Roburt

If you're down in the dumps over the status of your 45, buy this ........

I can't see why coz it was always easy to pick up copies (especially UK President copies). As her earlier Pres 45's were UK pop hits they will have pressed up many many copies in the UK ... PLUS ... her UK success would have encouraged US Kent to press up lots & promote this 45 back home. She wasn't well loved in US soul circles as her UK success went straight to her head & she became a bit of a diva .... BUT ... I'm sure Kent would still have got behind this 45 ... maybe Ady has an insiders view (from old US paperwork) on what US Kent did with regard to her releases.

Pat Lewis has posted on Facebook that Mack Rice has been hospitalised & prayers are needed.............. I do hope he recovers but at the mo it's not looking too good. Mack is 82 yrs old ....

John, CHEERS. The Esquire / Mojo rivalry comes from discussions I had years ago with an old Esquire goer. I was naming names of acts I saw @ the Mojo and he kept saying ... Saw em too, we got a coach up to go to Madcaster & see em at the Wheel ... When I asked why, he said they wouldn't set foot in the Mojo !! A police raid on the Esquire ...............

Got two of my Mojo membership cards somewhere (laminated in the past to preserve them .... then I put em 'somewhere safe' & can't find em now) ....anyway this was just posted up (hours back) on Facebook (see bottom left: the 1966 card) .............

In no way does this back up my claim ... BUT ... I just like this clip ..... Billy Prince performing in Europe a week ago ........

Lots of Platters mid to late 60's cuts were originally indie Detroit soul tracks ... the vocals had been removed, new lyrics written, the musical track sent to NY and Sonny Turner (with studio based backing singers) asked to sing the new lyrics over the original backing track. Have no idea if this tune is one that received such a treatment BUT GUESS IT WAS.

Very good graphics: if the site & it's service are of similar standard, you'll do well.

I have no personal view on this & can't say if there is a jot of truth in it .... BUT .... Joe Tex was always VERY VERY bitter about James Brown's reputation for having a great stage act ... the dancing, the 'fake collapse', the cape, the fighting his aides & return to continue his show .... Joe always claimed that most of that performance had simply been filched by James from Joe's stage act .... MIND YOU ... James could certainly DANCE !!!

John M , Stringers always claimed he got his records when in London ... BUT ... then Stringers was always the 'BIG I AM', he was the main man & it was all his own doing (in his opinion) ... so I do not dispute Mick Ward's involvement. Though I didn't know Mick at all back in those days (I knew him well in the 80's when he did a similar thing, supplying RIchard S & other top scene DJ's). I was just a punter in 66/67 (A young one too & from Dony not Sheffield itself), so I knew what I knew BUT only have my own perspective on the Sheffield soul scene back then. There was a 2nd big club in Sheffield; The Esquire (housed in the place that became the Leadmill, close to Sheffield Midland Stn). The guys who went to the Esquire, hated the Mojo. In fact, rather than see an act in Sheffield that had only been booked by the MOJO, they would go to the Wheel to see them perform. I have no idea why they hated the Mojo so much but they did !! In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the Esquire crowd were the 1st Sth Yorks folk to become Wheel regulars (but I could be wrong here). The Esquire was more of a blues / R&B club and faded away when the soul acts took over (though I don't know when it actually closed but I THINK it was before the Mojo). ANOTHER COUPLE OF RELATED BITS ...... was out at a Dony soul do last night and was told that there is a big soul night on there next Saturday ... lots of the old Mojo crowd have been invited & it's rumoured that Stringfellow himself may attend.... unfortunately I'll be @ a big do in Worksop, so can't attend.

I'm no Detroit expert, (too much great soul music made elsewhere for me to focus in on Motortown stuff) BUT from speakin to people on the Detroit club scene .... they always say that the only act to come close to the Tempts (& it was no accident that other groups made records about 'The Temptation walk') was ...... ....... .. ... ... ... .... ..... ...... THE PRECISIONS. Perhaps one of the Detroit experts on here could comment on this info .... is this what you understand from takin' to folk on the scene in the city ??

The main man for teaching soul act stage routines was Vegas based (in later life) Cholly Atkins (half of Coles & Atkins) ........... ... see here ... https://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/23/local/me-atkins23 Cholly was the guy who Motown hired in the 60's .... to teach all their acts .... BUT ... he wouldn't have anything to do with the Contours (he called them idiots, coz all they did was fool about & mess up his routines) ... after Motown, he went freelance & took on the O'Jays (& more) .... all the acts loved him & gave him gold records + back stage access to ANY shows in any Vegas casino / concert hall. He was a really humble man & made me SO WELCOME when I would visit him. He had a den full of memorabilia from so many acts & I'd ask him about working with each. He had so many items that one day he just picked up a hand full of laminated backstage passes & said .. YOU CAN HAVE THESE ..... I almost broke into tears & just took 1 Temptations backstage pass.

Little Queen Street, Hull .... home in the mid to late 60's of The Gondola (Hull's top mod / soul club on a night + coffee bar by day) .... This door used to be the entrance to the club, Chris Farlowe passed thru here when he played live @ the place ....

The current version of the Volumes were over in the UK to perform a few years back (March 2009). I wrote their bio for the Weekender web site .... AND ... got to spend hours with the guys over that weekend. All great fellas & very interesting to chat with. For a brief period, they also recorded under the name of the Magnetics, that story is really fascinating .... wrote it up & it went in a UK soul mag (Manifesto I think) .... talk about being in the right place at the write time (me that is).

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

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.

There was also a famous (American) football player & wrestler in the 40's / 50's who used the name (nickname) Baby Ray ...

Bet he got his RSG ticket direct from Stringers @ a Mojo session .... great days !!

RE: Otis Williams - Ain't Gonna Walk Your Dog No More OKeh ........... ........that Okeh 45 is OK but not as good as Otis Williams "Take Me Back" ....

All I know is that the CapCity 45 from Baby Ray was an in-house production; DC thru & thu ...so that would make Baby Ray a local resident at that time (spring / summer 1970 ?).

Yep it was Mick Walters, though I don't really remember him from those days (67). But when I lived in Worksop, I got to know him well & he always claimed to have been a Mojo regular !!

For fans of Dony's Horse & Groom soul sessions (that don't already know this fact) .... the Excel Bown was right next door to the H&G ... don't know what's in the building now (the bowling alley / disco occupied the entire 1st floor above all the shops at ground level).

Ady, you're too busy to be on here at present ..... though ..... can you check out the most recent posts on the King Mojo Club 67 thread !!!

I'm so pleased that this thread has brought folk out who were around & involved back in 67, it was a GREAT TIME to be on the Yorks soul scene ... Al Turner (along with Al Chappel) were close friends (but I mixed Turner up with Taylor in my initial post) ... .. the Viking pub, ain't that where they had all the fake acts on, I seem to remember a lot of problems when a fake Carla Thomas appeared there (groups they could just about get away with BUT fake solo acts were taking the biscuit) ... St Leger Bar ... in the Danum Hotel, centre of Dony ... our usual watering-hole for many years (draft Double Diamond please) .... Top Rank on a Tuesday, to see how many new Mojo 45's the DJ had managed to get his hands on & just who could do the latest dance steps ... Excel Bowl, I spent the summer of 66 in there, the discotheque room with a jukebox as DJ ... I wanna play 'Sugar for honey's lunch, what the hell is that records real name, Oh it's a 4 Tops record is it ... we all used to park our scooters out front of the Excel & wander off onto the Town Fields if it was a slow sunny day ... ... RE: a possible Mojo sounds CD .... I'm sure that could be a 'go-er', I'll speak with Ady ... WHEN he's not 2 weeks behind with Cleggy Weekender arrangements as he is now !!! Thanks to everyone for joining in !!!

Well Buddy Bailey's real name was John .... if he had a middle name ... say Jerome (guessing here) .... that would make him J J Bailey OR Jay Jay Bailey .... .... a guy trying for a new image (coz he was known for stuff that was 10 years old), could easily have gone for a slight name change .. OR ... as Buddy, he could still have been signed to a deal elsewhere. Do we know if Tina #900 came before or after Tina #503 ??