The Story of Leonard Jones and Fast Track Studios

detroit fast track leonard jones


Leonard Jones and FAST TRACK STUDIOS.


When the Motown Corporation packed up and left town in 1972 a giant void was left in Detroit’s musical landscape. A company that had dominated the city for over 20 years, generating millions of dollars for the local economy and employing hundreds of people over the decades, had suddenly gone. Some members of the famed ‘Funk Brothers’, Motown’s legendary studio band, as well as various other employees, followed Berry Gordy to Los Angeles, some stayed in Detroit. The Holland brothers and Lamont Dozier continued to record material for their Invictus/Hot Wax/Music Merchant labels well into the late 1970s, out of their studio on Grand River, with some success, and Don Davis took over at United Sound Studios, where he enjoyed commercial hits on artists like Johnnie Taylor, The Dramatics, and David Ruffin amongst others.


fast track studios

Meanwhile, in a small northern township on the way to Lansing, MI a quiet musical revolution was beginning to ignite under the leadership and guidance of one of the most prolific record producers in the region – Leonard Jones. The Fast Track Studio complex was built and funded by Frank and Bobby Adell in the early 1970s in Novi, MI, about an hour’s drive out of downtown Detroit, at the behest of Leonard Jones, with the intent of capitalizing on the rich vein of musical talent that still existed in Detroit and its environs. With a ‘state of the art’ studio designed by General Motors technicians, a sizeable budget, a wide range of industry contacts and almost a hundred local acts to choose from, Jones embarked on a creative and commercially successful period that culminated in thousands of separate productions being made at Fast Track. He brought artists like Almeta Latimore, Percy and Them, the Steptones, Sugar Billy, the Dramatics, September, Damon Shawn, John Freeman, the Final Decisions, the Theatrics, R.J.’s Latest Arrival, Special Delivery, the Complaments plus many others to regional and national prominence.


The Steptones (click to view in full)

Leonard Jones was born and raised in Washington, DC during the 1950s and 1960s and was a contemporary of Marvin Gaye, Billy Stewart, Don Covay, Van McCoy, members of the Dynamic Superiors and ex Drifter and native Detroiter Johnny Terry, who advised him to move to the motor city to fulfil his dream of record production when opportunities became limited in the nation’s capital. He made the trek north in 1968 and worked at General Motors initially while checking out local studios and production companies. By 1973 the Fast Track initiative was in full bloom and Jones was scouting and signing his first recruits. “ I’d heard the Steptones singing and I had to have them. They were the best singing group I had. They had more bite in their style than any of the others. The lead singer was a guy called Ozzie Hobson and with Roosevelt, Ernie and Cody backing him, he could really blow. Sugar Billy (Garner) was singing in a place called Little Sam’s and packing the place every night, so I signed him too. Another guy I liked was Duane Williams who later hooked up with a girl he knew to form Beverley and Duane. I cut stuff on him but it wasn’t released.”


Sugar Billy

Jones was determined to start with a bang and the artist he chose to lead the charge was Sugar Billy. “ I used my own money on his first record ‘Little woman’ b/w ‘Trouble’ but we decided not to release it. Our third try on him, ‘Super duper love’ took off like crazy though and hit number one in 1974. We almost got a Grammy too. We were beaten out by Major Harris ‘Love won’t let me wait’. We put that out on the Fast Track label and that kinda set us up. It gave us the money to expand and got us in the door with companies who could distribute our records.” Interestingly, he received an unexpected payday decades later when the song was covered by a fledgling English singer and became an even bigger hit around the world. Back in Novi, Jones was able to create an operation that was almost completely self-sufficient. “ We were the only company that was complete in Detroit ‘cause we recorded the music, cut the master discs ourselves, pressed the records in house and then shipped them around the country. I hooked us up with Mainstream for distribution but there were other companies too.”

Damon Shawn

Like Berry Gordy at Motown, Leonard Jones realised the value of using the same group of musicians to create a recognisable ‘sound’. “ I knew a lot of the guys in town but settled on the ones I could work with best. We had Mike Calhoun and Marcus Lee on drums, (former Just Brother) Frank Bryant and ‘Peanut’ Chandler on bass and I used a few different guys on guitar. Dennis Coffey, Robert White, Guy Patterson and Willie Hampton were all regulars. I had Frank and Guy on salary. Guy, in particular, could come up with these really pretty frills like on ‘These memories’. George Roundtree, Earl Van Dyke and Rudy Robinson handled keyboards at different times and we had a lot of horn players who had worked at Motown too. I didn’t use the Detroit Symphony for strings ‘cause I liked the Fisher Theatre Strings better. I always used Jimmy Roach to arrange strings. I handled the horn parts. If we needed background singers I always used an all girl trio called Brandye. They were real easy to work with and picked things up quickly.”


Percy and Them

Fast Track never seemed to have any problems coming up with songs either. “We had people like Jimmy Abston and Stella Petty who were killer writers but a lot of the artists could write too. Almeta wrote ‘These memories’ with Mike Calhoun and the B side ‘Oh my love’ by herself. She played piano on both sessions too. Percy (Hargrove) of Percy and Them was a good writer too. And we had lots of others around the place. I knew a lot of people and they were always bringing songs in. We would always listen and try to give songwriters a chance.”


September

The first female group to record at Fast Track was September whose debut, ‘Caution’, came out on Brunswick. “We had so many artists at Fast Track that we started to put them with different labels ‘cause the DJs wouldn’t play too many from the same label. I’d always give Mainstream first choice and they had IX Chains too, which they owned, so some of our acts, like the Steptones came out on that label, then there was Brunswick who had Dakar and distributed VR. John Freeman and Almeta, and the Theatrics came out on VR. There was also Roulette who took Percy and Them. There were other smaller, local labels too who we placed acts with. I started the Stand By label but later sold it to RJ later.



John Freeman

There was Hi C who had the Final Decisions and Fast Track itself.” In 1975 an offshoot of the Dramatics, led by Elbert ‘Al’ Wilkins, came to Fast Track. Wilkins had left the group after a successful run of hits on Volt, many of which were written by Tony Hestor, and had formed his own group. “ We did ‘No rebate on love’ on them and released it on Mainstream. It took off and got to number two R&B but then Don Davis issued an injunction on the record ‘cause he had a record out on the ‘other’ Dramatics on ABC, ‘The stars in your eyes’ and figured his group owned the name. Radio DJs dropped both records from rotation and Al went to court but settled when they decided in his favour. ABC paid all costs and Al sold the name to Ron Banks. I was mad though because ‘No rebate’ should have been much bigger. We did do another song with them but called them Dramatic Experience. Al’s group then changed their name to the Theatrics.”


Almeta Latimore

As Fast Track artists achieved success they came to the attention of other companies. “Yes, Motown came in for Sugar Billy but he didn’t want to go ‘cause he thought he’d get lost over there with the number of acts they had. Same thing with Almeta. Columbia offered $150,000 for her contract. They thought she was gonna be a superstar. She’d recorded some demos for Atlantic too when she was there with Aretha and they came around but she was happy with me and wouldn’t move. She thought both those companies had too many artists. I’d signed her to a five year deal.” Ironically, Almeta Latimore’s ‘These memories’ got lost in the internal affairs of Mainstream. “ I was really pissed about that ‘cause I thought we should have had two big hits in 1975 with the Dramatics and Almeta. They were trying to do too much at once and were concentrating on some of their other projects, so Almeta’s record didn’t get the attention I thought it deserved. It’s still one of my proudest moments at Fast Track.”


Al Wilkins and Leonard Jones mixing no rebate

Jones’ production style was popular with the musicians. “ They loved my sessions ‘cause I knew what I was doing. We’d give them charts, decide the tempo and create the music as a team. I’d always pay scale too. I didn’t believe in nickel and diming those guys. The rhythm section would get ‘in the pocket’ to start us off and then everything would be added afterwards. I always knew when we had a hit ‘cause the band would be tapping their feet! Stevie Wonder came by one time asking if we needed a keyboard for the session but I had to turn him down ‘cause we already had Earl Van Dyke and George Roundtree. I’d be in there at ten in the morning and would usually stay until ten at night, later sometimes if there was paperwork to do or sales to check. We recorded an incredible number of songs.” The success the operation generated caused another unforeseen problem. “When people in the industry realised what we were doing, especially around Detroit, we got a lot of people coming in wanting to record. We couldn’t fit everyone in though ‘cause we were so busy. I remember Emanuel Laskey coming in one time ‘cause someone he knew, who was also a Mason, had pushed him in ahead of others, but it didn’t work out. He just couldn’t fit into the band’s groove on the song we were doing and we said we’d try another day but he never came back.”


final decisions

Not every recording gained a release however, as the selection process at Fast Track intensified. “We would always record more than we needed on an artist then choose the best ones for release. Sometimes that was tough. There are still things in the can on a lot of our artists. A lot of them are good too” Though little previously unissued material has surfaced over the years from those sessions, one song did manage to eventually see the light of day as a vinyl release in 2011 on the UK Hayley Record label. The quality and vibrancy of the Final Decisions ‘I don’t feel no pain’ makes one wonder why it was never released at the time. Leonard Jones remembered the session vividly. “ Yeah, that was a great song that Jimmy Abston and Stella Petty came up with. The band was ready when those guys came in to do it. They had rehearsed and all, but the group, the singers, hadn’t learned it. So we had to wait till they ran through it, over and over again until they could finally nail it. By the time we finished that session I was so mad and the band were pissed too with the time we had wasted, that I decided not to put it out.” Despite his candour on this occasion, Jones is far more reserved about some of the more enigmatic obligations he undertook. “A lot of major artists were brought to me if they were in trouble. Everyone knew my style. Many times I would do the sessions, take the money but give the credit to someone else. And these were some major groups and individual artists with big hits, big labels and big budgets.” No details were forthcoming.

Rob Moss

http://www,hayleyrecords.co.uk.