soul detective

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS MYSTERY

2011-12-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
Santa Claus Please Listen To Me

Hey Folks - just like we did last year, when we found out a few things about Electric Jungle, I figured we'd take a look at another trés obscure Christmas 45, which was apparently quite the hit with the Northern Soul boys over there in the UK. Whomever Artie Fullilove was though, you can bet the farm he never heard of the Wigan Casino...

The only name I've been able to turn anything up on here is that of the composer, which is listed on the label as Hawlett Smith. I'm betting it's supposed to read Howlett Smith, who is still active out on the West Coast as a jazz vocalist and pianist. As it says on his booking agency's website, "Smitty"' has done it all!, including a 'recurring role on General Hospital'. There ya go. He was also the composer of another Christmas Chestnut, the eternal Little Altar Boy.

According to John Manship, the UK's Rare Soul Man, the copy we have here is a bootleg, but he has the original pressing currently on auction at his site; "The ultimate Northern Soul Christmas record! No wonder this 45 was 'bootlegged' immediately it was discovered in the70s - quickly shipped to the Wigan Casino DJs. It was not until sometime later the original vinyl 45 revealed itself. A trick often used by the West Coast suppliers to the scene..." It always amazes me that any curiosity on the part of these guys doesn't seem to extend beyond the moment when some talcum powder infused DJ 'discovered' a record, let alone the people who actually cut it...

Anyway, here's the flip side, Raindeer Walk:

All in all, a pretty awesome 45, I'd say, and a cool way to get yourself into the holiday spirit!

"Peace On Earth, Santa Claus,
Peace On Earth, Santa Claus,
That's What I Really Want To Say"

I am right there with that, man.

Artie would have one more release, Marlu 1002 - Thank You b/w Strangers In The Night. Can any of you detectives out there fill in some of the blanks on this one?

Ho-Ho-Ho!

soul sauce

2011-10-06T12:29:00.001-07:00

Hello there. You know, people write to me with questions and stuff all the time, and I'm usually like, 'Yeah, great idea for a case, or a burning question or something, I'll get to it eventually...' Only, eventually usually seems more like forever, and that just ain't right.

Instead of walking around like a guilt-ridden gumshoe as I've been doing, I've decided to resurrect the idea of an ongoing column, where I can address various issues and stuff without going as in-depth as I usually do (although all of that will still happen, God willing).

I'm planning to base it on the indispensable soul-era Billboard column "Soul Sauce", and for right now you can check it out over on the main page, souldetective.com.

Please feel free to send in your own thoughts and questions. We're all in this together!

Thanks -red

2011-04-27T08:11:00.001-07:00

2011-03-31T06:05:00.001-07:00

2011-03-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

case seven - THE MEMPHIANS

2011-02-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

LATEST UPDATE: 2/1/11

BLUFF CITY 101 B

South Memphis

OK folks, here goes... I've been working on this one for quite a while, and this time things are a little different. In conjunction with my friends Preston Lauterbach and Charisse Sales, we've already done some extensive legwork on this case, as you'll see in the days to come, but there is still plenty of stuff to figure out!

Now, as you may have noticed down in the comments, new contributor (and Ace detective) Sir Algernon Truth correctly identified the band that will be the subject of our new investigation here but, oddly enough, the song title he supplied us with is actually the flip of this 45, 'Breakdown'. He goes on to say that it "took a while for me to find as it was part of a gold sampler..." I'm wondering if the folks who put together the 'sampler' in question got the titles mixed up, or what... does anybody have any more information on that?

We'll take a listen to that A side of this initial 45 by this very cool Memphis underground super-group the next time out...

Thanks - red

3/11/10

OK folks, as promised here's the flip of South Memphis:

BLUFF CITY 101 A

Breakdown

So, here's the real 'Breakdown'... I'm loving that kind of 'Time Is Tight' meets 'Grazing In The Grass' feel, then all of a sudden there's this wild funky breakdown with a wailing sax that somehow comes out the other end into the tune again. Very cool and inventive stuff, no? Now, let's talk a little bit about the label.

Regular contributor, good friend and proprietor of the excellent Just Moving On Gospel site, Cies, had this to say in the comments: "According to the R&B Indies there are two more releases on Bluff City. R&B Indies has a New York address for Bluff City."

Well, that certainly seemed odd... so I checked it out:

Sure enough, they place the company on Seventh Avenue in New York City. The fact that the B Side of #101 is listed as an 'unknown title' would seem to indicate that they didn't have the 45 in front of them when compiling the book, and so didn't notice the Memphis address printed on there plain as day - 378 E.H. Crump.

A google of that location puts the address right in the middle of the intersection of E.H. Crump and South Third Street. I wasn't sure what was up with that so I contacted our man in Memphis, Preston Lauterbach. "Yeah, it's right about at Crump & 3rd. There's nothing there to see, though it had been some kind of record co. until just a couple years ago... I'll tell you who has a picture of it, Ted Barron at the Boogie Woogie Flu blog. It was called TB Records..."

Sure enough, Brooklyn's own Ted Barron, whose new venture is the excellent Daily Pixel: Twenty-Ten provided me with the photograph above. "I made this photograph in 2007," he said, "All I can tell you, is it was on a mostly derelict strip mall..." Thanks, Ted!

So there ya go, the original address of Bluff City Records was this building. If you notice, the sign actually says 'TB Studios'. Think that was there these sides were recorded? Anybody have any clue who TB might have been?

We'll talk more soon...

3/17/10

Yes, as sleuth Davie Gordon pointed out in the comments; "I'd bet that the Memphians are related to Julius Bradley who you wrote about on your Holy Ghost blog (Aug 28,2007)"... and he'd be right. It is my sad duty to inform all of you, however, that Julius Bradley, who was indeed the bass player for The Memphians, passed away yesterday, as I reported over on holy ghost:

We will talk more about Julius and his music in the days to come.

May God Rest his Soul.

3/24/10

So, as you might have heard me mention in my Special Report on the 2009 Soul Detective Fact Finding Mission, it was Julius Bradley who answered the door at Royal Studio when I came knocking back in 2006. It was Julius who was kind enough to show me around the place, and who introduced me to the man himself, Poppa Willie. We talked for a while about the Gospel album he was working on (which I would later feature on holy ghost when it was released the following year), and he told me he had been with Willie over thirty years, writing songs for Hi and Waylo artists like Al Green, Otis Clay and Lynn White.

When I went back to visit the studio just before the Stax 50th celebration in 2007, Julius was there along with J. Blackfoot and Preston Shannon. We had us a time...

Julius, who had actually gone to High School with O.V., was there at the O.V. Wright Memorial Benefit in 2008 (along with his constant companion and good friend 'Blade'), and it was obvious that he knew everybody in the place, both on stage and off. Through all of this, Julius never mentioned that he had been an R&B artist in his own right... never mentioned the fact that he had been the bass player and lead vocalist for one of the most respected and well-loved bands to emerge from the smoking Memphis club scene of the late sixties and early seventies.

He was truly one of a kind.

Imagine my surprise when my pal Preston Lauterbach forwarded an email to me that he had received from a young lady in Memphis named Charisse Sales about a group her father had been in back in the day...

The group, which had been known as 'The Memphians', had included not only Julius, but Preston Shannon as well! When I spoke with Julius about all of this, and asked him why he never told me about it (especially that time when both he and Preston were there with me at the Studio), he just kind of shrugged...

I promised Charisse at that point that we would make The Memphians our next investigation here on Soul D, and subsequently met with her and Kurl McKinney at the Lauterbach digs last October, where they provided us with some incredible photographs and memorabilia. As the case unfolds here on the site, I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate all of our efforts to the memory of my friend Julius Bradley.

He was awesome.

Back in the seventies, Julius got a 'day job' with Delta Airlines there in Memphis, and worked with a couple of friends named Mark Blackwelder and Barry Wilkins. Although The Memphians had broken up by then, he used to get together with his co-workers and play music whenever they could find the time. In yet another example of the amazing power of the internet, folks, here is a song Mark sent me that Julius wrote and recorded in the living room of Barry's apartment on an old 2 track reel-to-reel recorder around 1978:

It's Nice

That' Julius on the bass guitar and vocals, along with Barry on lead and Mark on rhythm. How cool is that?

Thanks, Mark!

4/5/10

Check this out...

MANKIND 12004 A

She's All I Got

In 1971, after Wally Roker shut down his Canyon label out in L.A., Jerry Williams, Jr. (who had only recently taken on his Swamp Dogg persona) negotiated a deal with Nashboro Records in Nashville that created the Mankind subsidiary. With Swamp at the helm, the label would become the home of some truly incredible soul music by the likes of Z.Z. Hill, Doris Duke, Brooks O'Dell and Freddie North.

North, who was also the head of promotion at the label, would have a top ten R&B hit (#39 Pop) with this Swamp Dogg production in August of 1971. Sounding a lot like Joe Simon, Freddie's impassioned delivery of this catchy number make it a definite keeper. If you look there on the label, it says "recorded at Quinby Studios, Sheffield, Ala", which I'm sure is supposed to read 'Quinvy', Quin Ivy's Muscle Shoals digs that were soon to become David 'Bat' Johnson's Broadway Sound, Swamp's home away from home in those days.

EPIC 10783

(Don't Take Her) She's All I Got

I'm not sure how it happened but, within a couple of months, another Nashville via Muscle Shoals figure had picked up on the song, and cut it on that most 'outlaw' of all the new breed of outlaw singers, Johnny Paycheck. Foreshadowing the ground-breaking work he was about to do with George Jones, this trademark Billy Sherrill production soared to #2 Country (#91 Pop) in early 1972, and set Music City on its ear.

If you look at the songwriting credit there on the Mankind label, it says 'J .Williams Jr. - G. Bonds' - that would be (you guessed it) Gary U.S. Bonds. Bonds and the Dogg had been friends since the early days back in Virginia, and were frequent collaborators, writing dozens of songs together. Bonds would also be a member of Swamp's short-lived Slick 'n' The Family Brick. Although he had continued performing, Gary hadn't had a record on the charts since 1962. I think both of them were pretty much blown away at being selected as the 'Country Music Songwriters of the Year' in 1972, after the Paycheck record was such a smash. It must have been quite a scene when they picked up the award...

Anyway, what does this have to do with The Memphians? Nothing really, but I just wanted to set the stage here for this next record:

BLUFF CITY 221 A

My Love Song

The last of the three Bluff City releases, this Bonds composition is actually a great little song that somehow fell through the cracks. With Bonds' songwriting back in the spotlight, he must have been viewed as a big signing for the tiny label. How the record came to be produced by industry heavyweight Alan Lorber (who had worked with everybody from Jackie Wilson to Ultimate Spinach), is anybody's guess.

Despite the fact that it was 'recommended' in Billboard in June of 1974, the record went nowhere, and Bluff City, seemingly, ceased to exist.

We'll take a closer look at the label, and the people behind it, soon...

5/7/10

OK, last time out we were talking about the Bluff City label, and I told you we'd investigate further.

Our story starts with our good friend Chuck Chellman, who told me that when he and Fred Foster set up Sound Stage 7 as the R&B subsidiary of Monument, they decided to hire an energetic young black man named Ed Crawley as the head of their promotion department. Chuck said they met him when he was 'washing windows' at RCA, and invited him to join them. "Eddie was just a great guy," he told me, "and everybody that ever met him just loved him. He was like a son to me."

One of the first R&B artists to record for Sound Stage 7 was named Joe Perkins, who cut 'Little Eeefin' Annie' for the label in 1963. Our hero (and ace detective) Sir Shambling has a wonderful article on Joe over at Deep Soul Heaven, where he calls Little Eefin' Annie "...the worst record to get a mention on this website." Although I've never heard it, we'll take John's word for it and leave it alone. According to the discography on the site Perkins had first recorded for King in 1957:

KING 5030 - Joe Perkins & The Rookies - How Much Love / A New Feeling

...but I don't know about that.

I am absolutely LOVING the fact that all these back issues of Billboard have been scanned into Google Books, it's become a truly invaluable resource. In the March 30, 1957 issue, I found this:

Yes, the single is listed in the 'Records Released This Week' section as being Country & Western. Do you think it's possible that this is a different Joe Perkins? I know that King first made a name for itself as a Country label, so I suppose it's also possible that they just got their wires crossed and made a mistake. Do any of you deep-crated detectives out there have this 45?

SAPTON 100 A

I'm Not Gonna Leave

There doesn't seem to be any biographical information on Perkins out there but, according to Ridley, the single immediately prior to the Sound Stage 7 release was this Sapton 45, which John says was released in 1961. The label was apparently owned by someone named Wylie Sappington, and the fact that it was produced by partners George Jackson and Dan Greer indicates that it was recorded in Memphis. Keep that in mind. It's a great record, but I'm kind of wondering if, with that fully developed 'Memphis Soul' sound, that the release date might be placed a little too early... what do you think?

Anyway, let's get back to our man, Ed Crawley:
According to Billboard, he left Sound Stage 7 in early 1967, and was set up in Memphis as Mercury's Southern Promotion Director. By 1970, Mercury decided to get even more involved in the southern soul scene, and set up Jerry and Billy Butler with their own subsidiary label, Memphis Records, headquartered at a state of the art sixteen-track studio named Universal down the street from American at 261 Chelsea in North Memphis.

In early '71, Crawley was named as the promotion director for the label. Memphis Records, as it turned out, would only release five singles, and folded by the end of the year. Bowlegs Miller produced the last two (on Ollie Nightingale) and, according to Howard Grimes, would continue to cut there after Mercury left, producing the untouchable You're Gonna Miss Me on Ann Sexton for John R's Seventy Seven label in 1973. The studio was later bought by Isaac Hayes, and renamed HBS (as in Hot Buttered Soul).

Crawley, meanwhile, tried returning home to Nashville, and got a job with Nashboro/Excello...

...but it didn't work out and, in less than a year, he was out on the street. At this point Ed apparently decided to return to Memphis and start his own label.

In December of 1972, Billboard refers to him as Joe Perkins' 'personal manager', and the president of a company called 'Plush Records'. When I asked Julius Bradley about it, he told me that he was the one who suggested the name Plush to Crawley for the label. With his connections in the industry, Ed (who had probably had it with the big outfits by then) was able to secure distribution with Stan Lewis in Shreveport, who operated one of the biggest 'One-Stops' in the South.

PLUSH 100 A

Wrap Up In Your Love

Here's that inaugural release on Plush, with 'Featuring The Memphians' displayed prominently there on the label. The label also credits our man Julius Bradley as the producer, and I think he did just a fantastic job here, with a sound that puts you in mind of what Poppa Willie was doing across town. The song was also written by Julius and his brother (and fellow Memphian) Archie, and I think Ed Crawley's idea was to use the group as his 'house band', and the Bradley bothers as the 'in house' songwriters for the label.

PLUSH 100 B

Looking For A Woman

Check out this cool scan I found of the B side of that record. Apparently from an earlier, more generic pressing. Once again it's produced by Julius, and features the same songwriters (does M. Smith ring any bells with anybody?). The publishing company is listed as 'North Bluff City Music', which may be the first mention of the name. This label also says that it was 'Recorded at Universal Studios', Crawley's former Mercury stomping ground. The Memphians intricate funky style just cranks it here, and Perkins' JT-like vocals are da bomb. Listed as 'A Division of Jewel Records' (which doesn't appear on the later pressing), I guess Lewis' distribution wasn't enough to dent the charts, and this great 45 disappeared without a trace.

6/16/10

Alright folks, every once in a while here on Soul D we get to do something really cool, like introduce a 45 that nobody (well, practically nobody) even knew existed. As I told you back when we opened this can of worms, we were fortunate enough to have been handed a stack of vinyl that belonged to the late Memphians drummer Oscar Sales by his daughter Charisse, who was kind enough to allow me to take the records back to New York so I could scan them and transfer the audio to the computer. It took me a while to finally get it done (and even longer to actually get us started here on the case), but once I finally started paying attention, I was amazed.

If you recall, we've been talking recently about the work The Memphians did backing up Joe Perkins. That is Joe in the only known photograph of him at right, which I lifted from John Ridley's excellent Deep Soul Heaven article that we have spoken about in the past. Last time out we questioned whether the Sapton single that Joe cut with Dan Greer and George Jackson that John dated as being from 1961, had actually been released later on. It certainly seems that way, as George Jackson didn't cut his own first single (for Ike Turner's Prann label) until 1963. I'd always heard that his partnership with Dan Greer started around the time they formed their own 'Gre-Jac' label in 1966, and released the version of You Didn't Know It But You Had Me that was picked up by Goldwax as part of the deal when Quinton Claunch signed them on as songwriters for the label.

So where, then, did Sir Shambling who (I think we can all agree) is simply one of the most knowledgeable people out there when it comes to Memphis Soul, get the idea that the record was cut in 1961? Well, as it turns out, the same tracks had also been released on the Berry label. Here's the R&B Indies listing:

Apparently the label's only release, perhaps the question mark should have been placed next to the date, rather than the location...

BERRY 102 B

Until You Were Gone (edit)

I was able to locate a scan and a short audio clip of the B Side of that Berry 45 on eBay (where it's going for $49), which does kind of sound like it might possibly be from 1961. The names of Dan Greer and George Jackson are nowhere to be found on this side of the record, however. In addition to Wylie Sappington (whom we mentioned earlier) a certain J. Horton is listed as his co-writer on this tune, and it looks like it says 'Prod. by H. Gordon', but its difficult to tell for sure. Do those names sound familiar to anybody? (I don't know why Wylie was the only guy who got to use his full name instead of an initial, but it's all good, I guess...).

Be that as it may, Shambling goes on to say; "From this period came the unissued deep ballad 'I Know What You're Up To' - really one of his best recordings." Well, Lo and Behold:

TAURUS 100 A

I Know What You Are Up To

This fantastic number we have here actually was issued, on yet another obscure Memphis label named Taurus. Has anybody out there ever heard of it before? Once again produced by our man Julius Bradley, and written with his brother Archie and the mysterious 'M. Smith', you can bet the farm that that's The Memphians playing behind Joe on this one. Truly an excellent record all the way around, check out Preston Shannon's guitar, Archie's sweet sax solo, Kurl McKinney's fat B3, and the tight battery of Julius on bass and Oscar Sales on the drums just knocking it out. This was one great band, man, and I'm sure Joe Perkins was happy to be their lead singer whenever he got the chance.

So, here comes the cool part... I get to introduce the B side of a 45 that nobody knew existed - a previously unheard addition to the Joe Perkins (and Memphians) discography (Thank You Charisse Sales!):

TAURUS 100 B

Your Love Fits Me Like A Glove

Can you say Funky? Yeah, Baby! This is one cookin' track, boys and girls, with that trademark Memphians 'breakdown' there in the middle, I am just lovin' it! Once again, I think it gives you an idea of how great they were. Joe is just going for it, man, with a couple of screams worthy of Lee Bates! Written by the Bradley Brothers, and produced by Julius, the publishing company is listed as North Bluff City Music, just as it was for the Plush single. So, where do you think this one fits in... is it pre-Bluff City and post Plush, or somewhere in between? If you notice, down there on the bottom, it says 'A Division of C & G Enterprises'. Hmmm... I'm willing to go with the idea that the 'C' refers to Crawley, as in Ed, but then who do you think the 'G' might be? Dan Greer?

2/1/11

Ok folks, I know it's been quite a while between updates here but, as I'm sure you know, life sometimes gets in the way...

First off, I'd like to thank new contributor Minee who alerted us to the fact that the Joe Perkins single that had been released on both Berry and Sapton was also issued on yet another obscure label, Brume. Just as with the Berry release, there are no production credits on the label. Minee also points out that the J. Horton who is listed as a co-writer with Dan Greer and Wylie Sappington refers to James Arther Horton, but neither side of the single appears in the BMI Repertoire Database. Go Figure.

Now, the Brume label does have a listing in The R&B Indies...

...but, as you can see, the Joe Perkins 45 is nowhere to be found. According to them, the label was formed in 1967, and since the single they do have listed has both a lower release and matrix number (2154) than Joe's (2156), it would seem to indicate that it is actually from that period, just as we suspected. Interestingly, both sides of the Eddie Billups record they do have on there are up on YouTube on a New York based label named HELPP.

HELPP 02 A

I Won't Be Around

I couldn't resist putting this up here, because I think it's just awesome. You go Eddie! Now, the address listed on the label, 1697 Broadway, is actually the Ed Sullivan Theater, where they film Letterman nowadays. I'm not sure what's up with that, but there are a couple of other clues on there that seem to place this great deep soul record down South where it belongs. Ed Bibbins, who is credited as both a co-writer and co-producer was a disc jockey down in Chattanooga, and one third of the publishing is owned by Cape Ann Music, which was John R's company, based in Nashville - which kind of makes you think that Brume may indeed be a Tennessee based label, and probably had the first release on it. Once again, I could only afford the first volume of the R&B Indies, so can one of you guys help out and look up HELPP for us? Thanks.

I was able to get Dan Greer on the phone recently and, although he remembered working with Joe Perkins vividly, he was unable to recall exactly what year it was, or any details about which label released it when. Now, if you remember, we had postulated that perhaps the 'G' in the 'C & G Enterprises' that was mentioned on the Taurus 45 referred to Greer. Not so, Dan told me. He said that Ed Crawley was 'like a brother' to him in those days, and they were the best of friends, but he wasn't involved in anything called 'C&G'.

Anyway, an anonymous tip from the Doo Wop Cafe confirmed that Joe's 1957 King single was R&B, not C&W, and good friend and long-time detective Colin Dilnot wrote to say that the songs on the Taurus single actually were released in Japan. Thanks, guys!

Now, let's go back to Billboard:

Although this is the first mention of him we've seen, in late 1973, Billboard says that both Bluff City and Plush were 'started' by someone named Carl Friend, even though they had reported earlier that they were Ed Crawley's labels. Friend had been the A&R director of the legendary United Southern Artists imprint back in 1961, which was a short-lived Rockabilly outfit based in Little Rock, Arkansas that featured releases by folks like Eddie Bond and Sonny Burgess' Pacers. Friend later moved on to Nashville and ran a booking agency that handled minor Country acts. The ambitious 15 volume 'History of the States' mentioned above never saw the light of day, as far as I can tell. How Crawley got involved with him, and handed over control of his labels remains a mystery.

The article goes on to say that "Joe Arnold, once with the Memphis Horns, and Pete Mitchell, brother of A&R veteran Willie, are handling production..."

Joe Arnold came up as a member of a group called The Memphis Blazers, and became one of the Mar-Key Horns when Duck Dunn brought him to Stax (to replace Gene Parker) in 1966. Along with Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love his baritone sax would become an integral part of so many of the Memphis Soul records we all know and love. You can see him in action on the positively fantastic Stax/Volt Revue Live In Norway DVD from 1967. According to Rob Bowman, Arnold felt he was under-appreciated on that tour, and didn't like the idea that The M.G.'s had all been put on salary, but the horn players were still being paid standard session fees. He left Stax shortly after that.

WAND 1175 A

Soul Trippin'

Florence Greenberg had been poking around Memphis for a while, signing The Masqueraders in 1967, and attempting to record Chuck Jackson at American in the ill-fated Papa Don Schroeder session that we've mentioned in the past. In early 1968, she signed Joe to Wand and released this great 45 we have here. A look at the label reveals that it was produced by Arnold and Larry Rogers. Rogers was the engineer and in-house producer at Bill Black's Lyn-Lou Studio, which pre-dated American on Chelsea Avenue in Memphis. Rogers took over the reins after Black died in 1965. According to Sir Shambling, this record was leased to Wand as part of a package that also included a couple of amazing Marvin Preyer singles that Rogers and Arnold had produced at Lyn-Lou. Written by Sammy Creason (the Bill Black Combo drummer who would later become one of The Dixie Flyers), Soul Trippin' was no doubt conceived as the same kind of hit instrumental that King Curtis had been recording across the street at American. The great guitarist on here is apparently Clarence Nelson who, according to Darryl Carter, recorded regularly for Chips Moman before Reggie Young left Hi to come work for him at American full time in 1967. Joe Arnold would have one more release on Wand under his own name later that year.

So anyway, detectives, here's a question for you; Whatever became of Lyn-Lou? Did Mercury buy it and rename it Universal after Larry Rogers left for Nashville in the early seventies? As we've established, Universal was located at 261 Chelsea, and would later become Isaac Hayes' H.B.S. - was it initially Lyn-Lou? Is that how Joe Arnold got involved with Ed Crawley and Bluff City? Hmmm....

The other name mentioned in the Billboard article is Willie Mitchell's brother, Pete. Eldridge "Pete" Mitchell was heavily involved in Memphis High School Football, being named coach of the year four times before moving on to the University of Memphis and the MIAA in the early seventies. In 1975, he formed his own insurance company, Pete Mitchell and Associates, which is still going strong. He was honored along with Al Bell as a Memphis Living Legend by the New Sardis Baptist Church in 2010. This Billboard reference is the only place I've found that connects him with music in any way.

BLUFF CITY 220 A

Hungry For Your Love

...that is, of course, except for the label of Bluff City 220, which does indeed list Pete Mitchell as the producer. Joe Arnold's name, however, is nowhere to be found. Note that the songwriters are listed as Julius and Archie Bradley, which certainly indicates that The Memphians are once again Joe Perkins' backing band on the record. Note also that the label is now being distributed by Buddah, just as predicted in the second Billboard article. Perhaps the most interesting name on the label, however, is one that Billboard didn't mention, that of the arranger, James Mitchell.

In a town that's full of under-appreciated figures, James Mitchell may just be the most under-appreciated of all. After studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, James returned to Memphis in 1964 and immersed himself in the burgeoning Soul scene. In addition to blowing the sax in his brother Willie's road band, he would become one of the go-to baritone men in town, lending his trained ear to the 'head arrangements' at countless sessions at virtually every local studio. Along with guys like Bowlegs Miller, Ed Logan and Jack Hale (not to mention Joe Arnold), he was a fixture in the loosely knit group that came to be known as 'the Memphis Horns', before Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love began using the name exclusively in the mid-seventies. When Willie Mitchell assumed control of Hi Records in 1969, he put James to work creating the signature Royal Studio sound that would change everything. According to Paul Brown; "Up until Hi Records was sold to Cream in 1979, James Mitchell arranged horns and strings on over ninety percent of all the albums and singles his brother Willie produced, including Al Green's classic Let's Stay Together, Ann Peebles' Grammy nominated I Can't Stand The Rain, and Otis Clay's powerful Trying To Live My Life Without You... during his career, James Mitchell, like his arrangements, has appeared on well over 300 Gold Records."

That, my friends, is quite frankly amazing.

By the time this Bluff City single was released the 'Hi Sound' that James and Willie had developed was in full swing, and Al Green was comfortably ensconced near the top of the R&B charts. No wonder Ed Crawley wanted James to come and work for him! I'm not sure if it was a sibling rivalry thing, with Ed convincing Pete and James that he could offer them some of the glory that brother Willie was keeping for himself, but this 45 certainly holds its own with Reverend Al's (or O.V. Wright's) Mitchell-arranged records from that same period.

BLUFF CITY 220 B

Try Love

Here (thanks once again to our man Sir Shambling) is the excellent B side of this penultimate Bluff City release. Certainly Joe Perkins' finest hour, this beautiful Bradley brothers composition, framed by James' stirring arrangement, is as good as it gets. Do you think it was cut at Royal or Universal? Hmmm.... So why wasn't it a hit? You would think that, with Crawley (and Friend) finally securing national distribution, it would be pretty much of a sure thing. Well, as we've discussed in the past, when Buddah suddenly hit big with Gladys Knight and the Pips in late 1973, a lot of their smaller acts kind of had to take a back seat. Once again, it seems, our man Crawley was in the right place at the wrong time.

We'll talk more about all of this soon.

To Be Continued...

2010-10-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Closer To You

There Are No Words

2010-01-05T08:59:00.001-08:00

It is with a heavy heart that I must report to you that our friend Willie Mitchell passed this morning at Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Words cannot express how much this giant of a man meant to all of us.

I will be posting funeral arrangements as they are finalized.

May God Rest His Soul.

A Christmas Mystery

2009-12-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

Funky Funky Christmas

Here's one I picked up somewhere recently that I know nothing about. Not a particularly rare record, it shows up from time to time on eBay, and gets included in many a holiday mix...

But, like, who were these guys? The only additional information I could find was on a site called Christmas Music Everyday, where they date the 45 as being from 1970, and call it a "Nice slab of Midwest funk..." I've never heard of the NIKE label, and the two names listed as songwriters, C. Colbert and P. Wilson, don't ring any bells with me.

Detectives?

12/20/09

Soul Santa

Alright, folks, here's the B side of our mystery record by Electric Jungle. I'll tell ya, whoever the vocalist is here, he's really going for it! Two of our crack detectives have weighed in here already. The Stepfather of Soul said:

"Nike was a Chicago label owned by Colbert... Probably the best-known Nike record among rare soul fans is A.C. Reed's Boogaloo Tramp."

...and Agent 45 (aka Georgia Soul's Brian Poust) added:

"Electric Jungle was apparently an Artie White project and the Amazon notes for Funky Funky Chicago suggests that this is an Andre Williams production."

Pretty amazing stuff, guys, thanks! Just like Soul Santa, you keep comin' on strong! Merry Christmas, everybody!

WE'RE NOT THROUGH...

2009-06-19T09:04:00.001-07:00

Here is the brand new trailer for the upcoming Soul Detective production of the Chase Thompson documentary film I'm Not Through - The Legend of Sir Lattimore Brown.

Chase and I worked together this past week in creating this preview so we could present all of you with a first glimpse of the incredible footage we've been getting of Sir Lattimore over the past year. Our man in The Netherlands Paul Pollman came through for us once again, bringing his world class graphic design to the project.

Special thanks to all of you who have supported us in our efforts to get Lattimore Brown's story told.

FOURTH ANNUAL SOUL DETECTIVE MYSTERY CONTEST

2009-04-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

That's right, folks, it's that time of year again... time for our Fourth Annual Mystery Contest! rather than go back to the infamous tape, I thought we'd try something different this year:

Green Onions

I know you're all familiar with the tune... and I'm digging this kind of beret wearing goateed bachelor pad version of it, but who, pray tell, is performing it? There is no artist listed on the label. All it says is that R&J Records is a division of Roye Dodge Studios, along with an address in New City, New York. New City? I had to google that one, but it turns out to be just north of the big town, up near Spring Valley, where the Thruway makes that big left turn. It seems kind of odd that a cool record like this would exist, without so much as a clue to who's working that Hammond, or smokin' that guitar, or blowing those fine horn lines...

Well, further googling turns up another R&J 45 at, you guessed, it Funky 16 Corners (you just knew Grogan would be involved somehow). Another swingin' cover of a top ten hit, once again the anonymous players get no credit at all, toiling on in obscurity all these years. Larry says that he discovered (although he doesn't say how) that 'Roye Dodge' was a choreographer, and that his guess is that these 45s were produced for use in dance schools "so that rooms full of students might have something to shuffle along with." But, like, where were they recorded? Who arranged them and produced them? And, I mean, it wouldn't have taken much to list somebody as the artist (like, say, The Roye Dodge Players or something like that)...

Just the sort of mystery we love here at Soul detective.

There is an excellent discography site called New York Soul Recordings, that focuses on obscure labels that released soulful 45s in the upstate regions of the Empire State, but, as fate would have it, the discographies end at the letter 'P' - so there is no information available about R&J.

SO, we're looking for any and all information about this tiny label, about Roye Dodge Studios, about where and when they recorded this 45, and - most importantly - about who our mystery artists might be. As always, the first to come up with an answer in the 'comments' will be our lucky winner. I'm not sure what this year's valuable prizes might be, but I'll figure out something while I'm down in New Orleans.

Good Luck!

SIR LATTIMORE BROWN BENEFIT 4/27

2009-04-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

THIRD ANNUAL SOUL DETECTIVE MYSTERY CONTEST

2008-04-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

LATEST UPDATE: 5/6/08

Alright boys and girls, here we go again... that's right, it's time for the third annual Mystery Contest!

Travel with me now, back through the swamp of time...
there's my ol' high school podnah Bernie scrambling to find a blank tape so he can record the amazing sounds that are coming out of his radio. It's Carnival Time in New Orleans, and up here in Brooklyn that can only mean one thing; it's gray and cold and ugly outside. Bernie can feel the heat emanating from this WBGO Mardi Gras broadcast. He fumbles a little bit with the cassette, but manages to catch about a half an hour of the most incredible music he's ever heard...

As you know by now, that tape has become the stuff of legend. After spending about ten years in my car, it became lost in space in the wake of the big switchover to CDs in the nineties. When it turned up in my basement a couple of years ago, I couldn't believe it. It was like finding a long lost friend. The music on that tape has served us well, and provided the subject matter for our last two mystery contests. Why mess with success? Let's go to the audiotape!

The 2008 Mystery Song:

?????

Like our last two selections, this one just knocks me out! This is the first song the Big Bern managed to get on the tape, and it's missing the first few bars... it's also got a little FM radio drift goin' on but, hey, that's OK because it totally CRANKS!! Talk about high energy! GET OUT THE WAY!! This is some full throttle Crescent City R&B here, folks, deep in the pocket and good to go; "...there ain't nothin' happenin', so get on outta my face!" I'm lovin' it, kids.

Now, I feel like I should know who this is... as a matter of fact I was kind of reluctant to use this one, as it might point out to all of you just how dumb I really am! Oh well, some things can't be helped, I guess...

It sounds like the J&M studio band, but then again, in some ways, it doesn't... hmmm. So put on your thinking caps, detectives, and let's see who turns out to be this year's lucky winner!

We're looking for:

ARTIST
TITLE
RECORD LABEL
RELEASE DATE

As always, the first one of you to leave the correct answer in the 'comments', wins. I'll figure out just what this year's cool prizes are going to be while I'm down there in Sugar Town.

Good luck! - red

5/6/08

Well, I told you I was dumb! That's right, this year's contest was pretty much over before it even began... our lucky winner, Jeremy Epstein (aka The Tubegeek), correctly identified our mystery selection within a few hours.

OKEH 6972 B

It Ain't Nothing Happening

As Jeremy stated down there in the comments, it was first released as the B side of Okeh 6972 in May of 1953 by the great Paul Gayten. As he also mentioned, it is available on the CD Compilation The Okeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957, a box set that I actually own (duh!).

Paul Gayten was one of the most influential (and under-appreciated) figures in the history of New Orleans R&B. Let's check it out:

The nephew of Little Brother Montgomery, Gayten was born to play the piano. While still a teenager, he cut his teeth in the 1930s bands of Don Dunbar and Doc Parmley, as well as fronting his own 'Sizzling Six'. After a stint with Silas Green From New Orleans, Paul and his band (which included the great Teddy Edwards) hosted one of the the first black radio shows in the South on WSLI in Jackson, Mississippi, starting in 1938. During the war, the army shipped him down to Biloxi, where he led the popular base band, entertaining thousands of GIs. After his release, he headed down to New Orleans and formed a trio along with George Pryor and Robert Green. They took up residency as the house band at the Club Robin Hood in 1946.

When the Braun Brothers came down to New Orleans in early 1947 looking for talent to record on their Deluxe label, they signed Gayten and his band right away. With the addition of guitarist Edgar Blanchard and singer Annie Laurie, they cut what were to become the very first Crescent City R&B hits, Since I Fell For You and True, both of which would break into the top five that fall. The Gayten band was just huge in their hometown after that, and played to sold out houses wherever they went.

In the excellent Blue Monday, Rick Coleman relates a story of how the young Antoine Domino was invited up to play the piano by Gayten at an outdoor concert in 1947. He "stopped the show", and from that moment on was hooked on the idea of being a star. When Gayten took him to dinner at Dooky Chase, that sealed the deal. Talk about being an influence on rock & roll! Around this same time, Gayten also cut a number he wrote called Hey, Little Girl, a song which Professor Longhair would later claim as his own.

After Deluxe sold out to Regal in 1949, Gayten made the move and began working with a young vocalist named Larry Darnell. Released under Darnell's name, Gayten composition For You My Love became the band's biggest record, spending eight weeks (!) at number one R&B at the end of the decade. They would break the top ten seven more times for the label the following year, backing both Darnell and Annie Laurie. At this point, Paul Gayten was arguably the biggest R&B act of them all, regularly headlining at places like The Apollo and the Savoy Ballroom.

Tired of the road, Gayten returned home to New Orleans and put together a band which would rule the city from its roost at the fabled Brass Rail for the next few years. The star of the new outfit was a young Sax man named Lee Allen, who Paul hired away from George Miller and his Mid-Driffs in 1951. In the awesome Under A Hoodoo Moon, Mac Rebennack paints us this picture: "Most of the guys in the house band were the same cats who became the standard studio musicians for Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio later on; Lee Allen on sax, Frank 'Dude' Fields on bass, and Charles 'Hungry' Williams on drums. Paul Gayten... never played a song the same way twice. One time it might be a ballad, the next time a cha-cha... There was no standard arrangement... they didn't look at no music like it was sacred. They just f#*ked with it, and that was so hip to me."

In late 1952, Regal went belly up, and sold Gayten's contract (along with Darnell's and Laurie's) to Columbia Records, who placed them on their Okeh R&B subsidiary. Due to what Gayten saw as a lack of promotion, none of them would chart for the label. This period, however, produced some of Gayten's most influental work, like the smokin' song that got us all going here, It Ain't Nothing Happening. Small wonder it sounded like the J&M Studio band, because it was, even before it existed as such. I believe that's Gayten himself handling the vocals. Killer stuff!

Cow Cow Blues

A guy who was hanging around the Brass Rail at the same time was the young Ray Charles Robinson, who was then living at the Foster Hotel. I'm not sure if Ahmet Ertegun knew it, but when he wrote the words for Brother Ray's Mess Around in May of 1953 (and took the composer's credit as A. Nugetre) the music Charles came up with was an almost note-for-note transcription of Gayten's Cow-Cow Blues, which had been released on Okeh 6982 the year before. Incredible.

In late 1953, Gayten was approached by Leonard Chess, who offered him a position as their southern A&R man, talent scout, and producer, as well as picking up his contract as a recording artist. In addition to his own great records like You Better Believe It and Yo-Yo Walk, Paul was the man behind all time classics like Ain't Got No Home and But I Do by Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, and Bobby Charles' Later Alligator. As his presence at the label increased, he would become involved with folks like Chuck Berry (playing the piano on Carol) and Etta James (co-writing My Dearest Darling for her with Eddie Bo).

Gayten would take Nervous Boogie and Windy into the Pop Hot 100 for Chess' Argo subsidiary in the late fifties, although neither record hit the R&B charts. In 1959, he recorded The Hunch for Billy Davis' Anna label (which was being distributed by Chess), and it climbed to #68. When Chess decided to open an office on the west coast, they put Paul in charge, and he moved out to Los Angeles in 1960.

After Leonard Chess died in early 1969, Gayten started up his own label, Pzazz, and recorded everything from his contemporary Louis Jordan to the funky organ grooves of Warm Excursion. The records didn't sell much, and he folded the label after a couple of years. Thanks to his good friend Billy Vera, Paul got to see some of his Chess and Regal sides re-issued before his death in 1991.

Truly a giant of R&B, this is a man who doesn't get nearly enough credit... I mean, consider this contest. I had no idea that was him...

Anyway, this year's valuable prizes include a J&M Studio T-Shirt (which benefits the New Orleans Musicians Clinic) and an assortment of genuine vinyl obscurities like the Sonny & The Pacers 45 I bought from Sonny Burgess at the Stomp. I'll get all of that out to you as soon as possible, Jeremy... thanks for playing!

Case Five: Allen Orange

2008-03-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

“I’m not positive, but I think all music came from New Orleans.” – Ernie K-Doe

Sometimes it sure seems that way... especialy here on soul detective. I apologize to all of you for taking so long to open case five here but, as you'll soon see, I had my reasons. Let me start things off by quoting from the 2005 post I did on Jessie Hill over on The B side:

"The hottest DJ in New Orleans back in 1960 was a cat named Larry McKinley. Many's the R&B classic he "broke" on his show and sent on it's way to the top of the national charts (not the least of which was Ray Charles' What'd I Say). It was a stroke of brilliance when vinyl distributor Joe Banashak asked him to be a partner in his new label, MINIT records. Talk about air time!

In January of 1960, McKinley arranged to hold an open audition at WYLD studios as a way of scouting talent for the new company. That one night resulted in the signing of Benny Spellman, Aaron Neville, Allen Orange and Jessie Hill (Irma Thomas and Joe Tex also tried out but were still under contract to other labels). Allen Orange brought along a piano player to accompany him, one Allen Toussaint. He ended up playing behind most of the other folks who had shown up, and so impressed McKinley and Banashak that they asked him to be the new label's producer and arranger."

There you have it. The inimitable Allen Toussaint got his start at that audition, we've already established that. What has, in my opinion, often been overlooked, is the fact that he auditioned himself as one half of a duo named Allen & Allen. Please join with me now, oh mighty detectives, in my quest to find out all we can about that other Allen, Allen Orange.

As far as I can tell, they only recorded one single together:

MINIT 609 B

Heavenly Baby

Here's the B side of that single, only the seventh release on the fledgling label. They had already tasted national success with Jessie Hill's Ooh Poo Pah Doo (Minit 607) by then, but this would mark the first time that Allen Toussaint's (or Allen Orange's, for that matter) voice is heard on record. Pretty cool stuff, Toussaint's piano never ceases to amaze me, and I love the two part harmony vocals (kind of like the mysterious Two Brothers we've been investigating over in Case Four recently). If you look closely, you'll see that Allen Orange shares the songwriting credit on here as well, something which (if you check the BMI database) is very rare indeed. He also co-wrote the A side, a novelty number called Tiddle Winks:

MINIT 609 A

Tiddle Winks

Although certainly not the greatest of songs, it mines the same Crescent City territory that folks like Huey Smith, Jessie Hill, Clarence Henry and Frankie Ford did with varying success. I'm not sure what's up with those sound effects, but taken in context with songs like Mother-In-Law (Minit 623) and Lipstick Traces (Minit 644), it's interesting to note the evolution of those cool baritone background vocals.

By the fall of 1960, the duet act had apparently run its course, and Allen Orange was now a solo performer. His songwriting partnership with Toussaint was also a thing of the past, evidently, as Orange wrote the A side of his next single (Forever), while 'N. Neville' would compose the B side:

MINIT 615 B

Just A Little Love

N. Neville, as I'm sure you know, was Toussaint's mother, and he began using that as his 'nom de plume' around then for whatever reason. Once again, you can hear the origins of 'Mother-In-Law' in there... dig those strings! According to Soulful Kinda Music, this single was also released with an alternate B side, 'Lighted Windows'. Anybody have it?

I'm not sure why, but Allen Orange wouldn't record again until 1964 when

MINIT 630 - When You're Lonely / True Love Never Dies

was released. I have been unable to locate a copy of that one...

His last Minit 45 would be released later that year:

MINIT 640

The Letter

His new songwriting partner here is 'E. Johnson'... none other than the great Earl King. I'm guessing that this record dates from the period that Allen Toussaint was in the Army, and Earl was busy doing independent production work for local labels (think Big Chief on Watch). Come to think of it, I bet this is a Wardell Quezergue arrangement we have here, judging by those saxes. A great record, man. King co-wrote the A side (Miss Nosey) as well but, just like Allen's other singles, this one died on the vine.

Now, here's where things begin to get interesting.

I don't know if Imperial (which was now a west coast operation busy concentrating on its biggest star, Ricky Nelson) dropped him at this point or what, but Allen Orange next turns up in, of all places, Nashville Tennessee, where he would pen an R&B top 25 hit for Roscoe Shelton, Strain On My Heart:

SIMS 217 A

Strain On My Heart

According to the liner notes of Night Train To Nashville Volume Two:
"...By 1964 Shelton was signed to J.R. Enterprises, a new production company owned by WLAC disc jockey John 'John R' Richbourg. Shelton was subsequently placed with Sims Records, owned by Russell Sims, with whom Richbourg shared an office.

"A showcase for Shelton's high, wailing tenor, the blues ballad 'Strain On My Heart' reached #25 in Billboard in 1965, and gave Shelton his first and biggest national chart success. Veteran New Orleans artist Allen Orange (a protégé of Allen Toussaint) wrote 'Strain On My Heart' and provided Richbourg's stable of artists with abundant material after he relocated to Nashville."

There you go, detectives, a tale of two cities, and an absolute trip of a connection between them. We'll be delving deeper into the story in the days ahead... stay tuned.

7/19/07

Well, I've heard from one of our detectives already. Cies emailed me with this interesting quote from the liner notes of the Charly Sound Stage 7 Story box set:

"Richbourg apparently took Orange under his wing when he arrived virtually penniless from Louisiana. The two cemented their working relationship on Sims with Roscoe Shelton."

Thank you, Cies, but as you said, there's "still no indication why he moved from New Orleans to Nashville."

Those liner notes go on to say:

"Shelton's Strain On My Heart (Sims 217) gave Richbourg his first national R&B chart success in February 1965 when the single reached the #25 spot. Significantly, the song, like others by Shelton on Sims, was written by Allen Orange who would become a crucial source of repertoire for subsequent productions via J.R. Enterprises. When the Sound Stage 7 situation came along later that year, Richbourg would simply switch Shelton over to his new affiliation."

Now, I'm not sure if you remember this, but it was a B side post from November of last year that really started me on all of this:

SS 7 2628 B

Come On And Get It

An absolutely fantastic record. In January of this year, I found this in the 'comments' for that post:

"I am the co-writer of this cut with Joe Simon and Allen Orange. I was an Artist, Session Musician, Arranger and Songwriter for Sound Stage 7 records. I played Organ on this cut. It was recorded at Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama... Allen Orange and I wanted to cut Joe in a more Funk type sound, but the label wanted to develop him as a more 'middle of the road/Pop' artist. This was one of his original funk type cuts. I played keyboard on 90% of Joe's hits with Sound Stage 7 and was a songwriting partner with Allen Orange on about 20 songs, but this was one of my favorites." - Bob Wilson

Wow. I was blown away. Since then, Bob and I have been involved in an incredibly interesting conversation that's taken place on the phone, via e-mail, through a wealth of material he's supplied me with in the mail, and finally culminating in a whirlwind trip to Nashville last month to meet with him. It's been positively amazing, boys and girls, and we'll talk more about that journey, and the events leading up to it, down the line. In the meantime, be sure to take a look at the multi-part post about Bob and Sound Stage 7 that's running concurrently over on The B Side. In addition to being a veritable font of information, he's also become a great friend. Thanks for everything, Bob!

Now... let's take a look at the only single Allen Orange released under his own name after he moved to Nashville:

SS 7 2573 A

V.C. Blues

Bob Wilson:
"V C Blues was cut on an Ampex 3 track analog tape recorder at the Monument Studio in downtown Nashville, where they cut the Roy Orbison hits. And it was me on piano, David Briggs, organ, Jerry Carrigan, drums, Norbert Putnam, bass, Chip Young and Billy Sanford, guitars. Allen was standing about 15' in front of my grand piano, with 3 wooden baffles (with glass windows) placed around him, and sang it live. I could see him clearly and as we were writing partners at the time, I kept my eyes on him. I don't think we went back and re-did the vocals, I think he was recorded live with the rythym section and as I recall, live horns. Which was the way we also cut Joe Simon at that time, we didn't bring the horns or voices back in later, we did it live; when Cliff Parman counted it off, everybody started playing and singing all at once, which was a thrill among thrills. I can still see Allen cutting V C Blues, in my mind's eye, straining to hit the high notes..."

Like I said, folks, he's an incredible font of information! One of those great "'Nam" songs, it was co-written by 'Mike Terry'. Wilson goes on to explain that this is not the Detroit Mike Terry (arranger and baritone sax man at both Motown and Golden World), but a 'pen name' for Nashville arranger Cliff Parman, who was 'conducting' the session.

Here's the B side, apparently recorded at that same session:

SS 7 2573 B

Where The Lonely People Are

Allen's really showing his Louisiana roots on this one... it's got that Swamp Pop feel to it, doesn't it? I'm lovin' the Billy Sanford lead guitar, and Parman's horn charts that somehow put a big city spin on that whole bayou sound. Written by Orange himself, it's a hidden gem, and one of the coolest records in the Sound Stage 7 catalogue.

More to come...

7/25/07

OK y'all, our ol' pal detective Dan Phillips came through with this:

"Good topic, Red. AO has been invovled in a lot of R&B/soul music over the years; and I always wondered the extent of it and what happened to him. I'd keep running across his name as producer or songwriter on various sides I'd find. Anyway, you've jumped headlong into another one and made some good contacts already.

I just thought I'd do some minor fill-in on some New Orleans records AO was involved with - not a complete list, I'm sure, but there are some notable sides on here. In no particular order:

"Over You" (Allen Toussaint-Allen Orange) - Aaron Neville, Minit 612, 1960

"She's Got What It Takes" (A. Orange - S. Johnson) - Tommy Ridgley , Ric 990, 1962

"It Will Stand" (Allen Orange) - The Showmen, Minit 632, 1961

"Too Many Pots" (A. Orange - E. Johnson), ??? (not sure if this was recorded)

"Roll On Big Wheel" (A. Orange - E. King) - Benny Spellman [Roland Stone, lead vocal], Ace 630, 1961

"I've Got To Keep On Trying" (A,. Orange-E.King-Eldridge Holmes) - Eldridge Holmes, Alon 913, 1962
(aka "I'm Gonna Keep On Trying" ?) Not sure about this one - haven't seen writers credits on actual track, but this is only E. Holmes song with 'keep on trying' in the title."

Excellent work, Dan! I wasn't aware that Orange had already started writing songs for other artists before he left New Orleans... and I certainly never realized that he wrote It Will Stand, one of my all time faves!! Very cool, indeed!

One question jumps out at me; we know that 'E. Johnson' is Earl King, and that 'D. Johnson' usually means Eddie Bo, but who, pray tell, is 'S.Johnson'? Detectives?

Here's a great one from Nashville in 1966, recorded during the period when the King Casuals (plus Bob Wilson) were acting as the Sound Stage 7 rhythm section (more on that here):

SS 7 2575 B

It's Such A Sad, Sad World

Co-written with the great Lattimore Brown, here's Bob Wilson's notes on the session:

"Recorded at Bradley's Barn, Piano/Organ: Bob Wilson, Bass: Billy Cox, Guitar: Chip Young, Arranger: Aaron Varnell, Harmony Voices: Sam Baker and Roscoe Shelton. Lattimore, Sam and Roscoe overdubbed the vocals simultaneously, with one microphone, standing with their arms around each other like three brothers. Their voices had a beautiful, beautiful blend. The Impressions had nothing on these three guys!"

Imagine? Just a great, great song.

7/29/07

Here's a couple more positively fantastic records from the 1966-67 'King Casuals Period' at Sound Stage 7:

SS7 2575 A

Shake And Vibrate

Recorded at the same Bradley's Barn session as it's B side (above), it was co-written with Brown and arranger Aaron Varnell. This smokin' dance party classic just kills me. I'm lovin' that extra syllable there in Vib-a-rate... yeah, yeah baby! Check out Billy Cox working that bass guitar!

Here's another high energy number from one of Sound Stage 7's mainstays, Sam Baker. According to the excellent article over at Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven; "...Baker joined Sound Stage 7 for the most settled and artistically satisfying period of his life. Apart from Joe Simon, Baker had more 45s issued by John Richbourg on his SS7 label than any other artist – a tribute to both to his talent and Richbourg’s enduring good taste." I hear that.

SS7 2585 B

I Can't Turn Her Loose

One of the last sides to be released before the move to Memphis (you can tell because Aaron Varnell is still listed as the arranger here, while the A side of this single was arranged by Dan Penn), it has the same kind of good time vibe as the Brown single. I'm diggin' Wilson's piano here, and how cool is Baker's 'BLLLLLRRRRR' thing? Most of Sam's output for the label (and the songs Orange composed for him) were more 'deep'. This one just rocks!

8/1/07

Alright everyone, Dan Phillips did some serious diggin' through The Home Of The Groove Archives and sent these along:

Ric 990

She's Got What It Takes

"Note that the Ric label does not list Orange, just 'S. Johnson'. I got the paired credit for "What It Takes" from the BMI database. I take it to be more accurate than Joe Ruffino's label credits... speaking of S. Johnson: Shirley Johnson was NOT Earl's mother... I do not know, nor could I find what relation Shirley was to Earl, but I suspect she may have been his wife at the time and that her maiden name was probably Washington." Thanks, brother! A great song regardless, Tommy Ridgley was one of the cornerstones of New Orleans R&B...

MINIT 612

Over You

"Just a note: I don't have the Minit original. This is a re-issue from a few years later, after Liberty bought Imperial, which had taken over Minit. It's one of their Golden Series of re-released hits. "Over You" charted #21 R&B in 1960." Well thanks, Dan. We'll take what we can get! I'm lovin the lyrics here, huh? "...all your folks will be dressed in black, ride a long black cadillac. Yeah baby they'll be puttin' you away, the funeral home will have the business that day." Sweet. This was evidently Aaron Neville's first recording!

Now, oddly enough, if you do a search for 'Allen Orange' at the iTunes store, you come up with both sides of his SS7 single (!), and four other tunes that come from something called 'The Best Of drew-Blan', a Night Train 2 CD set from a few years ago. I asked Dan if he knew what was up with that:

"Yes, I have the 'Best of drew-Blan', which was a Morgan City-based label, although most of its releases were recorded at Cosimo's, as I recall... a lot of the artists were from the Morgan City area; and a few, like Wayne Devillier (aka Wayne DeVille) also gigged in New Orleans... Anyway, through the studio contacts the drew-Blan owner, Andrew Blanco, worked with Earl King and Allen Orange some; and the two recorded those demos for him, which appear on the CD... Of the demos, Orange wrote and sang "My Confession", "Does She Love Me", "Leave Me Alone", and "Love (All Because of You)". These are very basic vocal and piano (or maybe guitar on some) demos, not really well-recorded, but, still cool to hear...

drew-Blan is rare vinyl to come by. I know a guy down here who is a big time dealer/collector (tens of thousands of records at a time). He showed me a drew-Blan last time I was at his place and said it was one of the few he had ever seen..." wow.

Here's one of those unreleased demos now:

My Confession

Thanks again, Detective Dan!

8/6/07

Well, ol' Colin Dilnot has joined us for case five, posting Roscoe Shelton's I'm In Way Too Deep (SS7 2582) over at his own excellent blog, In Dangerous Rhythm. Composed by Orange and arranged by Varnell, it's another keeper. Thank you Colin!

Today I thought we'd take a look at two excellent tunes from the crack songwriting team of Allen Orange and Bob Wilson. As Bob said in his initial 'comment', the pair wrote about twenty songs together. Here's two of their best, recorded in 1969 at 'Music City':

SS7 2629

Soul Children

This was the very next release after The Chokin' Kind, the record that 'changed everything' at the label. According to Wilson; "This was one of Allen Orange's deals, Paul Vann was really his artist, and although Allen didn't receive label credit... he 'really' was the one that produced this." What does appear on the label for the first time is 'Produced by Volume Productions', apparently Orange's own company...
Wilson: "Me on piano, Karl Himmel on Drums and Buttrey on Congas (now that was cool), Drummond on bass and on the guitars, thats Mac Gayden and Troy Seals.

"The horn arrangement was by a guy named Terry Burnside, and this was one of the very few arrangements Terry did in Nashville. Terry and I arranged the rhthym track and Terry did the horns and strings, Allen did the voices. Terry also played tenor sax on the horn track... he was from Cincinatti and had done arranging for King Records. He retired early from the business after not being able to really break-in in Nashville..."

It sounds pretty good to me!

Ella Washington had come up out of Florida and taken Harlan Howard's He Called Me Baby into the R&B top 40 for Sound Stage 7 in early 1969. Her only chart appearance, it had been recorded at American in Memphis. When John R made the move to Music City, one of his first priorities was to record an album on her. Bringing together Orange, Wilson, Bergen White, Troy Seals, Karl Himmel, and the 'Music City Four', John R produced what many consider to be a soul masterpiece.

SS7 2650 B

Sweeter And Sweeter (Ray, Ray, Ray)

This hot cut from the album was used as the B side of the deep Doing The Best I Can in late 1969. I just love that percolatin' organ! I wonder who Ray was?

Allen Orange wrote more songs with Bob Wilson than with anyone else. Both of these 45s we have here today illustrate why... great stuff, don't you think?

8/13/07

Here's a few more examples of the sheer depth of Orange's songwriting abilities. First, let's check out both sides of an incredible 45 submitted to us by our man in the UK, detective Colin Dilnot:

SS7 2579 A

Just A Glance Away

It really doesn't get much better than this now, does it? Recorded at Bradley's Barn back in the 1967 King Casuals period, Bob Wilson considers it 'the best song Allen ever wrote, and one of the best Sound Stage 7 cuts'. I'd have to agree, man, this is the real deal.

SS7 2579 B

Safe In The Arms Of Love

The flip isn't too shabby either, believe me. It's got that kind of 'country soul' thing going on that puts me in mind of Joe Tex or Solomon Burke. Another one of those 'hidden gems' of Nashville Soul, how great is Sam Baker's voice here? Thank You Colin for sharing this phenomenal music with us.

Moving ahead to the 1969 Music City sessions that gave us 'Soul Children', this next number was first released as the B side of that record. The copy we have here hails from the following year, when it was used as the flip of Hello My Lover (Wherever You Are), Paul Vann's take on the rocking and rollicking romp that Allen Toussaint had written for Ernie K Doe while Orange was still at Minit in New Orleans.

SS7 2653 B

The Touch Of Your Hand (Means So Much)

This is simply an amazing song. As I'm sure you all recall, 'the touch of your hand' is a phrase taken from another great Toussaint tune, All These Things. You have to wonder if the whole thing wasn't kind of a 'shout-out' to his old partner. In any event, these three deep soul compositions we've highlighted here today demostrate that Allen Orange was indeed a great songwriter, one whose prodigious talents in many ways equalled those of that other Allen he had left behind...

Then something happened down there. Something that turned Orange's attention away from his writing, pretty much permanently.

We'll talk more about that next time around.

8/22/07

... just received this in an email from our man Bob Wilson last week:

"Just before we (Sound Stage 7 Records) were losing Joe Simon to the Rifkin Brothers at Spring Records, John R. had signed Jamo Thomas as an artist. Jamo was a singer, but also worked successfully as a record promotion man for several small labels. Like Al Bell (STAX), he had a super smooth gift of gab and like Al Bell, he also, could 'sell snow to eskimos'.

"Allen, kinda fell in with this dude Jamo when we were cutting his records, and the next thing I knew, Allen was working on the side as a record promotion man also, something that I think Jamo hooked him up with. Now, Jamo was a born marketeer, and Allen soon took on those marketing mannerisms of building up excitement through lots of hype and BS. At that time, Allen was not working for SS7 as a promotion man and as he started working for some other small label, word started getting around that he was getting good results, and Allen was 'all over it' because he was getting a steady pay check and an expense account to wine and dine the disc jockeys..." Thank You, Bob.

Larry Grogan: "...Jamo Thomas was a funky soul man who left his cabana in the sunny Bahamas to come to Chicago and make a grip of cool soul records in the 60’s. The best known of these ‘I Spy (For the FBI)’ is a groovy classic. He recorded a number of 45s for Chi-town labels like Conlo and Thomas (no relation) before taking his Party Brothers down south to the SS7 and SSS Intl labels." The photo above is also taken from Larry's excellent Funky 16 Corners, and pictures Jamo with legendary Philadelphia dee-jay Jerry Blavat aka 'The Geator'...

Now let's back up a little to February of 2006 when detective Marc Demuynck pointed out a 1997 article in Juke Blues #37 on the Southern Soul Group. The article, written by Jeff Kuhn, contains two of the three known photos of Allen Orange (the other being on the back of Ella Washington's 1969 LP). It's about Geater Davis.

Vernon Davis, nicknamed 'Geater' in the Army (anybody have any clue what Geater, or for that matter, Geator means?) came up in East Texas influenced by folks like T Bone Walker and Bobby Bland. He had settled in Shreveport, Louisiana after his release from the service, and found work with an outfit called Elgie Brown and the Soul Searchers. In 1968, he was recruited by the great Ted Taylor to go out on the road with him. This was where he really 'cut his teeth' as a professional musician. Upon his return, he hooked up with Eddie Giles, whose band (Eddie G and the Jive Five) would take up residency at the Fountain Lounge on the 'Bossier Strip'. It was there that he got to know Reuben Bell, whose 'Beltones' were the house band at Kim's, further down the strip.

In 1970, Allen Orange came to town on a promotional trip to schmooze with local radio personality B.B. ('Bird Brain') Davis (pictured at right). He told Davis that he was thinking about starting up his own record label, and was on the lookout for local talent. It was B.B. that steered him in the direction of the Bossier Strip, Geater, and Reuben. A guitarist in Bell's band named Jerry Beach had written a song that Davis recorded a demo on at the tail end of a session at Stewart Madison's fledgling Sound City studio. This demo (which would later go on to be developed into Albert King's signature song by Mark Lee and the boys at STAX Studio C) of I'll Play The Blues For You so impressed Orange that he offered them both a contract, and so (as our anonymous commenter pointed out) the House Of Orange label was born.

Allen asked them to try to write some material, and set up a session at the Boutwell Studio in Birmingham, Alabama a couple of weeks down the line. Davis had never written before, but Bell 'broke him in', and when they got there they were ready. Once again, Orange was impressed, telling them "I've been fooling around looking for records, and y'all have already got a bagful of hit records!"

HO 2401 A

Sweet Woman's Love

Produced with somebody named Bill Crump (who, try as I may, I've been unable to find any info on), this haunting slow blues was the perfect vehicle for Davis' style. Geater told Living Blues "John R told Allen he'd help with the record... spotlighted it on those [mail order] packages they used to run on WLAC, and John played the record, played it for about two weeks... Allen took it to another friend of his [fabled Crescent City dee-jay] Shelley Pope... and the record broke in New Orleans... I'm telling you, I was so excited, I didn't know what to do."

Yes, Sweet Woman's Love was a huge regional hit down south, even breaking into the Billboard R&B top 50 in December of 1970. As often happened with small independent labels, Orange had trouble keeping up with the demand for the record (reportedly selling them out of the trunk of his car), and went looking for a distribution deal. Although the details are a little sketchy, he apparently turned to Johnny Vincent at this point who was operating a company called Santo Records that listed its address as the 'Hotel King Cotton' in Memphis, Tennessee. The photo at right was taken at the King Cotton and shows Allen standing to the left of Vincent with someone named Melvin Cohea on his right. Anybody familiar with him?

HO 2401 B

Don't Marry A Fool

Here's the B side of that record. I love the horns on here, and the cool blues guitar. I wonder if that's Davis playing? I don't know anything about the Birmingham studio it was recorded in... you think they had their own 'rhythm section'?

Flush with the success of Geater's first single, Allen arranged for him to record material to fill out an album, also called 'Sweet Woman's Love' (HO LP 6000), at the San American Studio in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1971. Davis' next two singles, My Love Is So Strong For You (HO 2402) and For Your Precious Love (HO 2405), would be pulled from the album. That's our man Orange pictured at right with Joe Lee, the engineer at San American. Do any of you detectives out there own the LP?

In early 1972, Davis returned to his roots at Sound City in Shreveport to record another single:

HO 2407 A

I Know (My Baby Loves Me)

Sounding more like Allen's Sound Stage 7 work than the rest (dig that Chokin' Kind bass line!), I think it's a great record, although I'm not sure about the 'Rome' bit at the end... Looking at the label, there are a couple of interesting things. If you notice, Bill Crump is now history, and 'National Dist.' is now handled by Jamie/Guyden in Philadelphia. Also, it claims to be 'Mfg. by Volume Complex Corp., Phila. Pa.' If you recall, the Paul Vann SS7 material above was 'produced by Volume Productions'. I wonder if there's a connection...

Our man on the bayou, Dan Phillips, sent along the listing for the House Of Orange label from his copy of 'The R&B Indies' (as, alas, I still don't have my own copy), and here it is up to this point in time:

House Of Orange
Hotel King Cotton
PO Box 439, Memphis, TN

1970
2400 - Kitty Clark - Big Wheel/Funny You Should Ask
2401 - Geater Davis - Sweet Womans Love (sic)/Don't Marry A Fool

1971
2402 - Geater Davis - My Love Is Strong For You/I Can Hold My Own
2403 - Reuben Bell - I Can't Feel This Way At Home/What's Happening To The World
2404 - Don Varner - I Can If You Can/That's All Right
2405 - Geater Davis - For Your Precious Love/Wrapped Up In You
2406 - Reuben Bell - What's Happening To The World/Don't Give No More Than You Can Take

1972
2407 - Geater Davis - Best Of Luck To You/I Know (My Baby Loves Me)

Thanks, podjo! Any of you deep-crated gumshoes out there have the Kitty Clark, Reuben Bell or Don Varner singles?

For whatever reason (my guess is that Orange had simply overextended himself, and owed too many people money), the Juke Blues article says that at this point "House Of Orange now seemed on the verge of collapse, and Davis feared that his career would collapse with it. 'By that time I was like a falling bridge,' Davis said, 'but John R stopped me before I got all the way down'."

More on that soon.

8/29/07

First off, I'd like to thank ol' pal Jason Stone, aka The Stepfather Of Soul, for his gracious acknowkledgement of what we're doing over here, as well as for putting up Sam Baker's incredible It's All Over. Very cool!

Around the same time that Allen Orange had started up his own label, John Richbourg decided to do the same. I'm not sure if things had somehow changed with Fred Foster and Monument's backing of Sound Stage 7, or what, but apparently both men felt there was room for more 'product'.

Bob Wilson: "At that time, John R didn't really have a good promotion man of his own, and used the Monument Records (the parent company of SS7) promotion men and sometimes got various independents to help in certain markets, like NYC, LA, etc. But, soon John wanted Allen to do that same type promotion for him..."

One of the first artists John R recorded for his new Seventy Seven label was Willie Hobbs. You can read more about Willie over at John Ridley's always excellent Deep Soul Heaven. Hobbs' producer for the label was Jackey Beavers, who had left his Motown roots behind (as our man Bob Wilson had a few years earlier) and signed with Sound Stage 7 in 1969. With John R apparently still looking out for Allen whenever he could, this 1971 B side is a cover of a song Orange wrote with Cliff Parman (aka M. Terry) for Lattimore Brown back in 1966.

Seventy Seven 108 B

I Know I'm Gonna Miss You

Recorded at Fame down in Muscle Shoals, it's a sweet version of a great song... although I do miss those Roscoe Shelton/Sam Baker harmonies. Hobbs is singing his heart out here, with the 'Fame Gang' punching out another great soul tune.

I imagine there's no way we'll ever get the full details of how things went down, but with House Of Orange in trouble, John R agreed to let Allen continue to produce Geater Davis for him. I'm not sure if he created his Luna label for that specific purpose, but Davis apparently had the inaugural release on the label in 1972:

LUNA 801 A

I've Got To Pay The Price

According to the Living Blues article, this was also recorded at Fame, with SS7 stalwart Bergen White handling the horn charts. It's a great record, but despite guaranteed airplay on WLAC, it didn't do much. Davis would have one more release on Luna:
804 - I Don't Worry About Jody / Don't Walk Off (And Love Me)
which was also recorded at Fame.

I'm not exactly sure of the chronology here, but Allen would also produce Geater on two Seventy Seven releases:
77 124 - Long Cold Winter / Why Does It Hurt So Bad
in 1972, and his final chart entry the following year:

77 130 A

Your Heart Is So Cold

Co-written with old pal Reuben Bell and released in July of 1973, this searing indictment of Davis' woman spent seven weeks on Billboard's R&B chart, climbing to #64. Apparently recorded at Music City, I wonder who's smokin' that blues guitar? (Living Blues says it's not Davis... my guess is Fenton Robinson, who was also signed to 77 at the time). Oddly, even though Orange produced enough other material on him for Richbourg to fill a double CD (Geater Davis - The Lost Soul Man on the Australian AIM label), this would be his last release for either of John R's imprints.

He told Living Blues: "John R is one of the best men I've ever met in the record business. The man helped me all he could... He was a good man, all the way, a good man... That's one of the worst blows I ever suffered, losing ties with John."

Stay tuned.

9/6/07

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

1973 was a good year for John Richbourg's 77 label. As we mentioned last time, Geater Davis had charted for the label in July, as would the indomitable Ann Sexton with You're Gonna Miss Me that September. A local legend John had signed the year before would break into the R&B top 40 for him that same month.

Earl Gaines came to Nashville from Alabama in the early fifties. After playing drums on Arthur Gunter's seminal Baby Let's Play House in 1955, he got a job as the lead vocalist with Louis Brooks and his Hi-Toppers. Together they would take It's Love Baby (24 Hours A Day) all the way to #2 R&B that summer (held back from the #1 slot by Fats Domino's Ain't It A Shame). The record put Excello on the map, but when subsequent singles didn't do much, the label dropped him in 1962.

After bouncing around to a couple of local labels, he started working with WLAC dee-jay Hoss Allen in 1964. Recording at Bradley's Barn with roughly the same crew that John R had been using for Sound Stage 7 (minus Allen Orange and Bob Wilson, of course) Hoss began to produce some sides that he shopped around to the record companies. A single, The Best Of Luck To You, was picked up by (of all people) Hanna-Barbera, and released on their HBR label in 1966. Although it would cruise to #28 R&B, the company decided to fold the label and concentrate more on the Jetsons and the Flintstones. Allen got Earl a deal with Starday-King, and despite quality releases on Hollywood and Deluxe (one of which, the MLK tribute Our Friend Is Gone, would feature our man Bob Wilson on the piano), Nothing much was happening with Earl's Career.

In 1972, after Hoss Allen's failing health curtailed his involvement in the business, Gaines signed with fellow dee-jay John R's Seventy-Seven label. John handed him off to Allen Orange. After three singles that failed to make much of an impression, Earl would crack the R&B top 40 once again in the fall of 1973:

77 131 A

Hymn Number 5

A cover of The Mighty Hannibal's 1966 Vietnam hit, I like Earl's version better. When he exhorts those awesome background singers to 'Moan, Children!', it's simply one of the greatest moments in Southern Soul history. Orange's great big production here is flawless, and Earl is just belting it out. A much better singer than Geater Davis ever was, Earl's energetic delivery takes the record to the next level. One of my all-time favorite J.R. Enterprises products!

The follow-up single, although just about as good, failed to make the charts:

77 135 A

I Can't Face It

I don't know if this was recorded at Music City or Muscle Shoals, but the band on here is just on fire! Check out the fat bass line, the oh so Toussaint piano - with the guitar mixed way up front, and the multi-tracked percussion... a masterful job of production by Orange to say the least. Gaines once again is just going for it at the top of his range, singing his heart out. The B side of this record was Earl's version of Soul Children, with Orange apparently trotting out the old 1969 rhythm track and having him sing over the top. It was worth a try, I guess. {this just in - according to our pal Bob Wilson, the backing track here was recorded during the same sessions as the original 'Soul Children', and was initially intended for Paul Vann. That's Wilson (who also wrote the rhythm arrangement) smokin' the 88s along with Tim Drummond, Mac Gayden, Troy Seals and New Orleans own Karl Himmel laying down that percussion. It was recorded at Music City circa 1969.}

In August of 1973, WLAC made the decision to change formats. John R, after 26 years as one of the most influential figures in R&B, was sent packing. Although nobody knew it at the time, this single event may have done more to alter the landscape of southern soul music than anything else.

Everything was about to change.

9/12/07

Our man on the continent, Detective Cies, who runs the positively fantastic Gospel Blog Just Moving On (an endeavor which dwarfs ol' holy ghost, let me tell ya!) has come through with both sides of the first release on House Of Orange... without further ado, here's Kitty Clark:

HO 2400 A

Funny You Should Ask

This song is an absolute trip! Like Tony Joe White snuck into a Shirley Bassey session and just let loose, or something. Those strings, the background singers... I'm wondering if Allen didn't 'lease' this one from somewhere else. The record works, though, in a weird sort of way. I have no clue who Kitty Clark might be... detectives?

HO 2400 B

Big Wheel

Kitty's really singing on this one! Once again, the 'big' production makes it sound more like a Brill Building 'girl group' record than anything else. It would be fascinating to find out the history of these two sides. Allen Orange is listed as the producer, and by 1970, he was more than capable of coming up with something like this, it just doesn't sound like anything else he ever did...

Thank You, Cies! Keep 'em coming!

In another interesting note, I just found this in the liner notes of Shreveport Southern Soul... The Murco Story (written by the lovely and talented John Ridley):

"...Alarm, the label they [Jerry Strickland and Bobby Patterson] owned with Stewart Madison... although cuts from this period were never issued in the US, several featured on a Japanese LP - "I'm A Losing Boy". This quite brilliant album also featured a few cuts Eddy [Giles] made for Allen Orange's House Of Orange concern around 1973-4, but which remained in the can as well."

Eddy Giles, you may recall, had hired Geater Davis to play guitar in his band Eddie G & the Jive Five around 1969. Any of you guys have the Japanese LP? I'd love to hear that stuff...

By 1974, John R's labels were in trouble. Not only had his immensely popular radio show provided a place for people to hear the music J.R. Enterprises was producing, it gave them a way to buy it. Just as he had been doing for years with Sound Stage 7, he sold his records through Ernie's Record Mart in ten packs, which offered the listener a chance to get a couple of hits, sandwiched around a few misses. They moved a lot of vinyl that way back then. Without that kind of mail-order business, everything kind of ground to a halt.

The numbering system was changed in '74 to a '900' series, with records by Ann Sexton and Jackie Beavers starting things off. The friends John thought he had in radio failed to materialize and, despite any kind of promotion that Allen Orange might have been doing, nothing could make up for the loss of his audience.

Things were moving fast.

In an interesting exchange on the Southern Soul Group recently, John 'Soul' Smith had this to say:

"Both Bobby King (77 #SP2120) and Sam Baker (77 # SP2134) had versions of this Allen Orange song released as A sides on Seventy Seven (& both had earlier been released on Sound Stage Seven). Its a good song & they are both decent versions, but anyone here know why these 2 labels would issue 2 versions of the same song close together -- it can't have made commercial sense."

To which I replied:

"Apparently, those releases are from just prior to John R having to declare bankruptcy in 1975, when the thought of paying for studio time was out of the question. He seemed to be mining the best of his under-rated SS7 material and re-releasing it, not only on 77, but on another of his labels, Sound Plus, and hoping that something, anything, might hit.

The fact that both singles you mentioned, along with:

77 - SP 2133 - SAM BAKER - Just A Glance Away / Safe In The Arms Of Love (reissue of SS7 2579)

were all Allen Orange compositions would tend to underscore that hypothesis, as he was, no matter what else he might have been, John's longest running partner in his 'J.R. Enterprises', and Richbourg always took care of his own."

John sent along the Seventy Seven scans above (becoming an official detective in the process) - thanks, man!

Without Fred Foster and Monument backing him up, without WLAC, John R just couldn't make it. There are those who place the blame with Allen Orange, who say that he was carelessly spending the promotional monies John gave him. While that may indeed be true, the eventual bankruptcy of J.R. Enterprises in 1975 had deeper roots than that. The whole game had changed by then... Stax would be belly up by the end of the year, and Fame had folded its house label the year before. Atlantic had moved on as had Sound Stage 7 itself... as corporate Disco came on, these were indeed dark days for the old time 'record men'.

With nowhere to turn, Allen Orange re-activated his House Of Orange label for a release that's not listed in the R&B indies discography, or the Living Blues article. Here's what I think went down.

For Your Precious Love was a track on Geater Davis' 1971 LP Sweet Woman's Love, a cover of a 1958 Jerry Butler & The Impressions tune which Oscar Toney Jr. had taken into the R&B top 5 in 1967. On the album Davis is really going for it, with a mood-setting romantic rap that brings the song in at over eight minutes long. It would be edited down to 3:15 for its single release as HO 2405 that same year.

In late 1974, the LP Al Geen Explores Your Mind was a huge seller. A track from that album, God Bless Our Love mined the same territory as Geater had done three years before, to say the least (some might even say it's a direct rip-off of the Butler composition). Anyway, the Al Green album cut was just HUGE on black radio stations down south, but Willie Mitchell refused to release it as a single. As we've seen over on the B side, the ever resorceful Senator Jones attempted to fill that need by bringing Charles Brimmer into the studio to cut his own brilliant cover version in early 1975. With an incredible 'love-rap' that spilled over onto the B side, the 45 would cruise to #43 R&B.

This must have burned Orange up. After all, he had been there first:

HO 2405 E

For Your Precious Love

Released as HO 2405 E in 1975, it's the exact same edit of the album cut that was released as HO 2405 back in 1971 (with the same B side, Wrapped Up In You). Small wonder they missed it on the discographies! In any event, the record didn't chart the second time around, either.

Just as he had been when he left New Orleans all those years before, Allen Orange was out there on his own.

9/28/07

Here's a scan I found on eBay of that lone 1971 House Of Orange LP, Geater Davis' Sweet Woman's Love. Like I said before, I don't actually have a copy, but I'd love to hear that extended version of For Your Precious Love one of these days...

Anyway, after whatever it was that happened down in Nashville between Davis, Allen Orange and John R, Geater headed for Jackson, Mississipi and Johnny Vincent's Ace label. "I had been knowing Johnny ever since 1970, and he told me if I ever ran into trouble... he would help me because he had a studio," he told Living Blues.

His 1974 single, Nice And Easy, was produced by good ol' Sam Baker, who had also left J.R. Enterprises under less than happy circumstances. Supposedly a great record, with a 'Tyrone Davis style' sound, it went nowhere fast. Johnny Vincent said, "It didn't sell a thousand, it didn't sell 500... it didn't sell 300" copies. Davis would record one more single for the label, the funkified Busting My Brain, which was co-produced by one 'J. Lancaster'. That one didn't sell either.

After the House Of Orange re-issue on Davis in 1975, the two men agreed to work together again. Here's the rest of that HO discography that Dan 'the Man' Phillips sent in a while back:

1977
2410 - Geater Davis - Cold Love (long version)/Cold Love (short version)
2415 - Geater Davis - Booty Music "Let's Go Dancin'"/Breath Taking Girl

1979
79-100 - Geater Davis - I'll Play The Blues For You/Disco Music

All of these were recorded in Jackson at Vincent's studio. It was Johnny, you may recall, that had been the distributor of the label back in the 'King Cotton Hotel' days and, by the late seventies, he was one of the few 'independents' left in the south. Those were indeed lean times for everyone involved. Here's a story about those days that was posted on the Southern Soul Group back in February of 2006:

"We cut those two singles in the most 'WarZone' situation possible. I cut those at Johnny Vincent's (ACE) studio on an 8 track Scully with a radio station console. I believe it was in '77 or '78. Geater lived really close to me in Jackson.. and he was the 'artist of the moment' at Ace... The studio was archaic and barely worked, but that never stopped me...

My favorite Geater story; Johnny's office was always filled with Johnny's friends... some of whom were or had been in the music biz... but there was a senator, an insurance exec, a siding salesman... anyway everyday we would go through the newpaper ads to find out who had the best carry out lunch deals. Popeye's chicken had a 6 piece special one day, and there were five of us. When the 'extra' piece of chicken went missing Johnny went ballistic, only to find out that, unbeknownst to us, Geater had eaten 2 pieces of chicken! This was a tragedy for Johnny, but Geater said that he was the artist and he deserved the extra piece! Anyway, this goes to show how broke we all were at the time...

209 West Capitol in Jackson Mississippi was quite the place. Huey 'Piano" Smith came in and out from time to time. My original audition for Johnny was to record Sammy Meyers. I also recorded James Booker there... and many more.

I recorded several of the House of Orange tracks... that Allen absconded with during the middle of the night without paying Johnny... Really made Johnny mad..."

The author of that post, the very cool Jim Lancaster (who is now the proprietor of the newly renovated Playground Recording Studio in Valpraiso, Florida), has since spoken with me and said:

"Geez, Johnny Vincent was so pissed at me, cause we all needed the pitiful amount of money... I think it was only like 300 bucks. It's one of those embarrassing moments in your life that you never forget. I really don't put any blame on Allen... It was my mistake."

I'll Play The Blues For You (which, if you remember, Davis had made a demo on way before Albert King had even heard it), was recorded with a long spoken word intro in which Geater pleads his case against the dreaded Disco; "...I don't never want to forget my roots, and I'm saying this to all black people, the Blues is your roots, like it or not." Which is interesting, as the flip of that same record was actually called Disco Music.

In any event, neither side of the record sold, and it would apparently mark Allen Orange's last foray into the music business.

Geater Davis would go on to record with Jerry Puckett and James Bennett, producing several singles and an album on MT records before his sudden death of a heart attack in 1984.

Now, when I first decided to focus on Allen Orange as the subject of case five here, my first question was, obviously, "What ever became of him?" I asked Bob Wilson, who had been supplying me with all this great information about those heady days in Nashville with Sound Stage 7. He told me that he had lost contact with Allen years ago, but that he would call up his friend Roscoe Shelton, as he would be sure to know... the only problem was that, unbeknownst to him, Roscoe had passed away in 2002. His widow told Bob that Allen had come to visit them some years back, but that she had no idea where to find him now.

As the idea of a trip to Nashville began to take shape, both Bob and I viewed re-connecting with Allen down there as a top priority. Billy Cox and his wife Brenda told us that they had last seen Allen back in 1986, when they spoke with him about getting back into 'the industry', and possibly starting their own label. At that time, they told us, Allen was working 'in the boiler room' at Vanderbilt University.

Wilson next contacted Earl Gaines. Earl said that he remembered Allen very well, and that he'd be happy to meet with us when we got down there. He knew where Allen was, he told us, and would be glad to help us find him. As the time got closer for the trip (this past June), it became apparent that Earl, although he certainly meant well, hadn't actually seen Allen in over four years, and that he wasn't quite sure where he was...

We next turned to Aaron Varnell. Aaron, you remember, was the saxophone man from the King Casuals that went on to become the arranger for J.R. Enterprises before moving on to Fame in Muscle Shoals with fellow horn man Harrison Calloway (for a glimpse of just how good the Casuals were, take a look at this incredible YouTube clip of Aaron and Billy Cox backing up Freddy King on The!!!!Beat. Wow!) Varnell was intimately involved in Sound Stage 7, and also wrote some songs with Allen (like Shake & Vibrate), back in the day. Here's a great one I unearthed for us on eBay:

SS7 2612

Send It Back (C.O.D.)

Released in 1968, I'm guessing it was recorded at American in Memphis, with our man Reggie Young on the guitar. Obviously conceived as an 'answer song' to Sam & Dave's Wrap It Up, it never made the charts. According to the label, 'Soul X 2' is made up of 'Lee and Calvin'... anybody have any clue who that might be? (*we've since figured that one out... please visit this B Side post for the amazng answer!)

It was Aaron who told us that, the last he heard, Allen Orange had gone to live with relatives in North Carolina... We did meet, all of us, for lunch at a Picadilly Cafeteria outside of Nashville. I really couldn't believe I was sitting there with these three men who had lived so much of this history, who were a part of so much great music... I can't thank all of you enough, man.

Anyway, what Aaron said got me thinking, and I began doing some research...

In the meantime, I got an email from Garry Cape, the owner of Soulscape Records. He had seen our case here about Allen, and was attempting to locate him as well:

"I saw him at the John L Glenn Residential Center in Nashville," he told me, "the date on my pictures CDR says July 2004, so I guess it would have been shortly before then. This was a place where he had his own room, and he came down to a communal sitting area where we chatted for about 2 hours. He seemed perfectly lucid & coherent at that time and was able to relay stories about his SS7 days... He was blind but said he could just make out shadows.

He gave me his number for when I was next in town - but the next time I went it was out of service. I called the home, they said he had moved out to be with relatives but they were not allowed to tell me where he had gone. That was the end of my trail. Please feel free to use the attached picture in your blog."

There you have it, Allen Orange in Nashville, 2004.

Unfortunately, I next had to share with Garry this information I had found on the internet:

Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
February 7, 2006
Section: Death Notice - Classified

Allen J. Orange

Charlotte NC United States
Mr. Allen J. Orange, 67, of 2004 Sunset Village Drive, Charlotte, died February 4, 2006. Memorial service is 2 PM Thursday at A. E. Grier Memorial Chapel. Grier Funeral Service is in charge of arrangements.

Survivors are one son, DeMarcus Orange (DeDe); five grandchildren, Londa Craig, Alexander Orange, George Taylor, Ikeylla Orange and Dominique Orange; three sisters, Behula Lee of Columbia, MS, Katherine McKeller and Ida Jenkins (Thomas) of Hattiesburg, MS. ...

Once again, detectives, we were a little late... May God Rest His Soul.

Just yesterday, I spoke with Allen's son, DeMarcus in Charlotte and offered him our heartfelt condolences. He told me that his father's runaway diabetes had wreaked havoc on his system and that, in addition to losing his sight, his health had been deteriorating rapidly when he brought him to North Carolina to live with his family in 2005. It soon became apparent, however, that he required more care than he and his wife were able to provide, and so he went to live in a private nursing facility. "He didn't make a year, once he went there," he told me.

His parents had split up back when he was only seven years old, DeMarcus said, and he had grown up in Charlotte with his mother. I think it says a lot that he was there to welcome his father home when he really needed him.

DeMarcus has consented to share his family's story with us, and is going to try and piece together some photos and the like for us in the near future.

Stay tuned.

10/18/07

Hi folks. I'm not sure if you saw this, but John Ridley (noted UK soul authority and composer of some of the coolest liner notes of the last 25 years) recently added a page on Geater Davis to his always excellent Deep Soul Heaven site. After a shameless plug by yours truly on the Southern Soul Group, John visited our Allen Orange investigation here and had this to say:

"Just caught your post to the southern soul newsgroup and read the Detective page on Allen Orange. Excellent! Really entertaining!... If you still need them I'll dig out my very rare HOO 45s on Don Varner and Reuben Bell."

We still needed them, I assured him, and I am pleased to welcome ol' Sir Shambling himself back to our team (if you recall, he sent along an entire CD of Joe Haywood material way back on Case One). Without further ado, here's John Ridley:

REUBEN BELL

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Reuben Bell’s high tenor vocals were at their best, in my view, when extracting every ounce of emotion from those slow, often almost unbearably sad, ballads he specialised in. Some of his early work for Dee Marais on Murco, such as “It’s Not That Easy” and “You’re Gonna Miss Me” showed his talents in that direction.

He recorded titles for Allen Orange in the 70s of which the unusual socially themed “What’s Happening To The World” may just be the best on House Of Orange although “I Can’t Feel This Way At Home” has its merits. Better in my view were the cuts that Orange leased to De Luxe. Both “All The Time” and “I Hear You Knocking” are really first class deep soul.

But his best work of all came for Alarm, where his interpretations of Danny White’s “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye”, “One Sided Love Affair” and “I Still Have To Say Goodbye” were all quality southern soul. But his finest moments on wax came on “Asking For The Truth”, a wonderfully melodic Bobby Patterson/Jerry Strickland cheatin’ saga, on which Bell turned in a heartbreakingly intense performance.

After a longish gap Bell resurfaced in 1982 with a first class LP on the tiny Port City label in Shreveport, from which 2 45s were lifted to heavy critical acclaim in Europe. Sadly Bell passed away, apparently in the direst poverty, not too long ago.

HO 2403 B

What's Happening To The World

Just an excellent song, huh? I think I'm inclined to go with John's assessment here of this being the best side to have been released on House of Orange. It's got this whole Curtis Mayfield kind of thing going on, both with Bell's excellent vocals and the topical subject matter (which, sadly, still rings true today). I love the reference to Kent State... Reuben and Geater made quite the songwriting team, didn't they?

Just as we've seen with Davis' For Your Precious Love, Orange apparently believed that the song was too good to have missed the charts, and re-released it once he got better distribution with Jamie-Guyden as HO 2406. It didn't help, and this fantastic song has been hiding from us all these years...

HO 2406 B

Don't Give More Than You Can Take

Check out this funky nugget! The band on here is just crankin' it out... I love those little guitar breaks - and the Hammond organ - yeah, man! I wonder if this was cut at Sound City with the African Music Machine? Once again, how could a song this good have gone un-noticed for so long?

This is the first I'm hearing of Reuben's passing, how very sad that he never got the recognition he deserved. He was a great talent.

Don Varner

Following an initial 45 on the obscure Down Beat label Varner recorded several sessions in Alabama but only four 45s were issued on Quinvy, South Camp and Diamond. All excellent Muscle Shoals efforts of which “Tear Stained Face” is the best known. Several unissued cuts came out in the Charly UK series of LPs from that source.

A one-off single for Allen Orange’s House Of Orange company appeared in 1970. This is what Don told In The Basement editor David Cole in 2000 about the tracks:-

“I had met Allen (Orange) when he was a promo man for John Richbourg and he liked the things I was doing. I think because Allen would come in particularly from out of town was what made me sign with him. At the time he signed me, Brenda (Duff – Don’s wife at the time) Geater Davis and Reuben Bell. All of us were pretty good songwriters too so out of the four of us he thought he had a pretty good base. And what happened was they cut me and Geater Davis at the same time and Geater’s “Sweet Woman’s Love” just took off. I mean it took off like a bullet and overshadowed the two songs on me…. There were also two more songs on me that that I had cut for House Of Orange – “Take Good Care Of The Children” and “Set Me Free”.

His final 45 was a self-produced effort on the tiny Roaring label in Los Angeles, to where he moved in the early 1970s. He made a welcome if entirely unexpected reappearance in 1985 at the Nice Jazz Festival as part of the Johnny Otis revue. Since then his entire output has been reissued on Shout UK CD RPMSH 290 Finally Got Over. Don Varner sadly passed on in 2002.

HO 2404 A

I Can If You Can

This sexy tune kind of puts me in mind of the stuff Allen was doing with Joe Simon around the same time. A little heavy on the echoplex, it's a great song nonetheless. If you notice, Varner's co-writer on here is Sandra Crump who, I'm guessing, must be related to the elusive Bill, Orange's co-producer on these early HO sides...

HO 2404 B

That's All Right

Although somebody should have hidden the reverb unit from Crump and Orange, Sandra and Don came up with another great record. Varner's just laying it all out here... great guitar, and I'm loving those congas!

Thank You Sir Shambling for sharing these ultra-rare slabs of vinyl with us all!

As we've discussed before, after Allen couldn't keep up with the demand for Geater Davis' big hit, he entered into a distribution agreement with Johnny Vincent, who was apparently running a Memphis label named Santo at the time. If you take a closer look at the label scans John sent us, both 2403 and 2404 read 'Division of Santo Records' (by 2406, Orange was hooked up in Philly). Well, I personally had never heard of this Santo label, much less seen one, until I got this 45 tucked into a bulk record buy I just made (thank you Double D!). I'm not sure of the vintage on this... it could be from before Ace stepped out from Bill Black's Combo as a front man, or after his run on Hi. In any event, I thought you'd like to check it out.

...even more international detective work is on the way, y'all. Don't touch that dial!

10/27/07

OK folks, as promised we're back this time around with a few singles that come to us all the way from Rotterdam in The Netherlands! That's right, Cies, our man on the mainland recently came through with a CD of some THIRTY songs that were written by Allen Orange and ripped from his original 45s ... amazing! This kind of international collaboration is just so cool, and has gone way beyond the wildest expectations I had back when I started this whole thing up... I really can't thank you enough, man, this is great.

Here's three awesome records, one from each distinct period at Sound Stage 7:

SS7 2605

I Want To Keep You (If You Want To Stay)

Recorded at Bradley's Barn in Nashville, this one features Bob Wilson on both the piano and organ along with Billy Cox and the rest of the King Casuals session band that the label was using at the time. Roscoe Shelton, I think, was in many ways Allen's alter-ego, and the guy he chose to deliver this type of love-lorn ballad in lieu of himself. What a voice he had! Orange's New Orleans roots are showing here, and I love the Aaron Varnell arrangement (he co-wrote the tune as well).

You know, Varnell is turning out to be one of the secret heroes of this whole case. I mean, if he hadn't mentioned North Carolina back in June, we would never have gotten as far as we have... I just used this 1968 Fame Studio photograph in my Bowlegs Miller post over on The B Side. If you check it out, that's Rick Hall and Clarence Carter standing, with most of the 'Tell Mama' era Muscle Shoals horns - Miller, Joe Arnold and our man Aaron Varnell seated left to right. When you put that in perspective, and realize that when Richbourg made the move to Memphis, Varnell went straight to Fame, it gives you a deeper appreciation of these early Nashville records, in my opinion.

This next fantastic number has eluded me on eBay for years...

SS7 2603

One Bo-Dillion Years

Recorded soon after John R started making the trip to American Studio, it was arranged by Chips Moman himself. Robinson's voice never fails to knock me out, and he sure delivers on this one! The 'Memphis Boys' are as tight as ever, and I love the fact that Bobby Womack's guitar is mixed way up front. Say amen, somebody! Another great tune from the pen of Allen Orange, it's songs like this that make you realize just how gifted a songwriter he really was.

Here's one from Richbourg's biggest star, recorded back in Nashville at Music City:

SS7 2664

I Got A Whole Lot Of Lovin'

The B side of top ten R&B hit Yours Love, this would be the second to last 45 Simon would make for Sound Stage 7 before going to Spring. Look Out! The drums and bass on this record just kill me (according to Bob Wilson, that's Kenny Buttrey and Tim Drummond along with the rest of the 'Music City Four'), not to mention those Bergen White horns... this is the side that should have been the hit, right? Hot stuff, man! You know, I read in the Southern Soul Group recently that Simon has signed on to appear at Porretta next year... I imagine he'll be singing his 'secular' material. How great would it be if he was backed up by his original Nashville musicians? Now that would be something!

Hope you've enjoyed these slabs of transatlantic vinyl as much as I have... more soon!

Thanks again, Cies, you are a prince among men.

11/18/07

Hey, everybody... not sure if you noticed this, but there's been some mention of Allen Orange in the Southern Soul Group recently (I hadn't actually noticed it myself, until ol' Cies pointed it out to me - thanks, brother!).

Actually, the discussion centered around a woman named Betty Adams, who is the niece of seminal blues man Big Maceo, and the sister of Jazz piano prodigy Roy Meriwether. Cies emailed me with this:

In his linernotes of the Grapevine CD Southern Fried Funk Paul Mooney wrote the following:
"Betty Adams (Jewel Meriwether) issued 'Make It Real (Ride On)' in 1971 on Allen Orange's Notes of Gold label (0001). It was recorded in Cincinatti and produced by Betty's brother, Roy. A second single was released soon after but but Betty turned her back on soul music and became an evangelist..."

Mooney, who worked at Grapevine for years, has recently opened a copyright management and licensing company called Millbrand along with its associated Selecta and Shotgun labels. We asked him to elaborate a bit on that, and he responded; "as far as I know, Allen Orange was the owner of (or a partner in) Notes of Gold Records and Notefiller Music... When Betty Adams leased her masters to Notes of Gold it was Allen she dealt with."

Very interesting!

According to the R&B Indies, the label only had three 45 releases:

001 - Betty Adams - Make It Real (Ride On) / ?
100 - Betty Adams - See Me Through / How Can I Do Without You
101 - Roy Meriwether Trio - Jesus Christ Superstar (Part I) / (Part II)

...and possibly one LP release by the Meriwether Trio, all released in 1971.

Here's one of those Betty Adams sides now:

Notes Of Gold 100 A

See Me Through

Pulled from Cies' Rotterdam vaults, this is one great record! I imagine that's brother Roy on the piano... check out that guitar, man! It's got this whole Gospel thing goin' on, I'm sure Betty had no problem stepping into the role of evangelist. Garry Cape reported in (on the SS Group), and said, "As regards Betty Adams, I met with her and her daughter last year in Atlanta on behalf of Millbrand. She's a very nice lady, now heavily involved in the church..." I wonder if she ever made any Gospel records... Cies?

When you take the whole 'Notes Of Gold' thing in context with all of the other phenomenal music Orange was involved in during that same period, it gives you an idea of just how great he was. Let's check out a couple of other cool records (via our Rotterdam connection) from around the same time...

Billy Mills was one half of North Carolina 'soul duo' Pic & Bill (along with Charles Pickens), who had recorded for Major Bill Smith's Texas Charay label in the mid-sixties, before moving to Smash in 1969. A much sought after LP, 30 Minutes Of Soul appeared on a label called 12 O'Clock in the early seventies, followed by some singles for LeCam and Bandit on into the nineties. In 2002, an album called Taking Up The Slack showed they were still out there doing it to it. I have no idea how it is that Mills came to record for John R as a solo artist, but I'm sure glad he did.

77 111

Easy Goin' Fellow

Originally cut by Roscoe Shelton in 1965 for Sound Stage 7, Billy takes this Allen Orange blues number to the next level... kinda reminds you of the Tan Canary, no? Recorded with the 'Fame Gang' in Muscle Shoals, I wonder if that's our man Aaron Varnell blowing that sax? Just as we've seen before with Willie Hobbs, Richbourg's producer on these Fame sides was none other than Jackey Beavers.

Beavers was in on the ground floor of Detroit Soul, recording with Johnny Bristol as 'Johnny & Jackey' on Anna, and later Tri-Phi for Gwen Gordy. After recording a song they wrote with Harvey Fuqua, Someday We'll Be Together, the duo split up, with Johnny taking his talents (and the song) to Motown. Beavers followed Billy Davis to Chess, where he had some moderate success with a couple of Checker singles in 1965, before moving back to Detroit and releasing a few records on small local labels like Revilot. By 1969, I imagine Jackey got the idea that Motown's ship had sailed without him and he signed on with John R in Nashville. He recorded five singles for Sound Stage 7 (including his own version of Someday We'll Be Together), before moving on to Seventy Seven as both an artist and producer.

This next one is as close as Allen Orange ever came to writing A Gospel song, and was originally covered beautifully by Sam Baker in 1966:

Sound Plus 2104

Someone (Bigger Than You Or Me)

Produced by Richbourg himself, I love the arrangement here. The shimmering guitar work sets the stage for Jackey's soaring vocals. I'm not sure how this came to be released on Sound Plus, a label which John R seems to have created primarily for re-issues...

What a great song this is.

Jackey apparently took its deep and inspirational message to heart, leaving the music industry behind him shortly after this to become a minister. He has been the pastor of the Glory Harvester Church in Cartersville, Georgia for over twenty years, and has recently been ordained a Bishop. He has written a book about his life called From Here To There and From There To Here, and is the creator of The Devil Stomp.

Life is good.

11/21/07

Hey... I'm just kind of dropping in here unofficially to share this with you:

You know, sometimes I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, if you know what I mean. I was going through a few 45s over here... listening to a few records, and I noticed something. the publisher listed on virtually all of the House Of Orange releases (the ones that were written 'in house', anyway) is listed as 'Notes Of Gold'. Well, how do you like that? I never noticed that before... The Davis/Bell compositions that were released on Luna and 77 were published by Notes Of Gold as well.

Now, a search of the ASCAP database yielded no results for Davis, Bell, or Notes Of Gold. I figured I'd try a 'search by title', and looked up 'Sweet Woman's Love'. Sure enough, it was on there. Under Publishers/Administrators it said: ' Please contact ASCAP clearance representative for other publisher information'. So I did. In an exchange that must be all too familiar to guys like Paul Mooney at Millbrand, I was told that the publisher had 'terminated', and was last listed as 'National Tapes and Promotions' with a Nashville address. They were unable to tell me how long ago they had 'terminated'. A web search for the company took me to a place called the Harry Fox Agency, an outfit that is attempting to update the contact information for hundreds of other defunct publishers like Notes Of Gold/National Tapes.

What a tangled web we weave.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

12/05/07

Alright folks, I'm back with some pretty big news!

I received this in an email from our man Paul Mooney last week:

"Just a note to tell you that I recently concluded an agreement to obtain exclusive rights to the catalogues of House of Orange, Notes of Gold and Note Filler from the estate of Allen J Orange (deceased).

The catalogues include rights to classic songs by Allen Orange, Vernon Davis, Reuben Bell, William Crump, Don Varner and others.

This deal had been in negotation for a while but I couldn't mention it until the agreement had been confirmed.

It's likely that some House of Orange product will be issued early next. Any help you can give regarding information, images, memorabillia etc. will be welcomed and very much appreciated..."

That is very welcome news, indeed, and I'm certainly looking forward to any 'product' that might be released as a result of that deal. I'm glad that our efforts here at soul detective helped to make that happen. Thank you one and all.

I hope they re-issue the Reuben Bell stuff straightaway. Ever since Sir Shambling sent along those tracks, they've been rattling around in my brain. Are they great, or what? As he said, they represent the best that the House Of Orange label had to offer.

Well, I was holding out on you, and there is one more Reuben Bell cut here that he sent us...

HO 2403 A

I Can't Feel This Way At Home

Another movin' and groovin' cheatin' number from the pen of Bell and Geater Davis, this one, once again, puts me in mind of 'The Chokin' Kind'... great bass line, huh? Reuben's vocals, as always, are right on the money. Definitely R&B chart material that seems to have suffered from the label's chronic lack of distribution.

Thank you. John.

Speaking of 'House Of Orange Product', here's the last release to appear on the label, from 1979:

HO 79100 A

I'll Play The Blues For You

Check out the very cool introductory rap here... coming to you from the land of eight tracks and fringed rear windows, Davis just wants to remind everybody to remember where they came from... I wonder if that's Geater himself smokin' that blues guitar? Recorded at Johnny Vincent's studio in Jackson, Mississippi, maybe Jim Lancaster can furnish some session details...

Thank you, Cies, for providing us with this one.

Now, as you may recall, way back in July Dan Phillips sent in a list of Allen Orange compositions written before he left New Orleans. One of the songs on that list was the great 'It Will Stand' by the Showmen. Hmmm...

According to the BMI database, there are two songs (assigned consecutive work#'s) with that same title:

Minit 632 - Imperial 66033

It Will Stand

This song, as promised, has indeed 'stood'. It was first released as Minit 632 in late 1961, and made it to #61 on the pop charts. As The Showmen went on to become hugely popular on the 'beach music' scene in South Carolina, it was released again, as Imperial 66033, in the summer of 1964, this time climbing to #80 on the Hot 100.

According to the label scans I glommed off of eBay here at left, Norman Johnson is listed as the songwriter on both releases (as I'm sure you know, Norman 'General' Johnson is the guy who would go on to form The Chairman Of The Board). I'm not sure why Orange is listed on the BMI pages... unless it's another song entirely.

Detectives?

In any event, the body of work that Allen Orange left behind will now, most assuredly, stand.

I'd like to thank him for that.

3/5/08

Alright everybody, we've had some important contributions here on Case Five over the last couple of months, and I just wanted to bring you all up to date.

First off, brand new detective Travis Doane sent along this one from Orange's 'New Orleans Period':

MINIT 630 A

True Love Never Dies

As Travis said, this song "seems to be elusive in its natural habitat," and I agree. In all this time I've never seen the original 45 show up on eBay even once. He ripped it for us instead from a 1986 EMI Minit Compilation LP. That's fine by me, brother... thanks, and welcome aboard! According to the label, it was co-written by Orange and 'C.Toussaint'... I'm guessing that Toussaint was using his son's name here (Clarence Reginald), just as he was doing with his mother's (Naomi Neville), around the same time for whatever contractual reason. A solid chunk of a Popeye record, it was Orange's second to last release for the label.

Now, I'm not sure if you've been following things over on Case Six, but what got us started on that one was two 45s, on two different labels, that shared the same backing track. Here's another case in point (although not nearly as dramatically mysterious):

77 135 B

Soul Children

We had mentioned this one in passing a while back, as the B side of 'I Can't Face It', which you may recall had Earl singing over an unreleased backing track that had been recorded by the Music City Four + 1 almost four years earlier. I spoke with Orange's co-writer on Soul Children, our man Bob Wilson, about all this not too long ago:

"It is the very same track, same instruments, all, but remixed with different voices. It is a quarter tone higher than Paul Vann's, which was cut in E, but Earl's is in F. So, either the machines were set up differently (inadvertently) or Allen speeded it up just a little. Also, the mastering job was better, cooler.

"That is me, Drummond, Karl on Drums, Buttrey on Congas and Percussion and Mac Gayden and Troy Seals on Guitars. Mac is doing the driving groove on the bass notes on the Les Paul (fatter), while Troy is playing the chink guitar on the Fender Tele (thinner). That is my arrangement on the rhythm track and Terry Burnside's arrangement on the horns and strings. Terry also played Tenor Sax on the horn track.

"A real cool thing, nobody ever got Earl to sing like that except Allen. It shows how cool Allen really was. When I produced Earl, John Richbourg, did 'not' want me to do anything wild with Earl, he wanted a Motown type cut, that he could get to crossover to the Pop stations with that Kristoferson song that he (John) had picked out. John wanted Earl singing more mellow. He wanted another Joe [Simon].

"Me, I liked both approaches by Earl, but, man-o-man, Earl sure is exciting singing like that..."

He sure is. Absolutely fantastic stuff, thank you brother Bob! He also told me that he spoke with Mac Gayden recently, and told him about our investigation over here:

"Mac told me that Allen was instrumental in breaking "Everlasting Love", Robert Knight, in Philadelphia, which was the first big urban market it hit into. Mac had been trying to promote it himself and when he got it to make some noise in Chattanooga, he then convinced the label (Monument - Fred Foster) to push it and they turned Allen Orange loose on it and Allen made it start to happen, then it took off. Mac told me he will always owe Allen for that."

Thanks, Mac!

Now, I'm not sure if you saw this in the comments, but I'm also happy to welcome Jeff Kuhn to our team, the guy who wrote that excellent article on Geater Davis in Juke Blues #37 - an article that has provided us with just loads of information along the way...

As you may recall, when we ran this picture from the article a while back, I asked if anyone had any clue as to who Melvin Cohea (the man standing on Johnny Vincent's left) was. Jeff had this to say:

"Melvin Cohea, pictured with Allen Orange and Johnny Vincent, is Orange's nephew and worked with, or for, Orange. Don't know what became of him... I had encountered Davis at a club in Fayette, Miss., in 1981 where Little Milton was playing. Davis was in the front of the club, asking to do a few of his songs with Little Milton's band. I remembered him from John R's shows on WLAC and I introduced myself, which led to an interview and story in the Jackson Daily News."

Awesome, Jeff. Thank you so much for everything, this case really wouldn't have amounted to much without your superb piece on Davis. I can't help but wonder, though, did Little Milton let Geater play that night or not?

Yet another new gumshoe on the job here is Peter McKernan, who came through with a truckload of music for us last month (he's the guy that sent in the great Sam Hutchins AGP single that's up on The A Side as we speak). As you may know, we've been looking for the full 8:36 LP version of Geater's 'For Your Precious Love' for ages... well, the wait is over!

from House of Orange LP HOS 6000

For Your Precious Love

Not only did Peter come up with the song, but he ripped us the whole album! Thank you, brother, it is MUCH appreciated. The uncut version here is just so mint... you can catch a glimpse of what Davis' stage show must have been like, as he is just testifying, man. I wonder why he didn't want them to play 'Midnight Mover' anymore? I stand by my theory about Orange re-releasing the single in 1975 to try and cash in on the 'God Bless Our Love' craze. It's virtually the same song.

Meanwhile, Peter H, one of our two crack Netherlands sleuths, sent this along:

HO 2615 A

Booty Music "Let's Go Dancin"

Wow! Not only is this 45 absent from both the House Of Orange and Geater Davis discographies, it also extends Allen's tenure as a label owner and producer by a full three years! Way to go, Peter! Released in 1982, it's an unashamed stab at the disco market... one that, apparently, never caught on. I'm not sure if it was a re-issue (was there really a 1976 version as well?), or if we just got the year and the catalogue number wrong initially. Interestingly, the 'executive producer' is listed as El Shaddal, an ancient Biblical term meaning God Almighty. Even He couldn't save this record, I'm afraid.

You know, it's funny how things happen. Once we had established that Allen was still 'in the business' as late as 1982, other evidence seemed to find its way to our door...

I found this Port City 45 on eBay, and alhough I bid valiantly, it slipped from our grasp. According to the label, it was also released in 1982 with Allen Orange producing. The songwriters are listed as 'Orange-Bell-Orange', I wonder who the other Orange might have been? Around the same time, I also found the LP that this single was pulled from:

I was outbid on that too. Looking at the credits here on the back, it was recorded both in Shreveport and Nashville and released in 1983. The executive producer this time around is someone named Roy Mahoney (a step down from El Shaddal, I imagine). There's also a version of 'Precious Love' which, judging by the composers, is the same Jerry Butler number Geater covered on his LP. Do any of you guys have this record? I'd love to hear that!

Peter McKernan also supplied us with this:

from Vivid Sound LP 1015

You're My Sweet Inspiration

If you remember, John Ridley had mentioned this Vivid Sound Japanese LP in the liner notes to Shreveport Southern Soul... The Murco Story, and I had asked if anyone had a copy last September. Well now we do, thanks to the deep-crated McKernan! The last four songs on Side B were written by Allen. According to Shambling, they were "made for Allen Orange's House Of Orange concern around 1973-4, but remained in the can..." The track we have here is the best of them, in my opinion, and has that same kind of funky groove thang that Allen was knocking out on his Seventy Seven releases for John R around that same time. Three of these Orange produced Eddie Giles cuts have also apparently been released on a CD called Sound City Soul Brothers on Garry Cape's Soulscape label...

Thank you again one and all for all of your hard work and contributions. It's the teamwork that keeps this whole thing fun.

Case Six: James Duncan

2008-01-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

LATEST UPDATE: 5/16/08

Are y'all ready?

We're about to open up a whole 'nother can of worms here, folks - an investigation that will take us all the way from the the Cajun Prairie to the Heart of Georgia, and God knows where else...

I was contacted by my friend, and MAJOR soul detective contributor, Dan Phillips (the man behind the legendary Home Of The Groove), a while back... here's what he had to say:

Mr. Soul Detective,

I've run across a strange one: two songs on two different labels, with different vocalists, different lyrics, different melodies, and exactly the same backing track!

Now, I know there have been other records that were on the same label and done by the same producer, for example, Allen Toussaint or Johnny Vincent of Ace, where recycled backing tracks were used for several artists. But I think it must be rare for this to have occurred on material from two unrelated labels and producers.

My case in point, which I mentioned in passing to you at Jazzfest last year, is a tune I featured on April 13, 2007 called "Funky Grasshopper" by Hugh Boynton, on a small Louisiana label, Lanor:

Funky Grasshopper

As I said in that post, my research revealed that the single was not recorded in Louisiana (as some, including me, once thought), but in Macon, GA about 1970 at the new Capricorn studios. Boynton was a Georgia native from Jefferson and recorded the tune in his home territory, with Lanor releasing the finished product. He is also credited as the writer. The lyrics are lame; and the mix is pretty bad, too. The horns and drums sound muffled and too far back. But you can still get the funk feel. I posted it, mainly as a cautionary tale about judging records by the labels. Anyway, a day or so after the post when up I got the following email message:

Dan,
"Greetings from Portland, Maine, and thanks so much for your great
audio-blog! I check it regularly, and much appreciate the music and
commentary. Having read your April 13 entry about "Funky Grasshopper",
I'm moved to tell you about a different version of this tune you're
sure to dig. It's "I Got It Made (In the Shade)," by James Duncan. I
have it on the double-vinyl comp People Get Up: Original House Party
Funk & Get Down Jazz (Harmless Recordings #031, 2001). Duncan's tune
has the same instrumental backing, and the lyrics and vocals are both
several steps above Boynton's take (I agree with your assessment all
the more having loved Duncan's cut for years). The Harmless comp says
"Made" was originally released on Federal Records (no date given) and
the song is credited to Grady Spires/Leroy Tukes. . . ." Chris

Well, that got me curious. I checked my archives and did not have Duncan's track, although I did have another of his Federal funk tunes of the era on a CD comp. So, I hunted around the web and found a 20 second audio clip of "I've Got it Made (In The Shade)" from the now out of print CD version of People Get Up - and, as poor as the sound quality of the clip was, I could tell it had at least similarities to "Funky Grasshopper" in the instrumental backing. I also did some research on the Duncan record and found out it was probably released in early 1970 on Federal 12552 - which could put the recording date back into 1969... maybe.

Duncan's Federal cuts were produced by Bobby Smith, who worked both for King and Federal. I have since found out that Smith worked a lot out of Macon, where Federal had a branch office. That other Duncan Federal side, "Stand Up And Get Funky", on the CD comp King Funk, is great, but has more of a psychedelic funk thang going on, rather than the Southern funkifried groove of "Shade".

I hunted around the internet for the Duncan single and/or the People Get Up CD, scoring the CD first. As soon as I got it, I did an A/B comparison with "Grasshopper" and determined that indeed it was the same backing track, with the Boynton version having a different, poorer quality mix. Several months later, I found a mint copy of Duncan's 45 on ebay:

I Got It Made (In The Shade)

So, I thought the soul detectives might be the ones to trace how the backing track made the possibly shady hop from Federal to Lanor. Since Duncan's producer worked in Macon, it is possible that "I've Got It Made (In the Shade)" was recorded at Capricorn; or maybe someone on the Capricorn staff was involved in that session and had access to a copy of the tape...

As Chris from Maine said, Duncan's version shows songwriting credits for Grady Spires and Leroy Tukes. Know anything about them? I checked the BMI database, and they are listed for the tune. Ditto, the US Copyright database [which since has become inaccessible online for registrations prior to 1978!!!!], which showed an original registration date for the song of January, 1970. "Funky Grasshopper" and Hugh Boynton are no-hits at both BMI and copyright . So, hmmmm, looks like Duncan definitely had the legit version, and probably the original one. But, again, how did it metamorphose into "Grasshopper"? That's the main nut to crack.

I thought Lanor Records owner Lee Lavergne was just an innocent bystander in all of this; but the CD notes for The Lanor Records Story 1960-1992 (Zane) say that Lavergne went to Macon, GA with Boyton and his manager, John Roberts, to record at Capricorn, and issued three singles on the singer. So, he was there at the sessions. Maybe the studio, owned by the notorious Phil Walden, gave them a "special deal" on the pre-recorded track used for "Funky Grasshopper", and they didn't know its origin. Or maybe they did. Since neither song was a hot seller, I guess nobody else (like the songwriters, Duncan, or Federal) found out about the song snatching, until Chris up there in Portland recognized it.

Red, your expert research will certainly help out here, as will any other insights readers can add. Thanks for agreeing to take this one on. Sometimes the search becomes more interesting than the original question. Let's find out.

Dan

Well.

There you have it. I don't know if my research is any more 'expert' than anyone else's, but I'm certainly willing to roll up my sleeves and see what I can dig up... I hope you'll join me!

Thanks, compadre!

1/25/08

Well, here we go.

I've received some EXCELLENT input from one of our Ace Detectives, good ol' Cies from over in Rotterdam... first, though, let's have a listen to the B side (you know how it is) of that James Duncan single:

FEDERAL 12552 B

I'm Gonna Leave You Alone

Just a great 'deep soul' number, it was produced by Bobby Smith, long a key player on the Macon music scene. It was Smith who cut the second record ever on a young kid named Otis Redding, which he initially released on his own Confederate label (whose name was quickly changed to Orbit when R&B stations wouldn't touch it!) in 1961. The Duncan single is from 1970, but still has that same kind of feel to it. So far we've been assuming that this stuff was recorded in Macon, but this side of the record sounded more Muscle Shoals to me...

Well, as fate would have it, one of the things Cies sent along was a scan of 'noted soul authority' (and one of our own detectives, I'm happy to add) John Ridley's liner notes for the Kent Compilation King Serious Soul Volume Two:

SO, there you have it, as John said "only the Alabama musicians could play like that..." (although the guitar [Eddie Hinton?] sure puts me in mind of Reggie Young). Muscle Shoals it is. So now, the plot thickens - was the funky A side recorded there as well?

Hmmm...

Cies: "My reaction on Prof. Ridley:
- I haven't found James Duncan's Gene 45 in the R&B Indies or other discographies.
- Besides recording in Muscle Shoals, Bobby Smith recorded James Duncan in Macon, Georgia."

OK - here's a Duncan discography Cies came up with:

KING:
5887 - My Pillow Stays Wet King / Here Comes Charlie - 1964
5923 - Everybody Needs Somebody / I'll Be Gone - 1964
5966 - I Can't Fight The Time / Three Little Pigs - 1965
6013 - Guilty / Mr. Goodtime - 1965
6052 - Why / Stop Talking To Your Child - 1966

FEDERAL:
12549 - Money, Can't Buy True Love / My Baby Is Back - 1969
12552 - I Got It Made In The Shade / I'm Gonna Leave You Alone - 1970
12555 - All Goodbyes Ain't Gone / You've Got To Be Strong - 1970
12561 - Stand Up And Get Funky / Please Johnny - 1969 (?)

Duncan, James & Duncan Trio - My Baby's Back / Waiting On That Train - Charay 25

Duncan, Jimmy (?) - Out Of Sight / Too Hot To Hold - King 6039 - 1966

We'll be taking a look at some of these records down the line.

On to our man Boynton. Here's the flip of Funky Grasshopper (courtesy of the man who started all of this, Dan Phillips):

LANOR 571 B

No More And No Less

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle! I honestly didn't notice this until I got the audio link set up here for this side... it is, once again, THE SAME BACKING TRACK as on the B side of the Duncan record!!! No doubt about it! What a trip, huh?

The songwriter is credited on the King single as Kay Stephens. According to the BMI Database, this is the only song she ever wrote, but an 'alternate title of "I Can't Take No More" is listed. Here on the Lanor single, Boynton is the only composer credited, but the 'No More' in the title makes you wonder if he was aware of the Stephens' lyrics. The 'Salt and Pepper' referred to on the label must refer to those background singers, as they (thankfully) don't appear on Duncan's version.

Very interesting indeed!

Here's Cies' discography of Mister Boynton:

LANOR:
547 - You're No Longer Mine / You Went Back On What You Said
553 - Running Out Of Fools / Girl I Feel It
561 - Can't Live My Life Without You (part 1) / (part 2)
571 - No More And No Less / Funky Grasshopper (the only one credited as 'Hugh Boynton & Salt & Pepper')

SOUL-PO-TION (Owner: Jesse Boone, Albany,GA):
144 - We're Gonna Make It / If Loving You Is Wrong

There is also another 45 in the Soul-Po-Tion discography which looks very interesting:
114 - Dr. Huriah Boynton & The New Generation: We're Gonna Make It / If Loving You Is Wrong
(Huriah and Hugh are one and the same person? Until proven otherwise they are one and the same...)

WORLD CLASS:
16083 - Bondurant (Hugh Boynton): You Know Me Inside Out / Come Go With Me

ROYAL (H) Atlanta, GA (The R&B Indies gives a Royal discography and a Royal H discography. Both discographies have only one entry):
Royal 1004 - Dr. Huriah Boyton: Make Up Your Mind/The Prosperity Way - 1983
Royal H 101 - Dr. Huriah Boyton: Make Up Your Mind/The Prosperity Way - 1983

Boynton looks to me as the most interesting suspect of the two...

Sure enough! Anybody have any of these other Boynton records? I'm issuing an APB!

One more thing, there IS a listing on BMI for Huriah Boynton (not for Hugh), but none of these songs are listed among his five 'work titles'.

Get digging!

2/15/08

Alright boys and girls, ol' red is back in the saddle. As I mentioned over on the B side, It's been kind of tough getting out of 'vacation mode', if you know what I'm saying, but here goes:

First off, let's talk about "Jimmy" versus "James" Duncan.

As Cies postulated up there in his excellent discography, there is one recording on King by a 'Jimmy' that most probably is by our man 'James'. Well, I found the 45 at right on Ebay a while back, and picked it up as part of our investigation. I won't subject you to it, but I can tell you that this one is definitely not by the same guy, as it's a totally white bread effort featuring Buddy Bregman, the guy who arranged the Ella Fitzgerald songbooks. Oh well.

Anyway, a while back, one of our Ace detectives in The UK, good ol' Colin Dilnot, sent this along:

The complete schedule for the seventh annual Macon Music & Heritage Festival (September 2007):

...SATURDAY
• Third and Cherry streets, 3 p.m.: Main event featuring headline band, Brick. Other acts include local artists Satellite Papa & the All Stars, Bo Ponder & Old Soul, Back Porch Review, Big Mike & the Booty Papas, Harold Thomas Experience, James Duncan & the Blues Legends and Finesse Band. Tickets are $5...

VERY INTERESTING! It certainly seems highly probable that the James Duncan that fronted the 'Blues Legends' down in Macon last year is indeed our James Duncan. Can anybody out there confirm that? Anyone ever been to the festival? Sounds like a good candidate for a road trip, baby!

Let's listen to another of those Bobby Smith produced Federal sides on Mister Duncan, the one that Sir Shambling called "the pick of the ballads":

FEDERAL 12549 B

My Baby Is Back

Great stuff, huh? According to Ridley, this is a "re-cut of his only 45 for Major Bill Smith's Charay concern from 1964" - any of you guys out there have a copy of the original? Major Bill was a colorful character from Fort Worth, Texas. One of those 'seat of the pants' record guys, his main claim to fame was producing the 1963 #1 smash Hey Paula. He recorded some other cool R&B sides on Charay (most notably on Pic & Bill) and was the man behind some incredible Texas 'garage' rock & roll classics.

The very cool DJ Little Danny over at Office Naps had this to say: "The Maj, in the tradition of the red-faced hustlers who once populated the independent record business, managed to tap dance around some of the finer points of copyright law; his entire working ethos, in fact, was based on a philosophy of cutting records and distributing them at breakneck speed. Old tracks would be recycled over and over again to fill the missing B-side of a record. New records would be rushed, still warm - still obviously unmastered - to the public."

Words that sound like they could be applied to our current case here, no? Check this out:

Here's a copy of the same Federal 45 we just listened to above, only the catalog number is listed as 928 (which is the master number on the original). It says on the label that it was released in 1976, which according to our calculations, is about seven years after it first saw the light of day on Federal 12549. Hmmm... any other Federal 45s I've ever seen were issued with those five digit catalog numbers. It was also my impression that King went out of business in like 1973, so what gives? According to the label, it was distributed by something called Gusto Records in Nashville...

I consulted a cool book I have called Little Labels - Big Sound and found some things out. After Syd Nathan died of a massive heart attack in 1968, King/Federal was taken over by Hal Neely who merged it with his own Nashville based Starday Records. Later that same year, Neely apparently sold it all to the Lin Broadcasting Corporation. In 1971, Neely bought it all back from them (this was when he sold James Brown's contract and all of his masters to Polydor for $1 million), and started a new company along with several partners, among them Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In Neely's own words, the partnership "did not work," and in October 1973 he sold his interests to the other partners "in a bizarre turn of events, on the flip of a coin." They immediately turned around and sold everything to a guy named Moe Lytle who owned Gusto Records... got that? What a tangled web we weave, huh? Anyone out there have any other King or Federal 45s from this post 1973 period with the three digit catalog numbers? (somebody hand me my anorak...)

Now, let's head on back to the bayou.

About twenty years ago, after reading John Broven's excellent South To Louisiana, I took off myself for the 'Cajun Prairie' in search of some of the old time 'record men'. One of the first places I stopped was at Lee Lavergne's record shop and studio in Point D'Eglise (aka Church Point, y'all). Lee welcomed me in, and we spent a couple of hours talking about the salad days of Swamp Pop, as well as the new records he was involved in with the likes of Boozoo Chavis and Donald Jacob. I left there with a stack of Lanor 45s, and a warm feeling that I had been able to meet a pioneer like Mister Lavergne and shake his hand (I would also get to shake hands with Eddie Shuler and Floyd Soileau on that same trip, but we'll save that story for another day).

LANOR 509 A

Life Problem

Now, I'm not sure if you remember this, but we spoke a bit about Lee during our First Annual Soul Detective Mystery Contest back in May of 2006. Lavergne's big breakthrough came with this great record we have here, which he produced on regional Swamp Pop star Elton Anderson at Cosimo's Studio in New Orleans, with Wardell Quezergue arranging and Katie Webster on the piano (as we found out as a result of the contest - thanks guys!). A remake of King Karl's 1956 Excello version, it became, in Lavergne's words, a "smash hit" down there and was picked up for national distribution by Capitol in 1962. Is it me, or does this kind of put you in mind of the Duncan 45? I guess Fort Worth wasn't too far from Houston to pick up a bit of the Swamp, after all.

We've been following up a few excellent leads on whatever became of Anderson in that case (and I'll be reporting more on that soon), but I always wondered about Lavergne. Was he still out there?

Well, believe it or not, there actually is a Lanor Records website where you can buy their original 45s at very reasonable prices. After I picked up a few recently, I decided to contact the company and ask about Lee. One of the owners, a very nice woman by the name of Pat Murry, got back to me with this:

"Hello Red Kelly...
In January 1998 Lee Lavergne had a massive heart attack and died in his recording studio. He was not found for several days. We were very good friends of his nephew who lived in Jennings. My husband and I had just retired... My husband had coffee with Lee's nephew several times a week at his business. One day my husband came back & said...'Wanna buy a recording studio?'...Well, I thought he fell off the turnip wagon...!!! Long story short...we did just that. Rented a U-Haul truck and hauled 17 loads of 'stuff' (we didn't know what all this was) to Jennings & put it in our almost brand new house and storage building and double carport. It was overwhelming!"

I bet it was! So there you have it, Lee Lavergne died in his studio there in Church Point, doing what he loved best. May God rest his soul.

Pat went on to say:

"That was then...this is now...10 years later and again, Lanor Records is For Sale, including almost 10,000 45rpm records(!), equipment, songs @ BMI and a lot of 'stuff'. We would like to retire, again, and enjoy our grandson... You have no idea how much 'stuff' is involved... and the buyer must take it all! ...the music publishing company, record label, recording studio with all equipment, hundreds of CDs, hundreds of cassettes, thousands of 45rpm records, ownership of all songs at BMI, etc, etc. - asking price of $125,000."

Wow! Any takers out there? How cool would that be, to become the new owner of this historic Louisiana record label? Unreal. Thank you so much, Pat, You never know, one of our detectives just might take you up on that!

LANOR 561 A

I Can't Live My Life without You (Part1)

OK, here's another of those Hugh Boynton 45s which, according to the label, was produced by Lee Lavergne at Muscle Shoals Sound. A pretty good record, it finds the MS rhythm guys in top form (check out David Hood on the bass!). According to Cies' discography, this was the release right before the Funky Grasshopper that started us on all of this. Now that we've more or less established that those backing tracks on Lanor 571 were recorded at Muscle Shoals, this might just have been when Lavergne got a hold of them, possibly as demos - a common practice in those days, sending a producer home with some tape to help drum up future business. That would certainly explain the inferior sound quality on the Lanor singles... hmmm.

Anyway, our man Cies has been busy:

"...Like you I was stunned when I read that both sides of the Duncan & Boynton 45 have the same backing track! But there's more on Boynton... I've done some more research and asked around in the gospel collector's community and found out about three albums by Huriah Boynton:

Huriah Boynton - Uniquely Hurriah (Belmark???) c. 1991
Huriah Boynton - Hurriah Has Arrived From The Planet Hugh Boynton (unknown label) c. 2000
Huriah Boynton - Greatest Hits: If You Can't Help Me, Please Dont Stop Me (unknown label)"

Well, that should certainly put to rest the question of whether or not Hugh and Huriah are one and the same person! I picked up the 'Uniquely Huriah' CD on eBay for us before I left on vacation:

from BELLMARK 77004

He'll Be With You

Well alright! Huriah's laying it all out here, man! Although I'm sure it's a little too 'nineties' for those purists among you, this is nonetheless a great contemporary Gospel tune, with a healthy helping of soul coming to you from the planet Hugh Boynton! Ain't the Lord alright?

Cies also sent along the Royal H single:

ROYAL H 101

Make Up Your Mind

Although once again a little too heavy on the synthesizers for most of us, Boynton is nonetheless singing his heart out. Credited to Doctor Huriah Boynton and the Melodic Voices of Macon, Georgia, we've come full circle here... all roads do seem to lead to Macon in this case somehow, don't they?

Thank You, Cies, Colin and everyone else for your continued interest... now let's figure out how we're going to buy Pat's record company!

2/26/08

Well, the response here has been overwhelming, folks! Let me start out by extending my thanks to all of you who have contributed to our investigation so far... we really have become a team. Isn't that great?

Alright. Peter H. from over in The Netherlands is back on the scene, and sent me some great stuff. First out of the box is the B side of James Duncan's GENE single from 1962...

GENE 004 B

Twistin' Baby

Well, seeing is believing, huh? Yes, even though it's not listed in the R&B Indies, or in the Gene discography on Georgia Soul (more on that in a minute), James Duncan and the Duncan Trio did indeed release this single in 1962. As it turns out, Brian Poust (the proprietor of Georgia Soul) also joined our team around the same time, and he confirms that it is indeed the same Macon based Gene label as is listed on his site. If you look at the label, it also credits 'Johnny Brown's Band'. Peter: "Johnny Brown could be the guitarist who recorded for Duke (another Texas connection!), Clarence Samuels [the songwriter] on the label may well be the same guy who recorded for Aristocrat amongst other labels." Can anybody expand on that? While we're at it, how about 'The Duncan Trio', anyone know anything about them? While not the greatest of songs, and decidedly in rough shape, we'll definitely take it! Thank You Peter! I'll update our own discography...

Next up, also making the trip from Peter's extensive vaults in Holland, is the original Charay single of 'My Baby Is Back':

CHARAY 25 A

My Baby Is Back

I think we can all agree with Peter that "The Charay version of My Baby Is Back is not as good as the Federal version, I think ..." but, being the anal-retentive completists that we all are, it's simply a must have. I do love that musty bayou, out of tune piano and horn section feel, though, right? James is really singing there at the end, man! Once again, Thank You Peter, you are a Prince among men. Do we have a date on this single yet?

OK, like I said, Brian Poust checked in with another of Hugh Boynton's rare 45s:

SOUL-PO-TION 144 A

We're Gonna Make It

Alright! This upbeat mover was written and produced by Boynton himself, and shows off his incredible vocal range. I'm guessing from the disco-esque arrangement that it was released sometime in the seventies.
Brian: "I've never seen that [Soul-Po-Tion] 114 as you have it listed. My Soul-Po-Tion 114 is:

Jesse Boone & the Astros - If I Ever Fall In Love Again / When Something Is Wrong With My Baby

"So, not sure what's up there. I've heard that 144 was not a Jesse Boone product but pressed up by someone in the UK. Totally different label design and pressed at United in Nashville, so very plausible..." Anyone ever hear anything about all of this?

Brian goes on to say "Before the Capricorn studio, King had it's own studio in Downtown Macon where Bobby Smith worked. Though by the time this track came along, it could easily have been recorded at Capricorn. I'm not well versed enough in the history of the King studio to say for sure..." He is currently following up some leads on Leroy Tukes and Grady Spires [the guys who wrote 'I Got It Made (In The Shade)'], and says he is "98% sure" that the James Duncan that played in Macon last year is indeed our man. It is certainly a pleasure to have the resident expert on Georgia Soul in our corner, Thank You Brian!

Now, speaking of 'resident experts', our man down in Louisiana (and very first soul detective) has indeed been busy! I'm not sure if you saw the 'comments', but Dan Phillips had this to say:

"Research so far seems to contradict what those CD notes to the Lanor comp said about Boynton's Lanor sessions. I'll quote; 'Boynton's manager, John Roberts had contacted Lee, a deal was made, and they took the singer to Capricorn studios in Macon, Georgia to record. Three singles were issued on Lanor [actually four, according to the discography]. . . . During the sessions at Capricorn, Lee met Jackie Avery who had put the session musicians together and had some success songwriting... Jackie suggested that Lee work with his wife, Ella Brown...'

"Now, I know CD notes can be wrong; but Avery WAS associated with Capricorn, according to a piece on him at Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven. He worked in the studio there; and his wife, Ella... recorded a bit for Lanor, and sang with Wet Willie, a Capricorn Records act. That puts Lavergne at Capricorn at some point doing sessions on Boynton it would seem. Hmmmmmm.

"So, at least one of Boynton's singles says it was recorded in Muscle Shoals. The A and B sides of the "Funky Grasshopper" single have backing tracks taken from Duncan's record, at least one side of which was done in Muscle Shoals... If I did not have those Zane CD notes (by Peter Thompson, owner of Zane, who did the compilation and interviewed Lavergne [Dan has since been able to contact Thompson, and he is going to look into things for us on his end.), I would happily conclude that everything was done in Muscle Shoals with someone slipping Lavergne the tracks on the sly. But, the Macon connections do not make for simplicity."

No, they sure don't. Dan also later noted that

LANOR 553 - Running Out Of Fools / Girl I Feel It

says on the label that it was 'Recorded At Capricorn Sound Studios Macon, Georgia.' Does anyone have that 45? Interestingly, none of Boynton's Lanor singles are listed for sale at Pat's website. It's almost as if Lee Lavergne made a conscious decision to delete them from his catalogue, while continuing to press most everything else...

As Dan noted over on Home Of The Groove, he and I had been running on parallel tracks here on this next one... Way back in his 'webzine' days, Larry Grogan (you just knew he'd turn up somewhere) did a feature on Funky 45s which included Boynton's 'Funky Grasshopper', as well as another Lanor single:

LANOR 567 A

Soul Pusher

Larry: "I'd be curious to see if Joe Chopper's lawyers had gotten a letter from Willie Tee, because 'Soul Pusher' is a (very) thinly disguised cover of the Gaturs 'Cold Bear'. They take the tune at a slightly heavier tempo and with a dirtier sound..."
Dan: "As you can see, the credit on the Lanor 45 just says 'The Band'. I hadn't thought much about it again until I picked up the record and finally listened for myself. Curious guy that I am, I checked the BMI database to see if 'Soul Pusher' was registered; and it is. The writer is shown as one Levence Lavergne, a/k/a Lee Lavergne, producer and owner of Lanor Records!

"As many label owners and/or producers did back then, he took the writer's credit on the song for himself to make sure any royalties for airplay came his way. I would hope that he did not realize the actual source of the song; but I don't think a judge would have given any weight to that defense. Wouldn't that be instant karma: he co-opted writers credit on a song he thought the band wrote, when, in fact, they 'forgot' to tell him they stole it from Willie Tee. You can't make this stuff up..."

GATUR 508 A

Cold Bear

No, you sure can't. Here's the Gaturs original, which just cranks, of course. It was later released on ATCO.
Dan: "As near as I can tell from dating other Lanor 45s from the period, 'Soul Pusher' came out in 1971, the same year that ATCO picked up the Gaturs' single. I guess what deprived the lawyers of their feeding frenzy on this bit of misdirection is the fact that the 'Soul Pusher' single was a commercial failure, and likely got very little, if any, radio play. For that matter, neither the Gaturs' initial release of 'Cold Bear' on Tee's own Gatur label or its subsequent re-issue in 1971 on ATCO made any big waves either. So, in Billy Preston math, that's 0 - 0 = 0.

"'Soul Pusher' certainly can't touch the minimal, tight, feel-good groove of 'Cold Bear'. The Swinging 7 Soul Band never quite gets it in the pocket. Instead of Tee's smooth cruise in a nice ride, they take you down a bumpier back road in a funky rattletrap. Doing this song with horns was a nice idea, though. Still, I am curious about Joe Chopper and the band... Alias or not, Joe Chopper alone is also listed on a later Lanor 45:

604 - Welcome To My World / Giving You Love

"I'm... wondering if Joe Chopper and the Swinging 7 were from the Southwest Louisiana area where Lanor got much of its talent, I did some research and am pursing leads on the singer. If I have found the right guy, whose last name is not actually Chopper, I will let you know. The band is another matter. All I've uncovered is a couple of things that just may be coincidences:

"There was a band called the Swinging Seven that recorded an obscure instrumental funk song with horns called 'Football' on a King single (#6325) around 1970. [Anybody have that 45 and want to share label scans and audio?] I hear it's really hard to find. I listened to a short clip of 'Football' and the players sound a bit more proficient than Chopper's Swinging 7; but I hear only five, rather than seven, instruments on it - there's no organ, either - go figure. And here's the strangest thing: the very next 45 on King (#6326) was by Wayne Cochran and contained a side called 'Chopper 70'. Both those sides can be found on a CD or vinyl collection put out by Mr. Finewine called Crash Of Thunder.

"Of course, you musical scholars out there know that the King label was affiliated with Federal, which released James Duncan's 'I Got It Made (In The Shade)'. Could there be a tie-in or am I off on one of my many tangents? Discuss among yourselves..."

Dan was planning on posting all of this on Home Of The Groove, and I sincerely thank him for sharing his research and expertise with us! In any event, the whole Soul Pusher/Cold Bear thing provides another indication that Lavergne may have been less than up front from time to time. It does seem odd, though, that the Boynton 45s were deleted, and yet this Joe Chopper single (a much more obvious rip-off) has stayed in print...

Discuss among yourselves, indeed!

4/4/08

OK everybody, I'm back. First off, I thought we'd give a listen to one of those early Duncan sides, recorded with The Duncan Trio back in 1964:

KING 5887 B

Here Comes Charlie

Sounding kind of like Joe Tex joined The Coasters, then moved to New Orleans and hooked up with Eddie Bo, this 'novelty' record just cooks right along. Now, we've spoken before about the fact that King operated a studio down in Macon, and that Bobby Smith worked as a producer there. There's no production credit on either side of this 45... do you think it was recorded there?

I've also heard back from Pat Murry, the head honcho at Lanor:

"With the purchase of Lanor Records came a few file cabinet drawers...full...of 'stuff'. If Mr. Lee wrote a letter or sent a fax to anyone...he filed a copy. If he received a letter or a fax from anyone...he filed it. He made deals through letters and faxes. He had no computer... I do believe this would be a treasure trove for anyone looking for information and can decipher what it means... We have read correspondence about Muscle Shoals and Macon, GA, etc. - Even a copy of a check that Huey Meaux received on a lawsuit which he collected thousands of dollars and has a notation..."Lee, there really is a Santa Claus"...how Meaux evaded law enforcement, how he was apprehended and letters he sent to Mr. Lee from prison... Hugh Boynton was only 15, I believe, when he recorded his first record and his mother had to sign a paper giving her permission. It just goes on and on..."

Incredible, Pat! A treasure trove, indeed. I truly hope we can get this 'stuff' preserved. It is living Louisiana history. Thanks!

Alright, if Boynton was only 15 when he cut Lanor 547, he couldn't be much older than that here on #553:

LANOR 553 A

Running Out Of Fools

Submitted by our man Colin Dilnot over in the UK, this one is just so totally cool! I absolutely love the phone conversation that starts things off..."Shirley?" Great, man. Now, just as Dan said earlier, it says right on the label that it was 'Recorded at Capricorn Sound Studios, Macon, Georgia'. Can we put a definite date on this record? If we're going with the assumption that 'Funky Grasshopper' is from 1970, that would place this earlier than that... hmmm. Now, I admit that I'm not an expert when it comes to Capricorn. I know ol' Swamp Dogg did some work there with folks like Arthur Conley and Oscar Toney Jr., and that there is a page out there about the Capricorn Rhythm Section, which consisted of Paul Hornsby, Bill Stewart, Scott Boyer, Johnny Sandlin & Tommy Talton in it's final configuration. Sandlin and Hornsby had been members of The Hourglass with Duane and Greg Allman, and supposedly Duane played on some early studio sessions for Phil Walden at Capricorn (which, of course was also The Allman Brothers' record label). What I'm getting at, I guess, is that the great guitar on here may be played by the ol' Skydog himself...

A question that ace detective Sir Shambling asks about our next selection (which I borrowed from Deep Soul Heaven) as well:

CAPRICORN 8008

Your Love Has Brought Me (A Mighty Long Way)

John dates this one as being released in 1970. Listed as the arranger on the Boynton single, Jackie Avery had come up out of New Orleans, and was the man behind a lot of great music.

Sir Shambling:
"Jackie Avery’s songwriting credits are both substantial and musically very impressive. In the 60s he scored with 'Aunt Dora’s Love Soul Shack' on Arthur Conley and 'Make Sure (You Have Someone Who Loves You)' for the Dells, for example, and in the 70s wrote the brilliant 'Sweeter As The Days Go By' again for the Dells and the hard hitting 'Shackin’ Up' for Barbara Mason. Perhaps his biggest seller though was the Disco 9000 LP for Johnnie Taylor.

While his wife Ella Brown was singing with the rock group Wet Willie who were signed to Capricorn, Jackie worked in Phil Walden’s studio. And it is for his work in Macon in the early 70s that he is best remembered – penning the outstanding 'I Wouldn’t Be A Poor Boy' for Oscar Toney and 'Blind Bats And Swamp Rats' for Johnnie Jenkins among many others as well as assisting on the production side of things such as his role on Eddie Kirkland's fine 'The Devil And Other Blues Demons' LP for Trix, on which he also played piano. His strangest credit of course is for his work on Charlie Whitehead’s 'Raw Spitt' LP courtesy of the mercurial and imaginative Swamp Dogg himself of course – 'Jackie Avery Tongue And Cheek Choir – Background vocals'...

'Your Love Has Brought Me (A Mighty Long Ways)' is an anthemic gospel workout of great energy and conviction. Check out the slide guitar (Duane Allman? Johnny Sandlin?) and wailing background vocals from Ella. The best known version of this track is by Wilson Pickett of course...'

Of course. But, I think I like this one better! Does it crank, or what? Thanks, John, for your always insightful input (even if I did steal it). Now, I would imagine that Ella Brown is also providing the background vocals on the Boynton single (which would coincide with what Peter Thompson wrote in those Lanor Records Story liner notes), as it appears to be from right around the same time.

Thanks, guys!

5/16/08

You know, it's funny how these things happen.

I was catching up on reading the posts on the ol' Southern Soul Group today, and people were going on about the 'real versus fake' instrument debate, as it related to some new CD that just came out which was a 'tribute to Otis Redding'. I'm not much into that kind of thing, but something caught my eye. One of the people posting was Peter Thompson, the proprietor of Zane Records, who we've spoken about before. Here's what he had to say:

"What a shame the press blurb connected to this release names Hugh's first record label as Lamor Records.. 'Running Out Of Fools' by Hugh Boynton is featured on Zane's release 'The Lanor Records Story ZNCD 1009..."

Huh? I wasn't getting all of this until I read back a little further and clicked through to the CD in question:

Now how about that? That's right, 'Big Hugh' Boynton has just released a CD of Otis Redding songs. No matter what you might think of the record (or the instrumentation), it kind of blows my mind a little that here we are in the midst of this whole 'case', and like, there he is with a new CD. Here's what that 'press blurb' had to say on the CD Baby site:

"Like many of the great singers today, Huriah Boynton started singing at the early age of 5 with his church choir, in his hometown of Jeffersonville, Georgia. Huriah soon developed a passion for singing and performing for an audience. That passion led him to Lamor Records where at the tender age of 14, his recording career began. At Lamor Records, he worked with producer, Jackie Avery and recorded 'Running Out Of Fools' and 'Girl I Feel It'..."

LANOR 553 B

Girl I Feel It

Which just happened to have been sent to us by our very own UK detective Colin Dilnot. Another great record 'arranged' by Jackie Avery, I'm sure that's Ella Brown singing backup. This side of the 45 may also have an Allman connection, you'll see why I think that in a minute...

"Huriah went on to perform for sold out audiences in local clubs around Macon, Georgia with the R&B group, 'The Flintstones'.

"In 1979, Huriah moved to Detroit, Michigan where he began his very popular Gospel Ministry, Hour of Grace, Blessings and Healing. 'Bishop Huriah' as he affectionately became known, touched millions with his message and music through his radio and television broadcasts. In 1991, on Bellmark Records, Huriah recorded his first Gospel CD entitled 'Uniquely Huriah' which contained the #1 smash single, 'If You Can't Help Me'. A few years later, Huriah started his own record company, Royal H Records. Under Royal H Records, he recorded and released a smooth, soulful mixture of Gospel and R&B CD entitled 'Huriah Has Arrived From The Planet Hugh Boynton'.

"During his career, Huriah has worked with many of the greats of our times including: George Clinton, P-Funk All-Stars, Four Tops, Al Hudson and One Way, Hamilton Bohannon, David Ruffin of the Temptations, Greg Allmon and The Allmon Brothers and Enchantment..."

SO, I'm thinking that's Greg 'Allmon' working the Hammond here... sounds like him, anyway. So like, David Ruffin? George Clinton? Bohannon? Who knew? The CD Baby site gives a link to Boynton's 'official site', where there's some more biographical info:

"Huriah Boynton's astounding gospel music vocals have energy, a drive that pushes the message of his music, energizing it with big city rhythms... Huriah Boynton is no stranger to the music scene. He was introduced to the gospel marketplace with his first album release on Bellmark Records, titled 'Uniquely Huriah' and has continued enjoying success from his single smash hit, 'If You Can't Help Me (At The Finishing Line)'... He began... opening services for Rev. Roosevelt Franklin and Rev. J. King. He left Georgia for Detroit where he met the late Al Perkins, a successful Detroit radio powerhouse, who had a vast number of contacts and a deep spiritual commitment. Perkins took Huriah under his wing. 'Al Perkins became my spiritual father,' Huriah recalls. 'He helped me to put my career and my life in the hands of God. I miss him so much'. Perkins helped Huriah's career, redirecting him to radio and television, resulting in a religious program on WGPR/FM in Detroit..."

And so, the Motor City enters the mix... still no mention of that ol' Funky Grasshopper, though, right? What a trip!

Now let's head back to Georgia, or is it Muscle Shoals?

FEDERAL 12549 A

Money Can't Buy True Love

Is it me, or is this record just AWESOME? It's got me doin' the ol' do over here... "she ain't no chicken, she don't need your feed. What she wants is a MAN when she's in need..." I'm right here, baby! Yeah, you right! How about that freakin' guitar?? Incredible stuff, boys and girls! So, what's the verdict? Macon or Sheffield? Georgia or Alabama?

According to the label, it was written by Duncan, but (and you just knew there had to be a 'but') on the label of the Gusto era Federal re-issue, the composer's credit reads Roy Brown. Roy Brown? Good Rockin' Tonight Roy Brown? Well, apparently, that is not the case, and I'm not sure where the hell that came from. According to the BMI database, it was indeed penned by J.O. Duncan, who (amazingly) is listed as the writer or co-writer of some 220 titles! Once again, who knew?

I finally got to meet Brian Poust, the Georgia Soul man, down there during the craziness that is the Ponderosa Stomp, but we never did get a chance to talk about the case here... oh well. Now that we've found out all of this stuff about 'Big Hugh', I guess the primary focus of our investigation is now Duncan. Think he's still out there?

SECOND ANNUAL SOUL DETECTIVE MYSTERY CONTEST

2007-04-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Who Will Be Our Lucky Winner?

LATEST UPDATE: 6/6/07

Yes folks, it's that time of year again. The time of year when ol' Red steps off the curb and heads South to Louisiana. Just like last year, when we uncovered a lot of cool stuff about Elton Anderson, I'm looking forward to seeing what we can figure out.

Now, if you recall, the song we used last year came off of a long lost cassette tape that 'The Big Bern' made of a WBGO Mardi Gras broadcast sometime in the early eighties. Why argue with success, I figured... back to the audiotape!

Our 2007 Mystery Tune

????????

This positively COOKIN' instrumental shows just how great New Orleans music can be. All the elements here are absolutely top shelf. I mean check out that rhythm guitar, the piano, the sax, the drums, the bass... YEAH YOU RITE!!! I played this song to death twenty years ago, and it still holds up as one of my all time faves...

Now, at least last year we already had a title to start with, this time we got nuthin'!

And so, we are looking for:

TITLE
ARTIST
RECORD LABEL
RELEASE DATE

...and while you're at it, let's see who can identify each of the musicians playing on this amazing record.

As always, the first to leave the correct (and most complete) answer in the 'comments' wins.

Wins what? Well, I don't know yet, but it'll be something cool that I dig up down in Sugar Town (last year's winner, Todd Lucas, was all smiles).

Best of luck, and I'll be back (with the official judges) early next month.

(While I'm gone, I'll be doing some preliminary leg work for our upcoming Case Five, which also has its origins in New Orleans... stay tuned!)

5/9/07

Ok, I'm back. Sort of.

New Orleans was just ROCKIN', let me tell ya... it's gonna take me a while to absorb all the incredible music (and food) I took in while I was down there, and get back on track.

Anyway, yes, this case is a tough one. I did confer a bit with ol' Detective Dan at Jazz Fest, but we were unable to come up with anything conclusive...

Hugo over at Monkeyfunk said: "I'm going for Gentleman June Gardner on Emarcy..."

Very cool hypothesis!

Albert "Gentleman June" Gardner is a legendary New Orleans drummer who was a member of Edgar Blanchard's seminal Gondoliers. He was already a seasoned road veteran who had worked with Lionel Hampton and Roy Brown when he was hired by Sam Cooke in late 1960. June had been holding down a regular jazz gig at the Joy Tavern with AFO stalwarts Harold Battiste and Red Tyler, but quickly became 'one of the boys' in Sam's touring outfit.

The great Mustard Greens has been featured at both Home Of The Groove and Funky 16 Corners. Apparently first issued on Hot Line, it was picked up by Blue Rock which, according to the label, was distributed by Mercury. The 45 also lists the amazing Wardell Quezergue as the arranger, and credits it as a 'Nola (Quezergue's own label at the time) Production'. The B side of this record was called 99 Plus One.

Whew. Now, the 'Emarcy' label referred to above by Hugo comes in when Gardner's two Hot Line/Blue Rock singles (the other, according to Dan, was Hot Seat) were collected, along with some other tracks, and issued on an LP called Bustin' Out. I don't know anything about the Emarcy label, and I can't recall offhand seeing anything else on there... That's the track list for the original album at left. Is it possible that our mystery selection is one of these cuts? Well, I'm not sure, but there is one way to find out...

It's Gonna Rain

Tuff City Records has reissued the album (along with two numbers Gardner did with Senator Jones in 1970) as 99 Plus One: Rare & Unreissued Jazzy Soul & Funk 1965-1970 . It's Gonna Rain was apparently originally issued as the flip of the great I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher. The Gentleman June version has appeared on several New Orleans comps before. It's got this kind of Ramsey Lewis' In Crowd thang goin' on... I'm lovin' the Wardell horn charts! Anyway, I just ordered the Tuff City CD, and we'll see what happens.

By the way, I saw Mister Gardner, who now leads a tight local combo, at Jazz Fest last weekend. They were great. It's good to see him still out there performing, man.

In the meantime, Hugo, thanks for pointing us in that direction! I'm definitely leaning towards it being a Quezergue arrangement... what do the rest of you think?

5/15/07

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

That's right, I woke up this morning, and found this in the comments:

"I KNEW I had heard that song before! Here are the details:

Title: "Tighten Up"
Artist: James Rivers
Label: Eight-Ball #1560
Release date: ca 1966-67

This is very strange. I was pretty sure that it was a James Rivers record. Just a hunch, I thought. Then, looking on ebay I spotted a copy of this very single (flip side is "Bird Brain") and bought it the other day - unheard, mind you. It was priced right. Just a freak of fate. Label scans will be sent on its arrival. So, I looked and listened to everything I had on Rivers on vinyl and CD - no luck. Then just by chance tonight I ran a search on my mp3 files and found it.

Red, Larry Grogan had this tune on his 'Funky16Corners Radio v.10 - Funky Nawlins Pt2' last year and I downloaded it then. It was hidden in that bigger file. If I hadn't searched, I wouldn't have seen it..." - Dan Phillips

Well I'll be dipped!!

Not only did I already have the answer right there in front of me, I had it on my damn IPOD!! As I said before, Dan and I talked about the contest a bit down at Jazz Fest... where I actually SAW James Rivers in the Jazz Tent!!

You can't make this stuff up, folks!

Kudos go, of course, to the very cool (and 'deep-crated') Larry Grogan for being hip to this great tune already... and shame on the rest of us, I guess, for not taking the time to actually LISTEN to all the stuff we download! Nevertheless, da rules are da rules, and good ol' Detective Dan is hereby proclaimed the winner of this year's contest!

I'll be sending down his nifty prizes (an assortment of local 45s I scrounged around for while I was down there) ASAP, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him, and all of the rest of you, for playing!

INSTANT 3232

Closer Walk

Let me leave you with this big fat buttery take on the traditional Gospel Hymn 'Just A Closer Walk With Thee', Mr. Rivers' only Instant release. The Allen Toussaint piano is positively transcendent here, as is James' full-bodied tenor. Say Amen, somebody! The guitar on these early Instant sides is usually credited to the great Roy Montrell... I wonder if that's him playing the 'chanks' on 'Tighten Up' as well?

Please make it a point to check out the excellent James Rivers article and discography that our lucky winner put together at his own superb 'blog', Home Of The Groove.

Life is good.

5/18/07

As promised, detective Dan has sent us a scan of our mystery 45's label (you will note, dear readers, that it is a B SIDE!), along with some incisive commentary:

"Just a couple of notes about the Eight-Ball label. You will note co-producer credit to L. Worthy on this record. That's Lionel Worthy, who I think owned Eight-Ball, such as it was. Rivers had three releases on Eight-Ball and there were three more by other artists: Bobby Brown, Clemon Smith, and the Majestics.

A bit later, Worthy started the Kon-Ti label. He had a recording studio set up behind his auto body repair shop on Conti St in New Orleans. Rivers had two more releases on Kon-Ti. Toni Washington had two; and there were two more by Prince Conley and Carolyn Wicker. Like Eight-Ball, it was a short-lived enterprise."

Thanks, Dan!

Larry (da man) Grogan weighed in with:

"Hey Red!
I don't know how I missed this. Love this track, as well as 'Closer Walk..' (a fave song of mine thanks to my Pop). I have a nice one by Rivers called 'Funky Flute', which has a little bit of edge warp, but it's such a good record it might be worth the noise..."

I'm down, Larry. We could turn this into a mini-case on James Rivers, if everybody's interested... bring it on! (By the way, don't miss your chance to pick up the Funky Nawlins Box Set over at Funky 16 Corners, and while you're at it, do the right thing and help out with the annual pledge drive).

By the way, detectives, we still haven't identified the incredible musicians that are backing James up on Eight Ball 1560 here, now, have we?

6/6/07

OK, folks, our lucky winner has come through with the A side of our mystery 45:

EIGHT BALL 1560 A

Bird Brain

Dan: "I am guessin' that James is on both harp and flute. I'm surprised he didn't throw in any bagpipes - but it is a short side. The whole feel of the rhythm track reminds me of 'Can I Get A Wtness' - not really all that original, but his breakdowns are cool."

They sure are, Dan, thanks for sharing! Pretty wild stuff, huh? Kinda like Jethro Tull meets Paul Butterfield or something. I don't think I would ever have pegged it as a New Orleans record... keep 'em coming, guys!

Case Four: Charles "Soul" Brown

2006-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

LATEST UPDATE: 10/5/09

I picked up this single a long time ago in some little store down in the French Quarter. It has been one of my favorites ever since. Years of searching have yielded no concrete information about who the artist might be. Only one thing is certain (even though the record is often listed in discographies that way), it is not by THAT Charles Brown.

NOLA 702 A

Standing On The Outside

This record just kills me, man. I mean, it's so DEEP, it's like painful, you know? The way it builds and builds, the whole spoken word thing, "...you don't trust a woman, not the way you trust a friend", whoa. When "Soul" just goes off there at the end... the call and response "YEAH!"s between him and the band - it's just about as good as it gets. It is inconceivable to me that this is the only record this guy ever made. He had to have had some kind of career leading up to it, or following it or something. He's just too good.

Now, there are two names on the label that should interest us. The first, of course, is the arranger, Wardell Quezergue, aka the Creole Beethoven.

Quezergue came up as a trumpet player and arranger for Dave Bartholomew in the late 50s. By the early 60s he had become the premier bandleader in the Crescent City, heading his groups The Sultans and The Royal Dukes Of Rhythm. "He would be the house band for all artists visiting New Orleans", according to Mac Rebennack. It was only natural that his skills as an arranger would lead to doing session work at Cosimo's studio. Small independent labels like Frisco, Rip and Watch used him to their advantage, most notably on the timeless Big Chief with Professor Longhair and Earl King. By late 1964, Wardell was able to form his own record company, NOLA, with partners Clinton Scott and Ulis Gaines. Our Charles "Soul" Brown record here was only the second release on the label.

They would go on, of course, to hit big with Willie Tee's Teasin' You and Robert Parker's Barefootin' as well as producing many solid local records by folks like Smokey Johnson and Curley Moore. A combination of unpaid bills and the collapse of Cosimo Matassa's Dover Records (along with the seizure of his assets, including the studio they recorded in), led to the demise of the label in 1968.

The ever resourceful Wardell, as I'm sure you know, would work out a deal with MALACO up in Jackson, Mississippi and go on to produce his biggest records yet for artists like King Floyd and Jean Knight. As I heard it, Quezergue was rescued from the rising floodwaters around his home on a makeshift raft last year, and was honored just this past weekend by the Mystic Knights of the Mau-Mau at Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

The other name is that of the songwriter, Sax Kari.

The Isaac Kari story is an absolute trip. Here's a guy who was a bandleader in the 1940's, and went on to record a string of way cool instrumental hits (like Chocolate Fizz) during the 50's. He had opened a chain of record stores in Detroit early in the decade, and began producing records on Della Reese, Teddy Randazzo, and The Falcons, at the very dawn of what would become Detroit Soul. He next turns up in Houston, where he is employed by Don Robey as a promoter and salesman for his Duke/Peacock empire, working with greats like Junior Parker and Bobby Bland. By late 1963, Kari had relocated to New Orleans.

"I rented a seven room apartment right across the street from Wardell Quezergue's home, and converted one of the rooms into a recording studio...", he said. It was this set-up that must have led to our current record by Mr. Brown. He would also produce the smokin' Key To Your Door by the great Warren (Lee) Taylor on NOLA 711. At this point, he opened a record store, and kept up his connections with the guys in the "one-stops".

When Allen Toussaint left Joe Banashak to form Sansu in 1965, Kari stepped in as his A&R man and producer. The first record he produced for Instant (3269) was a raw and muddy blues by someone named Polka Dot Slim, that was recorded at his home studio and was supposed to be used only as a demo. It turned out to be such a departure from the polished R&B the city had grown used to, that it became somewhat of a local hit. He went on to produce great records on folks like Ray Wilson and Chris Kenner for Banashak as well as having a few big releases under his own name on his Tune-Kel label (one of which, Ludwig, was actually leased by Atlantic for national distribution). By 1968, Eddie Bo had essentially replaced him as Banashak's producer, and Sax decided it was time to move on.

His next stop was Mobile, Alabama where he would operate a record shop and continue to produce records on his own Channel 1 imprint. By the mid seventies, he was working with Henry Stone in Florida on his T.K. family of labels, and continued to produce and record well into the 80s, producing some of the first hip hop sides. The last I heard, Sax Kari, now 86 years old, was living in a trailer that was damaged during the record 2004 hurricane season somewhere in Florida. A man whose career bridges everything from Big Band to Blues, R&B, Soul, Disco and Hip Hop deserves a better fate... hell, even if all he ever did was write our current song, that's enough for a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award or something, as far as I'm concerened!

There is a woman named Marilyn Bond who knew Sax well during his Detroit days, and contacted me this past Spring asking for help in convincing the Mystic Knights to let him perform at the Ponderosa Stomp. When I spoke with Dr. Ike, it became apparent that this wasn't the first time he'd been asked, and he assured me that Mr. Kari is indeed on their radar. I sure hope so.

Anyway, in 2002, Tuff City Records released both this side (on Wardell Quezergue - Sixty Smokin' Soul Senders), and the B side," I'll Love You (If You Let Me)", of NOLA 702 (on Sax Kari - Fumigate Funky Broadway). I immediately bought both of them (although it pained me), hoping that the liner notes would shed some light on the identity of our mystery artist. No dice. They don't know any more than we do.

So, here on this most tragic of anniversaries, I present to you this awesome record, a collaboration between two obscure yet legendary music industry giants who wouldn't think of letting a little thing like a hurricane slow them down!

9/5/06

Well, alright.

I knew this case was gonna be a tough one, if only for the lack of other known recordings. Here's what detective Dan (our resident Crescent City expert) had to say:

"Great record. Very mysterious artist. You'd think with a voice like that he'd have a few other sides anyway, unless he recorded under another name... All I can contribute is to tell you who he is also not, besides THE Charles Brown. I thought he might possibly be 'Chuck' Brown who had two singles on Excello in 1961-62. Come to find out, those were King Karl records recorded under a pseudonym. And a simple vocal comparison demonstrated to me that 'Soul' Brown ain't King Karl! It is interesting that NOLA 702 was just the second release on the label. That at least narrows down the date to 1964. Happy hunting..."

OK, thanks Dan!

Hmmm... not much to go on there, huh? Here's the B side:

NOLA 702 B

I'll Love You (If You Let Me)

While not the killer track that the other side is, the sweet Quezergue arrangement gives it that New Orleans feel. 'Soul's vocals here exhibit that same kind of 'tone deaf' quality that King Floyd's did at times, while I can hear a little Curley Moore in his inflections there towards the end... I'm guessing he's local.

Kari has said that he practically lived at the Dew Drop Inn around then, hanging out with owner Frank Pania. I suppose it's possible that Brown performed there...

Then again, anything's possible.

9/15/06

Kolb's Restaurant was a cavernous beer hall sort of place at the foot of St. Charles, right across Canal St. from the Quarter. Opened in 1899, it became a New Orleans tradition, serving German food with a Creole accent (if you can imagine that...). The ceiling fans in the place all ran off of one central motor, on a 'fan belt' (if you will) that circled the whole dining room. The entire contraption had been taken intact from the 'Cotton Centennial Exposition' of 1884, and was something to see! They also had a mechanized Bavarian looking figure that raised a beer stein to his lips and kinda looked around (I don't remember if he ran off the same motor as the fans). Everybody called him "Ludwig".

Ken Kerr, a studio musician that Sax was working with, was inspired by the figure (and a few beers, I imagine) to write a song about him. Sax produced it and Banashak released it on a new label they had created called TUNE-KEL (it was named after the publishing company he had started with Irving Smith in 1961). The song was a big hit locally, as everybody knew who ol' Ludwig was...

TUNE-KEL 601 A

Ludwig

This catchy little number has this kinda 'Love American Style does Bourbon Street' vibe to it that was just perfect for the pop charts circa 1968. Atlantic Records though so too, and approached Banashak about leasing it for national distribution. Kari went back into the studio, cleaned it up a little, and added some Clyde Kerr trumpet before shipping them the master. They released it as ATCO 6536, under the name of The Royal Canal Street Band. It started creeping up the charts, but when Al Hirt released a version of the tune (RCA 9381) - just as he had done with Toussaint's Java four years before - that became the one people wanted to hear, and the ATCO single sank like a stone.

I realize that this has nothing whatever to do with our quest for the facts about Charles "Soul" Brown's identity, but I thought you'd be interested nonetheless... Sax Kari just couldn't catch a break, man. Still can't, I guess. I mean, while Toussaint is out touring the world with a famous British rock idol, Kari is sitting home in a trailer.

I'm going to try to contact him... I'll keep you posted.

9/21/06

Talk about not being able to catch a break, check this out:

In the interest of leaving 'no stone unturned', and all of that (and also because I'm just as messed up as the rest of you are when it comes to vinyl), I went out and found us a copy of the ATCO release of 'Ludwig'. I slap it on the ol' turntable, and it SUCKS... I mean, it doesn't even sound like the same song, know what I mean? What a trip, I thought, oh well... then I turned the record over, and there ol' Ludwig was, trumpets and all!

In other words, Atlantic had apparently switched the masters, and put the "plug side" on the wrong side! Now, I'm not sure if they were all pressed that way, but I'll betcha that not too many more than the initial promo run (which our copy is obviously from), were ever produced...

SO, imagine you're a DJ at some radio station in 1968, plowing through the latest stack of record company advance vinyl, and you come across this one by the Royal Canal Street Band (who you've never even heard of), with a rubber stamp that says 'plug side' on it, and when you listen to it, you wince... would you turn it over to check if ATCO made a mistake, or toss it?

You get the idea... no wonder Al Hirt's version got the air time, they couldn't even FIND Kari's!

ATCO 6536 B?

Ludwig

I actually like the original TUNE-KEL version better... it's got more of a 'second-line' feel to it I think, but this is the sound they thought would sell, I guess (how about those two chords on the Hammond, yo?). I'm gonna spare you the real "Everybody Dance", as it's kind of like fingernails on a blackboard (sorry, Sax).

You can't make this stuff up!

10/12/06

OK. Enough is enough, I said. I'm gonna find Sax Kari...

As it turns out, all I had to do was look in the phone book! That's right, I was able to track down his phone number and I gave him a call. We spoke for about a half an hour. He was very gracious, and happy to talk with me about his music. At 86 years old, he remains as sharp as a tack!

SO, first things first; when I asked him about Charles "Soul" Brown he said that the first time he met him was at the recording session for NOLA 702, and that he never saw or heard from him again. That wasn't that unusual for the label's artists back then, he said, as they didn't promote anything. "They'd just put a record out and let it sit there", something Sax didn't agree with. All he could tell me was that he believed Brown to be from New Orleans.

He himself had built up a network of over 200 dee-jays (including John R and Hoss Allen) that he knew personally during his days with Don Robey, as he handled promotion for Duke/Peacock. He also worked closely with Robey's Buffalo Booking Agency alongside Evelyn Johnson, and knew how to 'sell' a record.

When I mentioned Dave Clark, the much-touted promotion man who ended up his career at Malaco, Sax laughed, and told me "Dave Clark couldn't promote a record if the dee-jay was already spinning it on the air"! He said he first met Dave through Denver Ferguson (a booking agent -and bookie- that owned the Sunset Terrace Ballroom in Indianapolis. His brother, Sea, owned The Cotton Club down the street) in 1939. He said Dave followed him down to Texas, and became a 'bag man' for Robey, delivering the 'payola' to the radio guys. When the big scandals hit in 1959, the money dried up, and Clark was left 'holding the bag'. "Dave Clark took my life history and made it his own", Sax said.

We talked about those Indianapolis days, when Sax was the leader of an eighteen-piece orchestra, and also about his days in Detroit, where he owned several record stores and began producing records on local talent like Della Reese. He told me that he later moved on to Chicago, and began working with Vee-Jay. He produced an album on Jerry Butler, that was to be titled "No End Of Time" after a song Kari had written for him. When Breakfast At Tiffany's hit big in 1961, Vee-Jay tried to cash in and had Butler cover Moon River, and put it on the album as the title track!

After talking for a bit about Chris Kenner and Eddie Bo, we moved on to his days with Henry Stone. He'd been working closely, more or less, with Stone since the mid-seventies, and accumulated an "extensive unreleased catalogue" of music. When Stone's Miami studio burned down, Sax took his masters with him. There's quite a bit of material 'in the can', he said, including some work he'd done with blue-eyed soul singer Bobby Caldwell, that's just begging to be released. He's been involved with the annual Jack The Rapper Conventions (which were apparently initiated in 1977) from day one, and basically never looked back.

In the mid-nineties, Kari re-invented himself as a piano playing 'blues man' named Candy Yams. Stone released an album by him and his band, The Bluesville Express, in 1997 called Love Juice. A song from the record, Charley's Got a Harley, has become a favorite of the 'bike week' crowd in Florida, and Sax said he's working up a an album's worth of biker tunes as we speak. He also told me that he put together a benefit album called "Katrina" that he sent to Stone soon after the hurricane hit, but it never saw the light of day.

I asked him about his own hurricane damage, and he made light of it, saying they're working on a new building now. When I tried to say things like 'you never got enough recognition', Sax said he was never interested in that, and viewed the music business as just that - a business. He asked me several times if I was with a record company, or a booking agency or a radio station or something, and when I told him I was a 'music writer' he said, "How you gonna make any money with that?" (ain't THAT the truth!).

Anyway, Sax Kari remains ready and full of ideas. He's willing to perform anyplace, anytime, he said, "just send me a bus ticket". He's also willing to shop his unreleased masters to the right people. We'll see what we can come up with.

In the meantime, here's the B side of the original version of 'Ludwig':

TUNE-KEL 601 B

Here And There

Just a little more of that Bert Kaempfert does Mardi Gras sound that we've all grown to love. I'm pretty sure that Sax is playing the organ (he wrote this side as well)... way cool! Also, how about that over the top flute solo? Yeah, baby!

10/23/06

I did a little digging around, and got us a copy of Love Juice, Sax's 1997 album with the Bluesville Express. Here's Charley's Got A Harley, the track the bikers took a liking to:

Charley's Got A Harley

That's bike week regular Moe Jackson on guitar, and a 77 year old Sax Kari on the keyboards and vocals. While not the greatest of songs, it certainly shows that Sax hasn't lost his sense of humor!

11/12/06

Let's continue with the 'Saxathon', as detective Dan so ably put it:

I picked up a cool little book called The Birth Of The Detroit Sound 1940-1964, a volume of the 'Images Of America' series. It was written By Marilyn Bond (you remember, the lady that spoke with me about trying to book Sax for the Ponderosa Stomp) and S.R. Boland. I bought it figuring it would mention Mr. Kari, as he was such a part of the music scene in Detroit in those days.

I was right. One thing it points out is the fact that Sax actually had a bonafide top ten R&B hit record in 1953 with a song called Daughter (That's Your Red Wagon) by 'Swinging Sax Kari and His Orchestra' on the Chicago based States label (#115). The song was an 'answer record' to Ruth Brown's mega-smash (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean, which had just spent 5 weeks in the number one slot. The vocals were handled by Gloria Irving, who would go on to record for Cobra Records in 1957.

As mentioned earlier, Sax would later sign with Detroit legend Robert West, producing acts like The Falcons for his Lupine and Flick labels. That's Sax discussing the finer points of the deal with West in the photo above.

While there's not much more info about Sax in the book, it's worth the price of admission for the cool photographs alone. Thanks, Marilyn!

Now, I had sent a copy of our 'case' so far down to Sax (as he doesn't own a computer), and received a letter back from him last week:

Like I said before, folks, Sax remains ready for anything! Despite what the man says, I'm not sure if I'm ready to 'start my own label', but I'm sure going to plug the idea of his returning to 'active duty' to anyone who'll listen...

"It's Blues, Baby!"

1/17/07

Hey y'all... just wanted to keep you up to date with what's been going on over here with 'case four'. First off, I found these cool label scans doing my usual scrounging around eBay and the rest of webland. If you check it out, they are both sides of the same release, STATES 115 (the top ten 1953 hit we mentioned above), only one is a 45 and the other a 78. This just illustrates, in my opinion, what a historic figure Mr. Kari is... he was there when the industry made that switch. He's been there all along.

I have been calling Sax every few weeks or so, and getting a phone company recording that his number has been disconnected. Fearing the worst, I called around and was finally able to speak with one of his neighbors in Florida. He said that Sax's damaged trailer had been removed, and that they were in the process of building a house in its place. Kari is staying with a relative (he thinks it may be his son) during the construction, he told me. Well, that certainly is good news! I guess FEMA or somebody finally came up with a few bucks. I'll keep trying to reach him, I promise.

Now, I was going through some records over here, attempting to finally 'get organized' and make some sense out of the faceless piles of vinyl that surround me, when I found something that froze me in my tracks:

JEWEL 838

I Just Can't Get Over You

Holy shit, I thought, here I start up this whole investigation and everything, and the answer was right here under my nose the whole time! I mean, here's a guy named Charles Brown, recording for a Louisiana label, with something in quotation marks in between his first and last names. It has to be the guy we're looking for, right?

Wrong. At least I think so. The label says this record was recorded in 1973, but I don't think those nine years could have changed 'Soul' that much. I love the song, it's like this Philadelphia meets Chicago type production by the "Soul Company"... can anybody offer any clues about them or "Cole Black"?

I don't know... maybe it is him, what do you think?

4/16/07

Alright, folks, here comes some important news...

As I told you a while back, Sax Kari's phone had been disconnected, but I was able to locate a neighbor who told me that they were rebuilding his house, and that he was staying with someone, possibly a relative.

I took a shot in the dark, and mailed a letter out to his last known address in early February. Eventually, Sax wrote me back, and sent me copies of his two latest 'hand-made' CDs:

from KATRINA

Aw Kick That

Here's an instrumental track from 'Katrina', the benefit album Sax put together and sent off to Henry Stone after the flood in New Orleans. I will say this, for an 86 year old man to still be making music at all, much less burning it to CDs with graphics and everything is nothing short of amazing. I'm sure that's him playing all those different keyboard parts as well, and he's still got it goin' on!

from DIRTY RED MORGAN GROUP

Messing With JB Pt 1

Well folks, apparently Sax has come up with yet another personality, this time he's 'Dirty Red Morgan', the Funk King! Like I was saying, the fact that an octagenarian can get down like this is just so cool! "Yeah, this is Dirty Red Morgan gettin' ready to blast your skull about the past, now do you dig?" Yes, Sax I dig, man. When you connect the dots that this is the same man that was recording demos on Polka Dot Slim up in his apartment in New Orleans for Joe Banashak over 40 years ago, it's the same as it ever was...

Sax also sent along this note scrawled on the back of one of the CDs. So far, I've been unable to find 'Victor', but sent an email to a 'Dopebrothers Records' I found listed on the web. I never heard anything back. Sax also gave me a phone number to reach him at, but I kept putting off calling him, hoping to have 'made friends' with this Victor guy first.

This past week, I finally decided to call. A kid picked up the phone, and when I asked to speak with Sax, he went and fetched his mother. I could hear her say "Oh, boy!" in the background before she picked up the line... "Sax Kari's had a mild stroke,' she said, "on the right side" He's in a nursing home, now. I was his caretaker, but I'm not any more..."

My heart sank. "it was about three and a half weeks ago..."

Damn.

I got the address and phone number of the nursing home and called Sax. Amazingly, his mind is still totally focused, but he's lost the use of his right hand... "They're gonna take good care of me in this place, Red. We're doing rehab to try and get my fingers to work again..."

It just broke my heart, you know?

We talked for quite a while, and he told me that the deal he had to rebuild his house fell through, and that he wasn't sure what was going to happen. Dopebrothers, he said, had actually released a Dirty Red Morgan record already (anybody have any leads on that?), and he thought they might be interested in the CD he sent me...

He handed the phone after awhile to the 'best friend he has down there', a fellow by the name of Melvin Blair. Mel is on a mission (as we are) to get Sax Kari the recognition he deserves. He told me that he's been in recent contact with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has recieved an initial positive response from them. Mel has also purchased the URL saxkari.com, and has just gotten it up and running, starting off with a FANTASTIC must read article from Real Blues Magazine. 'Melly Mel' is doing a great job over there at his Blue Duke Studio, and I've offered to help him in any way we can.

Now, I'm not sure if you remember this, but Sax told us that he had saved some unreleased master tapes from a fire in the T.K. warehouse. Work he had done with Bobby Caldwell and others. Well, he recently made a deal with Aaron Fuchs over at the Tuff City Music Group that will hopefully get some of that music released for the first time.

I just got off the phone with Aaron, and he assured me that, while the details need to be straightened out, he has nothing but Sax's best interests at heart. His company is going through those raw unmixed masters as we speak, and hope to be able to release something soon.

In the meantime, I thought I'd put up a cool B side from that era to hold us over:

DASH 5023

Raggedy Ann

Another of 'Saxton's' fractured easy listening pieces, this time filtered through the disco-era T.K. Orchestra, you just gotta love it. You can almost see yourself cruising along in like a '75 Impala convertible, just digging the scenery... You know, as Mr. Fuchs was saying on the phone, Sax's music defied categorization, and perhaps that's what's held him back from being recognized as the genius he is...

Anyway, if you'd like to send Dirty Red Morgan some get well wishes to cheer him up, here's the address:

Sax Kari
PO Box 773
Seffner, FL 33583
sakkari@hotmail.com

Get Well Soon, Sax!

...this just in (from the 'comments'):

"The Dirty Red Morgan 7" will be released in May 2007.

Your Chicken Ain't Funky Like Mine / Finger Lickin', Funky Chicken

UB-4501"

Victor Piagneri
victor@dopebrother.com

Thank You Victor!!! Can't Wait!

5/23/07

OK everybody, we have some major news to report here on Case Four!

As mentioned by detective Dan (aka our lucky winner) on Home Of The Groove, there was an excellent 'living tribute' to Wardell Quezergue on the small stage in the Grandstand at Jazz Fest.

On the stage with him were former rival studio arranger Sam Henry Jr. (now a member of Wardell's great big R&B Revue), the one and only Cosimo Matassa, Irma Thomas, and The Dixie Cups. Author Ben Sandmel led a lively and informative panel discussion about Quezergue's incredible career. Wardell, now totally blind, spoke humbly about how his musical skills were a God given gift, and how he considers himself blessed to have been able to make a living doing what he loves. "Everything I did was from the heart," he said, "if you paid me, or if you didn't pay me, I still gave it all I had."

Just a sweetheart of a man.

After the presentation was over, Ben opened it up for questions from the audience. Here was our chance! I spoke a little bit about the NOLA label, and how it went down with the ship when Cosimo's Dover Records distribution company declared bankruptcy in 1968. It felt a little like an episode of 'This Is Your Life', but I next went on to ask Wardell if he remembered a man he used to work with in the early days of the label, Sax Kari. I told him how Sax was now 87 years old and living in Florida, and conveyed his regards to his old friends in New Orleans. He said that it did his heart good to hear that Sax was still around, and that he remembers him very well. Now came the big question; "There's a song Sax wrote for NOLA, called 'Standing On The Outside', that was recorded by somebody named Charles "Soul" Brown. Can you remember any details about him or the recording session?"

"Charles, and his brother Oliver, were members of my band The Royal Dukes Of Rhythm," Wardell said, "and that's who's playing on that record, my band at the time."

NOW HOW ABOUT THAT?

He went on to tell a story about a show they put on at the Union Hall in New Orleans. Quezergue had worked up arrangements for the band to perform the entire smash 1962 Ray Charles album Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music in sequence (presumably with Charles and Oliver Brown handling the vocals), and the crowd went nuts. They loved it so much, they carried Wardell and the rest of the Dukes out of the hall on their shoulders. Can you imagine?

SO, not bad, I figured... we finally found out where Charles "Soul" Brown came from. I asked Wardell if he knew whatever became of him, and he said he had no idea.

NOW, I get home here from New Orleans and I get an e-mail from someone named "Charlie Brown" (I almost soiled myself)... I thought maybe we had finally made contact! Here's what it said:

"Red,

I just discovered your blog through Home of the Groove
and it is truly amazing. I am a New Orleans native
and thought I was a music fan until I see guys like
you and Dr. Ira etc.

Anyway, I took those Soul Brown mp3s and played them
on WWOZ's New Orleans music show (I am a sub, not a
full timer) and Clyde Kerr called me up. He said
Charles and his brother Oliver were both lead singers
for Wardell Quezergue's band and they sang together as
The Sultans. Clyde said Standing On The Outside was
one of the first sessions he ever played and credited
Wardell with giving him his start.

BTW, I am no relation to the singer, being a white guy
from Metairie. Bet I gave you a start, though? Huh?"

Yes, Charlie, you sure did. Anyway, how about THAT? Good ol' Soul Detective out there on WWOZ! Thanks again, Charlie!

SO, we have no less an authority than the great Clyde Kerr weighing in (if you recall, he was also involved with Sax on the re-recorded ATCO version of 'Ludwig', which incidentally, according to the label, was written by "Ken" Kerr... ), and independently corroborating Wardell's story. Thank you Clyde!

NOW... The Sultans, huh? I remembered reading in the liner notes for Wardell Quezergue - Sixty Smokin' Soul Senders that The Sultans was the name of another of Quezergue's bands, and that they recorded a couple of sides for Imperial... Sure enough, I found this on Global Dog:

IMPERIAL 5812 - Original Popeye b/w Dance Time

IMPERIAL 5886 - I Need Your Love b/w I'm Broke

Both released in 1962 under the name of "Wardell and the Sultans". The obvious question now is; Are Charles and/or Oliver singing on any of these sides? Does anybody out there own them?? Boy, I'd love to hear 'em! (another interesting aside, by the way, is that this also points out yet another 'Popeye' record we hadn't come up with over on that Eddie Bo 'B' side post... )

You go, detectives, let's find those 45s!!

Thank you Mr. Quezergue, Mr. Kerr, Mr. (no-relation) Brown and everybody else for everything. Stay tuned!

6/1/07

Alright. Detective Cies (the proprietor of the excellent Gospel site Just Moving On) left this in the 'comments':

"Great that you've found who the real Charles "Soul" Brown is.
I've just looked at the Imperial discography in the R&B Indies.
Two interesting releases by the Two Brothers. Are these the Brothers Brown? Charles & Oliver??

Imperial 5810: Never Again/Blue Monday
Imperial 5887: Who changed the look/Tell her"

Good lookin' out. Cies! A very interesting hypothesis, and I think you may be on to something! The first 45 he lists, Imperial 5810, is the release before 5811; Earl King's Trick Bag (which, as we all know, was arranged by Quezergue), which in turn precedes the 5812 Popeye record by Wardell and the Sultans... what I'm saying is, these may have all come from the same sessions.

The same holds true for Imperial 5887, which was issued just after 5886, Wardell and the Sultans' Who Changed The Lock. All of these records were released in 1962.

There is one other 'Two Brothers' release on Imperial that Cies didn't notice, however:

5748 - Lonely Boy b/w Tell It

This one hails from 1961, and doesn't appear to be contiguous with any Quezergue arranged stuff (number 5747 is by Huey Smith and the Clowns, while 5749 is by Frankie Ford). In any event, we need to hear these records! Does anybody know of any CD re-issues of early sixties Imperial stuff that they might be on? Or, better yet, any of you detectives out there have any of the original vinyl?

[OK... I just ordered the first Two Brothers release (5748) off of GEMM (for like $20), and we'll check it out together as soon as it shows up.]

In the meantime, I'm issuing a soul detective A.P.B. for the rest of 'em!

6/14/07

Alright guys, I got us a copy of the first of the 'Two Brothers' releases on Imperial:

IMPERIAL 5748

Tell It

Well, what do you think? Hmmm... it's tough to make a determination one way or the other based on this one. The harmony vocal there in the background could be our man Charles, but I don't know. If you listen closely, at the very end, one brother says "Sho'nuff" before the other chimes in with a "Whoah, Yeah" that kind of has the same vocal qualities that 'Soul' has. Take another listen to the B side of our original NOLA 702 45, I'll Love You (If You Let Me), and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, as we said earlier, Imperial 5748 here was released in 1961, which, I believe, is the same year that the company acquired the Minit label. I'm wondering if the cool piano work on here is by Allen Toussaint...

9/19/07

Hey folks, I figured it was time to catch up a bit here on case four...

First off, let's have a listen to another of those Imperial 'Two Brothers' sides:

IMPERIAL 5810 B

Never Again

A sweet little tune, it's kind of like a vocal group take on what was going on at Cosimo's at the time. The flip, the Brothers' version of Blue Monday, just doesn't do it for me. Anyway, whaddaya think? It certainly could be our man Charles crooning those "No, No, No, No, No, No's"... I'm digging that like limpid sigh. Oh, those love starved brothers!

By the way, I was this close to picking up one of the Wardell & The Sultans 45s on eBay a few weeks ago but, even though I bid heavily, somebody 'sniped' it in the last ten seconds. I hate when that happens.

And now, back to the 'sax-a-thon'...

Here's a primo photograph of our man Sax with Memphis legend Rufus Thomas:

(I love the shirt!) Taken, I'm sure, in the WDIA studios back when Sax was inventing the role of record promotion man, it shows once again what an important, and criminally overlooked, figure Kari is in the history of this music. Sax gave the photo to our pal, Memphis journalist Preston Lauterbach, who posted it on his insightful and informative site The Memphis Sound: Lost and Found back in June. Thanks, Pres, and congratulations to you and the missus on the new arrival!

Sax is presently living in an 'assisted living' facility in Tampa, which is certainly a step up from the Rehabilitation Center he was in just after the stroke. He was actually scheduled to appear with Etta James at the House Of Blues in Lake Buena Vista (aka 'downtown Disney') this past July (a show which I was not about to miss), but she was laid up in the hospital, and cancelled the first leg of her tour this summer. I spoke with our man on the scene, Melvin Blair, this afternoon, and he told me that Sax was in good spirits, and seemed to be doing fine. 'Melly-Mel' was scheduled to give a presentation tonight to the 'Rap Kids' at the Gainesville Music Summit. Go get 'em, Mel!

Here's another of Kari's wacky instrumentals from his Crescent City days:

TUNE-KEL 600 A

Siesta

Dig 'dem crazy bongos, baby! In the Fumigate Funky Broadway liner notes Sax comments on this one (and it's flip 'Spanish Drums');
"The session players and I made up those tunes on the fly at a studio session we placed with Banashak. Joe really liked the tunes and wanted to make them into hits..." Which somehow just never quite happened.

And now, as promised, here is the brand new Dirty Red Morgan Group 45:

Dope Brother 4501 A

Your Chicken Ain't Funky Like Mine

Pressed on groovy red vinyl, Dope Brother #1 Victor Piagneri sent us a few copies over the summer. No matter what you may think of the song itself, the fact that this outstanding musician is still releasing records at 87 years old is just so very cool... "Look at that chick dressed in green, strictly from New Orleans!"

Thank you, Victor... and you go, Sax! Your chicken is still plenty funky, brother!

10/5/09

I just got the sad news that the one and only Saxton Kari passed away in Florida on October 1st after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.

Sax was a joy to talk to, and always had a story to tell. He remained sharp as a tack right to the end, and I will always treasure the time I spent on the phone with him.

I just spoke with his son, Melvin Blair, who told me that a memorial service was held for Sax this morning.

May he Rest In Peace.