Out Now! The Sensations and The New Loves - MD Records 117|118

Sensations - Blinded By Pride - I Found A Love - MD117

The New Sensations as they started to bill themselves – before dropping the word New - formed in Detroit, Michigan and comprised of Jack Weiner, Gregory Glazer, Richard Berk and Lawrence Bliss. The group all attended Mumford High School and were heavily influenced by early street corner, doo-wop harmonies Gregory Glazer, the lead vocalist of the group auditioned for Motown at the age of 13. He not only sang in front of Berry Gordy and Stevie Wonder but was also offered a recording contract with Motown. A contract that his mother stopped him from taking up as she did not think that the music business was the right career for a young Jewish boy, especially her son. Despite this Greg continued his fascination with music, often sneaking into concerts and rehearsals, to see those who would become his influences, the likes of the Dixie Hummingbirds and Ray Charles.

Like all groups, The Sensations were desperate to have a vinyl release and with the hope of success, a decision was made to attend the weekly, Thursday audition sessions at Pioneer Recording Studio. The studio doors were open every week to allow artists to perform and impress owners, Gary Rubin and Alan Sussman - in hope that they might find the new talent they could offer recording contracts to for their growing label, which had previously released songs by The Modernistics in 1965.

The Sensations auditioned around November 1966 and performed two songs which were written by Gregory Glazer, titled; “Blinded By Pride” and “I Found A Love”. From the opening bars of “Blinded by Pride”. The raw street soul vocals add a pleading and emotional quality to the lyrics – telling the story of every young man that has lost love through his own blind pride.

After they wowed Gary Rubin at these initial audition sessions, it was arranged for a contract to be drawn up with parental consent, as some of the group were still underage. They signed to Pioneer along with another auditioning group The Gambrells, who already had success around Detroit working with Ollie McLoughlin and backing Deon Jackson’s “Love Makes The World Go Around” LP for Carla Records.

Gary decided to hire Milton Olsson and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to arrange and record the band tracks at United Sound Studio for both The Sensations & The Gambrells. The multi-track master tape was then brought back to Pioneer Studio to vocal overdub The Sensation’s audition vocals. Unfortunately, Gary said that at the time the engineer had recorded the “Blinded By Pride” and “I Found A Love” band tracks in such a way it was considered too fast and was almost impossible to get the vocals and instrumentation to come together – as such it was shelved and instead Gary decided only to release only The Gambrells songs “Jive Talk” & “Find A Love”.

Disappointing for The Sensations, Greg continued to write songs. Gary remembers Greg coming into the studio regularly to write songs and they went on to record a demo of a track called “Clean up the Attic”. Gary then played the “Clean up the Attic” tape to Jerry Hubbard, who was in the Soul Sextet, and later Tribal Sinfonia. On hearing the track Jerry Hubbard asked Greg to join the Tribe and the other members of The Sensations sadly disappeared into obscurity. When we heard the various audition vocal takes and the United Sound multi-track tape, it was easy to hear the potential in the song. But it needed to be cleaned up and mixed to really get the best out of it. In our eyes there was only one place to go – so we jumped on a call with Kevin Fingier who is fast becoming a regular member of the MD Collective and who will be working with us right through this project.

On hearing the takes, he too could hear the potential and was excited to be able to work on the tracks. It was fantastic to hear the audition tapes taken and brought back to life and – following a couple of meetings to discuss the mixes, we all agreed what we thought needed to be done and the songs were sent off to mastering with JJ at Goldenmastering - The results when received back where beyond our expectations! So, here we are, after all these years - with the support of Gary Rubin and Greg Glazer’s son & daughter, Sarah and Dan Glazer - we are very proud to release The Sensations songs which originally should have been released, way back in 1966 alongside The Gambrells.

AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE HERE - https://www.mdrecords.co.uk/product/sensations-blinded-by-pride-md/

Listen here:

New Loves - Paradise Of Love - My Heart Is Suffering Baby - MD118

The New Loves comprised of James (Jemy) Cheers, Robert (Bobby) Franklin Jnr., Sharon Gambrell, Sandra Gambrell and Pat Hunt. The girls had already recorded for one of Ollie McLaughlins labels Carla, releasing two tracks entitled “Pain In My Heart” & “You Better Move” under the The Gambrells. However, due to Ollie McLaughlin’s efforts being solely focused on the success of The Capitols and Deon Jackson, The Gambrells were sadly left in the shadows to be used as backing vocalists, assisting Deon Jackson with ‘‘Love Makes The World Go Round”. After an audition at Pioneer, they were quickly signed and started to record with studio owner Gary Rubin - sometimes as part of a group, such as The New Loves, sometimes as backing vocalists, and also in their own right as the Gambrells.

Robert (Bobby) Franklin Jnr is no other than the Bobby Franklin, who on returning from the Navy started Bobby Franklin’s Insanity with a group of school friends, John Hopkins, Hubert Crawford, Mike Anthony and Michael Gray. Bobby recalls – in an article, he wrote – that he met Jemy (James Cheers) when he was around 14. He was on the way back from Custer Elementary School, he saw a a young guy playing the guitar. Bobby stopped and took his drum sticks from his back pocket and started playing rhythm alongside the young guitarist. From there they struck up a friendship and the Famous Bros. were born – Bobby Franklin and Jemy Cheers.

Gary Rubin strongly believed in the talents of all five and decided to join The Famous Brothers & The Gambrells together to create The New Loves but sadly during the initial audition takes, little did any of them know that after this they would never record as a group again. James and Bobby went off to serve their country in Vietnam. Both safely returned home from service and worked together later in life in both music and business, but The New Loves never got back together again. Unfortunately, The Famous Brothers could not see this release of The New Loves tracks as James passed away in May 2020, followed by Bobby in July.

The Gambrells, continued to work with Gary Rubin at Pioneer Studio until 1967. They released songs “Jive Talk” and “Find A Love” in 1966, then the following year in 1967, they worked with Mike Valvano at Pioneer to record “I’m In Love For The First Time” / “Love Is In The Air”, their final recording. All three members of The Gambrells are still alive and well - Sandra & Sharon Gambrell both live in Detroit still and Pat Hunt now lives in Las Vegas. They have all retired from the music industry but Sandra still sings in her local church. They are so happy to know their music is still enjoyed around the world, as they previously had no idea before our contact!

When listening to these audition tapes it was very clear that we needed to retain the atmosphere of the audition itself, the excitement of a group of young singers and musicians and to that end, we left in some of the out-take tapes on “My heart Is Suffering Baby”. At the end of the take you can hear the call on the flip side which is ”Paradise of Love”. We put this on the top side as a great example of mid-tempo group harmony soul, the fact that it features the Gambrells is an added bonus and acts as a leader for future exploration of their story. More on that later in the Pioneer series! But suffice to say you may be very surprised by how tight knit the Detroit music scene was and who appears on what releases.

Listen here:

AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE HERE - https://www.mdrecords.co.uk/product/new-loves-paradise-of-love-md/

(All four songs) Published by Tru-Soul Publishing
(All four songs) Restored and mixed by Kevin Fingier
(All four songs) Mastered by JJ at Golden Mastering.