Robbk

Kent Harris worked some with Hal Davis and Marc Gordon at times, during the same time they were operating Jobete Music's L.A. Office. I don't know for sure if he wrote any songs that were bought by Jobete. But, he certainly had access to hearing the tracks. Atkins' cut is a different recording, using different musicians, likely recorded in a different studio. So, Harris may have just remembered the riffs and changes, and written this similar song. It's definitely not direct use of the same tracks.

That's only one musical phrase repeated. No more than plagiarism than in thousands of songs. Not like the entire background verbatim.

Yes. But the owner who produced the original recording session, Dave Hamilton, said he knew nothing about Maurci, and didn't lease the tracks to anyone. Maurci was owned by Gene Chandler and Symtec Simmons. There's no evidence of any Detroit names on Maurci. All the rest of their releases recordings (Five Jades, etc., and even the other Monique cuts) sound like Chicago. So no way to find the connection there.

Probably. But, I bet they got a fair amount of Belgian, French and German sales, as well. Maybe a couple UK NS. too.

To take advantage of the growing popularity of The Motown Sound and the new growing popularity of Detroit Soul in The UK? It does seem a bit far fetched. It should have been released in The UK on a demo in 1965, or else for The Northern Soul market, perhaps in 1974 or after.

I saw The Volumes' scan too. It looked like it was real. I didn't see any signs of a Photoshop job.

Yes. The Dream Girls on Big Top, and Bobbie, solo on American Arts, were a Detroit group produced (and managed?) by Harry Balk.

Look at the map of Michigan. Battle Creek, where Jackey was stationed, is in the far southwest, far away from The Detroit Metro area. Lansing is in the south central part of the state, also a fair distance outside of The Detroit Area. The fact that Detroit radio stations didn't play Jackey's song, but a Lansing station DID, tells me that Jackey was doing his own promotion, and that the Lansing DJ probably knew him from his Lansing gigs. I don't remember him appearing in Detroit venues after "Johnny & Jackey" split up. I don't think Revilot put more than the slightest marketing push behind Jackey's record. The probably ran a small pressing run for just Detroit. And when it didn't sell well, and they couldn't get regular local airplay, they dropped promoting it. I'd bet that Jackey gave away, or sold copies at his gigs in Lansing. And THAT and poor storage conditions resulted in the many "beat" copies showing up. I didn't know what Revilot 208 was until about 1970, when I first saw a company list of scheduled releases. So, I did place it on my wants list then. But, I stopped circulating my wants list in about 1977. And the stored stock wasn't discovered until about 1980.

As I stated above, that record was just not seen in the shops in mid 1967. I think that a small stock of them were "discovered" in later times (after 1980) (maybe by a NS Brit) from whoever from Revilot "inherited" them (perhaps Don Davis?), and then entered the NS market. We North Americans never saw them. I'd like to hear from a Detroiter from that period, to see if he saw any. Ron Murphy is no longer with us. Maybe someone should ask Cappy (if any of you have contact with him). I'd ask on Soulful Detroit. But. it seems that none of the old record collectors post there anymore. Sadly, I seem to be the only one.

I was located in both L.A. and Chicago when Revilot 208 was "released". I never saw it, and I looked through literally millions of 45s. I listened to Soul stations KGFJ in L.A., and WVON in Chicago. It got NO airplay on either station. I had friends in record shops in both cities, and worked in South L.A.'s Dolphin's of Hollywood, which had ALL the Soul records that existed in L.A. (all that got to California). If Revilot 208 came to California at all, I'd have seen it and known about it. It never got to Chicago. It must have had a very small single pressing, only locally in Detroit, and then nothing more. I used to drive to Detroit one Saturday a month to look for records in the bargain bins of Soul/R&B record shops, thrift stores, junk stores, and discount stores that rad 45 record dump sales. I never saw the record once- Not even in any of my Detroit record collector friends' collections! Believe me, it always was, and IS a dead rare record. Those few around were probably all found later, from insiders, who grabbed them from Solid Hitbound's stock. That record never got into shops outside Detroit. And if it got into shops there, there were only a few handful, if that.

I've never heard of any purely Liberty Soul CD compilation. Any Liberty-related CD would likely have a lot more cuts from Imperial, and Minit (and, possibly United Artists, and its VEEP and DCP subsidiaries. Not all that much Soul music appeared on the actual Liberty label.

I find duplicates, triplicates of records I wasn't sure I had, and find I am still missing certain releases I thought I had for 40 years, and had passed up buying for 1000 times thinking I had it. And MUCH of that time was BEFORE I became senile with long-term memory problems!

Yes, but on the individual Soul fan's taste - not given the prestige and nostalgic value of having danced to it at clubs many years ago. There are American Soul fans buying US 1960s Soul music of all different music styles and speeds/tempos. Their connections to that music are different, so different records will have different values to them for different reasons. But that doesn't mean they love them any less. Some of us have been buying them since they were released, and some, even before they were released. I was buying Black American music on US and Canadian labels from almost the beginning of the 1950s. I didn't stop buying it when they started calling it "Soul music". I like many of the classic NS club hits very much, am ambivalent about many others, dislike a fair amount, and HATE some, just like my taste goes with ALL music. I like music more for it's melody, singing quality, sound of the instruments and songwriting structure more than its tempo, or beat. THAT's where my taste differs from the classic NS criteria (and, thus, typical NS taste).

Doesn't it depend upon the copyright laws in each nation, and when art items become public domain (50 or 75 years or if the artist and children of the artist are all deceased before then)? Are you asking about UK rights (which now may or may not be different from European rights), or USA rights?

I lived about a mile from Gloria Jones for about 20 years. But, I guess that's not quite close enough to be considered neighbours.

Hi Marvin, I sent you another personal message to your message box on this forum. Please check it out. It answers a couple of your questions.

Some of us were buying those obscure Soul records in The USA, around the time they were released, and are still collecting today. I bought most of Dynamics 1011-1017 in Detroit record store bargain bins soon (within 3-6 months) after they were released.

I worked on many international 3rd World engineering projects, and all our project budgets had an item titled "Bakshish", for paying "bribes" to local project country government agencies, to provide us with data we needed, or access to project study areas (in other words, we had to pay bribes to even be physically able to do the work we were hired to do, and writing it off as necessary project expenses was entirely legitimate.

Pension plans rarely provide even 80% of a former workers average monthly income. in ANY of the countries in which I have dwelt, or with which I am familiar (even in heavily socialised Scandinavia). My German friends who come closest to matching their average late career work pay, get around 80%, and feel very lucky to do so. And, on top of that, they generally lose a little more each year, to inflation. So why should new pensioners have a LOT of disposable or discretionary income, when their pension income is already only able to support a very frugal lifestyle, and less able to do even that, over each succeeding year. I hear many, many stories about record collectors having to sell off their collections to survive, and very few if any stories about collectors who can now buy more, and more expensive records now that they are receiving their pension money. I don't know much about The British system, but, I can't imagine that it provides significantly higher pension incomes relative to previous worker incomes than in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany Denmark, Sweden, Canada and USA (of which I am familiar).

Speak for yourself!!! Some of us are ancient, and our pensions don't keep up with inflation (REAL inflation is a lot higher than the stated inflation figures provided by our various government agencies.

I'm sure you are right. But, had Frank made the wrong decision in Berry's eyes, there still may have been a "throwaway" limited release (maybe 300-500 pressed and released only in Detroit) , to "keep him happy", as was done with The Serenaders, Oma Heard, The Vows, The Creations (for Andre Williams), Hal Davis, and many others, with no marketing push, whatsoever, just to placate them. It cost next to nothing, and was a tax write-off for the "standard amount for record production, despite Motown's actual cost for the "throwaways likely being less than the writeoff amount.

I wouldn't go THAT far. It MAY be possible that they only ran 6 test pressings of the white DJ copy, to test before running the full DJ run, which Berry cancelled. Then there would have been only 12 pressed (6 DJs, and 6 stockers). Berry, not sure if Frank would decide to give up his singing career, might have decided not to run the full DJ run (of perhaps 200-300, or even 500) until Wilson gave his answer, but, he wanted both the test pressings of the DJs AND the stockers ready, to get production started as soon as possible, IF Wilson would decide against moving to Detroit and becoming a full-time Motown producer.

Hi Ady Sent you a 300 dpi of the white DJ to your Soul-Source message box. Hope you can use it. Robb

From what I remember, there was only one 4 Bars group, who sang in The Baltimore/D.C. Area, and that was Eddie Daye's group, which sang during most of the 1950s and 1960s. I always thought that Eddie was their lead singer. They DID have member changes in transitioning from R&B to Soul, and the '50s to the '60s. They backed Vic Marcel on several cuts, but I never heard of Marcel being an official member of that group.

So, Frank Brown was the financier, executive producer and owner of the record label (Soulville International). He owned a few small Detroit Soul labels during the 1960s. No relation to Kable, Mickay's and Ring's Fred Brown, Frank had his own label, Valtone (1966-69), and had a few other small Detroit labels of his own before that.