During the 70's, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis (Stax, Goldwax, AGP, etc.) all declined as producers of great soul music.

LA & NY seemed to hold there own whereas Philly was on the upturn.

.......... why was this ...

Motown quit Detroit but lots of the creative people (producers, arrangers, singers, musicians) remained in the city.

 Chicago (after Brunswick's payola problems) went into major decline & guys moved out to other cities (Atlanta, etc.). Chess had already declined.

Memphis had a burst of creativity from Hi, but Stax went under with financial woes & Goldwax just faded away.

In an interview Chicago based Floyd Smith gave in 71, he said they always worked 'formally' in Chicago soul circles, no improv in the studio as Stax & Motown did. Guess this didn't help their creative juices at all & guys again moved away (didn't Floyd Smith relocate to Nashville or somewhere similar ??) 

Views on the decline in soul terms of these cities musical output is much welcomed !!

Though you'll probably disagree, I think that it was largely due to the reassertion of the mainstream record industry's control (or the guys that ran it - the 'whiteification' of Motown management following the move to LA being an good example) over the minors and RnB/race-based sub-labels that led to a large extent to the watering down of the 'proper stuff' towards lowest common denominator vinyl mush aimed at maximum general chart success - as it did in the disco era (with the changeover from gay and hardcore to mainstream and fucking Abba, Bonnie Tyler and the BeeGees) and as it has done in recent years through Syco, One Dimension and the like... All those 'controversial'/emotionally demanding soul recordings (by fabulously talented artists, writers and producers that only sold in limited numbers into the ghettos and to relatively tiny numbers of enlightened white fans) dumbed down into musical magnolia, with the result that the old hardcore fans lost faith, whilst the pop buying public had limited interest because the more mainstream releases STILL weren't bland enough.

Dx

Edited March 23, 20169 yr by DaveNPete

Well majors like CBS, EMI, RCA all decided to get into soul music in a big way in the early / mid 70's (72 -- 76) as they saw it as another market that they could dominate. BUT the black labels had to go under / be struggling before the majors could tempt all their artists away.

CBS certainly picked up loads of acts from Stax, Brunswick / Dakar & the like .... then 2/3 yrs on when their marketing guys had failed to raise sales figures enough (coz they had no idea how to market to the black public), just about all those black acts were dropped.

So the majors were to blame, but Philly Int prospered for years under CBS distribution, so that wasn't the whole story.

As the majors took over soul product, they forced US black radio stns to take their product & indie stuff was dropped from radio play lists, so diversity in the market died. Up until about 1970, each local radio stn played different stuff including lots of local product. 

Even Warner Bros got back into soul in the early 70's via acts like Tower of Power & indie prod deals like Lou Ragland's 45. But they didn't seem to sign up acts from struggling old school soul labels, though they did distribute Curtom for some years (after Buddah).

Miami soul also rose up in the 70's (via TK mainly). In the 60's Miami product had lost it's identity as it escaped on Philly labels & NY's Atlantic in the main (for national distribution anyway).

Edited March 23, 20169 yr by Roburt

All the reasons cited above sound good to me. Add to them the change in musical style to a funk-disco oriented electronic approach relegating instruments in terms of importance. The decline of gospel-trained backing vocalists resulted in the loss of harmony. Song-writer creativity drying up after a peak with some becoming disillusioned at not receiving fair reward for their output. The general tendency of the majors to churn out commercial product to top the charts with little regard for quality or nurturing talent, same as today, perhaps. It was always going to be difficult to extend the vintage era 66-69 so it finally fizzled out early in the 70's.

This doesn't help with the facts surrounding the demise of Chicago Soul .... BUT ... if you have catch-up on your TV system, go into the BBC catch-up section & seek out an old (mid 80's) Arena documentary 'CHICAGO BLUES' (you can do a search using that name) .... it's part of a 6 part BBC 80's series on the Blues.

The episode on Chicago Blues opens up with a short chat with BB King (from the 80's) & then goes into a film (50 mins in length) about black Chicago that seems to have been shot around 1970. You get street scenes, church scenes, market scenes (with record stalls on view), you get interviews shot in record shops, club scenes with people dancing & blues singers / musicians doing their thing. You get shots in the projects & footage taken from trains on the L (elevated railway). 

All in all, it's explaining how urban blues developed, how gospel influenced most music the blacks played, how being in the city forced the music to evolve ... in short just about every factor that led to the development of Chicago Soul. The footage is priceless, it's like you've jumped into a time machine; the clothes, the cars, the attitudes, the daily life captured.

At one point in a blues club, a live performance is captured ... the singer hands over to the guitar player (Buddy Guy I think) for him to go his guitar break ... BUT .... everyone knows the cameras are there & shooting footage .... so Buddy extends his guitar solo TILL the singer has had enough & he just grabs hold of the neck of Buddy's guitar and stops him playing ... normality restored, the singer goes back into his vocal delivery ... PRICELESS STUFF .... 

Simply read Robert Pruter's "Chicago Soul"  in which the decline of Chicago as a  music centre is documented in great detail.

One of the absolutely essential books for anyone seriously into soul.

During that 'Chicago Blues' BBC documentary (I discussed it above) ... there's a street scene where a poster for a soul club gig comes into view (strapped to a lamp post or similar) ...  anyway, the club which seems to have been called the Cougar Club (1812 Sth Pulaski, Chicago) has long since been demolished but one of the acts who featured at the club was blues guitarist (& in the 60's, soul man) Eddie C Campbell. Eddie had a long & distinguished career on the Chicago music scene until he relocated to Europe in 1984 (Holland then Germany). Eventually, he went back home but would return to Europe to play blues gigs. Unfortunately, whilst over here doing a gig (Germany; 2013), he suffered a stroke & had to be flown home on an ambulance plane to recuperate. I believe he has recovered a bit from the immediate severe effects of the stroke.

Edited March 27, 20169 yr by Roburt

That should read: 1812 Pulaski Road (not Pulanski).    Kazimierz Pulaski was a Polish army general, who (like The Marquis de Lafayette) came to The British North American colonies, to help them fight their Revolutionary War of independence.

 

Polish street names are more common in Chicago than most of USA, because from the 1880s through the 1920s, many thousands of Poles immigrated there.  Chicago became the city in The World with the 2nd largest (after Warsaw) population of native Poles.  In the 1950s, it was the 2nd city in The World in numbers of people of Polish extraction.  A large portion of them live in the suburbs now, but Pulaski's Memorial Day (day of his death fighting for The American cause) is still a legal holiday.

Edited March 27, 20169 yr by RobbK

Robb, I'm a Brit -- we don't do foreign languages or foreign street names .......... everyone has to speak English to communicate with us !!

AND anyway, it's only us Brits (here in the UK) that can watch BBC 'catch-up' .......... so don't b'trublin yersen owa sumit yer canna watch anywise.

BTW, if anyone wants to know what Eddie's 60's blues track sounds like -- the one on the Hawee 45 (speld it datway jusfa Robb) ............. you can listen to it here ... 

.... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-People-Dave-Cash-Collection/dp/B00EEMLGVC/ref      (Track 17)  . . . .  CHEERS

Robb, we actually have a lot of Poles over here in the UK .... a lot came here after WW2 to escape communism and even more (lots of builders , etc) have come in the last 10 years to find decent paying jobs. We have loads of Polish shops ...... but no Polish street names yet.

Edited March 27, 20169 yr by Roburt

That seems like a really weird compilation.  What is its theme?  What binds those different recordings together?  It has a fair amount of Country and City Blues, but also Rock-a-Billy, C&W (Buddy Killen), R&B and Pop (Dee Erwin & Little Eva).

Does anyone here know who Alexander Graham Kowalski was?

 

 

He was the first telephone Pole.

Abit of bad American humor

54 minutes ago, recordsnracin said:

Does anyone here know who Alexander Graham Kowalski was?

 

 

He was the first telephone Pole.

Abit of bad American humor

I'll say!

With Nashvilles' long history of live black entertainment since the 40s (and even earlier) and R&B, the city had a potential to compete with some of the cities of the north with respect to the development of soul music in the 60s. A soul explosion of sorts did happen of course, but was stunted. Not only because of the 'Country machine', but also to massive urban renewal projects which started in the late 50s and contuinued through the late 60s / early 70s. The city planners essentially bulldozed most of the black community areas including housing, clubs and bars along Jefferson Street and other areas to tidy the city up, but actually ended up with disproportionate building of new housing projects versus folk who were actually displaced. This process fragmented the black community, left hundreds of families homeless, and in a musical context, artists no longer had a focal place to demonstrate their talents, practice their craft or be scouted. Just working on presenting the whole Nashville soul story weaving in a collection of around 15-20 biographies at the mo, should hopefully be finished end of this year / early next.

Edited April 1, 20169 yr by Windlesoul

I agree,  massive urban renewal projects killed off the soul club scene / basic recording studio facilities in many cities; Miami (the I-95 blitzing the Overtown area), Baltimore  & Norfolk (the city's chitlin theatre & surrounding buildings getting bulldozed) went the same way. Think some Chicago black districts were also affected & obviously whole areas of Detroit fell into decline. Harlem hung on OK but the Bronx & areas of Brooklyn wasted away in similar fashion. Loads of clubs in the Brooklyn area went under in the early 70's. The book about the Chitlin Circuit (can't recall the exact title at the mo, but it was mentioned in a thread on here recently) deals with how this killed off the entertainment in black areas of a number of other US cities.

I'm interested in the Nashville story. Watched a BBC music documentary a couple of weeks back on the Nashville music scene. It was 99% about country music (which I hate) with only a fleeting mention of local black music output.  

That book is here .......  https://www.amazon.com/The-Chitlin-Circuit-Road-Rock/dp/0393342948    and the thread it got mentioned in was 'Soul Artists Had It Tough'.

The BBC doc on Nashville music was mentioned in the thread (moved to General section) ...  Heart of Country -- BBC4 TV show

Edited April 1, 20169 yr by Roburt

Urban renewal also largely destroyed the black club scene in Memphis & indianapolis ... however .... the end of strict segregation meant that blacks could also now visit venues / resorts where they couldn't in the past. By going to new venues / locations they were deserting their old haunts & these soon fell into decline.

The I-95 being blasted through the centre of Overtown (Miami) back in summer 67 ..... housing clearance in the area soon followed on ....

.... AND YET ..... the Miami soul recording scene flourished in the 70's (even though the Overtown club scene had been decimated) ... so urban renewal wasn't the whole story ....

Edited April 5, 20169 yr by Roburt

The Mary Elizabeth Hotel was an early casualty in the drive to clear the Overtown district of Miami. This place housed a nightclub: in the early 60's it was the Birdland Fiesta Club ............

The I-95 in Nth Miami didn't get this place .... the Climax Recording Studio, NW 123rd St ..... it was only yards from the highway though.

The studio must have utilised an old building that had fallen vacant due to loss of local residents or the noise / disruption caused by a major highway being so close (plus all the east-west streets in the area had been severed by the I-95 and so were now cul-de-sacs). The studio was set up here in 1970 and moved on to a new location after 1974. It must have been a little indie set up and it had it's own record label at times .... a Jeb Stuart 45 escaped on Climax Records in 1971 ....  

On 3/23/2016 at 11:14, Roburt said:

During the 70's, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis (Stax, Goldwax, AGP, etc.) all declined as producers of great soul music.

LA & NY seemed to hold there own whereas Philly was on the upturn........... why was this ...Motown quit Detroit but lots of the creative people (producers, arrangers, singers, musicians) remained in the city.  Chicago (after Brunswick's payola problems) went into major decline & guys moved out to other cities (Atlanta, etc.). Chess had already declined. Memphis had a burst of creativity from Hi, but Stax went under with financial woes & Goldwax just faded away. In an interview Chicago based Floyd Smith gave in 71, he said they always worked 'formally' in Chicago soul circles, no improv in the studio as Stax & Motown did. Guess this didn't help their creative juices at all & guys again moved away (didn't Floyd Smith relocate to Nashville or somewhere similar ??) Views on the decline in soul terms of these cities musical output is much welcomed !!

 

I've always been of the opinion that the music changed come 1968/69, from that Motownesque/Stax-Atantic soul to a more funky protest type. The atmosphere of "we can do anything" got replaced during the Vietnam war by a more somber tone, something that got reflected in the music. Soul as we know it pretty much disappeared as Disco stuff started to arrive, despite the efforts of Dakar, Lizard and Invictus/Hot Wax. The record labels didn't/couldn't adapt fast enough.

Edited June 30, 20168 yr by Chris L

the rise of Miami and New York as main players in the formation of the disco, along with the aforementioned and crucial philly sound. Prog rock and the general move towards a more sophisticated sound in all forms of popular music, that's not to denigrate soul, but think about easy listening listening as a force too. great topic with some excellent, very well informed facts and views.

      

We winter in Florida and recently took a trip along the I-95 thru Overtown … not too surprised to see it clings onto it's black heritage still … 

PLUS an interesting article that deals with the subject of 60's / 70's Miami soul ...

https://www.standardhotels.com/culture/florida-miami-soul-history-overtown-johnnys-records

Any info on souls place Roburt?🎶

26 minutes ago, Spain pete said:

Any info on souls place Roburt?🎶

The Island Club and Soul's Place were mid 60's clubs in Overtown, the casino billboard is for a 2019 show.

Was it a place?  that Miami  dj Gary the master blaster of wcko  frequented  l have heard it mentioned on a remake of "cafe reggios" 🎶🎶

Souls Place was a club located at NW 2nd Ave & 36th St in Miami. Both those were busy roads (N-S & E-W), so that particular x-road was a good place to be located. ALSO it's just to the east of the (then) new I-95 freeway and south of the I-195 freeway. So that junction survived the mass demolition that occurred when the new freeway system was blasted thru Miami. Lots of the old black clubs were swept away when the freeways were constructed, but Souls Place survived. As an established venue for local blacks, it must have prospered when other venues were shut & the buildings demolished. WCKO / WRBD was located in Ft Lauderdale to the north of this area, but the old main US highway (route 1 - which goes all the way to New York) is just east of where Souls Place was & so it was an easy place to reach.     

As I said above, WCKO radio stn was based out of (Pompano Beach in) Fort Lauderdale, it grew out of stn WRBD which had been going strong from the early 60's till 1972. So it's likely the WRBD / WCKO DJ's would head south after their radio shift to meet up with other Miami black radio DJ's & local celebs at Souls Place (36th St -- route 27 -- was the main route to Miami Beach). No doubt, Ian Levine would know a lot more than me about those times as my personal knowledge is from more recent times (+ research I've done about the Miami soul scene in the 60's / 70's).

The X-Rds where Souls Place was located (recent pic) ...

 

Edited April 4, 20196 yr by Roburt

By the time WCKO was going strong, most radio stns had dropped their old 'local label plays' policy (some TK and Alston stuff was still played, the more popular artists at least) ....

but the chart below featured one local obscurity … AND .. the label was based just up the road from Souls Place ….  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZdJHRDu5Rc

 

 

Edited April 4, 20196 yr by Roburt

On 23 de marzo de 2016 at 11:14, Roburt said:

During the 70's, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis (Stax, Goldwax, AGP, etc.) all declined as producers of great soul music.

LA & NY seemed to hold there own whereas Philly was on the upturn.

.......... why was this ...

Motown quit Detroit but lots of the creative people (producers, arrangers, singers, musicians) remained in the city.

 Chicago (after Brunswick's payola problems) went into major decline & guys moved out to other cities (Atlanta, etc.). Chess had already declined.

Memphis had a burst of creativity from Hi, but Stax went under with financial woes & Goldwax just faded away.

In an interview Chicago based Floyd Smith gave in 71, he said they always worked 'formally' in Chicago soul circles, no improv in the studio as Stax & Motown did. Guess this didn't help their creative juices at all & guys again moved away (didn't Floyd Smith relocate to Nashville or somewhere similar ??) 

Views on the decline in soul terms of these cities musical output is much welcomed !!

 

As a Loleatta Holloway fan as I am, I knows that her husband and manager Floyd Smith was one of the first artists to sign with Salsoul Records where also appears Loleatta under the Norman Harri's Gold Mind subsidiary. I heard a Salsoul label track by Floyd Smith on youtube many time ago, an instrumental piece that sounds to me very similar to Love Unlimited Orchestra.

About the topic, for the different "stories" I have read, many authors coincide explaining that after Otis Redding's dead (there's not a clear relation cause - effect,…??), the word "soul" sounds "démodé", and "old" to the general audience. That jointly with the diverse innovations (fusion, funk, pro to-disco, uptown soul more and more symphonic done in NY, Chicago and Philly),  the interest by the artists to "capture" the new sounds (from BB King to Don Covay passing trough Betty Swan comin' to record at Sigma Sound Studios) can be some "explanation"… anyway, Carl Davis in Chicago, Bell-Gamble-Huff in Philly, Cassey-Finch in Miami, LeBaron Taylor and some Philly regulars in NY keep the soul idiom in the 70's despite the success of disco and pop - smooth soul. (That is the humble opinion by a soul lover from the 60's to the first 80's).

Edited April 6, 20196 yr by josep manuel concernau robles

2 hours ago, josep manuel concernau robles said:

 I heard a Salsoul label track by Floyd Smith on youtube many time ago, an instrumental piece that sounds to me very similar to Love Unlimited Orchestra.

 

This one .....

 

5 minutes ago, the yank said:

This one .....

 

Thanks!

It's possible this one… I recall it very bad… at the moment I heard it for the first time reminded me in Love Ultd. Orh. or possibly for the vocals on Barry White (or because the title "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love" by Barry White…?). The fact is that I recall it as an "instrumental" but I can be totally wrong.

You are correct about the instrumental version which is on the B side of the 45 and the 12". I didn't see the instrumental on you tube

so just posted the vocal version.