scotchmartin

Some of you may have heard that the musician and songwriter, Bill Bush, died this week after falling at his home. He was 70. Bill recorded 'Velvet Touch / I'm Waiting' on Ronn in the mid 60s and played with the Fabulous Carousels, a.k.a Little Johnny Clark, prior to forming his own combo. I'd known Bill for exactly a decade this year since I traced him through a contact at the local newspaper. I brought his band over to the Glasgow Jazz Festival in 2005 and two years later I visited him at his home in Shreveport, Louisiana, meeting Stan Lewis, BB Davis, Eddy Giles and many other great characters from that era. Anyone who met Bill in Glasgow back in 2005, or at Crossfire allnighter in April 2013, will remember him as a warm and funny bloke, and very, very talented despite never 'making it' big nationally. He played on the same bill as people such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Bobby Bland, to name a few of the stars who crossed his path in a successful performing career of 50 years+. He was still playing live the week before he died. Although he was not able to perform / do a PA at Crossfire, he did appear onstage and thanked everyone for their support just before Sean Chapman played his Ronn single to a packed dancefloor. That meant a great deal to him. When he was in the UK last year I tried once again to explain the appeal of his dance track but mentioned that it wasn't like Motown and was a different kind of sound, I asked him what the influence was for it given that 'northern soul' was nowhere on his radar, where had the inspiration come from for that driving beat and soulful delivery, asking him: "What was it supposed to be?" His reply, "It was supposed to be the b-side". So we're still no wiser. What started for me as a desperate search for an impossible 7" led to friendship and genuine affection, he was a great guy and I'm very lucky to have called him 'friend'. Thank you to Keith Money for spinning Ronn 17 at the 100 Club back in the early 2000s, without whom none of this would have happened. I remember saying to my other half at the time, "I have to get that record". http://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/local/2014/10/01/bush-former-councilman-dies-fall/16549359/ added by site link to interview/feature http://www.newuntouchables.com/nutsmag/masters-the-fabulous-carousels-interview/ scan from an earlier forum post by Martin

Uncle Stan, the Hip Hit Record Man © Martin Gavin 2006 & 2011 I'm excited: I'm about to meet Stan Lewis. Uncle Stan 'The Hip Hit Record Man' as bluesman Lightin' Hopkins called him on record, is partly responsible for a very large chunk of the back catalogue of soul and blues to come out of America during the 60s, 70s and 80s. He is, quite simply, one of the most significant figures in the history of blues, R&B, and even Northern Soul, but receives little recognition compared to Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegan, Berry Gordy or Lewis's old friends, Phil and Leonard Chess. Funny how history picks its heroes. He formed Jewel Records in 1963 in Shreveport Louisiana, his hometown. The label was named after a chain of grocery stores in Chicago that he saw from the passenger seat of Leonard Chess' Cadillac. These are the Jewel supermarkets featured in the famous shopping-mall car-chase in the film, The Blues Brothers. In the 1960s heyday he had 120 staff including 12 promotion men on the road and his own printing shop. Maybe not Motown, or Chess, but they do things differently in the South: more relaxed. The interview has been set up by my friend, Bill Bush, writer and performer of the Northern Soul rarity, 'I'm Waiting'. The location is Lee's Lounge, a blues and live music venue on East King's Highway, Shreveport, Louisiana. I would later find out that it's now the only club in town with regular live music, crazy when you remember this where the famed Louisiana Hayride was based just about two miles from where I'm at now, in the grand Civic Hall, a venue where Elvis cut his teeth as a live performer. Lee's is a busy, old style 'tavern' a bit like Huggy's place in Starsky and Hutch and the blues jam that's taking place is just what you want: genuine blues players including Bill Bush and an appreciative audience of all ages set in a dark, smokey (no smoking ban at the time) atmosphere that adds to the buzz. As soon as he walks in I know it's him. The only photo I've seen is at least 50 years old of Stan with his ex-wife, Paula (of the label) standing with Elvis, who looks about 16. Now he wears a white suit, shoulder length white hair expertly styled and alligator shoes, who else could it be. I later find out that a serious car accident in 2002 left Lewis with arthritis and some other associated injuries but despite the fact that many details about his career have faded with time, he is a sharp dressed character in his late 70s and every inch the Southern gentleman that his appearance suggests. He also turns out to be a rich vein of information and stories about the golden age of R&B. After the introductions we take a table in the back of the club and I asked Stan how he got started, which takes him back much further than I expected to the Great Depression and a nine year-old entrepreneur with a news stand. "I got a corner news stand and sold magazines, we also had a veterinary next door and I cleaned the dog pens, during the depression things were tough and money was scarce," he says. "I sold papers until I was 13 and in the morning and afternoon and business took off. I remember the extra edition coming out when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and after that there was an extra edition almost every day, which suited me." Lewis got more and more rounds delivering newspapers and had accumulated $2500 when he got married at aged 17. His next step up was slot machines and aged 18 he bought five 10/50 Wurlitzer jukeboxes, "The kind you see in all the movies," and five pinball machines. It was around this time that he started to look for a reliable source of blues records because his main location was Bossier City, a blues (Black) area. "It was big bands, swing and jive that was in demand," he says. "I had to go to HL Green, Woolworths, etc. to find the records to put on the jukeboxes." It was on one buying trip that Stan happened upon one of his most significant breaks. "In 1948 I visited J&M Record store to pick up the latest blues records and the shop happened to be for sale, for exactly $2500, the amount of money that I had saved. I'd been married just under a year and I told them that I'd pay them $1800 and that I wanted to but some inventory - they agreed." It was located at 728 Texas Street in Shreveport and his wife originally worked in the store while Stan worked other jobs to make ends meet. Eventually, they did well enough with the records so they could buy a slightly larger store next door and expand the business. "I got rid of the jukeboxes because I didn't want to be in competition to the jukebox operators as I was also selling them by this time in East Texas, Arkansas, Alabama and even Oklahoma and had a big jukebox clientele. I was the first person to give the operators a 10% discount on the records that they bought, which they weren't used to getting and I really built up a very substantial business selling jukeboxes and records to go into them." Stan speaks in a low, calm Southern accent like a smoother Bob Dylan, it's a pleasure to listen to, although hard to make out clearly at times. "One day, Leonard Chess pulls up outside my place, this would have been mid 50s, and he was sharing the trip through the southern states with a guy called Lee Agulnick. Leonard was pushing a record by Muddy Waters and Lee was plugging a record called 'Long Gone'. Leonard would come through Shreveport about every three months when he had a new release out. Well, I had a contract at that time on Sonny Boy Williamson, which I gave to Leonard and that would prove very good for both of them of course. Leonard covered the South and Phil the North, he took Waxy Maxy up in Washington and Joe in New York. "Phil stayed in the background but he was pretty sharp, and then Marshall came along. Later on Leonard put in some real good people around him, that was his skill, people like Dick La Palm. Dick was Nat Cole's manager and set up Argo for Leonard, the jazz label." It was common for record pluggers to drive around and distribute their records personally, bearing in mind that Chess was little more than a well established 'start-up' business in the late 40s trading as Aristocratic Records, eventually becoming Chess around 1950. As well as the varied back catalogues of Jewel, Ronn and Paula, the three labels that Stan Lewis set up in the 60s, he produced or co-produced many tracks around this time he tells me, including Lowell Fulsom's blues standard, Reconsider Baby, and sat in on recordings by Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Etta James and the Moonglows, to name a few. Lewis was gradually gaining status and his position as one of the most important distributors in the South was cemented when 1949 he was invited to Chicago as a guest of the Chess brothers, staying at Leonard's Chi-Town home. "He was 12 years older than me and always called me kid," says Lewis. "We got real close and the records that I was distributing for Leonard saved my business in the early fifties, it was tough. John Lee Hooker's Crawling King Snake, I'm In the Mood Hobo Blues, Charles Brown's Trouble Blues got real hot here and Leonard would introduce me to people, mention my name. Leonard was a diamond in the rough, a very special person." Although never rich in the Berry Gordy sense of the word, Stan, a key Motown distributor in the South, was able to loan the label 'some cash' when Gordy wanted re-sign Stevie Wonder in the late 60s. He's still bitter about losing 60,000 units of stock in Stax, which he received in the late 60s after selling up his own company. A two year cooling off period before resale meant that Stax went under before Stan could sell and he lost around $2.4 million by his calculations, and his masters. He blames his lawyers for not seeing it coming, although ironically they also had Stax stock. He also makes reference to a British business man, publisher and music collector well known on the UK soul scene of the 70s who never paid him for masters, but best not to get into that one - bit too close to home. Lewis is still grateful for favours he received from industry giants like Chess and Gordy back in the day. "Guys like Bob Shad, who later went to Mercury, he had Lightnin' Hopkins and Peppermint Harris, who I released on Jewel in the 1960s with some great stuff. Jo Bihari of Kent and Modern was also very good to me, I remember that Ike Turner was riding with him on the second trip through here and then he was always with him and would give me samples and started selling direct to me, I got real close to these guys, Ike was crazy, but he lived, ate and slept music. "In the early 60s Leonard Chess asked me to come up to this convention in Chicago and he would take me along and put his arm round me and say, 'This is my man Stan, take care of him,' and I tell you, that opened doors. Great days, I was very lucky you know, I remember going to Sun, Stax, Hi, Fame, all these places and sitting in on sessions. I saw the Rolling Stones record their sessions at Chess in Chicago at 21/22 South Michigan, and Muddy Waters, the Moonglows, Etta James, on yeah, I saw them all right there in the booth. I love the doo-wop sound personally, The Moonglows and The Clovers were great." It was the late 50s and Lewis was by now selling records mail order. A young Bob Dylan was a customer and Lewis remembers marvelling at how "this kid" could afford a long distance telephone call. He would later receive a signed biography from Dylan with reference to this period and to thje importance of Stan's shop. "I had started to buy time, about 15 minutes of airtime, on KWKH in the afternoon and these guys were real happy to get their records played because stations didn't play what they called race records at that time in the 50s. Because I bought the time I could play what I wanted to play," he chuckles. "In those days you couldn't own more than seven radio stations, so it was a very independent industry with great diversity, not like today." That may be true, but his choices didn't sit well with the good ole' boys of Shreveport and Lewis, a Roman Catholic, soon found himself on the wrong end of a pillow case, as it were. "It's a funny thing, I got the first Fats Domino records and Jimmy Reed on the show, that was the first time Jimmy Reed was played on a white station, Baby What You Want Me To Do. After that The Klan put posters on my door and I was scared to death I'll be honest, I've never told that to anyone before, but these people were very prejudiced and very violent. You see, I was raised in a black neighbourhood, I knew the people - we had black neighbours and I'd play with the kids and we got along very good with the black people in town, it wasn't as bad as people think." The Klansmen didn't stop him, and soon Lewis was buying airspace on KWKH and KAAY in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was a more powerful station, and WLAC in Nashville. Fortune smiled on Stan and his family during the 1950s with the emergence of blues and R&B as a mainstream, crossover music form his mail order and shop sales business flourished. He guided sessions for Dale Hawkins' hit, Susie Q, and Lowell Fulsom's Reconsider Baby in Dallas in 1963, already a music business veteran although just in his early 30s, he formed his own label with Bobby Charles as his first artist, cutting Everybody's Laughing in late 1963. "Bobby Charles was a great writer," says Lewis. "I gave him to Leonard (Chess) after that and wrote some great material for Fats Domino. "I would go along to sessions, although I didn't really know much about the engineering side of things I learned a lot from Jo Bihari and the engineers of course, you can't run the whole show yourself you need good people around you. A lot of people don't admit that but I some good engineers and recorded at some great studios, Universal, Chess. Being in the retail business you get a feel for the music and soon you get to love it. "My mail order business was totally R&B but I was selling white music too; country too and had Arista, 20th Century, United Artists, Cameo Parkway as a distributor. They put out everything from jazz to R&B." By 1963 Lewis had the record store, a mail order business and his own Jewel label. The legendary Jewel Records was followed by subsidiaries Paula (after his wife at the time Pauline) and Ronn (after his brother, who Lewis credits as his 'right arm'). I asked Stan why he had Ronn and Jewel, both hosting R&B stars (Paula was his pop label). "Well, the thing then was payola, if you had too many records on the same label you got accused of payola, bribing the DJs. That was why Leonard had Checker, Argo, etc. and Atlantic had Atco, Modern had Kent, etc. I was never involved in that type of thing. "The record industry was so interesting, exciting there was something happening every minute, I mean every minute 24/7, you'd get the records in, run them down to the radio stations then the show and the mail order. I remember one night I was at Leonard's house and at 2am the phone rang. It was the Cook County jail asking if he could come and bail XXXXXX (a certain very famous female R&B star) out of jail, which he did." "When Atlantic came along I got their first blues record to distribute. I also had the first Stax release and I got the first Motown release. I became the biggest distributor in the South. John Richbourg was also doing well with Ernie's record shop who took airplay as well, he was involved with Joe Simon and played him to death on the show. I came on after him and played at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, that was how the music was made up and we would get a lot of free records, that's how the game worked." Stan's company was in many respects pioneering, cutting innovative business deals that would be copied across the music business in the late 60s and 70s. He approached Bob Smith at KCIJ (later to become the fabled Wolf Man Jack), to negotiate a PI deal, which he explains meant Payment Per Inquiry. For every call that Stan received from a potential customer, Smith got a cut. The radio station was based in Del Rio Texas but the transmitter was a massive 250,000W unit in Mexico. "It was probably the biggest transmitter in the world," he says. "I started to get orders from Europe, in fact everywhere bar the Soviet countries, really everywhere else. Through strong sales and a reputation for business Lewis became sub distributor for many of the major labels such as RCA and Decca. "We were shipping records worldwide eventually, it got real big." Lewis was given 10% of the Chess pressing plant in Chicago when the company moved to 2120 South Michigan Avenue. When they opened another plant in Nashville he got 10% of that one just for being great at what he did, that was the way it worked. He had helped the Chess bothers get established in the south, he had given them Sonny Boy Williamson, he was in. Motown also pressed at the Nashville plant and most of the other major labels of the 60s. Through his contacts, basically the founding fathers of modern popular music, he travelled the length and breadth of the USA, often as a companion of Leonard Chess. "Leonard had a big station in Chicago and E. Rodney Jones was a key figure there, a DJ. Then he moved to Baton Rouge, he was great and I could call him and say, 'Man I need some help with this,' and he'd play it for me. The other guy was BB Davis at KOKA who would sometimes pay a track four, five times in a row if he liked it." The standout for me thing about talking to Lewis face-to-face were the stories behind some of the tracks that I've loved for years. One of these concerns Toussaint McCall's stunning Southern Soul ballad, Nothing Takes the Place of you. The story about McCall's visit to Shreveport was confirmed to me later in the week by BB Davis, the DJ that Lewis refers to above. "I remember one night in the record store I was closing up and this guy knocked on the window," says Lewis. "Well, this good looking negro fella was waving a record at me, it was an acetate if you know what that is, like a metal master. Anyway, I was tired and I knew my wife was expecting me home so I told him I was closed but he wouldn't go away so eventually I let him is just to get rid of him really and played the track. Now I don't know if it was 'cause I was tired or what but it didn't do anything for me, he made me play it again but I wasn't really interested, it was just a real simple little recording and I was used to cutting tracks at Muscle Shoals, Chess, Stax you know, really top end studios. Anyway I thanked him, and I think I must have said to him 'take it to BB at the station'. BB Davis was one of the first successful black DJs in Louisiana and he took up the story when I met him later that week. "Stan didn't dig the track," says Davis. "I was playing my show and it was near to quittin' time when this guy tapped on the window, cause the station had a window to the street in these days. I let him in cause he had a record with him and said I'd listen. Man, it was Nothing Takes the Place of You and I just melted, I thought it was heartbreaking man, and I played it at least six times, plugging it over and over again. "Almost straight away the phone started to ring, 'Who that, where can I get it man, does Stan have it?' They just kept callin'. Toussaint explained that the record was recorded in his living room at home, then he left and headed back home." Stan Lewis remembers what happened next: "My phone at the shop started to ring off the wall, the girl asked me if I've ever heard of the track that everyone was callin' about by Toussaint McCall, Nothing Takes The Place of You, luckily he'd left a business card and I grabbed my cheque book, a contract and took off on the highway to Munro after Toussaint. I caught him and singed him right there at the roadside and that was how the track was released as the third single on Ronn and became a hit." The prolific releases from the trio of labels during the 1960s made Stan successful. National and international hits by John Fred (Judy In Disguise was Stan's' biggest seller), blue-eyed soulsters, The Uniques (USA), and Northern Soul heroes, The Montclairs, plus the local blues and pop hits, meant that when Chess Records sold up in the late 60s Lewis was in a prime position to take on many of the artists after the company that took over Chess went bankrupt. "They knew me, guys like the Blind Boys, the Soul Stirrers, Ted Taylor, Fontella Bass, Lightnin' Hopkins, I took all these guys from Leonard. Artists were always in debt though, they always borrowed ahead of themselves. The late John Fred owed me $45,000 when he left the label, even after his hit and Little Johnny Taylor, who was very successful, owed about the same too, they were always living above their sales and that's still the same today I think." In 1966, Lewis started a gospel singles series (the 100 series) on Jewel, and followed that with the establishment of Ronn Records in 1967 (named after brother, Ron), as an outlet for R&B and jazz style recordings. He turned down offers from the majors to buy the labels in the 60s, something he regrets. Enigmatically, he also regrets selling eventually in 2000, mainly because of the subsequent resurgence of blues as a mainstream music form and the boost that CDs and downloading provided. "I felt that I could conquer the world in the 60s, I wasn't ready to retire because I was still on my way up. However, things changed in the 1970s - I stuck to the R&B but I really would have been better off selling." Lewis sold to a large .com but he states that it never came to anything and that Len Ficco has the label now, but he admits to being unsure what he's doing with it. Lewis is retired and after the accident is not as "frisky" as he used to be, in his words. However, right at the end of the interview he drops the news that he has unreleased masters of Lightnin' Hopkins, Ernie Johnson and some 'other things' in the can and would still like to get back into the business, taking advantage of the latest technology to go right back into the music business. Not everyone likes Stan. I've spoken to several well known characters over the years from that part of Louisiana, including Elvis's band members, who are less than keen on Lewis. You don't run a business like Lewis's without making enemies, but I have to admit that I found him charming, self effacing and very genuinely proud to have achieved what he has done over the years. When all things are taken into account, I reckon Uncle Stan 'The Hip Hit Record Man', founder of Jewel records, is a diamond geezer. ©Martin Gavin 2006 and 2011 Can catch the author Martin Dj-ing @ Friday Street in Blackfriars, Bell Street, Merchant City, Glasgow on Friday 25 March 9pm - 3am. .

White Men Can't Jump - The Turley Richards Story By Martin Gavin (Scotch Martin) "You have to ask yourself, have you felt pain?" says Turley Richards "Ask that about African American's back then and the answer was clear And me, I can tell you that the blues visited my heart and soul every single day of my life and still do because as a blind man I've never seen my children " Turley Richards has certainly known pain, and that comes through his music, but he s also positive, very funny, inspiring and committed to recording again after an absence of 25 years. ??'s made some serious money at points He's also drifted around the edge of major stardom all his life and with a new CD in the can he's bubbling over with enthusiasm for the music that first inspired him, but it's been a hard row to hoe After hearing his soul material I've become a huge fan in recent years and I spoke to him at the end of 2005 about his career and his remarkable life Richards was born in Charleston, West Virginia At school he was an unusually talented basketball player and could have pursued a career in sport had it not been for a childhood eye injury that would eventually lead to blindness in 1969 He now lives in Louisville and has two children, Adam, 28 and Amber, 25 "I love them with all my heart," he says "We have a tremendous relationship and I'm so very proud of them " Pride is an enduring characteristic of this very polite and genuine man, maybe partly because of his determination not to be labeled or marketed as a "blind" performer, or maybe just because he's proud of his very eclectic and substantial body of work over the last 40 years Despite having sold over 1.4 million records, with appearances on Top of the Pops (anyone got the footage?') and at the Royal Albert Hall, Richards failed to reach the heights of success that his good-looks and outstanding voice warranted. In a typical stroke of bad luck the hugely soulful I'm A Lonely Man, from the 1966 Columbia session was shunned by black radio stations that had been championing the track after Colombia released his photo to Billboard in a disastrous attempt to woo white stations Ironically, when Turley first started singing with three black friends and another white kid in the late 50s, he was taunted as a n****r lover and found it hard to get bookings Thankfully this type of bigotry has no place on the Northern Soul scene. Since Cleethorpes in the mid 70s the Columbia barnstormer, 'I Feel All Right' has been leading a charge to the dance floor and is finally in the Northern Soul big league where it belongs. Also making waves is the 1965 R&B dancer, I Need to Fall in Love, on 20th Century, recorded with an audience in the studio. But these two gems barely scratch the surface of a career covering folk, jazz and rock that, but for confusion about where he fitted in, should have taken him to the very top "I learned to sing in a little black church and even today black people love my singing," he says "Sure, they know that I don't sound black, but I sing black and as BB King said, the colour of soul is blue ' His first recording was for tri-state label Fraternity in 1959. "I had no idea what was going on," says Turley. "I was 17 and recording at King Studios, Cincinnati. The entire band recorded at the same time, live. There were no headphones and even if you messed up on the last bar everyone did it again. I dread to think what the stuff sounds like, I don't have any records today. I started singing R&B in Charleston with three black kids and two white fellas and we had a hard time for sure, from all camps. We did Drifters, Coasters and Midnighters material." In 1964 Turley packed up and moved to New York. "I guess I thought it was a waste of time trying to achieve anything in Charleston, and with my sight worsening I was very driven. I'd visited LA but things were slow so I moved to New York with $87, my guitar and my Mother's blessing. Man, it wasn't what I expected. "When I ran out of money I didn't know what to do, but I sure wasn't going home with my tail between my legs. In '64 I started playing in bars around Manhattan for food and pocket money supporting comedian Richard Prior. I'd sweet-talk the pretty girls and usually got lucky and they'd take me home, but I never lied. I'd say. Til sleep on the floor, the couch or in your bed but I can't make a commitment'. 1 lived with 13 different gals before the last one got me an audition and I was off and running. Probably the most influential figure in my early career was Norman Schwartz, he was the manager that actually got things started. Then Paul Tannen, my producer, took over and got deals with Columbia, Kapp and Warner Brothers. Beyond that, there were not many people in the business that made me feel comfortable with who they were." Tannen was the producer (PMT Productions) on the summer 1966 Columbia session that produced, I'm A Lonely Man, and I Feel All Right. Turley then revealed the amazing band that had been hired by Leroy Glover for the session. "I still had some sight then and when I walked into the studio most of the crew were black," he says. "I'd come from the beach and I don't think they were too impressed by my blonde hair, blue eyes and suntan when I arrived, but I won them over. Bernard Purdie was on drums, Chuck Rainey on bass, Cornell Dupree was the guitarist, piano was provided by Paul Griffin and backing vocalists were Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson." "NYC was very nice in the 60s, compared to the 70s and beyond," says Turley. "Being 6' 4" and 220 lbs. helped to keep me safe, but you didn't really have to worry too much. I saw lots of acts at the Apollo that never really made it and also Stevie Wonder, when he was just a kid." I mention to Turley that I could hear traces of Jackie Wilson in his vocal style. "Right on! I learned a lot of my vocal inflections from Wilson. I also like Clyde McFaddern, Chuck Jackson and Little Richard. I met Wilson Pickett at the Columbia studios and he was great too, but I didn't meet many other big soul acts face to face". Turley's favourite singers as a young man were Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, leading him to joke, "Maybe I should have chosen different musical heroes!" I asked if attitudes towards blindness have changed. "I think the better people understand it, the better they deal with it. I don't appear to be blind so it's very funny sometimes when I meet people for the first time. Someone on the phone actually said, 'You don't sound blind Turley'. My answer now after hearing this so often is, 'Up until now, you didn't sound stupid'." I revealed to Turley that his Columbia record, I Feel Alright, started getting played at soul discos in the UK about 1975, and asked about his circumstances at that time. "I recorded, I Feel All Right, at Columbia on 52nd Street along with three other tracks. I had no idea that anything was happening in Europe with the songs that came out of that session. The entire band was made up of great black side men. I do believe that all musicians can forget about the colour. When someone is really good, we don't give a damn what colour they are, but society wants to always make something out of it. The stuff I recorded for Kapp was awful, that was because they didn't get my scene." "When you guys in the UK were playing the track in 1975 I was in my third year of retirement," he says. "I was sick and tired of major labels wanting me to be like whatever singers were hot. They stole my R&B style from me and never let me go back to it. I was soulful, man they sank me with them. But I'm not bitter," he laughs, quite genuinely for someone who's been let down time and again by short sighted record label bosses. "The 20th Century deal was secured through the manager that I mentioned earlier, courtesy of number 13!" he adds. I wondered if Richards' love of soul had somehow held back his chances of commercial success, after all he's signed deals with nine major labels in his career including Atlantic, Epic and Kapp. "Yes and no," he says. "I wasn't really writing that much although I did write, I Need To Fall In Love. I think my problem was the fact that I could sing just about anything. I had an unusual five-octave range and could do everything. After I went blind, I was pushed into the folk scene but I don't think the labels had a clue what to do with me. At one time, they felt that I was a possible blind guy that they could sell as 'sexy'. That's when I quit for about four years." Career wise the 70s and 80s were a series of all-too-familiar brushes with stardom that didn't quite come off. According to Turley a six-album deal with Atlantic, brokered by Mick Fleetwood, fell through when Ahmet Ertegun took the decision not to proceed with the deal when sales of the first record were short of the target by just a few thousand albums. There's some really interesting background to this story but I don't fancy meeting Atlantic's lawyers across a US courtroom. I finish by asking him what the future holds. "I've just finished a new CD 'Back to My Roots' and I'm going to put some samples on my website. I'm always writing. I've written over 600 songs and one day, if someone records one of them and has a hit, I will be ready to give all the producers all the songs they can handle. I'm also a vocal coach and I produce some of the local bands or solo singers. If they are good enough, I will take advantage of what contacts I still have, but, unfortunately, I've not found that one act that I feel can get to the next level. But I'll keep trying, it's what I do." Just before closing Turley demonstrates his great wicked humour by explaining the meaning of his 1970s rock LP, Therfu which is regularly on ebay. Fill in the blanks, **therfu****'! Not all black music is soul. Similarly, in my opinion, not all soul music is black. The very essence of what I call Northern Soul is the lack of colour and the presence of soul, and Turley Richards has bucket loads of the stuff. Scotch Martin Originally published in issue 65 of Soulful Kinda Music Magazine http://www.turleyrichards.com/ Scotch Martin playlist Turley Richards -1 Feel All Right - Columbia Unknown -1 Can't Believe My Eyes - Acetate The Esquires - How Can It Be - Bunky Timmie Williams - Competition - Mala The Explosive Dynamics - A Whole Lot of Love - Lemco Bill Bush - I'm Waiting - Ronn Jackie Paine - No Puppy Love - Jet Stream Cookie Jackson - Suffer - Okeh Chuck Wells - The Love Knot - Goldleaf Unknown - Every Man Needs a Woman - Acetate

Karime Kendra - It's a Family Affair - Interview by Martin Gavin Karime Kendra has soul music running through her veins and is all set for 2009 to be the year when she hits the big time. The Los Angeles-born singer lives in Kensal Rise and MARTIN GAVIN found out about her soulful family and prolific recording career. Q. Why, and when, did you make the move from The USA to Brent? I became a resident in 1998. Before that I managed to spend time here because I was signed to Talkin' Loud records. I think the move was based on the fact that my late mother, who was a soul singer in the 60s, had a following here so I felt drawn and knew I had to stay once I got a taste of Brent life. Q. You've performed on seven albums over the past ten years with some singles thrown in too. You were also signed to Talkin' Loud records in the 90s .I have worked with Roni SizeÃÆ’­s Reprazent crew, Red Snapper, The Unsung Heroes, The Next Men, Shawn Lee, Trunk Funk out of Sweden, Carl Ryden for One Phat Diva, Yellow records with Alf Borgman, Outside on Dorado, Tim Land on Hospital records, The Killer Meters on Scenario Records and now on Breakin Bread.The Nigo album out of Japan and numerous songs have been released on compilations. I have been fortunate to work with fantastic people over the years. I have a bad habit of not keeping a list so I have to google myself sometimes. Q. What's your favourite part of Brent and why do you like it? My favourite part of Brent is Queens Park and Salusbury Road. I take my little girl to the park when the weather permits. We love the zoo and the cafe for mini-milks. The play areas are exceptional for the little ones with a wonderful paddling pool. Salusbury Road is cool because I love chai tea at Starbucks and Bakers and Spice for an extra special pastry or lunch. Its great. It almost feels like a village. Q. Your late Mother, Ty Karim, is a legend amongst Northern Soul fans in the UK for rare 45s released in the 1960s on a small independent record label owned by your father.You must be very satisfied that their work is now featured on a new compilation CD from Brents very own KENT Records? I always knew my mother was awesome as a performer but to know that other people felt the same is mind blowing. My dad wrote some fantastic tunes and it ÃÆ’­s wonderful to know that his work is still sought after 40 years. Having lost my mother prematurely in the 1980s and to have a body of work where I can hear her voice whenever I want is so special. To pass this music on to my daughter, also Ty, is incredible. Q. You recently performed some of your parents 'biggest hits' from the 60s to packed venues in London and the North of England. How does classic soul music from that era influence your contemporary style as a singer? I am influenced by my parents music because it's my legacy. The music from that era was all about the song. My dad has told me that if you don't have a song then you don't have a career, so I strive to write and co-write songs that are timeless. Performing their tunes recently has been an experience that I will never forget and will treasure. Look out for my own album next year. JANUARY 2009 THE BRENT MAGAZINE Martin Gavin 2008 "Up The Junction" (link below for details) http//caledoniasoul.co.uk info@caledoniasoul.co.uk Photos of Karime performing live at last years Cleethorpes weekender can be found via the gallery Published in the Brent Magazine Jan issue which also features a cd comp for the 'Complete Ty Karmin ' Cd

I've recently started broadcasting on 103.6fm in NW London on a Wednesday night from 10.00pm - 12midnight with the Vinyl Vault on Life FM. General soul, mod jazz, ska and other odds and ends is mixed with events news and occasional guests (6 June DJ Cello returns for more fierce ska and rocksteady). Also available on www.lifefm.org.uk - the show crashed online last week because too many people were trying to access it at the same time so the station is increasing bandwidth soon to help with this scenario. Hopefully all will be well this Wednesday night. If you do get a chance to listen I'd welcome feedback at the address below - it's not perfect yet but improving weekly I hope. Well done to everyone who's secured space for real soul music on the airwaves and thank you if you take the time to tune in. Best, Martin Gavin scotchmartin@lifefm.org.uk

One of the UK’s most popular soul music clubs is calling it a day this weekend after five years of bringing the country’s top northern soul DJs to Glasgow. Caledoniasoul, at the Woodside Social Club this Saturday night (22 July), has introduced a generation to the mysterious world of Northern Soul with intricate dance steps and impossibly rare vinyl from the 1960s and 70s. The mixed crowd of celebrities, pop stars and soul fanatics, regularly topped 200 over the years while maintaining an underground feel through minimal publicity. The venue’s notoriously sweaty atmosphere is almost as famous as the music and Saturday’s finale promises to be no exception. Co-promoter and resident DJ, Scotch Martin, says: “This has been a fantastic club with a really mixed crowd of soul fans and people who are just curious. The 1970s Northern Soul scene was massive, and the precursor to Rave culture, but it’s been written out of 70s history in favour of Abba and Punk. Cale’soul was our way of demonstrating that this great music, based on the Motown sound, will never lose its relevance, even 30 years on. Thanks to everyone who enjoyed Caledoniasoul over the years, and thanks to Caroline, Keith, Lenny and Cathy for making it all run smoothly.” The special guest DJ for the final night is London’s Ady Lupton, a Mod fashion icon. :-) Martin has moved to London. In Glasgow, Goodfoot, Friday Street and Divine (Art School) will continue to champion to sound of vintage soul in Glasgow. Ends “Keep the Faith” 1) For more information please contact Martin Gavin on 07887 633437 or info@caledoniasoul.co.uk 2) Admission is £5.00, no admission after 1.00am 3) Woodside is no smoking in line with legislation 4) Event runs from 9:00pm until 2.00am 5) Woodside Social Club is at 329 North Woodside Road, Glasgow (Kelvinbridge Subway station)