Lou to Suemi Records (their publicity tag-line read: "If you don't like it, sue me!"), which he co-owned with Bill 'Sparks' Taylor, and which had recorded a variety of country and rockabilly artists, and had some success with Bobby Fuller. When Lou arrived at their Tasmit Studio, Kenny was impressed and excited:

"He showed up to our studios wanting to put out a record of his band "The Funky Bunch" and I was glad to have a different type band play in the studio. They had horns and I had never dealt with horns before."

The Funky Bunch were a group of Lou's aquaintances from the nearby Fort Bliss army base. While he was astounded by their musicianship, Kenny wasn't so impressed with their name, and began searching for a better one. He thought wrongly that Lou billed himself as 'The Groove Merchant', so when it came to naming the band for the 45, The Groove Merchants was printed on the label.

Just 500 copies were pressed, and most were sold just in the local area. While the single never broke nationally, it was played frequently by Johnny "T" Thompson, a DJ at the time (who himself recorded songs such as So Much Going For You on Chess Records, the Top 20 hit Main Squeeze and Given Up On Love on New Miss Records, and more recently performed with the late Bill Pinkney in the Original Drifters). It provided Lou with regular bookings on the chittin' circuit across Texas. Lou explained to Drew Vergis how "the old hard-time crusty promoters" in Texas helped him hone his stage performance: "Percy told me one day, 'Boy, you're pretty good son, but you stay on stage too long! Get off the stage , son!'" That of course, led him to spend more and more nights away from his family home on the road. Despite this, Kenny describes Lou thus: "Lou was and still is one of those people that never complains and is always in a positive mood."

For the next Lou Pride session, Bill Taylor used his contacts through his uncle, who owned the distributor Hot Line Music Journal in Memphis and owned some stock in Hi Records, to arrange studio time at Willie Mitchell's Royal Studio. It is here that Lou recorded his funky, uptempo version of It's A Man's Mans World, backed by the Hodges Brothers and Howard Grimes. Sadly, it would be a short interlude, as Lou's family commitments life made extended trips away increasingly difficult.

Lou would continue to record for Suemi for another year, back in El Paso. I told some of the story of Lou's classic Northern Soul hit I'm Com'un Home In The Morn'un last year in another post. It highlighted the difficulties Lou was facing in trying to recording in El Paso, for Suemi, tour and gig to make money, and still make visits to his new girlfriend and to his family and children living up in Chicago. According to Kenny Smith, just 500 copies again were pressed. Ironically, had half of the thousands of UK bootlegs been genuine, Lou Pride would have been able to put his financial worries behind him, but Suemi Records had no idea that anyone in England had even heard of it. Instead, Lou, now a single father raising his young children, devoted himself to supporting them by keeping up his touring and live performances at jazz and blues festivals. As Lou describes it in an interview with Drew Vergis; "I was doing good on the road, then my mother got sick, and then things just fell apart!" In the late 70s, he returned to Chicago to visit his sick mother. She told him to go visit the Reverend Fairchild, in the church not 25 yards from his front door:

"My pastor Reverend Fairchild, Curtis [Mayfield], Marvin [Yancy], Kevin Yancy, Natalie [Cole], my mom, all of them grew up together, and I said to my parents “Man I need a record deal!” He [Reverend Fairchild] said , “Well come on, come on, go to Atlanta with me." He said, "You'll need some hotel money", so I went down there, and he fed me and took good care of me , and he said, "Go to your room , I'll call you when I need you." I didn’t know what was goin' on, and he called the room the next day and said, "Come downstairs, someone wanna meet you", and Curtis Mayfield’s sitting in the room! You know how your mouth just drops? There's nothing to say but "How you doin', Curtis, I love you and admire you." By them being friends the Rev erend just says, "Curtis - the man needs a record deal", so Curtis says,"Can you sing?" "Yeah, sure, he sang in my choir!" So Curtis says I’ll give him a record deal!"

Curtis was impressed with Lou, and they were working on an album for Curtom Records , writing half of the songs each, up until Curtis Mayfield's accident in 1985. Several of those songs appeared later on CDs, as Lou continued to work with colleagues of Curtis with his support. "I never ever saw him with sadness on his face" recalls Lou. It seems to be a temperament they have had in common.

And Lou is still recording, now with Severn Records with labelmates such as Johnny Jones, formerly of the King Kasuals, and still touring. Speaking of his first tour in England in 2003: "When I got there it was an amazing sight for me, people just wanted to touch me and take pictures of me,and oh god, it was just beautiful man!"

Back to the beginning of the story, in El Paso with those 'Groove Merchants', and then the b-side to Lou's funky It's A Man's Man's World:

The Groove Merchants (Lou Pride & The Funky Bunch) - There's Got To Be Someone For Me (Suemi 4557)

Lou Pride - Your Love Is Fading (Suemi 4571 B)

Buy CDs of Lou Pride's recordings from Severn Records. Jazzman Records also sell a vinyl special edition containing three reissue singles. A recorded interview with Lou Pride from 2004, by Drew Vergis, can be heard at DirtyDj.com. Quotes by Kenny Smith come from the Suemi Records website. Further information about Lou Pride comes from liner notes to Lou Pride: The Suemi Sessions, written by Kym Fuller and 'Jazzman' Gerald Short. Check out Vincent's FuFu Stew at the moment for a fabulous link to Natalie Cole Live. Unverified 'JLC' story credited to Andrew Hamilton of the All Music Guide...

Return Of The Groove Merchant: Lou Pride Is Back!

2007-10-20T16:51:00.000Z

I am in a groove this week, and the posts keep coming...

Great news for soul fans! The Groove Merchant, Lou Pride, is back in concert in the

this month. Sadly he isn't coming my way again to Brighton, but he will be at the following venues:

Oct 24 Canterbury Festival Club (St Alphege's Church) 01227 378188
Oct 25 London 100 Club 0208 460 6941
Oct 26 Stamford Arts Centre 01780 763203
Oct 27 Penrith Playhouse 01228 409795
Oct 28 Newcastle, The Cluny 0191 230 4474

Thanks to Harry Lang on the Yahoo Southern Soul Forum for tipping us all off to this!

99 1/2 Just Won't Do: Brown Eyed Has Got To 100!

2007-10-18T17:51:00.000Z

I have let another milestone pass me by... my post about The Chants was in fact my 100th published post.! With all of the half-started posts strewn in my blogger dashboard, I never realised...

To help me celebrate it, here is the late, the great, the wicked Wilson Pickett, to sing that ode to perfection, 99 1/2 Won't Do. I just hope 102 is enough! Accompanying him, The Alabama Christian Movement For Human Rights Choir sing the hymn and freedom song from which Pickett, Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper took their inspiration.

In the summer of 1963, in the midst of the gruelling Birmingham, Alabama protests co-ordinated by Rev Fred Shuttlesworth of the ACMHR and Rev Martin Luther King of the SCLC, the Alabama Christian Movement Choir perfomed nightly at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in support of the protests. According to historian Wilson Fallin Jr: "In two organizations within the ACMHR, women made up the majority of the members. The ACMHR choir, formed in 1960, was intended to enhance the spirituality of the Monday night meetings. Twenty-three members formed the group. Most were Baptist women who sang in their church choirs and were accustomed to singing songs similar to those sung by the movement choir, including spirituals and gospel hymns. They sang "God Will Make a Way Some How," Walk with me Lord," and "Ninety-Nine and a Half Won't Do." One member of the choir remarked that "the choir sang with faith in God knowing that his power worked through their songs to give courage." In the mass meetings, female singers allowed their emotions to take over, and on many occasions, they had to be restrained by the ushers."

Choir conductor Carlton Reese adapted the lyrics to add new civil-rights phrases to a popular gospel song sung by Mother Katie Bell Nubin (mother of even more famous Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Reese is leading the singing, backed by a powerful thumping Hammond organ. This version was recorded by folk singer Guy Carawan. The recording served a dual purpose, giving nightly hope and strength to those taking part in the protest, but also as a conscious element of Project C, a strategy to confront the racialist system of segregation in the city head-on in a high-visibility strategy that would engage the entire nation. The singers themselves faced intimidation and arrest. Cleopatra Kennedy was 20 years old in 1963 when she sang solos for the choir. She recalls what it was like the first time she was sent to jail: "That first time, she was in jail for 14 days, but the group sang songs and stomped their feet on the iron beds to make their music. "Singing songs was our way of keeping our self-esteem up, of washing away fear," she says. The day after she was released, she went back on the picket line." When Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed in April of that year, local liberal white church leaders wrote to him urging him to tone down the movement's activities, calling them "unwise and untimely". His response was the famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail, with his powerful riposte: "For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." The situation would become even more ense later in that year, with the use of dogs and fire hoses against student and youth protestors, and the bombing of the 16th Street Church during a Sunday school session, with the tragic death of four children. It was in trying times like these that freedom songs could give hope and inspiration.

Jump forward in time two years, to May 1965. Wilson Pickett arrived in Memphis courtesy of Jerry Wexler, who was sure that The Little Label That Could had the spark he needed to secure Pickett, former member of The Falcons, an elusive r&b hit. Pickett sat down with Steve Cropper, and within a matter of half-an-hour, they had come up with In The Midnight Hour and Don't Fight It, both taking the behind-the-beat Stax sound in a new direction by incorporating a behind-the-beat 'Jerk' rhythm. Not a bad night's work! So pleased was he with the sessions, that he sent each of the MGs a $100 thank-you gift.

Wexler and Pickett were eager to return in October and again in December 1965. Eddie Floyd, Wilson's old partner from The Falcons, Steve Cropper, keen to earn some more songwriting money, and Donald Dunn, impressed with Pickett's vocal ability, were all pleased to see him again. Jim Stewart was less keen, perhaps fearful that Atlantic Records were borrowing too much of the Stax sound. The MGs were joined this time by Isaac Hayes, brought in to play piano while Booker T Jones was at college. The new sessions were more difficult, as the group felt the pressure to reproduce what they had achieved in May. Nervous about the prospect, Steve Cropper turned to the experienced Eddie Floyd for advice about songwriting. Cropper said in an interview with Gerry Hershey: "He had been on the stage, and he knew what was going on... He was real helpful to me. Eddie knew the pulse on the street, he knew the pulse of the ghettos of Chicago and Detroit, and I didn't know jack shit about that..."

Eddie Floyd and Cropper had been working on a new song for a whole week, 634-5789, before Wilson arrived back in Memphis on 19th December. After hearing a tape, a clearly tense and nervous Pickett let fly: "This is it? This is my hit tune? It's a piece of shit!" Eddie Floyd had to be prised off his old buddy! But apparently, it had been no different in the old days with The Falcons...

Later on that day, Wilson had calmed down, and so had Eddie, so they went over to Pickett's hotel to write something else. Eddie and Steve noticed a Coca-Cola billboard, with the slogan 'Ninety-Nine And A Half Won't Do.' Recalling the gospel tune and the freedom song, and with Eddie suggesting they add that stop-start behind-the-beat jerk feel, soon Pickett had another classic in the can, so to speak!

The songwriting and recording relationship was sometimes explosive but always professional, and could have produced even more hits, had not Jim Stewart become uncomfortable with the amount of studio time devoted to an Atlantic artist. Citing Pickett's 'drunkenness' (an assertion that Cropper and others hotly dispute, citing Pickett's sober dedication to every session), Stewart packed Pickett and Jerry Wexler back to New York. It was time for them to try to find similar magic at FAME Studios...

The Alabama Christian Movement Choir - 99 1/2 Won't Do

Wilson Pickett - Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)

Read A Letter From A Birmingham Jail here...

Information from Soulsville: USA by Rob Bowman, Nowhere To Run by Gerry Hershey, and liner notes of Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966 by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Phyllis May. Wilson Fallin's article about the ACMHR and the role of women in the organisation can be found here. Visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to read more and to study eye-witness accounts of events from 1956-1963. Quote from Cleopatra Kennedy from an interview for Baylor University magazine.

Isaac On His First Go Round: Sir Isaac & The Doo-Dads

2007-10-14T12:24:00.000Z

In 1962, Isaac Hayes was graduating Manassas High School in Memphis, and contemplating whether to find a way to study for his early ambition of becoming a doctor, find a steady job at a local meat-packing company to support his young family, or to pursue a career in music...

After a guidance counsellor at school had persuaded him to enter a talent concert, which he won by singing Nat King Cole's "Looking Back", Isaac had begun to learn the baritone and alto sax with Lucian Coleman, and had begun to make contacts with some of Memphis' premier musicians, whom he would watch as they turned up to play at the clubs on Thomas Street in the 'North Chicago' district of Memphis.

In 1961, in one version of the story, he impressed respected band leader Ben Branch while singing "The Very Thought Of You" by Arthur Prysock, after being snuck into Currie's Club Tropicana, and sang three nights a week with the band for the next two years - backed by Branch, Floyd Newman on alto sax, Emerson Able on tenor sax, Larry Brown on bass guitar, Eddie Jones on piano, Herbert Thomas and Herman Green on trumpets, Big Bell James on drums, and Clarence Nelson on guitar. However, in another version of the story, told by band-member and eye-witness Howard 'Bulldog' Grimes over here at the amazing blog Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound, it was thanks to the rest of the band and Mr Johnnie Currie, the club owner, and a lot of shouting in the kitchen, that Ben Branch even allowed Isaac up on stage! As it turned out, Ben had been wrong, and Isaac was a great hit, singing Brook Benton's "Just A Matter Of Time"!

Isaac also sang gospel with The Morning Stars, and doo-wop with The Ambassadors, The Teen Tones and The Missiles, played r&b with Calvin & the Swing Cats, before graduating, and his singing was so good that he had been offered many college scholarships to study vocal music. Amongst those who had encouraged Isaac at the school was Emerson Able, school band teacher and tenor sax player with Ben Branch, who is featured here at Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound, and is recovering from a recent heart attack. At one point, the story goes, Emerson actually kicked Isaac out of the school band to get him to focus more, perhaps to remind him that playing nights wit Ben Branch and himself wasn't going to be enough without an education! Manassas High School is where Isaac Hayes chose to place his historical marker, in thanks for the encouragement they gave him. He continues to support the school in many ways, including attending events during Black History Month (in the photo below Isaac is standing with Dr Linkwood Williams, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American pilots and officers of WWII)

However, in need of money, he had to turn them all down and started work full-time at the processing plant. It was only by chance that Isaac heard of an opportunity to perhaps continue in music. Sidney Kirk persuaded him to go down to Chips Moman's American Sound Studios for an audition for Chip's new Youngstown Records label.

Sir Isaac & The Doodads - Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round (A-side) Youngstown 1962
Sir Isaac & The Doodads - Sweet Temptation (B-side) Youngstown 1962

Moman decided to record them performing Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round by Patti Ferguson, and Sweet Temptations by Merle Travis. The band was Isaac on vocals, Sidney on piano, Ronnie Capone on drums, and Tommy Cogbill on bass, while apparently, those sweet, tempting backing singers are in fact Isaac himself on an overdub. Isaac's singing on Laura demonstrates a purity and honesty in his tenor range, while Sweet Tmeptation begins to reveal the earthiness and allure possed by his baritone voice, which would later become his trademark. Sadly, the record went nowhere at the time, but Isaac Hayes turned up nearly every evening after work to learn more about recording from Chip, and hoping to get more work, perhaps as a backing singer or saxophonist. Just before Christmas, Sidney Kirk decided to quit music and go into the Air Force. And it was ironically the loss of his partner that set Isaac Hayes on the route to success. Fanny Kirk phoned him just before New Year to see if he knew a piano player for the New Year's Eve party at The Southern Club. Getting desperate for money, Isaac found himself saying that he would play the gig:

"After I accepted it, I broke into a cold sweat ... I was scared to death. I said "What am I doing? I don't know how to play piano. They gonna kill me!"

Read what happened next here from an excerpt of Rob Bowman's Soulville USA: The Story of Stax Records...

Buy Soulsville USA. Now!

Information and photos for this post come courtesy of Rob Bowman's research, and the dedication of Scott and Preston Lauterbach at Lost And Found: The Memphis Sound. The recordings here are from a reissue by San American records (#950), of Little Rock Arkansas, where Joe Lee was sound engineer and did some work with Allen Orange in the 70s. Go over to the Soul Detective to read more about this...

More Soul Britannia: The Chants Of Liverpool 8

2007-10-06T07:57:00.000Z

Time for some more Soul Britannia, and we are returning to Toxteth, Liverpool, to continue the story of The Chants...

As the excellent Soulpool website explains, and as discussed in a previous post, the musical heritage of Liverpool and the origins of the Merseybeat explosion have deep roots. Some of those roots were drawing nutrients from the singing groups and bands of Toxteth, Liverpool 8, an area of Liverpool with a large Caribbean population long pre-dating the Windrush generation. Local halls such as the Nigerian, the Sierra Leone, Stanley House, the Rialto Ballroom, and the All Nations, built by the Toxteth community, or the White House pub, were popular venues for local people to hear r&b, and a big draw to black GIs from RAF Burtonwood. Some of the key r&b acts of the late 50s and early 60s - Derry Wilkie, Sugar Dean and Colin Areety, The Sobells, The Conquests, The Poppies and The Chants - all came from Toxteth.

It was in this environment that The Shades - Joe and Edmund Ankrah, Nat Smeda, Alan Harding and Eddie Amoo - honed their craft, enough to be noticed by the young and eager Paul McCartney, who met Joe Ankrah in a New Brighton ballroom, and invited them to come along to The Cavern. The other Beatles were equally enthusiastic, and they decided to play behind as the backing band. The response from the audience was enough to convince Epstein to sign the renamed Chants, but it would not be the magical mystery tour of fame that they had expected. Rather, they would take the long and winding road to the real thing...

Despite Epstein's management, nothing seemed to happen for The Chants through early 1963, and as they continued to miss the wave of the Mersey Sound, they managed to convince a clearly-disinterested Epstein to release them from their contract. They had to go to Manchester to find Ted Ross, who arranged a record deal with Pye Records in London in April 1963. Such a journey to find musical success was not at all unusual in the British music industry, which was overwhelmingly centred on the capital for many decades. It would, however, leave The Chants particularly isolated from the musical influences and musicians that underpinned their vision for themselves.

The Chants - I Could Write A Book
The Chants - I Don't Care

Pye Records, a big industry hitter which was trying to embrace this new youth fashion for 'beat' music, were not an r&b label. 'They had no idea what to do with a black doo-wop group, they just had no idea.' recalled Eddie Amoo in an interview. While other r&b groups, for example The Kinks, could turn up at Pye and just start playing the way they wanted to sound, The Chants, as a harmony singing group, suffered from the need to rely upon the hired musicians and arrangements designed by people unfamiliar with all of the nuances of doo-wop and r&b. Eddie in another interview explained the impact this had upon them:

"But in that era - late 60s, the very early 70s - most black bands in this country that were recorded were recorded like white bands, and they sounded like white bands. They used to record The Chants like a white pop band, which we weren't. We weren't musically adept enough in them days to establish what we really wanted ourselves - we weren't musicians then."

Eddie talks with some bitterness about this upon the career of The Chants, but at the end of the day, the other musicians could only bring the influences they had to the table, and that seems to have extended only as afar as the latest releases of the 'beat' and 'mod' scene - r&b influenced, to be sure, but too adulterated for what The Chants wanted. You do sense that Eddie is directing his ire more at their management and at A&R at Pye itself, who either from benign ignorance, or paternal condescension, did not put enough thought into how The Chants worked best, and didn't hire the kind of arranger and band that would have made a difference. With Pye unaware of The Chants best interests, as Eddie admitted, they were also too inexperienced to know how to ask for what they wanted.

So, during the 1960s, you can hear the sound of The Chants changing with the dominant trends of 60s British pop, and changing accompaniment, from Merseybeat ballads to psychedelic-tinged pop in the late 60s. Live, they continued to attract a loyal following, regularly performing at venues such as The Twisted Wheel in Manchester and touring Europe, where they played alongside Curtis Mayfield and The Four Tops at US Army bases in Germany. Whatever they tried, however, they still could not break into the pop market for commercial success. It is not entirely clear that even if they had hit the magic formula, that they would have profitted from that success. Geno Washington, who despite low single sales made a success of a series of 'live' albums, cashing in on his immense popularity on the live circuit, became embroilled in a legal fight over the royalties he was owed by Pye, a battle he lost and saw him bow out at the end of the 60s.

In their singles of the late 60s, The Chants developed messages into a number of their songs, perhaps in part inspired by the problems and barriers they had tried to overcome in their career. For the community of Toxteth, they continued to be feted, and in particular, local MP, 'Battling' Bessie Braddock, had strongly supported them ever since their first recording.

The Chants - Progress

The Chants - You Don't Know What I Know

Throughout all of this, The Chants had to also make a living. Increasingly, they took bookings to perform less at the cutting edge of soul, and more on the cabaret circuit of popular standards mixed with a few of their Mersey hits. This way, the rest of the Chants could continue in music and put food on the table, but for Eddie Amoo, it was not what he had dreamt of. He began to perform less and less with The Chants, and made his way back to Toxteth, where he discovered a new possibility unexpectedly close to home. His younger brother Chris had formed his own band...

"The Real Thing started out with three people, then went to five, then they dropped two out and by 1975 they'd become a trio - Ray, Dave and Chris. But by then Chris [Amoo] and I had started to write together. I wrote the first three Real Thing singles. I was still with The Chants, but I was writing for The Real Thing, because The Chants were no longer a vehicle for the songs I was writing - The Chants were doing cabaret, and The Real Thing were able to play these songs live, so I was writing and giving the songs to Chris."

The Real Thing were more fortunate than The Chants had been in that they were able to secure the services of some people with experience of soul music, in the form of songwriter Ken Gold, who had written songs for Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson and Eugene Record, and producers such as Jerome Rimson, who had played with The Detroit Emeralds, Hugh Masekela and others. They also had the experience of Eddie Amoo, who wrote many of The Real Thing hits with his brother, to steer them away from decisions that might stymie their career.

Such considerations were important, for essentially, the mass commercial appeal of 'soul music' had begun to dissappear not long after the 'mod' heyday of 1965-66, and by 1967, new influences focused more on the psychedelic scene had taken their place in British youth culture. It is important to remember that youth cultures in those times were not fuelled by 20 and 30-somethings living an eternal youth, but by teenagers just entering the world of work. In 1970, 95% of people under the age of 45 in Britain were married, and embarking on a new family life, which did not involve following the latest musical trends. An entire generation who had been inspired somewhat by soul music had essentially 'grown up' and settled down, sometimes casually tuning into Tony Blackburn on Radio 2 to hear some old Motown hits. It wasn't until the mid 70s that a new disco-influenced soul began make an impression on the record-buying public, who were by then a quite different generation of teenagers.

This time, the band set out deliberately to write those hit records, and they succeeded time after time, with classic disco soul like You To Me Are Everything and Can You Feel The Force in which even Pye Records could not fail to see the potential. Beneath the surface of success, however, the band yearned to venture further into funk and to write lyrics with a wider meaning. By the mid 70s, racial tensions in Toxteth were building to levels not experienced since 1948, despite the outlawing of overt racial discrimination The Race Relations Act. Britain was in the midst of yet another period of economic decline after a short respite of the early 70s, Merseyside itself was suffering a major slump, and many people looked around for easy explanations. While small in actual number, the National Front were a prominent and highly vocal group, and their activities in the mid 1970s validated a much larger swathe of petty prejudices amongst white Britons. Levels of unemployment were higher in Liverpool 8 than in the surrounding districts, as people struggled. Housing, welfare and education in Toxteth was maintained badly by a bankrupted council increasingly preoccupied by ideological disputes about socialism. Meanwhile, Merseyside Police were becoming increasingly heavy-handed with the application of stop and search powers. It was in this environment that The Real Thing wrote their masterpiece, Children Of The Ghetto. Sadly, the song's call for action to change conditions were ignored, and political interest in the difficulties of Liverpool 8 would only be pricked by the Toxteth Riots in 1981.

The Real Thing - Liverpool Medley: Liverpool 8/Children Of The Ghetto/Stanhope Street

Today, Joe Ankrah, who also left The Chants in the 1970s to perform with Ashanti with brother Edmund, is a respected artist, working and living in Liverpool 8. Eddie and Chris Amoo still tour with The Real Thing. Bizarrely, one of their former tour bassists, Des Tong, went on to form a computer company, and devised some of the motion-capture technology that is used in film and animation today.

Information about the Chants came from excellent articles by Bill Harry, Des Tong, and The Soulpool website. Bessie Braddock photo by Bert Hardy/Getty Images. Chants photos courtesy of Bill Harry and Des Tong. Dave Haslam has written a particularly good article and interview with Eddie Amoo about The Real Thing. You can buy "The Real Thing: Children Of The Ghetto - Greatest Hits" direct from itunes.

Chewing The Bacon Fat: Andre Williams

2007-09-22T09:10:00.000Z

Andre Williams began his career in music singing with groups like The Cavaliers in Chicago on creatively extended weekend furloughs from the Navy, where he served alongside a young Redd Foxx, and when he was discharged for being only 15, he tried his fortunes in Detroit - at the little Fortune Records label, located behind a barbershop.

Here is where he gained his opportunity to gain experience of song-writing, and more importantly, of studio production: "...not only figuring out how records was made, it brought me to the realization that I could write! I didn't have no prior musical training, but I could put those damn songs together in five or ten minutes."

Andre got busy creating dozens of hit records, and he began each with the same concept in mind: " I'll tell you somethin' fellows, the first line of communications was the drums. That was in Africa, the Congos, the Mongos, and all them 'gos. When they was doin' communications, it was with the drums. So if I could get a drum rhythm which captivates people and put a hell of a story on top of it, I can't lose. And that's where I went."

That was the concept behind such hits at Fortune as Bacon Fat and Jail Bait. Recorded in 1957, they stand out for their take on the seamy side of life, and for Williams vocal delivery. How did Bacon Fat's lyric come about?:

"When I came up with "Bacon Fat" I was travelling from Detroit to Memphis. That's when I knew that I had to come up with a gimmick. So I stopped in Memphis and I got an egg and bacon sandwich - on toast! I'm driving and a lot of places where we used to travel, it was only a two lane highway so you'd see the cotton pickers on both sides and I'm driving and [starts tapping a beat on his thigh, starts humming] "Down in Tennessee... and the name of the dance is..." and I had the sandwich in my hand and there it came, "The Bacon Fat!"

As for the talking style, often cited as a forerunner of rap, it came partly from necessity, and partly from Andre spotting how to make his own mark: "With all these guys singing acapella, I knew I couldn't cut the mustard with that. I've always been a survivor; I've always been able to look ahead and see disaster coming. I said to myself, "Andre, you gon' have to come up with a gimmick, or these people are gonna spot you, and you gonna go down the tubes, because you cannot sing like these people. You ain't no Clyde McPhatter, you ain't no Nolan Strong, you ain't Pookie Hudson, you cannot sing like these guys. You gotta come up with somethin'...Nobody knew that I was gonna talk this record...They pressed the record and, bingo, that was it! I said, "Okay, now I got it; now the only thing I got to do is talk about all these bad times that I had, and I should be able to have me a lengthy career."

Sadly, according to the research of Marv Goldberg, who has interviewed many of the people involved, Bacon Fat did not lead to fame and fortune for all of its participants. For the singing group The 5 Dollars, for whom Andre was supposedly a nominal fifth member, and who had written the tune and sung the backing vocals, it threw fat on the fire in their relationship with Fortune. When the record actually was released, it was no longer Andre Williams and The Five Dollars (or even 'The Don Juans', the pseudonym Andre had encouraged them to adopt for some of their recordings and shows - wearing handkerchief masks) but Andre Williams & His New Group - and the backing voices were somebody else. They belonged to another Detroit group, The Dexatones. The original take with the 5 Dollars does somewhere exist, since Fortune Records used to keep the tapes running constantly to capture anything they might use for a quick release. However, the version we all know is the one released on Columbia/Epic.

In 1961, he met up with Berry Gordy, and was hired to act as both an A&R man, writer and producer. It seems to have been a kind of love-hate relationship!:

"I could never conform to his way of doing business, and I could never be a yes-man and suck up to him, so he fired me! But when he'd fire me, then he'd get a guilty conscience or something, and he call me back. I'd go back and work maybe six or seven months, then mess up again and he'd fire me again …" Despite the temporary disagreements over business, Gordy could not deny the genius that Andre brougth to Motown, and Andre produced dozens of hits for the likes of Mary Wells, The Contours, Stevie Wonder, and later for groups like The Chi-Lites.

So when Andre Williams knew when he encountered Alvin Cash and his brothers in the Budland Dance Club, he knew that he had another vehicle for his unique style of rhythm-heavy, direct vocals r&b, and the Cash brothers should have realised their good fortune. Sadly, it seems that Alvin Cash didn't feel the same about his mentor. Andre Williams explains in an interview with Joss Hutton for furious.com in 2001: " I wrote the song ["Shake A Tailfeather"] originally for the Five Du-Tones, a vocal band and I also recorded it with Alvin Cash (and the Registers). I also did "Twine Time" with him. When I cut Alvin and I got a hit on him, the same way the American system works, the white boys moved in and he chose a white producer. You know, "We're gonna make you a star, why don't you go with us?" and then, when comes session time, Alvin doesn't want Andre to produce it. What a dumb motherfucker! I mean, I would've always stuck with the cat that got me there in the first place! But he wanted to go with them. Alvin needs producing 'cause there's no talent there, he's just a voice on a record you know!" Even if Alvin didn't realise what Andre could do with a record, others like Berry Gordy, watching a Williams song hit for another label, certainly did!: "Berry'd send a telegram sayin', "Come back to Detroit!" (laughs) You know? Everytime I'd catch a hit like "Twine Time," he'd send for me, because he didn't want his soldiers out there. He was a selfish cat."

Andre Williams took that genius for hit-making on to Chess and Duke-Peacock before things got out of his control after a gruelling 18-month stint working with Ike Turner led to a spiral of drug addiction, and eventually saw Andre homeless. In the mid 90s, Andre Williams was back recording. On his latest album in an ongoing career, Andre hired guitarist Bobby Quine. Bobby Quine is quoted as saying: "Now I've worked with two geniuses: Lou Reed and Andre Williams."

Funny he should say that...
Williams idiosyncratic vocal delivery seems to have had an influence in one of the unlikeliest of places. A young guitar player from Long Island, soon to make his way to New York City to become a company songwriter for Pickwick Records in the Brill Building, absorbed a great deal of ideas and techniques from listening to songs like Bacon Fat and Jail Bait. Lou Reed, soon to form the avante-garde rock band The Velvet Underground, adopted some of Andre's style for almost improvisational lyrics, lacsadaiacal delivery, slurring and deadpan asides. You can hear Andre's laid back 'Lord have mercy!' from Bacon Fat echoed on Lou's 'Temptation Inside Of Your Heart' along with a whole background of extemporisation, and the word association of Jail Bait is echoed in 'Murder Mystery'. 'She looks so good, just like a young girl should' is used by Lou in one of his live numbers 'Sweet Bonnie Brown'. If the only band The Velvet Underground ever wanted to be able to play like was Booker T & The MGs, then Lou wanted to be singing in front like Andre Williams.

Andre continues recording. The Five Dollars had a well-recieved reunion in 1999. Sadly, in 2006, pianist Joe Weaver, featured on Bacon Fat, passed away.

Well, I've been chewing the fat for long enough. Now it's your turn:

Andre Williams - Bacon Fat (Fortune/Epic) 1957

All Andre Williams quotes are taken from an interview with Joss Hutton for furious.com , and from an interview by Dan Epstein for Ugly Things magazine. John Nova Lomax at Cleveland Scene magazine has also collated together several other Andre Williams interviews from recent years. The story behind the story of the recording of Bacon Fat, and the role of the The 5 Dollars, is revealed in full by Marv Goldberg, in another one of his fabulous R&B Notebooks. 5 Dollars photos belong to Marv Goldberg and to group member Charlie Evans. ALvin Cash photo shared by Mel(andthensome) on SOulful Detroit forum.

It's Twine Time!: Alvin Cash And The Registers

2007-09-15T13:49:00.000Z

"The Twine, which is the title of this album, is a dance started in one of Chicago's High Schools. It is the consensus of opinion that Dunbar High School students started the dance.

Herb 'The Cool Gent' Kent, WVON deejay, popular with teenagers, picked up the name at one of his regular record hops and started talking about the WOODBINE TWINE (the title of our newest release by the Five Du-Tones). Bill Cody, who has taught choreography and dancing in and around Chicago for many years to most of the singing groups, saw the dance and brought it to the attention of Mar-V-Lus' A&R man, Andre Williams. Andre saw the dance and felt the beat - grabbed Alvin Cash and the Registers, and bingo, the rest is history. Alvin Cash, the leader of the Crawlers dance group has been on the entertainment scene as a dancer and entertainer for thirteen years. Alvin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, is now 23 years old. At the age of 10, Alvin became a close associate of his Uncle Bill Robinson Jr., who was a well known dancer in the St. Louis area; and soon after, became a part of his uncle's act. Later, when Alvin's brothers, Robert (now 16) and George (now 15), were 7 and 8 respectively, they joined him as part of his act. Robert 'B Q', a radio personality at KATZ in St. Louis, named the act (because of their ages) THE CRAWLERS. Alvin, unmarried, lives in Chicago. George and Robert, who are still attending Sumner High School, St. Louis, Missouri, commute to Chicago every weekend to work in various clubs, returning to St. Louis on Sunday for classes on Monday."

- liner notes to Mar-V-Lus LP 1827, "Twine Time" released in 1965.

The weather is still fine, and summer has not left us behind, it's time to dance but one thing is on my mind: How do you do The Twine?

I don't know about you, but not having lived through the Sixties, and living far from the talcum powdered dancefloors of northern soul, I have immense difficulties in strutting my stuff. I hear a record, my body wants to move, but I am reduced to one of three options: propping up the bar for another pint; gyrating wildly in a freestyle form of funky James Brown dance which results in injuries for other dancers; or the intense, solo dance, comprising lots of shuffling and spinning, that for some reason third-generation mods like me seem to think should accompany Green Onions.

What I really would like to be able to do is to dance The Bop, The Watusi, The Cool Jerk, The Boston Monkey, The Birdland, The Sissy Strut, The Popeye, The Funky Penguin, or just Shake A Tailfeather. The trouble is, I have never actually come across anybody who knew how any of these dances go. I suppose there is the Twist, and the Mashed Potato, but surely things used to be more exciting than that? Where did all the dancers go? Nowadays, there seem to be more people interested in learning the foxtrot than in knowing what to do when somebody yells, "It's Twine Time!". When Land Of A Thousand Dances comes on, you'll find me propping up the bar again, watching other people go, "Well, I know how to , um, and do the .. well, ..."

I am still no nearer to finding out just exactly how to dance the Twine. Maybe Sis Detroit can enlighten us?:

"I was once in a boogaloo contest in a backyard party (twenty-five cents to enter the gate.) But I was a young teen-ager. When the jerk came out, I was an older teen, and I had slowed down a bit, but tried to hang in there. The twine was quite easy, but the older I got, the less I danced, and the more I just listened and observed."

This sounds slightly reassuring, as I am now at the tender age of 34, and need to consider slipped discs, hernias etc. Meanwhile, Joe Nawrozki, a writer for the Baltimore Sun, attests to the powers of The Twine when far from home:

"I would see this again years later, stinky and scared young guys dancing to candlelight in a sandbagged Vietnam bunker, serenaded by a tropically-warped Temptations album. That
dancing was integrated [unlike in clubs in Baltimore] and I learned how to do the boomerang, shing-a-ling, the skate and the twine time. Dance was a brief connection with home for us, time out from the insanity of war."

So what is the story behind The Twine?

Alvin Cash (real name Alvin Welch) was I believe the eldest of eight children. Alvin, Arthur, George, and Robert formed a song and dance act and called themselves The Four Steps or the The Step Brothers. Alvin wanted to try to get into music, and encouraged his brothers to visit him in Chicago for dance gigs and competitions. As a dance group they were very successful. They renamed themselves The Crawlers, while Alvin formed a band of his own called the Nightlighters. It was while the Crawlers were dancing at the Budland Dance Club in Chicago that Andre Williams spotted them, and decided to try Alvin out at Mar-V-Lus back in Chicago.

The other brothers in the Crawlers were not featured on the record that came out of this, Twine Time, written by Andre Williams and Verlie Rice, following on from the tune Woodbine Twine by The Five Du-Tones. All being much younger than Alvin, nobody could quite see how they would fit together as an r&b group performing for adults. That is all bar one. While Andre was taken by Alvin's singing skills, flambouyancy and sharp, colourful dress sense, it is another brother, George, to whom much of the credit should go for crafting the dance we know as The Twine. Don on the Soulful Detroit forums recalls:

"George was the person who originated the dance moves named The Twine that Alvin adapted ... Since George was a dancer he would make up the dance routines, or would make better routines out of any regions dance moves. If anyone ever saw Alvin Cash do a concert you know what I mean."

George was so talented he is alleged to have shown Major Lance and others how to improve their moves. Not only that, but despite his young age at the time, George was know locally as a remarkable drummer, playing with local group The Vows. He could even dance at the same time, and once, opening a concert for Frank Sinatra with the Four Steps, he was invited back on to play some drums by Frank himself, while tapping! According to Don, George's drumming was so good that "[it]... even made Sammy Davis, Jr said wow!" So it is George you can hear keeping the beat on The Twine Time and many other Alvin Cash recordings. Only trouble was, due to his age, George would have to be snuck into clubs and snuck back out again as soon as the set was over:

"Since George being young, he couldn't stand around or mingle in the area because he was underage, and would have to stay in the back before the shows began and during intermissions and after."

While George was too young to latch onto the fame that went with Alvin Cash and The Registers, he went on to play drums with a number of groups, including Mothers' Finest, and continued playing with The Vows. He is married to Berniece Willis of The Kittens.

Ladies and gentlemen, you don't need to check your watches, I'll tell you what time it is!

Alvin Cash & The Registers - Twine Time (Mar-V-Lus 6002)

Alvin Cash & The Registers - Twine Awhile (from Mar-V-Lus MLP 1827)

Information from liner notes, and from the informative posts of Mel(andthensome), Sis Detroit, Randy Russi, and most especially Don on the Soulful Detroit forums

He Meant Well: Say It One More Time For Kip Anderson 1941 - 2007

2007-09-07T19:35:00.000Z

Born January 24, 1941 in Anderson, South Carolina; died Wednesday August 29th 2007

Today's post is going to add to the other tributes that have been presented about Kip Anderson, who died after recent heart problems in his home town of Anderson, South Carolina.

The title of this post comes from an interview with Kip for The Beat magazine by Dan Armonaitis in 2003. When asked what he would like to be remembered for, Kip replied that he would ask for his tombstone simply to read: "He meant well". By all accounts, Kip Anderson was a gentle and kind individual, and devoted a great deal of his time helping others in the community. In part this was inspired by the pitfalls that he himself had encountered in his life that almost derailed his musical career, and by the individuals who, when he had reached a low point, offered him a lifeline.

Dan's article is well worth the time reading for its detailed summary of Kip's life and career, as well as the personal anectdotes which Kip revealed to him in their interviews: amongst the highlights of which is, what Sam Cooke used to do to the unsuspecting Blind Boys of Alabama while driving their car to a gig. With Kip's input, the article spans from his early years playing piano for gospel groups in Anderson and his big break playing for gospel legend Madame Edna Gallmon Cooke, to his move into r&b recording, to his movements from label to label looking for the big hit, which came closest with I Went Off And Cried, on which Kip Anderson uttered the legendary phrase 'say it one time for the broken-hearted.' It then records the struggles Kip had through the 1970s trying to beat an addiction and cope with the stresses of incarceration, and the way in which, thanks to a prison warden who happened to be an old school friend, Kip got the chance to discover how music could transform other people's lives as well as his own. His well-deserved career renaissance saw him feted in both the local gospel and the beach music audiences.

Without A Woman, a release on Checker Records for Chess, was the first Kip Anderson song I ever heard, and precisely the sixth soul record I had ever heard. It can't fail to hit the mark as a quintessential deep southern soul number, being written by Quin Ivy and Dan Penn and recorded at FAME.

Kip Anderson - Without A Woman (Checker Records) 1966

Visit the Kip Anderson website.

For more information on Kip Anderson, go to the Dan Armonaitis article.

Stop The Violence

2007-08-28T10:05:00.000Z

Recently, a series of shootings involving young people have hit the headlines in Britain. These tragedies have ignited a debate about the issue of gun use among young people. Most recently, an 11-year old boy named Rhys Jones was shot dead by a youth riding a bmx bike while walking home in Croxteth, Liverpool.

The number of murders involving firearms in Britain is far smaller than in the United States, which is why they have had such a national media impact. Murders involving hand guns have actually fallen in the past year, and killings involving young people have actually fallen dramatically - by half - in recent years, not risen. The worry is that this could be a temporary lull. Woundings involving firearms have risen from around 850 woundings per year five years ago to around 4000 last year. Possibly more worrying is the much higher rise in the carrying of knives. People involved in the drugs trade are bringing weapons onto the street as part of their business and needlessly putting young people at risk. Even more irresponsibly, they are putting some of those weapons into the hands of young people, either when they dispose of them or when they recruit the impressionable into doing their errands. Worse, many of those young people who choose to carry a knife are not doing so because they want to be criminals, but because they feel scared in the communities that drug gangs are preying upon.

What is so sad is that young people are no different today than at any time in the past fifty years, and nor are the problems they encounter as they enter young adulthood. We should be able to surmount most of them and give every child a meaningful future. And most young people are reaching for that future. Young people today are working harder and achieving more in education than ever before. They are not irredeemable, as some tabloids like to assume. The trouble is that for the ones who do drop out and become dissaffected, they are less prepared for technical and trade careers, and there is now an established underworld that habitually uses guns and knives for 'respect' to fall into, should they happen to live in areas where the trade in drugs has grown. Over half of all incidents involving weapons occur in a handful of cities: London, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool amongst them. So for those young people that we miss, the ones we fail, the consequences can be higher than they used to be in these communities.

So for all of us, if we want to stop the violence from escalating, we have to try harder to support young people. Spend time with them, do our jobs as parents and families, talk with them, set an example, work with our neighbours to put our neighbourhoods in order, help them with their schoolwork, make sure they do it, provide training in trades as well as academic subjects and office skills, improve the surroundings so they are safer, talk to them about the adult world before they are faced with it, stop bombarding them with commercials and commodities, play with them, set up clubs and run activities that give young people hobbies and interests, teach them how to talk to people and communicate, get young people involved in helping others, get the police on the beat again and people talking to them (people, you have to talk to the police if they are going to solve murders). As an aside, it wouldn't hurt if we could cut out the casual drug use at dinner parties and in university digs. They exacerbate the problems of communities they don't live in. Where do those people think drugs come from? A fairtrade stall?

Britain is still a remarkably safe place to grow up. What better time to start to make it even safer and fulfilling?

Gil Scott-Heron wrote today's song to comment upon the impact of hand-gun violence on urban communities in the USA, and the false sense of security that a weapon provides.

We have to get the message across to young people, across the world, that carrying a weapon might feel as if it provides protection and a sense of power in an adult world, but that in fact it will actually make their lives and community less safe. In the United Kingdom, the overwhelming majority of gun and knife wound victims (for in fact it is the carrying of knives that has actually risen more steeply) were carrying weapons of their own. It can act as a provocation to others who are carrying a weapon if you are known to carry or produce yours - the chances are that the other boy or girl is going to want to live up your your challenge, and you have just raised the stakes to a dangerous level. Now you are in this situation, the next step is more likely to be that you will use your weapon. The consequences are enormous and hard to take back.

Is that where you set out to be when you picked up that weapon and put it in your pocket?

Gil Scott-Heron - Gun (from Arista LP 'Reflections') 1981

More Tricolore Soul: Eddy Can Handle It!

2007-08-21T19:03:00.000Z

I've been on holidays for three weeks, driving through France with ma cherie amour and her mother. First, we went off to Limoges, and then across country to Alsace. I'd been preparing some posts that I hoped I could post en route, when I reached an internet cafe... Well, I got the Al Green one online when we stopped by a friend of ma cherie amour, but other than that the holiday has been computerless. I tried using a internet-accessing phone, but it was totally beyond my understanding. The good news is that here is last weeks post, and that posts and ideas are piling up ready to tumble out.

When I prepared my Bastille Day post, I knew I couldn't resist a bit more Eddy Mitchell before next 14th July! This one is from 1969, and sees Eddy get to grips with Otis Redding material. It's a version francais of Hard To Handle, with a new set of lyrics written by Eddy himself, and titled Otis. Playing the song are a group called JC Petit et Les Soul Brass.

Eddy translated and recorded a number of songs by his favourite rock and roll artists including many songs by his biggest hero Gene Vincent, and also many r&b artists, including Little Richard, Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, J J Jackson, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Sam & Dave, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Don Covay.

Eddy Mitchell - Otis (Hard To Handle) (Barclay 20036) 1969

A fantastic site for details of all of Eddy Mitchell's cover versions is available at Mitchell-City. Watch Eddy singing Otis on French TV in September 1969 here.

"Let's See If Al's Still Got It": Al Green In Hammersmith 11.7.07

2007-08-07T00:13:00.000Z

This post was ready last Tuesday, but I've begun my holiday in France and have had no luck getting to a computer until today! Sorry for the needless waiting!:

As Candi's band leave the stage I am joined by a bunch of people who are surprised to see such a soul great leaving so soon. Nevertheless, they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Reverend Al Green. They have seen him twice before, and as one of them describes it: "It's impossible to stay in your seat when Al Green is on stage." They were right. I tell you, we did not stop jumping up, singing and responding to Rev Green the whole time.

At 8:30, Al Green bounds on to stage, carrying his trademark roses for the crowd, flanked by two warm up dancers who do a routine while Al gets into I Can't Stop. People are already out of their seats to find space to dance, and girls are pushing to the front and leaning onto the stage so that Al can reward them with a kiss or a plastic rose. As if sensing the exhalted, maybe fevered, atmosphere of expectation, Al finishes the song and greets us with humour:

"Now, sit down folks, relax! I'll do the work; you enjoy the concert..."

Al moves into Let's Make Love, which hardly serves to calm the ladies down, especially when he explains "I'm gonna sooooothe you...". Throughout this song, Al and his dancers go through a fascinating series of hand gestures, gentle twirls and poses. Sophisticated and smooth are just words.

Al chats about recent events: "Did you hear about those guys that drove into the airport? What was that? I tell you, friends of mine called me up from the US and they said, Al, stay over there! Sure glad they caught all them guys."

Time for a little bit of gospel from Everything's OK, as the Reverend Green sings Everything Gonna Be Alright (He's Coming Back). It goes down well, and we get to sing a chorus back to the Reverend and for whoever is up above.

"We're in Hammersmith (cheers)! You know, all I can think is, I wanna be out there with you! I went to the Royal Albert Hall (Al puts on an upper-class accent for this, and the crowd go 'oooh'). Man, I had to be careful I didn't walk on a rug!" And Al laughs at the memory.

I was reading beforehand some of the comments on the Southern Soul Group forum, and I had been a little taken aback at how non-plussed some of the contributors seemed to have been with Al Green at the Albert Hall. I did start to worry that the experience was not going to be up to my hopes. I suppose people were expecting something resembling a note-for-note CD recording, and were not prepared for the call-outs, the banter, the stagecraft and sing-along that we received from a consummate live performer. Equally, who should expect a pyrotechnic light-show, when the key to the music is the man, his heart and his voice. For that, a plastic rose in the hand of a woman (or man!) is the one-to-one connection that makes the song come alive. I have to say much of the trouble perhaps stems from the venue: the Albert Hall is not a venue that creates an atmosphere, and thus no wonder people would start to feel something was missing. It was all much plainer to see and feel when crammed into the more intimate and human Apollo theatre. It's getting so warm, Al tears off his jacket and throws it down:

"Somebody told em, Take it off! Somebody else said, put it on - its cold in here!"

Al brings us to a hush and begins to sing Amazing Grace, and asks us to sing with him. The moment of reflection is brought to a close when Al directs us:

"Let's take it back to the beginning. 1972." And he sings Let's Stay Together.

It's all about the moments and the personal stuff. Al gives us another hit straight away, with How Can You Mend A Broken Heart. This is when he introduces us to his daughter Deborah Green, on backing vocals. Al does a nice line of 'la la las' in synch with Deborah's backing, then abruptly signals stop: "Wait!"

Everyone holds their breath. What could be wrong?

Al smiles. "I wanna make it sound just like the record!" And he launches straight back in, this time floating even more effortlessly!

It seems the song has put someone into the mood, and Al is quick to spot them:

"Hey, leave the lady alone, I saw ya! She don't holler like that for nothing!" But who can blame them, and should we stop them? After all, Al tells us, now its "1974!". It makes the world go around - Here I Am, Come And Take Me.

Things take an unexpected detour now.

"I'm feeling like I wanna sing songs that aren't on the list. Songs that tell you where our songs come from, so you know why they lasted so long. Maybe they've helped somebody along the way. Raise your hand if they've helped you along!" The hands go up all over. Al treats us to a medley of short snippets from a few popular soul classics, all familiar, in tribute to his vocal heroes and southern soul antecendents Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. The Four Tops also get Al's salute, as he sings through Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch/Bring It On Home/My Girl/Sitting' On The Dock Of The Bay/Wonderful World.

I'm So Tired Of Being Alone gets us back up to a fever pitch again, and Al is loving it so much he has to do something to savour the moment. He halts before the crescendo to holler:

"Let's see if Al's still got it! He used to have it... YEAAAAAHHHHH!"

And he falls to his knees and nails the high note.

Al Green goes into the crowd in the next song to show I'm Still In Love With You. Walking back along the front row, a blonde woman stands up and blocks his way, so that Al is going to give her that hug she is after! Al clambers back on stage, and while the band play behind him, he tells us how proud he is to have his daughter working with him, and carrying on the singing tradition. But there's still stuff he can teach her, he teases:

"She's always asking me, How do I hit that high note, Dad?" Al looks over to Deborah, smiles, and hums a little pastiche of Mercy, Mercy Me. I assume Debbie Green is used to this!

"Well, you do it something like this .... AAAHHHH!"

The band kick in more powerfully, and now we are into the final song Love And Happiness. And as we get to that moment, Al has to milk the crowd some more:

"Wait! Let me do it once more! I like that!" One more high note!

The crowd cheer and clap as Al waves goodbye and leaves the stage, and the band segue into their instrumental showpiece, Funky Nassau. One by one they are introduced by the musical director and get to do their thing. I was particularly impressed with the sound of Dave Cook on the electric clarinet, and now I can place that strange pulsating buzzy vibe in so many songs!

It was all over as the lights came up, and we had been treated to a show. Only three questions troubled me as I left the gallery. Why no encore? Still, you can't say Al Green hadn't given it his all. Next, why did the musical directer go wild with a Hendrix style 'throw the guitar on the ground and jump on it' routine? Well, he's got to be as excited as we were! Finally, why was the intermission music made up entirely of Roxy Music tracks? Which just goes to show you great music comes in many forms!

Al Green Set List:
I Can't Stop

Let's Make Love
Everything's Gonna Be Alright (He's Coming Back)

Amazing Grace
Let's Stay Together
Here I Am (Come And Take Me)
Medley: Sugar Pie Honey Bunch/Bring It On Home/My Girl/Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay/Wonderful World
I'm So Tired Of Being Alone
I'm Still In Love With You
Love And Happiness
(Al Green departs)
Funky Nassau (band only)

As usual, I can't take photos of anything! Images of Al Green from the Al Green tour programme, and from Juan Pérez-Fajardo's photos of the Madrid show on 11th July - EDIT: Blogger has just deleted the picture I uploaded for the third time!!! Follow the link to see the photos for yourself.

The Best Thing You Ever Had: Candi Staton In Hammersmith

2007-07-30T16:30:00.000Z

I've finally gotten around to dragging out my notebook and writing up a little report about Al Green and Candi Staton at Hammersmith Apollo. I've split it up into two posts, to give each artist their credit.

I almost thought I wasn't going to make it up to London in time, after a last minute planning meeting at work meant I left an hour later than planned. But as the time hit 7:30, I was rushing out of the underground, trying to pick the correct subway exit to come out in front of the Apollo. No time to waste, as the sound of Candi Staton in full swing was roaring out into the foyer! I stumbled my way upstairs to the gallery, and found my seat, with a wonderful clear view down onto the stage below, where Candi was in the midst of singing the song Elvis Presley admitted she could do better, In The Ghetto.

Candi was looking glorious, and dominated the stage, moving about so much that sometimes the lighting crew had difficulty keeping the spot up with her. "Who loves the blues?", she called out, "I love the blues!"

Candi can sing blues but equally can soar into gospel heights. Candi's life story is filled with many trials and difficulties, but also relates how they can be overcome, emerging triumphantly. So that now Candi is able to get every woman in the auditorium standing up and building a mood of confidence as she sings another track from her 1973 album, The Best Thing You Ever Had. Candi boosts the women while slyly ribbing us men for our biological flaws:

"Girls, sing it with me - I'm The Best Thing You Ever Had! ... Sometimes, our men just don't appreciate us, do they? When we're out with our men, they keep looking around, like this (she does a mean impression of one of those corner of the eye looks we do when something aesthetic catches our attention). They just can't see what they already got! Boys, I don't need no internet to see what I'm looking for!"

Time to make up, guys and girls, and everybody gets to sing along with Candi's uplifting disco hit Young Hearts Run Free. For her final number Candi sings her dance classic You Got The Love.

As the band play on, Candi introduces us to them - Ernie on bass, Suzy and Xavier on vocals, Tom and Ritch on horns, and Terry Williams on congas: "He's from Atlanta Georgia. I should know, 'coz I was there when he was born. He's my third son!"

And then its her second son, Marcus Williams, who completes the set with a storming drum solo.

And that was the end of Candi's set.

Short but sweet!

Sadly, I don't have Candi Staton's United Artist album, or even a CD with Best Thing You Ever Had or In The Ghetto on it. So perhaps you will enjoy instead another track from her FAME debut:

Candi Staton - Sweet Feeling (from LP I'm Just a Prisoner - Fame LP 4201) 1970

NEXT: Al Green!

As usual, the concept of taking my own photos in the dark has baffled me! So, the photograph of Candi is from a recent concert in Holland, taken by Eric Van Nieuwland. A nice interview and biographical details about Candi Staton can be found at divastation. Go and buy Candi Staton's new album, His Hands.

My Birthday Choice: Jumpin' Jack Flash!

2007-07-26T11:15:00.000Z

Today is the first day of my holidays, and it's also my birthday (hooray!).

I happen to share my birthday with one Michael Jagger, who is considerably older than me today. Other things I don't share in common with Mick Jagger are being born in London, attending the London School of Economics, and getting a first-class honours degree. And writing hundreds of classic r&b numbers. But I can dance like a chicken impersonating James Brown (or Joe Tex, or Rufus Thomas, according to preference) just as badly! It is slowly dawning on me why my younger self never had much success with the ladies at discos...

Now, rather than pick a random Rolling Stones song from Aftermath or Let It Bleed, which I would enjoy but is not really the point of the blog (its been really hard not to let some of the Soul Britannia posts I've been writing grow into a history of mod bands, which I imagine would not really interest most of you out there!), I had a think about a song that would have a birthday theme and would highlight the r&b basis of the Stones music. There was only one choice to make, and it will get you up and leaping about, like I will be!

The singer today is Thelma Houston. This track is one of the covers featured on album Sunshower, produced by Jimmy Webb (of By The Time I Get To Phoenix fame), who wrote many of the other tracks. I think I may feature some more over the summer!

I have heard a number of unusual comments about this song in the past - that it refers to voodoo; that it refers to Sympathy For The Devil; that it 'isn't' r&b at all. Of these, let's tackle the last first. The argument, amongst mostly white 'rock' fans, is that the chords utilised in the song presage 'rock' music. Keith Richards has commented on the song and agreed that the structure of the song was more ambitious than their earlier r&b covers and compositions, but equally he found it a relief to 'return' to r&b feeling and iconography after their brief psychedelic experiments, and felt it showed growing maturity in their writing and playing. I get the feeling that the Stones themselves would be embarrassed by these 'birth of rock' advocates, who clearly quite misunderstand the r&b group the Stones were always trying to be.

Equally, the 'voodoo' statements seem laboured. Mick and Keith were writing lyrics with the much more common theme of the hard life in mind. What is interesting is how they transform a hard life blues into a story where the obstacles are overcome. More likely is that it simply speaks about the traumas and trials of any troubled childhood, from men who were all fortunate to grow up in caring homes in post-war Britain. The song was written around the time that the tv documentary Cathy Come Home was shown in Britain, showing the appalling treatment that unmarried mothers and their children were forced to put up with at that time, and the scandals of childrens' homes. It caused a prolonged national debate about such matters and child welfare.

Whereas the Stones had played it lacksadaisically and Jagger had sung it with a front of bravado, mimicing the attitude of people who internalise such events, when Thelma sings the song, she brings added power to the song that almost knocks you over, and a heart-rending sense of pain into her voice, making you almost believe that this is personal. Thelma, born Thelma Jackson, would have been able to draw on her memories of her early life in Leland, Mississippi, loved but poor, when her mother supported them by picking cotton, before they made a new life for themselves in Long Beach, California.

To make it clear, I was probably not born in a crossfire hurricane...

Thelma Houston - Jumpin' Jack Flash (from Dunhill/Motown album 'Sunshower' 1969)

Information about Thelma Houston found in All Music Guide by Ed Hogan. Information about Mick Jagger from White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook.

Tricolore Soul: Monsieur Eddy!

2007-07-14T19:44:00.000Z

Well, after a little sleep, I'm feeling more awake, and I caught the end of le Tour as they raced through le Col de la Colombiére. And my dad arrived with soup and supplies!

Normally, I'd be off to the local pub for their Bastille Day party and some bouillabaisse, and then down to a club that dedicates itself to glorious Radio FIP, which Brightonians are lucky enough to be able to tune into halfway underneath Radio 1. Ah, europop and yéyé girls!

Instead, while I eat my soup, I thought I'd serve you up some early French soul. I didn't know what to call this mini-series. Originally it was just French Soul, then Bastille Day Soul, then Funk The Bastille!

The modern indigenous French soul scene is thriving and has a much firmer place in French sub-cultures than its British equivalents. However, I thought I'd go further back, to the 60s, to see how one of the original French rock and rollers became intrigued by the soul sound, to such an extent that he went on to spend much of his career recording in Nashville, Memphis and Louisiana. Claude Moine, who in honour of his rock and roll heroes, changed his stage name to Eddy Mitchell, and is venerated by all French people as simply Monsieur Eddy.

Eddy and his band Les Chaussettes Noires got a residency playing at le Golf Drouot, a Parisian club which originally had its own 9-hole miniature golf course inside. It was also one of the first clubs with a jukebox, filled with American tunes. Soon, they were signed to Barclay Records, and had several rock and roll hits. After Eddy went to do military service, he embarked on a solo career, continuing the rock and roll.

He recorded several times in London, and while there in 1965, it seems he came into contact with some of the modern soul music being imported from the USA. From this point on, the sound of Eddy Mitchell was distinctively different from that of other French pop artists - he turned up the horns, the guitars played blues, and he chose to interpret or write soulful tunes, all the while singing in French with the passion of a soul balladeer but also with the nuances of French chanson. The albums Du rock ‘n’ roll au rhythm ‘n’ blues (Barclay 1965) and Seul (Barclay 1966) were recorded in London, while De Londres à Memphis (1967) saw Eddy finally travel to America. They comprise the heart of Eddy's soulful output.

Here are a few of those tracks for you to consider. First up is a bluesy number:

Eddy Mitchell - J'avais deux amis (I had two friends)

Eddy moves into Deep Soul country, with an opening sliding guitar string that just makes me think of Hot Buttered Soul!:

Eddy Mitchell - Je ne me retourerai pas (I will not be turned over)

And another Eddy original from his 1966 album:

Eddy Mitchell - Seul (Alone)

And I haven't yet shared Eddy's fabulous Creedence impression, or his version of Hard To Handle! I am going to have to do another Eddy post quite soon!

After a slight slowdown in his career, Eddy picked up again in the mid-70s, travelling annually to Nashville to record with Charlie McCoy and his band, and following a country rock vibe. And he's still going strong today, having recently recorded a new CD Jambalaya with a number of displaced New Orleans musicians in LA after Hurricane Katrina, and calling in the likes of Johnny Halliday (his fellow gallic rocker) and Little Richard.

Eddy Mitchell's website.

RFI Music have a great biography in english of Eddy's career.

Shout Outs To Les Soul-blogs Francaises!: If you want to practice your french while also listening to some fine music, try out these sites. We have to mention le case de l'affreux thom, a blog of refinement and taste; also, I've just come across Mushroom Soul,which looks like it will become a favourite of mine. I've visited Loaded To The Gills on occasion, and found some interesting funk. For in depth resources on Otis Redding, check out The Otis Redding Site of Jean Paul Pécréaux. To discuss soul music in french, visit The Dark End Of The Street - don't worry, they will be kind if your words fail you, like me!

How Can You Mend This Broken Heart?

2007-07-14T13:04:00.000Z

No, I haven't had a fight with ma cherie amour (well, not today, anyhow...)!

I've been visiting the doctor these past two weeks, checking out some chest pains, getting a cholesterol test, x-rays and ECG scans to see how the old ticker is doing. No news yet, which is good news. I took up cycling again recently, in anticipation of the Tour de France - I always said exercise would kill me. SO I've been taking it easy a bit, going for gentle walks on the promenade by the sea, looking out the window in my bathchair, grumbling about the good old days, and mentally totalling the number of tubs of Haagen-Daas ice-cream I have consumed wantonly in my lifetime.

And now, this weekend, would you believe it, I've caught a nasty flu-type thing called parvovirus from kids at school! Taking Friday off work is just no fun if your actually ill! And ma cherie amour is currently off on a camping trip with her class somewhere near Ardres in Pas-de-Calais. So there is nobody to pamper me and feed me soup. In fact, there is no soup! Pizza delivery guys, I have decided, should be considered the seventh emergency service (behind the coastguard, mountain rescue and the AA).

There were thus many candidates for today's post. We've got Pain In My Heart from Otis Redding, or we could have had his I've Been Sick Y'all. The Supremes nearly made it with Nothing But Heartaches. Then there were The Isley Brothers with This Old Heart Of Mine. Sadly, those would all have involved me rummaging around for vinyl and tranferring them, while shivering and with a splitting headache!

In that vein, here are some fantastic heart-stopping tunes! Guaranteed to get your pulse racing and your soul aching!

Otis Redding - Pain In My Heart (from Atco LP 'Saturday Night At The Apollo') 1964

(for more on this track, read my old post here)

Al Green - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? (Hi Records) 1972

Ann Peebles - Troubles, Heartaches And Sadness (Hi 2205) 1972

James Brown - Your Cheatin' Heart (King Records) 1970

Well, I'd better get back to the couch and my blanket, and hopefully I'll be playing you Art Posey with No More Heartaches soon! Also, I've just realised its Bastille Day, so I'm going to try to phone ma cherie amour's relatives with my terrible linguistic skills! Meanwhile, as a sort of Saturday question: How many soul tunes with a heartache or flu/illness/plague theme can you think of?

The Original Drifters Come To Rest: Bill Pinkney 1925-2007

2007-07-05T20:18:00.000Z

RIP Bill Pinkney, 15th August 1925 - July 4th 2007

Yesterday, Bill Pinkney, the last original member of The Drifters, passed away in Daytona, Florida. He had continued his career as a Drifter unbroken from 1953 to the present day, and had been due to perform for a 4th July event.

As well as contributing his distinctive bass to the early hits of the Drifters, Bill stood as a testament to musical integrity, defiantly fighting to use the name of Original Drifters after he and the other founder members were summarily sacked by their management in 1958, and campaigning for a law which requires a band to include at least one original member if it wishes to claim to be the genuine article.

Bill's life up until 1953 was equally remarkable. Born in Dalzell, South Carolina, Bill Pinkney used to listen to his mother, a choirleader in a church in Woodrow, South Carolina, and started to perform gospel himself at the age of 12 with a group called the Wandering Four. Bill Pinkney joined the US Army to fight in France, and took part as one of 1,500 black troops in the initial assault to secure the Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day, helping to set up and maintain barrage balloons over the beachhead, delivering ammunition and supplies constantly throughout the assault, dealing with the wounded, and in the following days liberating several villages. Pinkney was assigned as a technician in a combat support unit attached to the 3rd Armoured Division. For his part in outstanding acts of courage supporting the 101st Airborne and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with them at Bastogne, Bill was the proud recipient of the Distinguished Unit Citation (now known as the Presidential Unit Citation) with Four Bronze Stars, denoting service in Normandy, The Battle of Saint Lo, Bastogne, and crossing the Rhine. That Saint Lo action tells you that Bill had a role as a technician in the transport route known as the Red Ball Express, which trucked supplies from Saint Lo to the front line, which is how Bill became trapped in Bastogne with the 101st Airborne whom he was bringing supplies to. After the war, Bill moved to New York and tried for sporting fame, as a pitcher from 1949 to 1951 in a Negro Baseball League with the New York Blue Sox. He also began singing with gospel groups the Jerusalem Stars and The Southern Knights. However, by 1953, Bill had decided he needed a more regular job, and he was running a car dealership.

Watch an interview with Bill Pinkney from 2005 about his career...

It was in 1953 that Bill Pinkney was contacted by his old Southern Knights colleague Gearhart Thrasher. Clyde McPhatter, another old aquaintance on the gospel circuit, had an r&b contract with Atlantic Records, but was in need of a new group to back him, after the first group, the Mount Lebanon Gospel Singers, were rejected by Ahmet Ertegun. Billy met up with Gearhart and his brother Andrew 'Bubba' Thrasher and local labourer Willie Ferbie. The group were among those strongly influenced by the harmonising gospel quartet style of The Orioles, and Bill's deep bass helped to complement Clyde McPatter's soaring melodic lead tenor. It was a sensation in r&b music. The group secured a contract, and Clyde revealed the name Drifters at the end of the sessions after a worried Gearhart Thrasher asked him what they were going to call themselves!

Thus began a series of r&b hits, amongst which Bill sang lead parts on White Christmas, their biggest hit of all time, Steamboat, I Should Have Done Right, Bip Bam, and Soldier Of Fortune. Bill's presence in the group was soon resented by their manager George Treadwell, as Bill, acting as road manager, frequently argued that the group were not getting their fair share of the ticket receipts for their shows.

"I was a singing road manager, well there was a fellow name of Charlie Carpenter, he was the manager of a show for Mr Fell, every week he would pay everybody. With the Drifters money, I had to pay Gearhart, a man by the name of David, and a guitar player by the name of Jimmy Oliver... I had to take this money back to New York in a suitcase, cash, and I was making $200 for the week, and the others would get £180, $175, and I would get a few more dollars under the table. Anyhow, I'd dump that suitcase of money, .. then I'd go on back, and get another tour started .. til I finally got hip! I said, you know what, this man is sitting down in his office in New York, we've doing all the work! Atlantic Records paying Jesse Stone, we went in and did the recording, and [George] Treadwell was climbing fat as a manager! He should have only won a percentage of what the Drifters made, not all of the money. So we talked it over with the rest of the Drifters and they said, Yeah you talk to George, we want raise in pay..."

A pay rise was not forthcoming, and he was summarily fired. After that, Bill went off and recorded some rock and roll themed tracks with a band called The Turks (or The Perks according to itunes!) The rest of the Drifters, chastened by Mr Treadwell, carried on, but were all finally fired from their own band in 1958, after a dispute at the Apollo Theater, and George replaced the entire line-up!

Bill persuaded the original group to stick together, and kept them going on a lucrative touring schedule, gaining a solid following in the Southeast. At first they went under the name of The Harmony Grits, and recorded some singles in 1959 with David "Little David" Baughn, who had been one of the singers Clyde had originally picked for his group. Later, Johnny Moore, who had also left the Drifters to go solo, got Bill's group to back him on several songs he recorded under the name Johnny Darrow, thus renuniting the 1957 Drifters line-up. But it occured to Bill and the others that they had every right to stake a claim to the Drifters name themselves, and so The Original Drifters were born. In 1964, they recorded Don't Call Me and I'll Do The Jerk, on Fontana Records, with temporary lead singer Jimmy Lewis. In 1966, they recorded another, for Veep Records, I Found Some Lovin' backed with the slow classic The Masquerade Is Over. I love this song, especially Nancy Wilson's version, but I would love to hear this rendition by the Drifters some day.

As the line-up of the Atlantic Records' Drifters continued to change, it seemed more and more Drifters were competing and claiming the same authenticity! Both Johnny Moore and Charlie Thomas would continue their own Drifters on the groups departure from Atlantic. This Bill's Original Drifters could accept, seeing as there was some connection to the classic group. Indeed, in 1976 Johnny Moore's Drifters paid the complement of covering (More Than A Number) In My Little Red Book, which the Originals had written and recorded back in 1967.

As the 70s arrived, however, the Drifters name became further clouded by bands that had little claim to the name. One group that Bill had hired and rehearsed to go on a tour after the other Originals had decided to retire, The Tears, dumped him and toured for many years as The Drifters. In the 80s and 90s, other groups, like the Nu Drifters, worked almost like Drifters 'franchises'. Bill Pinkney became involved in campaigning for the rights of artists who were being denied control over the identity that was their livelihood. And right up to the present, Bill had kept faith with authenticy by including the son of the founder of the Drifters, Ron McPhatter, Clyde's son, in the Originals, alongside Richard Knight Dunbar, of duo The Knight Brothers fame. The group also ventured into gospel in recent times, recording as The Gospel Drifters.

Bill was awarded the key to the state of South Carolina, which proclaimed May 14 as Bill Pinkney Day. Not least amongst his other honours must stand his 2001 honorary doctorate for services to South Carolina's state dance, the Shag!

The Drifters - Bip Bam (B side of Atlantic 1043) 1954
The Drifters - Steamboat (B Side of Atlantic 1078) 1955
The Drifters - I Should Have Done Right 1956

Information found at BBC News, www.originaldrifters.com , Soulfulkindamusic, wikipedia (!), the South Carolina African American History Calendar, and most especially from the amazing research of Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks, (also his Original Drifters Notebook ). Vince Welsh has recorded an interview with Bill Pinkney which you can watch. Also of interest is the regimental history page of the 761st Tank Battalion. Info concerning black soldiers on D-Day can be found in an article by Marian Douglas at Afrigeneas. Gregory Kane writes an interesting article about the contribution of black soldiers fighting at Bastogne in the Battle of The Bulge.

Get It If You Want It: Win A Free Al Green & Candi Staton Ticket!

2007-07-03T07:10:00.000Z

Time to get excited. On Friday, I am going up to see the Reverend Al Green at the Hammersmith Apollo! Yaaayyy!!!!

That is exciting enough, but in support is a jewel of gospel and queen of southern soul, in the form of Candi Staton!

There's more! Other soul alumni likely to be present behind-the-scenes include Al Green's musical director, Norman West, formerly of The Soul Children. I wonder if he is ever tempted out on stage? What would a rendition of Hearsay featuring Norman, Al, and Candi be like?

Hang on, did the title of this post say I could win a ticket?
Yep! I bought a ticket for my good friend Will, but unfortunately he will have to travel for work. I've asked around, and nobody else I know seemed excited about the idea! So... that means I may have a spare ticket available! I will try to give it away to some deserving reader of this blog!

How To Win The Ticket!
I am going to set some simple questions about Al Green, Candi Staton and Norman West. You can probably google the answers! Email the answers to me at robertwhatman@hotmail.com, and then i will randomly pick a name out of the hat on thursday at 7 o'clock GMT. Include you name and a contact phone number, so I can contact the lucky recipient on Thursday evening!

Here are my questions three...

1. What is the name of Al Green's church in Memphis, Tennessee?
2. What was the name of Candi Staton's famous soul-singing second husband, who took her to FAME Studio?
3. Which two Stax songwriters put Norman West's group The Soul Children together to replace Sam & Dave?

Don't worry if you get stuck on a question! Google it, and if you still can't work it out, just tell me why you really, really want to go see Al Green! Tell me you favourite Al Green song, or your favourite soul artists. I'll put you in the hat!

Today, I'm going to serve up some Alabama funky soul from Candi Staton's FAME albums, and some Al Green, each with a good luck message to help you get that ticket:

Al Green - Wish You Were Here (from LP 'Al Green Is Love') 1975

Candi Staton - Get It When I Want It (on 'I'm Just A Prisoner' FAME LP 4201) 1970

P.S. I have now fixed the Al Green link - sorry!

So much has been written about Candi Staton's life and music. Visit Candi Staton's website and bio here, or this short bio from divastation. Heiki Suosolo of Soul Express magazine did a good interview with Candi here. Candi's autobiography is called This Is My Story. Equally, what can I add to the story of Al Green? Visit his website here.

Juneteenth Jamboree: Gladys Bentley & Louis Jordan

2007-06-20T19:58:00.000Z

Happy Juneteenth!

A little late this year, after another week of overworking, but its time for some Juneteenth celebrating! Last year, I did a post going into the history of Juneteenth. You can find that by clciking on the Juneteenth link at the bottom of this post, and it has links to some other interesting websites related to Juneteenth.

This time, I am briefly going to introduce two pieces of Juneteenth blues that I came across while reading Music You Never Forget: The Juneteenth Jamboree by Fred Bals. The article introduced me to the life and career of Gladys Bentley. She was a well-known singer in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, headlining at such infamous venues as as The Clam House and the Ubangi Club, before moving to California, where she performed until her death in 1960.

"Perhaps the most famous gay-oriented club of the era was Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a narrow, smoky speakeasy on 133rd Street. The Clam House featured Gladys Bentley, a 250-pound, masculine, darkskinned lesbian, who performed all night long in a white tuxedo and top hat. Bentley, a talented pianist with a magnificent, growling voice, was celebrated for inventing obscene lyrics to popular contemporary melodies. Langston Hughes called her 'an amazing exhibition of musical energy.'"

- Quote from Hidden from History : Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past by Eric Garber.

Next, in full this time, is the song as recorded by 'King of the Jukebox' Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five in 1940 for the Decca label. The song was, and still is, mislabeled as "June Tenth Jamboree," apparently because no one at Decca knew what Juneteenth was. Not a fate Louis Jordan himself would have to worry about. Jordan was a highly popular musician with both black and white audiences, one of the first"crossover" artists, having at least four million-selling hits during his career. He also performed comedy and acted in many films, while also starring in two of his own. Many r&b artists look upon him as a pivotal figure in the emergence of r&b.

Two artists, who despite the prevailing prejudices against race and sex, forged their own careers on their own terms!

Gladys Bentley - Juneteenth Jamboree (excerpt)

Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five - 'June Tenth' Jamboree (Decca 1940)

It's Like Carrying Soul To Newcastle: At The Club-A-Go-Go

2007-06-15T18:00:00.000Z

Not all the elements of British r&b were developed within the confines of West London.

Eric Burdon grew up in Newcastle, a hard-working, coal-mining region that prided itself on the quality of its colliery brass bands. Of course Eric's family did not have any connection with coal-mining as such. Eric did however enjoy listening to dixieland-era jazz which some colliery band trained musicians enjoyed, and in his youth he tried to play some trumpet, which set him apart from many other British r&b musicians of the 1960s, in that he had experience of horn parts. However, like many of his contemporaries, the influence of Chicago blues, and practicality, led Eric sing and to use the harmonica. Not the least of these considerations was that Eric never learnt to play guitar!

During his teens, he happened to pass by a black gospel church in his home town, and was mesmerised by the singing he heard within. Such an experience was exceedingly rare in late 50s and early 60s Britain. There was a growing modernising trend amongst theologians in the Church of England, but it was more aimed towards developing a more rational and scientific response to issues of society. While this appealed to the overwhelmingly areligious population of Britain, who freely admitted to visiting a church only for Christmas, weddings and Christenings, amongst the 10% of regular churchgoers, the traditional service prevailed. For the more evangelical, services were experimenting with personal readings, testimonials, and new hymns based upon British folk music. But an evangelical service in Britain had little in common with the black Baptist church experience in the USA.

Eric's epiphany had been musical and in a way political. He began to seek out the music of Mississippi and Chicago blues. He once explained what had appealed to him so much living far from the American South in a northern British city:

"If I heard John Lee Hooker singing things like, 'I been working in a steel mill trucking steel like a slave all day, I woke up this morning and my baby 's gone away' I related to that directly because that was happening to grown men on my street."

While many members of British r&b bands had benefitted from attending the new art schools, Eric and much of the mod scene had their roots in working-class communities. R&b was not treated as an exercise in historical preservation in Britain, at least at that time. It resonated with their lives on some level.

Eric and Philip Payne began a band called The Pagans, and performed on the Newcastle clubs. Here Eric encoutered both a kindred spirit and bitter rival in the guise of Alan Price. Over a period of months, the members of the Alan Price Trio, including Bryan 'Chas' Chandler (later to play bass and manage The Jimi Hendrix Experience), would come to merge with Eric's band, to form the Alan Price R&B Combo, also featuring Hilton Valentine of The Wild Cats on guitar. No two members of the original band can agree on exactly who's idea it was, or who joined whose band! All recognised each others talents, while also becoming deeply suspicious of each other's position in the band. On stage, they transmuted their mutual animosities into a raucous performance. Soon they adopted a more appropriate name, The Animals.

In the Summer of 1963, The American Folk Blues Festival arrived in London. Amongst the invited performers was the mysterious Sonny Boy Williamson II. The harmonica player Alex 'Rice' Miller, protege of the legendary Robert Johnson, the only one to know the true details of Johnson's death, and who had later adopted the name of the original Sonny Boy Williamson, also a harmonica player, for himself, enjoyed the experience, and was fêted by a number of members of the young r&b scene, amongst them The Yardbirds , the Stones and The Animals. He began to tour the r&b clubs fronting these bands at a series of gigs, some of which were recorded. On December 30th, 1963, Sonny Boy Williamson and the Animals came to the Club A-Go-Go back in Newcastle, and recorded the performance. Recording was overseen by Giorgio Gomelsky. Still, some are not easily impressed:

"Truthfully, these live shows are more historically interesting than anything else, being merely passable bar band blues" - Steve Leggett All Music Guide

"Ah, knickers!", as Eric exclaims at the very end of the night, after thanking Sonny Boy and thanking the audience for supporting them. There had never been a passable bar blues band before it in the history of Newcastle! Now, a bunch of eager teenagers and their friends in a northern city were working with and learning from a legendary, experienced Delta bluesman, and it undoubtedly improved both their technique and their confidence. That went for the other groups Sonny Boy jammed with that year. When The Rolling Stones made their assault upon America, they made a point of requesting that Sonny Boy Williamson was also booked to appear alongside them on TV, as a mark of their respect.

Here are some tracks from that recording at the Club A-Go-Go, plus The Animals' own homage to the venue that had nurtured them, which was the b-side to the fantastic Please, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.

Sonny Boy Williamson & The Animals - Night Time Is The Right Time (From Charley LP The Animals & Sonny Boy Williamson 1977, recorded December 30th 1963 at Club A-Go-Go Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Sonny Boy Williamson & The Animals - Bye Bye, Sonny, Bye Bye (from Charley LP The Animals & Sonny Boy Williamson 1977)

The Animals - Club A-Go-Go (b-side of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood Jan 1965)

Its definitely worth visiting The Animals Official Website , run by original guitarist Hilton Valentine, if you want an introduction to their music. Lots of sound clips are available to sample. Photos of The Pagans are property of Philip Payne, and can be found at This Book Of Burdon by Aimee Harrison. Listen to and buy more clips of the 1963 concert on itunes! Quotes from Steve Leggett at All Music Guide, and from A Change Is Gonna Come by Craig Werner.

Hammer And Nails: The Staples Singers Make This House A Home...

2007-06-09T16:20:00.000Z

I have just bought my first flat, and I have been busy in the last week packing, moving house, painting and decorating! Ma cherie amour et moi are very happy, and not a little exhausted! Finally, today, my internet was reconnected ...

Naturally, this gives me an opportunity to ramble on about The Staple Singers and to play for you the title song from Hammer And Nails, an album of gospel recorded for the renowned jazz label Riverside Records in 1962. It's taken me quite a while to record this onto my computer, since there was a slight nick on the surface that sticks once in a while. There were tears as I blamed myself for this crime against vinyl, but now I have secured a copy of the single, so enjoy!

By this time, the Staples family were already a well-established gospel group who had performed together for nearly 15 years, since Roebuck Staples, born on December 28, 1915 in Winona, Mississippi, decided to form a family gospel group in 1948, incorporating his bluesy guitar style. His elder daughter Cleotha, younger daughter Mavis, and son Pervis Staples took their places sharing the vocals with their father.

Before that time, Roebuck and his wife Oceola had moved from Mississippi to Chicago during the Depression, and had worked in steel mills and meat-packing plants to support the family. The musical talent of the children encouraged Roebuck to start performing in the local Chicago churches, and by the early 50s, they made the choice to become full-time gospel singers, touring churches across the country. In 1957, they signed with Vee Jay and recorded Uncloudy Day, and it became a nationwide gospel hit. Others followed, including Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Help Me, Jesus, and Swing Down Chariot (Let Me Ride). The greater exposure led to more bookings touring college campuses, concert halls and music festivals:

"Everywhere they go they generate a unique kind of soul-to-soul enthusiasm and give every type of audience a deep emotional thrill." -Gary Kramer

Distinguishing the Staple Singers from other gospel groups was their adherence to a southern gospel style, rather than follow the more polished modern vocal harmony groups. This was exactly the kind of gospel sound that most appealed to the growing white audience interested in the 'authentic' American folk tradition. Looking to expand the label, Riverside Records signed The Staple Singers. Orrin Keepnews, who supervised the Staple Singers sessions, had made his name in the jazz world by signing Thelonius Monk and recording him on a series of seminal albums. In April 4th 1964, the Staple Singers would be performing Hammer And Nails on TV's Hootenanny, recorded for that show at the Purdue University, West Lafayette, in Indiana, alongside The New Christy Minstrels and irish harpist Deidre O'Callaghan.

The period at Riverside would be shortlived. Orrin left the business side to his old friend and partner Bill Grauer. In 1963, Grauer died suddenly, and Riverside went into bankruptcy in 1964. The Staples moved on to the Epic label. Here they would take their exposure to the world of folk and protest song and use it to record songs that mixed gospel with themes of the civil rights movement.

In 1968 when The Staples signed with soul music label Stax Records, they would suffer a certain amount of criticism for this in gospel circles. Yet, musically, the only difference was that the popular music coming out of Memphis was simply taking more of its own influences from the same traditional gospel sources that the Staple Singers had always drawn from. Nor do their message songs exactly abandon their gospel message completely.

On this, the title song from the Hammer & Nails album, which was also a single, contralto Mavis sings a powerful vocal line, using the lines 'More, more more...' to drive the beat forwards and pushing harder and harder up to a crescendo in each chorus that evokes an ecstatic feeling. This version of the song is a very different one to the more widely available recording found on their greatest hits CDs. Inexplicably, Hammer & Nails is the only Riverside track that is not featured on their 'complete' Riverside Recordings CD.

Another interesting fact: throughout the liner notes to this album in 1962, Roebuck is referred to as 'Daddy' Staples. When did he pick up his more familiar monicker of 'Pops'?

The Staple Singers - Hammer & Nails (Riverside R-4518, from LP Hammer & Nails 3501)

Information garnered from Rob Bowman's summary of the Staple Singers career, info from The Rosebud Agency, and liner notes by Gary Kramer.

Soul Britannia: It's All Over Now...

2007-05-25T18:54:00.000Z

It was their most intimidating audience to date.

As they entered the Co-Op Ballroom in Nuneaton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Ian Stewart did not know what to expect. Tension was high. They set up, were introduced, and began to play their brand of rhythm and blues...

The audience, mostly children from the age of 4 to 10, were not impressed, and proceeded to pummel the Rolling Stones continuously with cream cakes until they left the stage.

"They did not appreciate r&b", said Bill Wyman sadly, looking back on that ordeal.

For the fledgeling r&b band, success and recognition was not coming easy. It was all very well to play at The Marquee on the nights when Blues Incorporated were unavailable, but other venues and appreciative audiences were still very thin on the ground.

But, in 1963, while the Stones searched for gigs and practiced being jammy dodgers, the r&b scene that had grown around the clubs of London was now spreading. The Ealing Club grew from 100 members the first week to 200 memebers the next, to over 800 by the end of 1962, some having wandered to its doors in search of the blues from as far away as Scotland. By 1964, most of the clubs of Wardour Street and West London had gone over to featuring r&b over modern jazz. The Stones finally found a home away from the Marquee, this time in Richmond, at the Crawdaddy Club. Richmond could boast a number of other venues turning to r&b, such as the Eel Pie Hotel, The Station Hotel, The Imperial, and L’Auberge. Approximately 10,000 people were likely to enter the doors of these London clubs alone in a typical week to pick up the r&b sounds.

And the trend had spread outside the capital. By late 1963, rhythm & blues clubs were forming all over: from St Andrew's Hall in Norwich, the Olympia in Reading, the R&B Club in Andover, the Rhythm & Blues Club at the Maritime Hotel in Belfast, and the Downbeat Club and Club A-G0-Go in Newcastle, to the Starlight Rooms in Brighton. It must be said, however, that while now these clubs were bringing r&b closer to British youth, they are all situated in ports, near American bases or close to London.

Rhythm and blues was going to be the new musical wave, then, after all. It had not been inevitable, or even likely. But for a number of reasons, r&b now appealed. It is often suggested that this was simply because Britain was still haunted by the spectre of World War II, and had a yearning for the trappings of America. Yet as my dad told me recently, there had been a number of reasons why rock and roll had become adulterated and tamed in its British version by the early 60s:

"You have to remember, for a lot of people, even young people, rock and roll had been connected with the Teds. Many ordinary people thought they were violent, dangerous thugs. They were outcasts, troublemakers from the working class [so people assumed]... So a lot of people wanted nothing to do with anything these troublemakers enjoyed. In any given week, at least half of the Hit parade would be filled up with ballads and popular tunes by people like Alma Cogan. That's what most people wanted to hear, right up to the mid Sixties."

In fact, Britain benefitted from a veneer of prosperity and more spending power in people's pocket, largely due to the removal of rationing and a series of canny devaluations by the MacMillan government during the late 50s. More and more young people were growing up into a comfortable suburban life that had cultural, educational and creative advantages. There was more money for instruments, more opportunity to enjoy the nightlife, the chance for free university education and growing enrollment at art schools. Here, a relatively small number of young people were introduced to jazz and then the blues, and had a chance to play and experiment. So affluence, leisure time and money in pockets was making it possible to adopt new American trends, after a fashion, in a way that had never truly happened in Britain before.

Some have said that in fact it was easier for British youth to take up r&b than it was for their contemporary white Americans. This is perhaps an oversimplification, as it ignores the way southern soul in particular was formed interracially in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, to name but two examples. However, naively obsessed with all things American, with access to far fewer media accounts of the realities of American society, British youth were far happier than white Americans to simply accept that jazz, blues and r&b was at the heart of 'American' music. The main objection to r&b in Britain was its noisiness, young people's unprofessional musicianship and the length and cleanliness of the bands' hair.

Was the music that they made r&b? It was certainly different to the rhythm & blues Americans were used to, They couldn't play as well, they couldn't sing at all American, and they had nobody to refer to except for the twenty or so records they had in their bedroom. They had grown up with very different influences to their black American heroes, from skiffle, to old folk ballads, to music hall songs, and these influences naturally permeated the songs that they began to write for themselves. So ultimately, British r&b changed into something unlike its beginnings, and took a course far removed from the course of black American music in the late 60s and 70s. But it was inspired by and dedicated to the seven-inch pieces of vinyl they had listened to note for note in those early years...

SO, who was playing this r&b hybrid? Time for some more music posts!

Information quoted from the chapter 'Enter The Stones' in 'White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixtes' by Dominic Sandbrook, and 'Mod: A Very British Phenomenon' by Terry Rawlings. Blue Eyed Handsome Dad helped with some memories also!

NOTE TO READERS: Tomorrow I am starting to move house. So I have to wait for a few days to get my internet reconnected in the new flat. So I apologise in advance if there is a delay in posting more stuff next week. Of course, since I usually get sidetracked and delayed anyway, you may not notice any difference to the usual poor service ! :)

Soul Britannia: Stoned!

2007-05-25T16:20:00.000Z

The early recordings of the Stones are going to be somewhat humourous to American soul afficionados. But they have their charms. And each song gives some indication of the influences of early British r&b and how a British r&b enthusiast perceived themselves in the early years.

With Come On, the guys attempt to do Chuck Berry for the first time. Clearly terrified of this strange music, the Decca producers constrict the band into a sanitised and clean arrangement that still resembles other tunes by British rock and roll stars of the time. Interestingly, it was not a hit with the r&b crowd, who were disappointed that it did not sound 'authentic', and it only reached No.29. What it does show is that rock and roll was a much bigger element in the influences of British r&b. The b-side, I Want To Be Loved, the Willie Dixon hit popularised by Muddy Waters, is a better track, kept tight by the professional drumming of the jazz musician Charlie Watts, who used to play in Blues Incorporated before joining the younger band. It's blues rather than rhythm and blues, and it's little wonder that early on, British r&b developed a heavy reliance on noisy guitar riffing, and on the power of the harmonica, due to the cheapness of the instrument in comparison with trying to organise a horn section, and the reverence in which blues artists were held by Chris Barber and Alexis Korner and other leaders of the scene.

Next, the Stones turned to songwriters that they idolised, Lennon and McCartney, who gave them I Wanna Be Your Man. Clearly unnerved by the poor response to their first single, both band and Decca Records looked for a sure-fire Beatleesque hit, the only r&b British record companies understood was saleable. The completely unexpected way in which the Beatles had suddenly reached No.1 on the US charts in January 1964 (not 1963 as I previously wrote in a hurry...) stunned everybody, not least themselves, and it had radically changed the way in which young r&b enthusiasts, starting up their own bands, saw their potential. Perhaps they could write their own songs as well as play their favourites.

On the b-side, Stoned shows that there was more to the Rolling Stones than so far meets the eye. It bears the unmistakeable influence of the 1962 hit Last Night by the Mar-Keys, although harmonica takes the place of horns. The British r&b fan was not just a classicist, trying to imitate a revered 'folk' music, however over-earnest some of its proponents sometimes acted (stand up Slowhand...). They were young people excited by an up to the minute sound. This is also a song with a lyric that hardly needs commenting was rather different for British music. The next year, of course, the Rolling Stones would return to the Stax stable to record Rufus Thomas' Walking The Dog for their first album.

The Rolling Stones first self-titled EP, recorded in late 1963, and their second recorded in Chicago in 1964, begin to reveal their true appreciation for some of the masters of r&b, and more closely resemble how they played live...

The Rolling Stones - Come On (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Want To Be Loved (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - Stoned (Decca 1963)

Soul Britannia: The Modernists, The Marquee and The Music

2007-05-13T08:34:00.000Z

1956. Back to Soho. Home of the jazz clubs and the skiffle clubs. Above The Roadhouse pub on Wardour Street, tired of skiffle and trad jazz, Cyril Davies and Alex Korner are setting up a club night, playing the blues. The night is called the Blues & Barrel House Club. The band is called Blues Incorporated. Who knows if anyone will come?

They come. Big Bill Broonzy and Otis Spann even come down to hear and play, and stay at their houses while they are in town.

They've come down from the Cold War US airforce bases around London, where they've been playing for the servicemen - the only place up to then you could hear the blues in Britain. Like many GIs, they come into Soho, looking for entertainment. First to clubs like the Americana for jazz; then on to Wardour Street to the Barrel House and finally down to the basement club The Flamingo for modern jazz and latest r&b singles from Ray Charles and Lee Dorsey. Mixing with student trad jazz fans, being beatnik in old jumpers and scruffy trousers, the GIs cut a style in suits and ties. Some of the skifflers and jazz musicians are interested: Zoot Money, Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames, Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds, are listening and learning.

They interest the younger kids too. From all over London they come to hang out in Soho, young mostly working-class boys who are fascinated by everything American, but can't find it in austerity Britain, can't dress like that, but they try and put on an attitude. They are not going into National Service like their older brothers, the Teds, and coming out aged and conformist. Thanks to the self-same GIs and thanks to mutually assured destruction, the country doesn't need their services. These boys are able to go to work, earn their money, buy clothes, go out, and spend it how they want. They aren't as rich as they make out - you can do a lot on the HP. They want a new kind of life all the same.

At the Flamingo, they can meet real Americans. The GIs can sell you buttoned Levi's for a fiver.
Where do you get those suits, those shirts? They just don't exist in the high street. So you need to find a way to alter things yourself. First, find something you like at Marks & Sparks, or C&A. Round the corner from The Roaring Twenties Club, where blue beat mixes with r&b from 1961, the tailor at Newmans on North End Road will make you a suit with the 'Billy Eckstine collar', or help you get the perfect 'Italian' drop to your trouser. Go to the cinema, and there are new ideas every week. La Dolce Vita with Marcello Mastroianni, Shoot The Pianist with Charles Aznavour, Rocco And his Brothers with Alain Delon, the New Wave. Always new, different, modern, changing. Think of a style, and take it to John Stevens in Fulham, Bilgorri in Bishopsgate. Now show it off at the clubs...

It's not just about the clothes anymore. It's about the music. The GIs have records to sell as well. Better than trad jazz, or skiffle, or Cliff Richard's tame rock and roll. Its a handy extra income, and a way to offload belongings before returning to the States.

March 17th 1962.

The Barasque Club, opposite Ealing Tube Station. Art Wood, singer with Blues Incorporated, asks if the owner wants a new resident band, a blues band. He agrees. Davies and Corner open a new club night, and the faces start to appear from other pockets of London, young, fashion-conscious, a little arrogant, interested in the new sounds. Soon, another club offers them a residency - The Marquee Club, at that time on Oxford Street.

Clubs in 1962 mean live music, and there are a small but growing coterie of young people who have absorbed the r&b records they have bought, and are starting to play. You'd find Brian Jones in the audience at the Marquee, Mick Jagger taking a turn as a singer with Blues Incorporated, Eric Clapton and other Yardbirds not far behind, Chris Farlowe and especially Georgie Fame and his Blue Flames turning from jazz and skiffle towards r&b at The Flamingo.

A local phenomenon amongst young men and women in London, looking for whatever the latest styles and trends are, trying to make their own identity, has encountered a club life suited to the tastes of GIs and Caribbean-Britons, and heard a music that intrigues them. Something similar is happening in some other places, in Liverpool, and in East Anglia, in smaller towns near other airforce bases. People visiting the London nightlife are bringing back the news and the new sounds to towns across the south. The rest of the country hardly know anything about it, but soon it will become a national youth culture...

Here are some tunes from Blues Incorporated in the early years. The first is taken from an LP recorded live at The Marquee Club in its first few months back in 1962, and released on Ace Of Clubs. The second is the b-side of Blues Incorporated's first single, released in 1963, many years after the formation of the group. I think this reflects the assumptions in Britain at the time that the priority for a band was playing live, and perhaps also that for many British blues musicians, they did not fully consider the idea that they could make records like their own idols. This was about to change dramatically as the recording industry, soon to be bowled over by the public fervour for The Beatles, awoke to the potential of British beat.

Alexis Korner & His Blues Incorporated - Rain Is Such A Lonesome Sound (LP 'R&B From The Marquee Club' ACL1130) 1962
Alexis Korner's & His Blues Incorporated - Please, Please, Please (B-side of Parlophone R 5206) 1963

Information gathered from The Georgie Fame site, The Marquee Club website, The British Beat Boom website (very good index of many bands), and from Mod: A Very British Phenomenon by Terry Rawlings.

Soul Britannia: Chris Farlowe Says Baby, You're Out Of Time!

2007-05-05T17:20:00.000Z

Its the Swinging Sixties!

As I didn't know where to start, I'll start with some of the best!

Amongst the blue eyed soul singers that emerged in the early 60s in Britain, few were as well respected as John Henry Deighton, more famously known as Chris Farlowe.

He had begun like countless other teens in the mid 50s as a skiffle fan, worshipping the grating folksiness of Lonnie Donegan and his ilk. The John Henry Skiffle Band actually won the All-England Skiffle Championship in 1957. Over the next year or so, the repertoire of the rock and roll group gravitated more and more away from rock and roll numbers towards r&b. In 1962, John renamed himself Chris Farlowe, in honour of jazz guitarist Tal Farlow (who at that time had mysteriously 'disappeared' from the jazz scene, to much debate amongst jazz cats) and the band became The Thunderbirds. They got a residency playing at the Flamingo Club in Soho, and were noticed by Decca Records. On their first single, an innocuous number called Air Travel released in November 1962, you can clearly hear the impact that a certain Sam Cooke had had on the country during that year. However, nothing came of the record.

Click Here to listen to Air Travel by Chris Farlowe And The Thunderbirds.

The band then signed a deal with EMI. They were to release a number of singles on the Columbia imprint. Despite creating some great singles the Thunderbirds were not getting hits. Ironically in 1964, when they released a single as The Beazers, called The Blue Beat, in which guitarist Albert Lee mimics the guitar strumming of ska under a conventional r&b melody, they had a dance hit. Albert, who went on to have along career as a respected guitarist across blues and country, joined the band after playing guitar with a number of bands, touring England and doing regular stints in the clubs of Hamburg. He was impressed with what he saw in the Thunderbirds, and stayed for four years:

"In May 1964, I joined Chris Farlowe and I stayed with him four years. I thought it was a great band - the best in Britain at what we did...but we never got much in the way of recognition or public acclaim. It was very frustrating; we'd support bands like The Animals, who were terribly ragged in comparison, with very little feeling or finesse - and they'd go down a storm while we got a smattering of applause from the few punters who weren't in the bar. I've got tapes of some of our gigs and they still stand up - some of our stuff was killer! Farlowe was a dynamite singer! But there was practically no crowd reaction. We worked solidly for years...tours, one nighters, all nighters, doubles, trips to Germany and Scandinavia - we went all over the place, but we never cracked it beyond a certain level."

In 1965, another class tune, Buzz With The Fuzz, was released to much mod acclaim, only to be withdrawn from sale when EMI's management realised that it might constitute a provocation towards the police.

Then in 1966 an offer came from Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, who had set up a new label, Immediate Records, which was also distributed by EMI. Not only was Oldham more receptive to the sounds of r&b, he could also call on the songwriting of Jagger and Richards for his artists. Farlowe was impressed , and joined other similarly soul-inflected vocalists such as Steve Marriot of the Small Faces, and later P P Arnold, at the label.

Eric Burdon, of The Animals, was asked to produce Chris Farlowe's first two singles, and was faithful to Farlowe's r&b sentiments, though who knows what Albert Lee thought of him at the time. Some outstanding albums and EPs followed, three in 1966, starting with his showcase of soul classics, Farlowe In The Midnight Hour. Farlowe had garnered so much credibility with British fans that he and Eric Burdon were asked to appear on a special edition of the TV show Ready Steady Go! with Otis Redding.

It was the third single, Out Of Time, however, written and produced by Mick Jagger, that struck the right vibe, reaching Number One in July 1966. I think that while often dismissed as a Rolling Stones cover (the Stones recorded it for their album Aftermath earlier in March), and derided for its powerful orchestration, it is a wonderful Deep Soul number, in which Farlowe positively delights in giving a woman the bad news that this relationship is not just going to pick up where she left it after leaving for another man. It was so powerful it enabled England to win The World Cup!

The Beazers (Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds) - The Blue Beat (Decca F 11827) 1964

Chris Farlowe - Out Of Time (Immediate IM 035) 1966

Sadly, by 1967 and 1968, the cultural influences arriving in the UK were no longer dominated by soul music, and while other bands were willing and able to adapt and embrace psychedelic culture, Chris Farlowe was struggling to continue in the same r&b vein he had always championed. Despite a series of outstanding relases, the hits dried up, and he was out of a record contract in 1970. Farlowe was not eager to go down the popular cabaret singer route that others like Tom Jones opted for in these years. It must have been a blow to see Rod Stewart that same year acheive a hit with his frankly inferior version of Handbags And Gladrags, a song that had been specifically written for Chris by Mike D'Abo of Manfred Mann. Sadly, it is the Stewart version that semi-Britpoppers The Stereophonics attempted to mimic with their recent hit.

The next few years saw him join up with a number of prog rock bands as a vocalist, including Atomic Rooster and Colosseum, suffer a two year hiatus after a nasty car accident, before leaving the business temporarily in the late 70s. In the 80s, Farlowe decided to return, this time trying to tap into the adult blues market, and has made a successful new career touring solo, with his 70s band Colosseum, a reformed Thunderbirds, and with Albert Lee. So once again you can hear the voice of Chris Farlowe in the North, South, East And West (yes, this is a plug for another great Farlowe track...)

Information about Chris Farlowe from many conversations and the voluminous mod record collection of John Bennett, www.45-rpm.org.uk, and the Chris Farlowe website. Albert Lee quote from O O'Connor's fan site. Photos from the collection of Lisa and Georg, two big Farlowe fans from Germany who were once part of German beat band The Fenders. Request to hear The Blue Beat came from Blue Eyed Handsome Dad!

Soul Britannia: The Jury's Still Out There...

2007-05-05T17:15:00.000Z

While perusing the internet for info about Chris Farlowe, I read this excerpt from an interview with guitarist Albert Lee. It gives a little bit of an insight into the influence of US airbases, r&b, and the Caribbean community on the beat explosion:

"In 1961 ... I ran into this bloke called Bob Xavier, who asked me to join his band. So I wore a variety of open necked silky shirts and worked American airbases and London clubs for over a year.

Bob Xavier was West Indian, and the band was modelled on Emile Ford and the Checkmates. Most other groups around town were still doing rock'n'roll, but we were into Drifters/Brook Benton sort of stuff...but in summer '62 Xavier left and we became the house band at the 2Is [paid 18 bob a night].

We'd play in the cofee bar 5 or 6 nights a week - backing whoever wandered onto the stage...and at weekends we would go out of town doing one-nighters backing Vince Eager, Keith Kelly and Jackie Lynton (who were all managed by Tom Littlewood - owner of the 2Is at the time)."

The band were called Bob Xavier & The Jury, and recorded a single with Jackie Lynton after Bob Xavier left. I found a picture of an old gig poster, but nothing else concerning Bob Xavier, or what he went on to do. If anybody knows anything about Bob Xavier and The Jury, I'd love to here from you!

Hip Ship Blues: The Incredible Jimmy Smith On A Pirate Ship

2007-04-22T12:58:00.000Z

Radio Caroline and the other pirate radio stations of the 1960s freed up the airwaves of a Britain sorely underserved by the offical channels of the British Broadcasting Company. First broadcasting from the MV Frederica off the coast of Essex in April 1964, outside of British territorial waters, it soon merged with Radio Atlanta, whose boat, the Mi Amigo, became Radio Caroline South, while the Frederica sailed to the Isle of Man to become Radio Caroline North, where its broadcasts were even more heavily influenced by jazz and rare blues and soul. They continued to broadcast until 1967, when offshore radio was outlawed. During that time, they transformed the musical tastes of Britain in the 1960s. Although their influence was equally as powerful for British beat and rock, they had a major influence in promoting soul music during the years 1964 and 1965.

This post recounts an unusual event from May 5th 1965 at Radio Caroline. Keen to do things differently from the BBC, the decision was made to invite renowned jazz musician Jimmy Smith aboard, who was in London to record a soundtrack for the film Where The Spies Are and to perform at the Royal Festival Hall. Jimmy brought a precious Hammond B3 organ with him, and his band, for an on-air performance live from the deck of the Mi Amigo. Simon Dee introduced them, and then Jimmy and drummer Tony Crombie, and guitarist Tony Thorne performed two tunes titled Hip Ship Blues and Satin Doll. Despite the experience of freezing on the windswept deck, Jimmy Smith also recorded several jingles that were played on Radio Caroline North.

The Jimmy Smith Trio - Hip Ship Blues & Satin Doll (Live May 5th 1965 on Radio Caroline)

Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 8, 1925, Jimmy Smith initially learned piano at home from his father and mother, he was a prodigy and was renowned for his endless ability to improvise without repetition. After service in the war, he went on to study bass and piano at music schools in Philadelphia, despite being unable to read music - a fact his teachers never discovered! He experimented with the Hammond organ starting in 1951, but it took him until 1955 before he had finally found a sound that was distinctivey his own. He got work playing in some of New York's most famous clubs, including Cafe Bohemia and Birdland. Offered a contract with Blue Note soon after, his 1956 album New Sounds On The Organ pushed the organ as a jazz instrument. In particular, since he was not always accompanied by a bass player in his trio, Jimmy would use his knowledge of bass to play those lines himself, giving more depth to his sound, while mimicing horn players on the other hand to give it a punchy sound. The gospel tinged, bluesy style of 'soul jazz' Jimmy Smith developed was an influence on every other organist, including r&b artist Ray Charles.

In 1963, Smith left Blue Note to record for Verve. Later in life he recorded for the Concord label. He died aged 79 at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona in February 2005.

Recording made by Dick Morecraft and is available permanently at Radio London's Radio Caroline Scrapbook. Photographs from the book 'Radio Caroline' by John Venmore-Rowland. Jimmy Smith facts from report by Arthur Spiegelmann. Some good Jimmy Smith bio pages are this one by Bob Blumethal, and an interview conducted by Pete Fallico at jazzateria.com.

Soul Britannia: Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?

2007-04-22T11:36:00.000Z

1956. This Is Tomorrow. Richard Hamilton presents his collage Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? Pop Art starts in Britain. Bring us America!

From Belfast to Birmingham to Newcastle, to Liverpool and back to London, Britain is emerging from the years of rationing into a more prosperous era. Full of new consumer goods and other influences from America. New musical sounds of America making their way across the Atlantic and reaching young people…

Not r&b, or even rock and roll, but skiffle at first. The music that first encouraged thousands of British youths to pick up an instrument and form a band. Lonnie Donegan and other British jazz musicians, playing a spin-off from New Orleans in the jazz era in Soho clubs. A BBC reporter investigates:

“In London, the skiffle movement provides entertainment at several dozen coffee-houses [playing] blues, ballads, shanties, work songs, country songs, cowboy songs, railway ditties and even evergreen popular tunes.”

Tune in to Saturday Skiffle Club on the BBC Light Programme on the family radio, half an hour for the teen-agers on a Saturday evening, starting in 1957. It’s the place we encountered real gospel spirituals, bluegrass, country, blues and r&b for the first time. Sometimes the authentic sound of Leadbelly on a recording. More often than not (thanks to strict rules on not allowing too much ‘needletime’ on radio), interpreted by a British skiffler in a live performance.

Skiffle sound doesn’t hold sway for long. Rock and roll hits British shores. The rechristened Saturday Club plays us more Gene Vincent, Cliff Richard, more American acts. But just half and hour still. If you want to hear some more, wait until early evening when the signal bounce is stronger off the ionosphere, sneak a transistor radio under the covers and tune into Medium Wave 208, Radio Luxembourg. They play the latest hits from the major record companies, who vied to sponsor a show to plug their products. The sound fades in and out in the south on England, but up North things are clearer…

TV! Neighbours rented one, it costs 10s a week from Rumbelows. Turn it on at six on Saturday and catch your favourite British rockers on Six-Five Special, Drumbeat on the BBC, or live from the Palladium on Oh Boy! on ITV. See some film clips of the American stars we wish would come to Britain.

1960. Finally, the end of the Musician’s Union ban on American performers. Finally hear Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy and Bobby Darin, Chris Montez, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddly - performing live on Saturday Club! Finally get to see some of their rock and roll heroes in the flesh, and along with them the latest stars of soul music, a new sound, mixed with gospel music – Little Richard and Sam Cooke, at Brighton Hippodrome in 1962, Richard jumping on the piano, never been a performance like it before. Solomon Burke in 1963, Chuck Berry in 64.

Want more?

1964. Here come the pirates, broadcasting from out at sea, far away from the reach of the BBC. Radio London, Atlanta, and most of all Radio Caroline. All aboard the good ships MV Mi Amigo and the Frederica. One stays south anchored off Essex, and one goes North, carrying a cargo of several thousand rare jazz and r&b records. Now everybody can hear the new sounds of British beat, and the sounds of America, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the old and the brand new. Whatever young people are listening to in Britain, now it all originates with the music of Black America…

Information about Saturday Club is from an article by Spencer Leigh. There is a nice list of all of the artists who appeared on Saturday Club here. I read up on Six-Five Special here. Also from The Story Of Radio Luxembourg website. Radio Caroline information is everywhere on the web, I have enjoyed looking through the Radio London scrapbook on Radio Caroline, and The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame.

1st Anniversary: It Was A Brown Eyed Handsome Man!

2007-04-15T15:58:00.000Z

It’s been a whole year since I began this blog, and I only realised this morning! I got a little writer’s block coming up with some more historical posts about soul in Britain, when I thought, why don’t I write about Chuck Berry's Brown Eyed Handsome Man?

After deciding to make a blog while not really knowing what it entailed, and discovering that every variation of ‘sweet soul music’ had been taken already, I stayed up all night watching The Buddy Holly Story on TV, where they play Buddy’s cover of this song, and in the morning the title still appealed to me. Thinking about the song and its lyrics, it seemed to evoke a lot of things about the significance of black musical forms in America. While being a ‘rock and roll’ song meant it would highlight a broader definition of rhythm and blues, that make more sense outside of the narrow genres in the racks of your local music store.

Coded language and social commentary have a long history in music, from the rhythmic patterns and drumbeats of slave songs, through the exodus and salvation imagery of revival songs and spirituals and into gospel music. In the blues, the telling of someone’s troubles in song has revealed something of the conditions of the world around them. Characters like Stag-O-Lee have lived through many decades, informing us through their fictional exploits of the desperate side of life, much in the same way as today’s hip-hop artists continue to do. Jazz followed all of these trends also, using music itself to express it.

The emergence of rockabilly and rock and roll highlighted a changing society in which the old divisions and the certainties of the folkways of segregation in America were being challenged and bypassed. In the first of the tracks featured today, you can hear four individuals challenging those changes as they struggle to get to grips with playing Brown Eyed Handsome Man at Sun Studios in Memphis in December 4th 1956. Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. Four white boys who’d, between them, spent their youths listening to gospel in black churches, learning to play blues guitar from black musicians, grown up picking cotton on mixed farming communes thanks to the New Deal, amongst other influences. Carl Perkins, always shy and thoughtful, and a little unsure of his true talent, is clearly awestruck, as they all are, as they ponder the complexity and the wit of the lyrics, and while Elvis struggles to keep the words in rhythm. Finally, he confides earnestly to the others:

“You oughta hear some of this stuff sitting around, boy”, says Carl Perkins. “I’ve just come offa a tour with this guy, Chuck Berry. Man, he sat down behind the stage and just … man, I ain’t no good!”

Chuck Berry creates a series of entertaining, racy tale of the allure of brown-eyed handsome men and their exploits, and puts his penchant for suggestiveness to good use by this time exhorting the women to seek them out, while he of course plays the role. The race of the character is never made explicit, but is inferred by the distinctive choice of brown eyes, as opposed to the very popular ‘blue eyes’ of dozens of popular crooners’ tunes. There lies the element of social danger that was implicit in all rock and roll performed by black artists, sexual desire between races. Little Richard for example was overt about courting publicly women of all races. Chuck is going further than this, however, in his lyrics. He subverts the dominant assumptions of the era that white women were chaste, unwilling victims of ‘miscegenation’ by threading the song with the line, “Her mother told her daughter go out and find yourself …” The suggestion is that the sexual colour line was never as rigid as society’s elders wanted it to appear. Chuck tells us “Way back in history three thousand years, Back ever since the world began.” In the realm of individual relations, the reality defied the constructs of social stricture.

Roy Kasten, writing last year at the Living In Stereo blog, made a detailed appreciation of the lyrical talent of Chuck Berry, and said:

“Berry turned the sound of a sub-culture into a universal lingo and made three minute dance numbers into comprehensive portraits of life.”

How did the song story originate? According to some sources, the first verse was inspired by Berry observing a West Coast policeman trying to arrest a Hispanic man for loitering until a girl talked him out of the arrest. The second verse is alleged to be inspired by images in the sadomasochistic novel Venus In Furs. Meanwhile, in the final verse, Chuck Berry is said to celebrate the baseball player Jackie Robinson, though again, some claim that he is talking about Larry Doby, first African-American player in the American League. It is the one verse where a brown eyed handsome man is shown beyond the arena of sexuality, beating the odds and winning the game, and is an image of power.

It’s a brilliantly written tale, and elements of its lyrical techniques have influenced others such as Van Morrison with his Brown Eyed Girl. Meanwhile, in the hands of other singers, such as Nina Simone and Fontella Bass, the song gets a different treatment, as when sung from a black female perspective in the black power era, it took on connotations of a call to support black men. While this was never the original intention of the song, it certainly adds something interesting, especially since the underlying causes of alienation of black men in American society have not been addressed and have merely become worse over the decades.

Eventually, I imagine, Elvis got the hang of the lyrics.

Arrested on charges of unemployment,

he was sitting in the witness stand

The judge's wife called up the district attorney

Said you free that brown eyed man

You want your job you better free that brown eyed man

Flying across the desert in a TWA,

I saw a woman walking across the sand

She been a-walkin' thirty miles en route to Bombay.

To get a brown eyed handsome man

Her destination was a brown eyed handsome man

Way back in history three thousand years

Back every since the world began

There's been a whole lot of good women shed a tear

For a brown eyed handsome man

That's what the trouble was brown eyed handsome man

Beautiful daughter couldn't make up her mind

Between a doctor and a lawyer man

Her mother told her daughter go out and find yourself

A brown eyed handsome man

That's what your daddy is a brown eyed handsome man

Milo Venus was a beautiful lass

She had the world in the palm of her hand

But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match

To get brown eyed handsome man

She fought and won herself a brown eyed handsome man

Two, three count with nobody on

He hit a high fly into the stand

Rounding third he was headed for home

It was a brown eyed handsome man

That won the game; it was a brown eyed handsome man

The Million Dollar Quartet – Brown Eyed Handsome Man (Rehearsal Outtake) (Sun Records) Dec 4th 1956

Chuck Berry – Brown Eyed Handsome Man (1956)

Buddy Holly – Brown Eyed Handsome Man (released 1963)

Nina Simone – Brown Eyed Handsome Man (High Priestess of Soul LP, New York 1966)

Thanks To Living In Stereo blog for giving me some inspiration for this post, and they are always worth a read for descriptive and thoughtful appreciations of music. Read their Chuck Berry posts starting here. Also interesting is this account by Dave Marsh of the story of Johnny B Goode and the way society affected its lyrics: http://www.lexjansen.com/cgi-bin/marsh_xml.php?fn=2

Soul Britannia: Soulpool

2007-03-31T18:45:00.000Z

This article is based upon the remarkable research of the Soulpool website, conducted by Steve Higginson , David Pendleton and others. Basically, Soulpool is creating a detailed social and cultural history of the musical roots of Liverpool, and using oral history they have been able to present a very different version of the origins of the Mersey Sound. I don't think there is any similar project of such depth online concerning this aspect of British social history. So, once you have finished reading my short(er) post to wet your appetite, follow the links over to Soulpool to read the rest of the story that forms one of the most important chapters in the history of Soul Britannia...

Trying to track down the origin point for a social phenomenon is intrinsically difficult, and there will always be the isolated example that acts as an exception to the rule. However, the history of Merseyside offers evidence that it is amongst the earliest British communities to have ready access to and develop an appetite for American r&b music. From this appetite, a new musical movement was formed, which then went on to transform music in Britain and then impact across the world...

We will all think we know this story of course. Yet while four loveable moptops were indeed responsible for the final breakthrough of Merseybeat into popular success in 1962, their careers alone do not explain the origins of this new sound.

Liverpool's black history, of course, is a long one. Both free and unfree, black people have been living in Liverpool for 400 years. As Britain's principal slave-trading port for over a century, it surpassed Bristol and London. Even after abolition of slavery in the British Empire, Liverpool's dock workers were among the most vociferous in their support for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, being at that time dependent on the southern cotton trade. Throughout all this time and beyond to living memory, Liverpool was the principal port of access to the commerce of the Caribbean.

Poverty and casual racism often colluded to ghettoise these communities geographically, for example in Toxteth, Liverpool 8, despite the lack of racial codes. As in other areas of Britain, the sign in the window of rooms to let would frequently read, "No Irish, No Gypsies, No Blacks." However, in a busy port like Liverpool, there was work to be had in boom times, and throughout the C19th, racial solidarity could be found in workers' movements such as the Chartists (William Coffey being one of the prime leaders in London), and later in the trade union movement. Of course, in times of slump, more selfish motives could rise to the surface. Such a time occured in 1948, after a wartime rise in the black population, due to the call for qualified nurses and doctors to aid the mother nation during its time of crisis. In the post-war austerity era, it became easy for people to accuse black Liverpudlians of taking jobs that belonged to white people. White rioting occured through Toxteth in that year.

So, in Liverpool by the late 1940s, before even the Windrush generation, the black community was larger and more established than in other cities outside of the major seaports. It stands to reason that there was already a growing number of musicians with both Caribbean and African influences through the 1940s and 50s. It was however, according to oral histories, quite difficult to find venues to play in, in large part due to the long-running Musicians' Union ban on any American bands playing in unionised venues. This ban was in large part a reaction to 'negro bands', as the union put it, and affected local musicians as much when combined with the casual segregation of most Liverpool venues in the 40s and 50s. Right up until the late 1950s, most licenced clubs were folk orientated in central Liverpool. Local halls such as the Nigerian, the Sierra Leone, and the All Nations, built by the Toxteth community, or the White House pub, were some of the few opportunities to perform and to go in relative peace to hear what was still unfamiliar music to the majority of Britons.

Liverpool's position as a major seaport made it open to other influences, from the late 30s onwards. Merchant seamen who found themselves travelling to the Caribbean and to the United States had the opportunity to take shore leave and wind down in the local nightlife. They began to get a taste for the very different kinds of music they encountered there. Soon they were seeking out record stores in those places, and bringing their finds in country, jazz and later r&b home with them. To the Liverpudlians back home, these 'Cunard Yanks', as they were known, often appeared outlandish, somewhat strange, when they began to congregate and play this discover'd music at their hangouts. Their clothing would seem outlandish also, described by Cunard employee Tony Dwyer as being manily African-American fashions, such as zoot suits, full drape jackets, and very tight bottoms to the trouser leg, and which Steve Higginson describes from a slightly later era as being the smart, sharp suits and button-down shirts being worn by the American r&b artist Billy Eckstine, and uncannily similar to the 'mod' fashion that would emerge in Europe and Britain nearly six or seven years later. Some, like sailor Ian Gilmour, came home in the late 50s and established clubs in Liverpool, at least tapping into the rock and roll boom and providing a atmosphere tolerant to r&b and jazz as well as the usual rock and roll. However, some other historians strongly dispute the influence of merchant seamen on Merseybeat bands themselves, stating that it was a world in which those bands rarely interacted. As this is a big debate, I will come back to it in another post.

Record stores in Liverpool began to stock this new music in the 1950s. When the rock and roll boom hit Britain in the late 50s, there was already this established influence. Teenage skiffle enthusiasts and banjo players in Merseyside were able to satisfy their curiosity when they encountered names such as Elmore James, Sleepy John Estes, Larry Williams or Arthur Alexander alongside Elvis or Buddy Holly, in a way that other British rock and rollers would not so easily. However, there was something else that allowed the growing army of scouse rock'n roll bands to deepen their understanding and experiences of r&b.

Up with rockers like Rory Storm or the Hurricanes, the Merseybeat scene was dominated by homegrown artists playing their own authentic r&b. Derry Wilkie, Sugar Dean and Colin Areety jumped onstage when Little Richard played Liverpool, and were accepted for their talents and the enthusiasm of the local crowd. A number of big American r&b artists made it their business to tour to Liverpool, where they were assured of a good audience - one recent commentator on this blog, Bill Mitchell, remembers with fondness the time Joe Turner performed and came down into the audience during the interval to chat and have a drink with the people. The Valentinos, named for their American namesakes, and other local groups were digesting and recreating the American vocal harmony group sounds of the late 50s and early 60s. The Chants were also writing and performing in this vein. When four befringed lads came by to hear them play, they went back to their manager Brian Epstein to beg to play behind The Chants as their backing band. When The Chants came to The Cavern, this is exactly what the Beatles did, despite Epstein's obvious displeasure that his band were being upstaged.

This is how bands like The Beatles, who were also the songwriters behind hits for many other Merseybeat bands, were able to listen to complex vocal harmonies in r&b firsthand, and learn how to incorporate them into their guitar-based rock and roll.

They encouraged Brian Epstein to sign up The Chants along with many other Merseybeat bands in 1964. However, you get the impression that he had little enthusiasm for promoting them. Ironically, Epstein got them a record deal with ... Pye Records, the well-meaning but slightly out-of-their-milieu label of Jimmy James and The Vagabonds and later Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band also. The sound of the black r&b groups of Liverpool had some similarities with the Merseybeat sound, but it is clearly pure r&b, and different enough that the record-buying public, obsessed with Beatlemania, passed it by for the next long-haired Mersey group single. Meanwhile, other enthusiasts of American r&b, in other parts of Britain, were unaware of what was on offer to them in Toxteth, in those dark days before the internet. Micks and Keiths and Erics (both Bs and Cs) continued to think they had to go to Detroit and Chicago to find the gritty r&b they had encountered.

Here is a little taste of the early Chants, written by Eddie Amoo, as would have influenced Liverpool beat groups. Later, I will be sharing some of the transformations that The Chants and other black British groups went through to try to gain commercial success to match their talents.

The Chants - I Don't Care (1963)

Information for this post came from the Soulpool website - who go into much greater detail than I have here on all these phenomena. It is a must-read if you are interested in the story of Soul Britannia! Much information about the Chants comes from articles and photos collected by Bill Harry, journalist and author of the site Mersey Beat. I have also learnt some interesting things from the websites of Colin Dilnot, who has been kind enough to mention this site several times in recent months. In Dangerous Rhythm should be part of everyone's weekly blog trail. Recently, on his Soul of Liverpool blog, Colin announced the sad passing of Vincent Ismael, a member of Liverpool soul group The Harlems.

Soul Britannia: Geno!

2007-03-24T12:23:00.000Z

Last Friday night, I went the Komedia Bar in Brighton. Coming along also was my father (going for now by the moniker Blue Eyed Handsome Dad) for a glimpse of his Sixties past and a little generational discussion about the legacy of soul music in this island nation. And some beers. And some great soul music from an Anglophile soul man who almost single-handedly brought a live soul presence to the small towns and dance halls of East Anglia and southern England. We were waiting to see Geno Washington and The Ram Jam Band! My father remembered going to see Geno at a university hall somewhere in London back in 1967. It was with a mate of his, who he hasn't seen since the mid 60s. If you remember Dave Whatman of Auckland Drive, Bevendean, in the 60s, leave a comment!

"RAMAJAMAJAMA!"

Geno Washington, born in Evansville Indiana, is of paramount importance in the history of live soul music in Britain. How did this occur? Geno was serving in the USAF and stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk. After being demobbed, he was hanging out in local clubs in Ipswich, when he happened to go along to a gig by Shane Fenton and The Fentones. Seeing their performance convinced him that he wanted to do that too. Geno is the only soul singer to have been inspired by Fenton, read name Bernard Jewry, later to become the glam rocker Alvin Stardust. Geno admits that one of the primary motivations he had for getting into music at this time was to impress women. Travelling to London in 1965 to try his hand as a singer, he was invited to join a beat group put together by Pete Gage.

In one version told by Geno himself, the band passed by an A1 motorway service station called the Ram Jam Restaurant, and the Ram Jam Band they became… or they could simply have chosen the name from The Ram Jam Club at 390 Brixton Road where they were opening for The Animals!

From 1966, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band toured across southern England, performing covers of up and coming soul hits and their own material. It was a high-energy, non-stop performance, showcasing not only Geno’s powerful voice and the Ram Jam bands tight authentic sound, but also Geno’s dancing, and his humour and repartee, none of which were familiar to reserved British audiences. This was one of the few ways in which provincial soul fans were able to hear authentic soul live during that time, while waiting for the tours and revues of American soul artists. The level of touring that the Ram Jam Band put in paid off in terms of record sales, despite being signed to Pye Records, who as with The Vagabonds, did not exactly know what to do with a soul band, and initially offered Geno songs such as Que Sera Sera. Both of the Ram Jam Bands first albums, Hand Clappin’ Foot Stompin’ Funky Butt … Live! and Hipsters, Flipsters Finger Poppin’ Daddies! were recordings of their live performances. The first album, on Pye Record’s Piccadilly label, stayed on the chart for 48 weeks in 1966, becoming the third- biggest-selling album in Britain of the year. The Beatles Revolver was not even in the top three…* Finally though, in the end of the 60s, Geno decided to stop the exhausting touring, which had made the record company wealthy, but not him.

After recording back home during the 70s on and off, everything changed again in 1980. A song by Dexy’s Midnight Runners went to number one. Friends called Geno up at his home and told him: the Number One record in England, it’s about you… Geno was back out on the road, and back in the UK.

"RAMAJAMAJAMA!"

The concert is about to begin. My father mentions some ska records that come through the post addressed for me. Just then, they start playing One Step Beyond. He says that it was around 1964 when he was travelling around the West Country on a scooter that he first heard about ska, from a group of London girls they’d met. You didn’t hear it in the local Brighton clubs back then, even along at the club above the shops on Western Road next to Codrington Mansions.

Stanley ‘Wolfman’ Williams cranks out the guitar riff, then tenor Orlando Star and original baritone saxophonist Buddy Beagle punch through with the horns, and the Ram Jam Band start to Pick Up The Pieces. Then a familiar Otis Stax fanfare comes in, and Geno Washington comes on stage to wild applause and the first of many begin to leave their tables to dance at the front. Geno is singing I Can’t Turn You Loose, with his own lyrics, then segues into Wilson Pickett’s Feel It. Halfway through, he sings a dedication for tonight’s show:

“I love Elvis, I love BB King;
I love James Brown, I know he’ll be back again.”

Geno gets us hollering back lines from Land of A 1000 Dances, and gets us clapping, and then gets us dancing with Get Up Offa That Thing and exhortations to do the Funky Broadway. The call is answered by an eager crowd made up of young hipsters and potential artificial hipsters. Geno welcomes them all:

“We’re all gonna tell the truth, ain’t we? Yeah! Man, I see a lot of good looking people out there tonight. Yeah! Damn! I see a lot of damn ugly ones too! … Yeah, I remember the 60s, sorta – back in Vietnam – Major Washington – I didn’t fly jets, flew copters. And I also lie a lot!”

Geno volunteered wisely for a posting in England partly to avoid a more hazardous posting to Vietnam, and partly to further his athletics career, in which he excelled in 110m hurdles. He served as a physical training instructor.

In The Midnight Hour a lot of strange things seem to happen to Geno:

“Last night we were kidnapped by six skinhead Japanese! True. They made us drink six bottles of Jack Daniels! Bastards!”

Green Onions, accompanied by Geno's lyrics, becomes a melancholy plea, Maybe Can You Be My Baby. All the generations up on the dancefloor slow down instinctively to the strange, solitary, half turning, half shuffling gait:

“Maybe, can you be my baby?
Coz I’ve got so much love to give,
Maybe, maybe, maybe…”

and ends by pleading "Baby, please don’t go back down to New Orleans you know I love you so…"

Stevie Deuce on bass leads us into Theme From Shaft, and Geno takes that into Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag. Then a guitar string breaks, and Geno takes a little break, while letting us into a little secret he just made up:

“I made Eric Clapton’s last guitar. Looks good. He plays like shit. Four fucking licks!”

“If we get to 11, you girls might get freaky, throw knickers on stage and shit. You might, they’re just bigger now, yeah!”

Screaming Jay Hawkin’s I Put A Spell On You, in which Buddy Beagle does a particularly haunting solo, becomes a musical and comic classic in the hands of Geno. Halfway through, Geno tells us a story involving the mysterious Madame Lulabelle, a fortune teller. She tells Geno that his wife, Lula-May, is cheating on him. He can’t believe it, so he formulates a plan:

“I go home and put on Teddy Pendergrast singing Let’s Both Wax That Ass – ‘coz in my neighbourhood, if you can’t score listening to that … I’m smoking a Cuban cigar, and I’m doing my best Barry White voice to my wife – ‘Honey, was you faking it last night?’ And she says, ‘No, honey, I WAS asleep.’ Shit, it wasn’t funny too much!”

Geno challenges us to sing back the opening lines of I Feel Good, storms through the song, only to have one guy in the last pregnant pause yell out the last "I Got You!":

“Bastard (pronounced correctly with the double ‘arr’)!! Bastard! We practiced that for six months! I was even gonna do the splits, and then while I was down there, I was gonna breakdance on your ass! But HE fucked that up!”

The band back up and redo the ending, and this time, the offender gets a full dose of “Lord knows what I’d a done to yo’ mama .. yo’ sister ….”

"But that don’t make me a bad person?” asks Geno, innocently!

“Van Morrison, he used to help me out. He was the first Irishman I ever met, he always lent me 1s and 2s but never a fiver, he’s so tight his ass squeaks!”

I vow never to accept a two-pound note from Van Morrison. And on to a rousing Gloria. Everyone is shouting out the name.

“Before I got confident, I’d do that Elvis pose, with your legs wide apart. Then I’d drop my microphone and stick my ass in the air! A luxury item around here! On the street it would be ‘Can I touch it, can I rub it’ all the time. Sometimes it would be ladies too!”

The home straight is Knock On Wood, and then back into I Can’t Turn you Loose. Geno tries to go, but its back for an encore:

“I thought I’d get an easy night. Take the money and run. My lobster’s getting cold back there! Don’t you care? They paid the band in euros and steak and kidney pies.”

The band finish with Everybody Needs Somebody, as at the Soul Britannia Barbican concert in February that was barely advertised.

The concert ends slightly abruptly with a few bars of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which just stops, just as I’m expecting a Thelma Houston style rendition.

We are left with words of wisdom:

“It is better to be pissed off than to be pissed on.”

"RAMAJAMAJAMA!"

The DJ plays out with some Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and I recall how at the end of every school disco in the early 80s, the teacher acting as DJ would play Come On Eileen, and people would ask if he could play Geno as well, although I am sure that in some part of my mind back then I though it was actually a song about Dino, the dinosaur on the Flintstones. Somewhere probably in the audience is Dexy’s songwriter and Brighton resident Kevin Rowland, though I don’t catch sight of him. Then the play the fellow Anglophile Edwin Starr’s War, and Blue Eyed Handsome Dad is intrigued to know that there is a statue in his honour in the middle of Birmingham. Next up is Nutbush City Limits, and Dad reminds me of when my brother and I would listen to this on family car outings to a country pub, roll down the windows, and literally scream out our own words: “They call it CROSSBUSH! CROSSBUSH CITY LIMITS!”, and howl with laughter, it being a tiny, sedate village near the historic town of Arundel. Another variation used to be Nutwood, home of Rupert Bear... Finally, the Temptations put us both in a Ball Of Confusion as we try to work out who is the female singer singing at the beginning. After a knockout evening of non-stop soul, we both head off for a good pub…

Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band - If This Is Love (I'd Rather Be Lonely)

Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band - Jumpin' Jack Flash

The first song is not on the Ram Jam Band's sixties records, but was an unreleased track now found on their compilation CD and on itunes. According to London Lee, who featured this last summer at the sadly retired No.1 Songs In Heaven blog, it was first recorded by The Precisions. It is a particularly good example of how Geno Washington helped to spread the popularity of some exceedingly rare soul recordings to the furthest reaches of Britain. The second song is here not only because these are the vocals the song should have always had to do it justice, but because we only heard ten seconds of it on the night!

Thanks to The Komedia Bar for an excellent venue and nice food. Information for this post came from various sources, including the All Music Guide, and the article If The Blues Spirit Moves You in the News & Star, who provided the humourous but perhaps apocryphal motorway service station anectdote. Thank you also to my guest the Blue Eyed Handsome Dad, Dave Whatman!

*the No.1 album of 1966 was The Sound Of Music, followed by Bridge Over Troubled Water.