Roburt

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 !!

Seems like it might have been mainly the type of records that aren't of interest to us here ......... BUT this NY outfit went on to have it's own label & to press stuff up for foreign markets (into the late 70's at least ) ................

Came across this interesting piece from 1967 about EMI setting up in the US with a (NY based) firm that would distribute all the records sent by EMI to the US from 16 different countries that the company pressed records up in .............. .... anyone know much about the US outfit involved OR how many records were involved (100's, 1000's ??? & what period did this arrangement go on till ?) ....... ......... is there a track record (sorry !?!?!) for loads of EMI 45's from the likes of Argentina, Finland, Greece, India, Norway & Turkey turning up @ US record fairs ?? ...ALSO ... Herb Williams was leaving Capitol to join Peters Int. THAT wasn't THE Herb Williams was it ??

Robb, perhaps this was the studio the Del-Phis cut at ......... In 1950, Fred Wolf opened radio station WDOK at 1515 Euclid Ave (the Loew's State Theater building) and hired a young Navy veteran, Ken Hamann, as his engineer for both the radio and the recording studios. Hamann became chief engineer of Cleveland Recording in 1956 and over the next decade he helped build the studio into a state-of-the-art recording and mastering facility. Here many regional and national hit records were produced (the Outsiders' "Time Won't Let Me", the Human Beinz "Nobody But Me" & other successful stuff including tracks by Grand Funk Railroad). The other top local studio was Agency Recording, which was above the Agora Ballroom. Lots of top acts were recorded by Agency when they played lived gigs @ the Agora, these sessions being released many times on vinyl. But that studio wasn't above the Agora until 1967.

I think the O'Jays & their road musicians were based in / around LA until late 66 .... Lou Ragland makes mention of them returning to Cleveland around 66 / 67(?) from LA. They were broke & unhappy and hadn't had much chart success so good paying gigs were drying up. We love their Minit 45 (written by Clevelander Larry Hancock) but it didn't do much sales wise in the US (was this cut in Detroit ?). Tom Li Puma (who the group worked with) was originally from Cleveland. The group returned to winning ways with "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow" in Dec 67. There's a famous literary Charles DeBose who originated in Akron, Ohio. No idea if that's the same guy as the one who worked with the Symphonics though. I always thought the Symphonics were from Chicago.

Just got off the phone again with Lou, another enjoyable 90 minutes speakin' with him. He really does have a great memory, I ask, he ponders & then you get the info right back. Loads more fascinating facts have been unearthed. Lou went on the road (in his Cleveland days) in a major way on 4 different occasions. His recall of exact dates is not brilliant but everything else he remembers. The 1st time he went off was around 1964. He was an item with Kim Tolliver at the time & her guitar player / band leader. She had other singers in tow & so their show was billed 'The Kim Tolliver Revue. Top of the bill on the package was (CM &) the Impressions. The next time he went on tour was with Terry Knight, right after Terry had a hit record out. They played the 'white club 'circuit & Lou got to play the Bitter End & Peppermint Lounge in New York. Then came a long spell (after his short period as lead singer with Billy Ward & Dominoes) with the O'Jays and that road job lasted about 2 years. Lou fronted Hot Chocolate from 70 to 73 and they undertook an extensive tour (Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida). That was the spell when the group came up with "Since You Said You'd Be Mine" & when they sold their name and became Seven Miles High. When Lou was with the O'Jays, they weren't doing that well (having returned from LA nearly broke). They played the 'black club' circuit so never made top dollar then. Lou knew they needed more publicity to generate more gigs (as the group's records weren't really selling that well --the George Kerr spell about 68).So Lou prepared a 22 page booklet as publicity for the group. As well as sending copies out to get bookings, they sold copies to the public at gigs & made a few extra $$. Below is a screen grab of the front cover of that publicity booklet .....

Not the era you two are talking about .... but a piccy of the Musicor group's lead singer Sonny Turner. He's dancing with our lass @ the big soul show we staged in Vegas back in 1998 .... he broke into "With This Ring" & it's such a fave of Mrs Smith's that she had to get up to dance with him ....

I LUUVVVV me some STAAXXXXX !!

RE: The strangest Uptown release is the Shotgun Express 45, I think that might be their only non-US artist. What did yanks make of this Tower LP then ....

I guess Chuck had been 'Slippin' Around' (or was that Art Freeman ?).

Not sure as I ain't got that one .... BUT the BBC did source a whole bunch of the tracks to form these LP's from Motown. I'm after the VA LP that contains a few (otherwise) unissued Gwen Owens 'Motown' tracks cut around 1973. ALSO the Rudy Love LP 'The Right Feeling' (though I have all those cuts electronically -- sent to me by Rudy). Again the Rudy Love cuts didn't escape anywhere else in the world (these were cut in Muscle Shoals but after 'Motown South' shut down).

Another cautionary tale from life on the road .... again in Detroit ............ CHUCK JACKSON the victim .........

Robb, I bet Robey & his female partner (who ran Buffalo Booking) got some of those Detroit based artists work on their 'southern venue circuit' AND if they did, Buffalo would definitely have taken their cut of the fees. Buffalo kept a whole string of clubs / venues (across 6/7 southern states) supplied with live acts on a constant basis ........ so I see no reason why they didn't include those Detroit artists in that work. The juke-boxes in those same venues was always stocked with new Duke / Peacock / Sureshot 45's and if one of those 45's became a popular spin, then the bar / club would be asking about a visit from the artist themselves.

I'm getting ready to write up a full article on Lou, so there will not be much appearing on this thread for a while .... .. HOWEVER .... I'll be speakin at length with Lou again on Tuesday afternoon (morning his time) and so if anyone wants me to ask him a specific question about anything from his long career, post it up here. I'll then prepare a list of them (should there be any response) and ask him. To keep things tickin over, thought I'd post up a street pic of 1966 E 55th St, Cleveland, the site of the Way Out Records studio .......... a railway line ran behind the studio, so I asked Lou if the noise of trains ever interfered with a recording session. He said that the recording sessions were held at night and trains didn't seem to run on that line at night ...............

Jumping back to the 1st post of this thread & the riot at the Hollywood Palladium .... here's another report on it (from a mag published a few weeks later) ....

Do you want any articles for the site Dave ??

Those BBC Radioplay LP's are great (the soul ones at least) AND hard to find these days .,..

That's not NJ (Normal Jazz) it's MJ (Modern Jazz) ..... we'll have to split the rooms this stuff is played in; a NJ Room & a MJ Room (sorry I'm gettin mixed up with soul).

The 'white' Mad Lads (Bally) were still going strong & playing gigs in Milwaukee (their home town ?) in 1966 ......

BTW, it was also included on this 1978 US Motown Sampler LP, so they must have been pushing the cut a bit .......

Some songs included on the Major's Motown LP (not the Chicago recorded stuff) were done under the supervision of Kent Washburn in LA. The backing tracks for those cuts were originally recorded with Jamal Trice (?) singing lead but his romance with Gwen ended (& thus so did his Motown career). So the finished backing tracks were just recycled & used with Major (just about sums up Motown's commitment to that album). "I Never Thought" formed the A side of the Major's only UK Motown 45, it's a track I used to play at MS nights (when I DJ'ed).

Robb might already have mentioned this, but as well as the Stax / Volt Mad Lads, there was a white group in the late 50's who cut for Bally Records in Chicago.

Robb, I know it seems strange but there was a lot of interplay between the music folk in Detroit & Cleveland (plus the cities are less than 175 miles apart). Lots of Cleveland soul music biz guys would go to Detroit a lot (from the mid 60's onwards) to try to learn the Motown-secret. Choker Campbell had come to Detroit from the Ohio / Cleveland area. Mike Terry ran recording sessions in Cleveland (for Way Out) and Beans Bowles would also visit the Way Out guys. So lots of interchange going on BUT I also think it's strange coz Cleveland didn't really have good studios back then.

I made mention of Charles' 103rd St Band days AS THAT IS what he was / is famous for in the music world. In that guise, he enjoyed many hits and toured / played gigs extensively (Mary Love was even the bands support act for some time on shows they did around California area. NS folk may JUST be interested in part of his career but you have to go with the facts not your personnel preferences. AND like Robb, I have an interest in his whole life and certainly in the 'when & why' of how he broke into the music biz. PLUS the Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band made some great music (though James Gadson was far from happy with the way he got treated during that period by Charles). A Watts 103rd St album that may illustrate the impact the band had; note the country of origin of this release ............

There's a new book available (Kindle version on US & UK Amazon: actual book also for US customers) from Charles Wright -- ............ 'Up From Where We've Come'. Charles was of course leader of the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band of "Express Yourself", "Spreadin Honey", "Loveland" fame ..... ..... but don't get your hopes up .......... it only deals with his early life before he got into music. Maybe there's a further volume in development that will deal with his musical career, but at present that's not on offer.