boba

Hi. Yesterday on my radio show I interviewed members of the South Side Chicago soul group the Antennas. Members of the Antennas sang in various gospel groups throughout the 50s. The Antennas formed in the Stateway Gardens homes at 35th and State Street; the group initially formed as the Antennas in 1960 when Billy McGregor, his two brothers, and Robert Bailey decided to form a secular, pop group to try to perform professionally. By 1962, the lineup had finalized to Robert Bailey, Jerry Royal, Billy McGregor, and George McGregor (Billy's brother, who was not related to the Detroit George McGregor, who is Billy's Cousin). In 1962, Billy Williams came to Stateway Gardens to audition artists to take with him to perform in a revue in Las Vegas. Billy took the Squires as well as Shirley Shelton (as an Etta James-styled solo artist) with him for a 3-month nightclub booking. In Las Vegas, Shirley ended up making friends with and joining the group. When they returned to Chicago, the Antennas went to different recording companies and endeded up signing with Don Clay's "Clay" record label. They released "Fuji-yama Mama" / "Be yourself" in late 1962. The A-side was a novelty record actually inspired by Robert Bailey's experience with a girlfriend he had while stationed in Japan during the Korean war. The record got some play in Chicago. The flip side was an excellent early soul track, led by Shirley, probably ahead of its time in sound. The Antennas then signed to Don Clay and Ric Williams' Boss record label. The label had previously recorded a group called the Squires and, owning the name, had the Antennas change their name to the Squires, with the idea that they would have a more fashionable stage look, with canes, top hats, etc. The group backed Perk Lee Moses (previously of the El Doradoes) on his solo record "The Docks" / "Peanut Butter", which was released on Boss and also picked up by USA records. At Boss records, Billy McGregor also wrote the track "One Dance" for Ric Lee, which was later recorded by the Creations and by the Classics. The group then moved to Constellation records and released the excellent double-sider "Drip drop" / "I'm in a need" in 1963. "Drip drop" had an excellent soul sound while "I'm in a need" had more of a throwback, Etta James-inspired doowop sound. Although both tracks received much radio play, the record was not distributed to stores and fans were unable to purchase it. Due to frustration over the record, their management, and their lack of the success, the group broke up. Throughout the '60s Billy McGregor tried to focus on songwriting for other artists but was generally unable to get tracks placed. In the late '60s, McGregor wrote a track for Don Clay called "Mrs. Shy" that was intended for Ruby Andrews. Clay liked McGregor's demo of the song better than Andrews' performance and had McGregor record the song himself. "Mr. Shy", released on the Flash label, became a big hit for McGregor in the Midwest. McGregor toured the Chitlin circuit based on the song. A followup on the Flash label, a cover of a Charlie Rich song "She's a yum yum", received little play. McGregor then began working as a writer for Sunny Sawyer's Palos label. McGregor released his excellent cut "We've been in love much too long" (including backing by original Squire Robert Bailey) on Palos, which received some radio play. His next release, "Thank your mother and father" and "We can come over with love" was a duet with Palos artist Doris Young, released on the USA label. It did not get much play. McGregor's final record, "It's my turn now", was an excellent ballad, also featuring backing by Robert Bailey. The record was McGregor's second biggest hit, receiving more radio play in the Midwest and getting McGregor more night club work. McGregor's brother George also released an excellent record "Temptation is hard to fight" (backed by the local girl group the Bronzettes) on the Twilight label, backed with a duet with his brother Billy. In the early 70s, McGregor did some writing for Bill Meeks' Alteen record label (writing a track for Robert Taylor and arranging records for Drake and the Ensolids) and performed in local Blues bands in the 80s and 90s. You can check out the interviews and any of my other interviews at: https://www.sittinginthepark.com/interviews.html thanks, Bob

walter is the guy wearing the kangol cap. he's also the lead in the admirations 'wait till i get to know you', one of the most classic chicago soul songs. cliff frazier is the guy on the right, he had bit parts in barbershop and more recently in the prison break tv show. it's funny, the guy i interviewed the week before, rex alexander of the auditions was also in barbershop, and previously lorenzo clemons of the mandells was also in barbershop.

carl davis was mainly a producer -- what is your favorite song he wrote?

you mean a cover of lorraine ellison track "i dig you baby"

Can ANYONE help me with this question? I have the 2 Unity records on lecam. John anderson told me they had ANOTHER 45 on ANOTHER local ft worth label that he used to have copies of but didn't remember what it was. I know there were a lot of groups called "unity" but not other ft. worth ones that I know of. Does anyone know what John was talking about. DOES ANYONE HAVE ONE THEY CAN SELL ME? Thanks.

it is the same guy

check it out:

is the group on cobra the same group? i haven't seen the cobra record but it's listed in the soul harmony singles book

thanks. Soulsalmon, if you have that mp3, please send it in the next couple of days as i'm waiting to mail that cd to freddy. thanks a lot.

is that true? wasn't there some other thread where someone said that the windy city was on WB first before innovation 2, wouldn't the quadraphonics be the same way?

bridges-eaton-knight

don't know how this fits in the numbers but i have this: ALA S-20 - Family - Wallflower / Father/Son Song It's from 1983. "Family" is Chris James of the Natural Four plus his kids. he told me ALA was run by richard pryor. Totally unrelated, but someone else recently told me that AVI was run by liberace.

is contempo UK only? rarer on wb in the US for sure.

i just saw the sales thread you are talking about, i think he may have mentioned that title too. it would be nice if someone would record both sides of that to send to him

yeah, I saw that, craig moorer had also sold that number, I assumed you sold it after craig did. i don't want to send him a partial clip but let me know if you find one that is not the one i have. thanks.

maybe, I don't know the record. he was a jazz-type vocalist. if you have a recordings of that you could send me too that would be cool, i could send that to him too.

did you get a photo from them? if so it would be cool to see it

I'm trying to make a CD for Freddy Cole, the artist who recorded on Tru-Glo-Town, De-Lite, etc. He is Nat King Cole's brother. I have two of the delite 45s, #533 and #515. There are two more de-lite singles, #506 and #508. Can anyone supply me with either of the 4 sides I'm missing (e.g. delite #506 and #508) that I can send to Freddy? please email me at bobabrahamian@gmail.com. Thank you.

I think the weird intermittent behavior where it jumps back and forth is due to them having a huge server farm and your request bouncing back between different servers, some of which are configured an old way and some of which are configured a new way. For example, for the last few months at least, I'll be browsing and in like the 5th page of my "next"s it'll lose my settings and I'll have to start all over again which is annoying as hell. Sometimes when I refresh I can see the "R&B" category but clicking on it does nothing and takes me to a page that doesn't have it anymore.

the link you gave is to browse "Records / R&B and Soul" not "Records / R&B", which is what I was complaining about. At least as of last night it was omitting most of the listings that were previously categorized as "Records / R&B". Maybe they were half in the process of converting the categories on the actual listings? I will try again tonight and see if I get most of the items. Thanks for your help.

daily on ebay I used to (at least since the last switch) search for all 45 RPM records ending that day in the R&B category. As of last night it appears they totally changed the search options so that the category you can search for under records is "R&B and Soul"*. But the actual items have not been recategorized themselves, so this search leads to very few items (old items I still have in my watch have their category as "R&B" and won't show up with this browsing). Not picking a category at all probably would make them show up but would mean I would also have to sift through all rock and country records too. Occasionally it will let me pick R&B but it won't "take" (I think it's just hitting a stale server for that request). Anyone have any idea how to search for records tagged as "R&B" now? I'm guessing they're trying to force people to ultimately change their listings but current listings will go missing in people's standard browsing.

the main guy from the group was from pennsylvania then moved to LA. the best record they did in my opinion was "trying" on big town. They also did a sweet soul record on RET. I think the acacia street record also came out on an LA label but I might be getting confused.

I would rather listen to beyonce than big maybelle (and I'm not joking either).

Hi. Today on my radio show I interviewed one of the heroes of my radio show, Keni Burke, the youngest member of the Five Stairsteps. You can check it out at the bottom of my interviews page at: https://www.sittinginthepark.com/interviews.html thanks, Bob

it's the desciples (not disciples) of soul on GV. it's a philly group. the creations also do a version of this song on the liberty bell label but this is the better and rarer version.