I Finally Saw A "diamond In The Back"

[boba]

Two days ago I was driving and stopped at a stoplight at the near north side of Chicago. I'm looking at the traffic on the cross street and I see this pimped out caddy come by. It is painted like two slightly different shades of light blue / periwinkle and there's a bunch of blue felt all over parts of the car which made it look super-pimp. But most importantly it had the rear diamond shaped window. I can't believe I live in the city of pimps and have been looking for a diamond in the back for like 15 years and never seen one before.

[Steve G]

Was the sun-roof down?

[boba]

Was the sun-roof down?

The line is "sun roof top". I'm not sure, it's weird, it looked like the soft cover that goes over a convertible but I think it's not a convertible. They definitely had a gangster lean.

[Steve G]

Were they digging' the scene?

[Guest in town Mikey]

Did you have any Isaac Hayes on the radio?

[Peter99]

I don't get it.

[Garethx]

Peter it's a lyric from William DeVaughan's "Be Thankful For What You Got".

Don't know if this is the right place for this discussion but in the wake of one of Ian Levine's podcasts I did a lot of thinking about the whole group of John Davis / Frank Fioravanti labels. Ian was raving about the Liza Mae record on Omaga and the Mark Jarjisian on Concept.

Seems that the duos' labels like Concept, Omega, Philomega and so on were an updated version of the song-poem concept, much like the Rodd Keith records had been in the earlier 1960s.

They advertised in the local press for singers and songwriters to come into a studio and for a one-off payment they could cut a recording of their own songs. For a relatively small outlay of their own part there was always the chance that someone would one day come off the street with a potential million-selling record in their back pocket. I'm guessing the scam part was that Fioravanti and Davis would own the mechanical royalties and publishing once the payment had been made and a heavily weighted-in-their-favour contract signed by the unsuspecting artist.

Such a visitor to the studio was William DeVaughan and the song he came in with was "Be Thankful For What You Got". Legend has it that DeVaughan didn't have all the $1,400 fee and could come up with only $900. Consequently Fioravanti and Davis kept all the publishing on what would be the biggest hit of their career in the record business. It seems likely they would have made all the money even if DeVaughan had been able to pay the entire fee. They must have known they were onto a winner immediately as the 45 came out on the RCA-distributed Roxbury label without first having appeared on any of their usual custom labels.

The story about WDV got me thinking about what an unusual release it was. Their usual stock in trade was generally pretty amateurish singers like Liza Mae singing over recycled backing tracks cut at Sigma. The Liza Mae "Breakaway" backing track appeared also on a 45 by Fred Mark (wonder if this is really Mark Jarjisian?) and apparently the rare Toll Darkness 45. There are also a number of pretty rank singles on Concept by the likes of Michael Christian (same track as Cody Michaels) Richie Cee (a great backing but pretty awful vocals) and so on.

The puzzling bit is always the quality of the backing tracks. Bobby Eli played on a lot of them according to a posting on soulfuldetroit.com. He intimated that Fioravanti was in the music business in the same way Tony Soprano was in waste management. Putting together sessions like that wasn't necessarily ever cheap and I wonder if these were done as favours or payment in kind for other services rendered.

In the wake of the success of "Be Thankful" John Davis for one went on to have a reasonably successful career in the immediate pre-disco era and slightly beyond. A few of the records cut in the wake of Be Thankful on other artists are actually pretty good like Charen Cotton and The Charmetts 45s on Philomega, Billy Harner on Melomega and so on.

William DeVaughn tried to re-cut his hit on more than a few occasions with deals where he actually stood to gain something financially. It must have been maddening for him to realise that the version everyone still wants to hear to this day is the one he signed away.

I've also wondered if there is any other use of the original "Be Thankful" rhythm track. It would be in the character of the business operation of the two producers that there was, somewhere, at least one or more versions knocking around.

Any thoughts on any of this appreciated.

Congratulations bob a on finally seeing a Diamond In The Back!

Edited May 24, 2012 by garethx

[Peter99]

Peter it's a lyric from William DeVaughan's "Be Thankful For What You Got".

Don't know if this is the right place for this discussion but in the wake of one of Ian Levine's podcasts I did a lot of thinking about the whole group of John Davis / Frank Fioravanti labels. Ian was raving about the Liza Mae record on Omaga and the Mark Jarjisian on Concept.

Seems that the duos' labels like Concept, Omega, Philomega and so on were an updated version of the song-poem concept, much like the Rodd Keith records had been in the earlier 1960s.

They advertised in the local press for singers and songwriters to come into a studio and for a one-off payment they could cut a recording of their own songs. For a relatively small outlay of their own part there was always the chance that someone would one day come off the street with a potential million-selling record in their back pocket. I'm guessing the scam part was that Fioravanti and Davis would own the mechanical royalties and publishing once the payment had been made and a heavily weighted-in-their-favour contract signed by the unsuspecting artist.

Such a visitor to the studio was William DeVaughan and the song he came in with was "Be Thankful For What You Got". Legend has it that DeVaughan didn't have all the $1,400 fee and could come up with only $900. Consequently Fioravanti and Davis kept all the publishing on what would be the biggest hit of their career in the record business. It seems likely they would have made all the money even if DeVaughan had been able to pay the entire fee. They must have known they were onto a winner immediately as the 45 came out on the RCA-distributed Roxbury label without first having appeared on any of their usual custom labels.

The story about WDV got me thinking about what an unusual release it was. Their usual stock in trade was generally pretty amateurish singers like Liza Mae singing over recycled backing tracks cut at Sigma. The Liza Mae "Breakaway" backing track appeared also on a 45 by Fred Mark (wonder if this is really Mark Jarjisian?) and apparently the rare Toll Darkness 45. There are also a number of pretty rank singles on Concept by the likes of Michael Christian (same track as Cody Michaels) Richie Cee (a great backing but pretty awful vocals) and so on.

The puzzling bit is always the quality of the backing tracks. Bobby Eli played on a lot of them according to a posting on soulfuldetroit.com. He intimated that Fioravanti was in the music business in the same way Tony Soprano was in waste management. Putting together sessions like that wasn't necessarily ever cheap and I wonder if these were done as favours or payment in kind for other services rendered.

In the wake of the success of "Be Thankful" John Davis for one went on to have a reasonably successful career in the immediate pre-disco era and slightly beyond. A few of the records cut in the wake of Be Thankful on other artists are actually pretty good like Charen Cotton and The Charmetts 45s on Philomega, Billy Harner on Melomega and so on.

William DeVaughn tried to re-cut his hit on more than a few occasions with deals where he actually stood to gain something financially. It must have been maddening for him to realise that the version everyone still wants to hear to this day is the one he signed away.

I've also wondered if there is any other use of the original "Be Thankful" rhythm track. It would be in the character of the business operation of the two producers that there was, somewhere, at least one or more versions knocking around.

Any thoughts on any of this appreciated.

Congratulations bob a on finally seeing a Diamond In The Back!

Thanks Gareth

That's really interesting.

[Steve G]

GOOD POST Gareth, and yes the same backing track on Toll Darkness, which has better vocals and an ace stepper B side.....

[Garethx]

Interesting Steve. I'd love to hear it as that's a particularly good Philly rhythm track. Great drums, presumably courtesy of Earl Young.

[Steve G]

Yes I'll play it on this months show....and put the podcast up.

Incidentally Charen Cotton I also have this on a really odd label, different mix and all. Not sure if it came first or sometime later......but it's pretty!

[boba]

Yes I'll play it on this months show....and put the podcast up.

Incidentally Charen Cotton I also have this on a really odd label, different mix and all. Not sure if it came first or sometime later......but it's pretty!

you have Charen Cotton on Art, same label the Beck Family was on, and it has a different b-side.

Garethx, I totally didn't know that the label was run that way, awesome details. It makes sense given that they reused so many backing tracks. The second biggest hit they had btw was Spice on Sound Gems, it charted nationally. It's actually the Chicago Spice that's on Cle-An-Thair.

Concept was their pop label. I got the Mark Jarjisian 45 the other day at a friend's house, he gave it to me for free. Not soul by any stretch, and I would think it's terrible, but I'm super psyched that it's an Armenian dude and enjoy the a-side at least (as a pop record, I really like light psychedelic pop, e.g. the poppy family). The b-side was so bad that the ethnicity couldn't excuse it though.

I'm confused about one thing -- I didn't know Omega was their label. Almost all the Fred Mark 45s reuse tracks off of Virtue 45s. How would they get access to those tracks, they didn't run Virtue did they?

[boba]

also, btw, I don't think the car had whitewalls

[Garethx]

That's precisely what I was wondering too. There were other examples of 'buy-a-hit' type labels all over the states but this was one where the backing tracks were often phenomenal and used the cream of Philly session players. Bobby Eli said he always got paid for such sessions so I'm wondering if the mysterious Fioravanti did indeed have financial juice in studios like Sigma and production facilities like Virtue.

[boba]

There were other examples of 'buy-a-hit' type labels all over the states

This is taking the topic more off track, but that reminded me about how I recently got an AMG press kit, it's pretty cool. That 5-song EP that shows up a lot is actually part of the press kit (which is why it's so common). Lots of artists from different cities had records on AMG (lots of Chicago records, one of the Puzzle People told me they advertised and set up at a local Holiday Inn and auditioned people). Everyone complains about paying them $2000 and getting ripped off. But if you read the pamphlet, they actually don't say that they are going to manufacture and distribute your songs to stores. Their whole thing was that they were industry insiders and they knew what "sound" would hit [obviously they were wrong] and they going to send the records to different program directors in certain critical markets and then follow up further if the records got picked up in those markets. So the records were never even supposed to be distributed to stores, they were just supposed to be distributed to radio stations (which I guess is why they are pretty rare). I'm pretty sure that they actually did do what they promised to do (distributed the records to stations), I've even had AMG records that had a reply comment card. I guess it was a "scam" in the sense that they told anybody that they could have a hit and took their $2000.

I think their main focus was country music though, they may have had an actual hit country record. Also, the puzzle people told me that their song was played on american bandstand in some new song of the week type segment or something.

[Mike]

think a move to box is on for this as moved on from the first post

yep .. moving now

[Roburt]

READING BETWEEN THE LINES A BIT ....... I presume Jimmy Bishop & his associates claimed ownership of many of the Arctic / Virtue backing tracks & as they were strapped for cash at the end of the 60's, sold them on for Frank Fioravanti's use.

In 1967, Baltimore radio DJ Fat Daddy had hooked Kenny Hamber up with Arctic in Philly (the company being headed by ex singer Jimmy Bishop). Kenny's 1st release for Arctic was "Ain't Gonna Cry" & this 45 was followed by Kenny's remakes of "These Arms Of Mine" and "Lookin' For A Love" in 1968. However neither of these 45's received the proper attention as far as advertising and distribution were concerned. Other tracks he cut for Arctic remained in the vaults, as the label was on the verge of bankruptcy and very close to folding. By then Jimmy Bishop was in the process of jumping ship to become a promotion man / talent scout for Spring records. Since he had Kenny Hamber under contract for three singles, Bishop handed Kenny over to Jesse James (no doubt a sum of money going to Jimmy from Jesse) and the resulting cut "Camel Walk," was released on Mean records in 1969.

So Jimmy Bishop was looking to move on from his label owning & producing days but still make some money from what he retained from that failing outfit. SO he could easily have just sold off all the old backing tracks then in his possession to Frank Fioravanti and then forgotten all about them. As stated earlier, the Arctic & Virtue Studio tracks had featured many of the musicians that would become members of MFSB in the early 70's & so were a 'quality product'.

If Frank Fioranti was 'connected', JB could well have owed him money (loans to try to keep Arctic going) and so the backing tracks may have gone someway to repaying any debts.

[boba]

I don't think Bishop was looking to stop producing, at least not as early as '69. In my interview with Charles Russell (lead of the Image on Janus), he described how they moved to philly because Bishop explicitly wanted to produce them. He said that they were supposed to be the main male group and Honey and the Bees was his main female group he was producing. Barbara Mason was involved, she wrote a lot of the songs. That was all early '70s.

[Roburt]

Jimmy Bishop MC'ing a show he promoted at the Nixon Theater in Philly back in the day .......

Bishop had arrived at WDAS from KATZ in St Louis.

He managed lots of groups (all the ones signed to Arctic), promoted lots of live shows (many at the legendary Uptown Theater in Philly), had his own record shop (not a bad move for a radio DJ & label owner) and produced sessions, scouted talent, handled A&R plus promotional duties. Quite a 'busy boy' then !!!

JUMPING BACK TO THE INFO IN THE LAST POST ... his then wife (Louise) has stated on occasions that he fell in with the 'wrong crowd' and couldn't see that they weren't actually helping him. Jimmy had a dream to make it big in the record biz & he couldn't accept his wife's opinion that many of the people he was 'working with' were ripping him off. He thought she was trying to hold him back & they split up. Guess he 'sided' with the wrong people in that argument.

Edited May 25, 2012 by Roburt

[Roburt]

The theme of this thread just keeps expanding .......

Here are interesting articles that make mention of Jimmy Bishop's time in St Louis ....

https://www.mckinleygoldbugs.com/RadioDays.htm

https://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6666/is_277_35/ai_n29187431/

Edited May 25, 2012 by Roburt

[Guest Raresoulie]

Hi All,

Look's like we very nearly had yet another Shrine release to try and track down

[media=]

Cheers, Heath

[Steve G]

you have Charen Cotton on Art, same label the Beck Family was on, and it has a different b-side.

Yes that's it.

[Roburt]

MORE JIMMY BISHOP RELATED INFO .......

Bluesman Leroy Jodie Pierson was born in 1947 in north St. Louis. His home life gave him a firm and fertile grounding in music .... His father ... played a lot of black music at the house, where Pierson heard the likes of Jimmy Rushing, Count Basie, Joe Williams, among many eclectic sounds, including the early, free-form days of radio. Family outings included trips to jazz clubs to see John Coltrane, Muddy Waters and Albert King.

He said "When I was a kid, I used to listen to a lot of blues. I didn't understand that it was blues. To me it was more pop music because I didn't understand categorizations of music when I was seven, eight, nine years old. I was also listening to Gabriel [a KATZ deejay], used to listen to him every night. Gabriel would play the weirdest mess of stuff. I mean, one minute he'd play James Brown, the next minute he'd play George Jones, the next minute he'd play the Howlin' Wolf. So I knew that I loved Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and these people, but I didn't know they represented a different form.

There was also KXLW, which had a daytime license; they had to go off the air when the sun went down. They had a fella on named Jimmy Bishop in the afternoons. Best deejay I ever heard in my life, bar none. When I was on the radio [his "The Baby Face Leroy Blues Hour"] I stole 90% of my patter from Jimmy Bishop. All that ho-mommy-oh stuff, that style is all Jimmy Bishop. Gabriel was always a humorous disc jockey, but he wouldn't do any slick patter. I always liked that patter business"

"When I was 13 years old I started dating a girl whose brother liked blues. He gave me an album called Lightning Hopkins in New York and said, "Listen to this." That was the profound experience for me".

Jimmy Bishop quit KATZ & St Louis in 1963.

Edited May 25, 2012 by Roburt

[Sean Hampsey]

Great thread folks. :0)

Just remembered I have a small label version of 'Be Thankful For What You've Got' by the Deltones. It's a really raw 'crossover' sounding thing and it must be a rare one, but sooo cool.

Must give it a whirl sometime.

Sean

[TOAD]

ive got a cool reggae version by bunny ruggs on uppsetter

[Peter99]

MORE JIMMY BISHOP RELATED INFO .......

Bluesman Leroy Jodie Pierson was born in 1947 in north St. Louis. His home life gave him a firm and fertile grounding in music .... His father ... played a lot of black music at the house, where Pierson heard the likes of Jimmy Rushing, Count Basie, Joe Williams, among many eclectic sounds, including the early, free-form days of radio. was the profound experience for me".

Jimmy Bishop quit KATZ & St Louis in 1963.

Amazing stuff - real life stories.

Thanks Roburt and everyone who has contributed.

[boba]

I wonder if devaughn redid the track in 1980 specifically because he was not getting master royalties (from working with shady dudes). I previously just thought he wanted to update his hit but it adds an interesting new dimension to the remake.

[Roburt]

So is it known which studio John Davis / Frank Fioravanti used in Philly to cut the tracks released on Concept, Omega, Philomega & the like.

No doubt it was an old established place where the equipment was well out of date by the early to mid 70's (the time they were using it).

[Ian Dewhirst]

I wonder if devaughn redid the track in 1980 specifically because he was not getting master royalties (from working with shady dudes). I previously just thought he wanted to update his hit but it adds an interesting new dimension to the remake.

I'm not sure if Tec would have been any different from Roxbury to be honest. At least Roxbury had strong national distribution and promotion operations, whereas Tec was another local Philly label without the same clout as Roxbury. A great song is a still a great song whichever way you look at it.

As an aside, when I was a local radio plugger for UK Decca/London in the mid 70's, I had to take Hodges, James & Smith around the country on a radio tour. I can remember taking 'em to Piccadilly Radio then out for a meal @ Mario & Francos and then ferrying 'em back to their hotel. I had William DeVaughn on my car stereo, so in a bid to show them my 'right on' credentials, I cranked William DeVaugnn up full blast as I cruised through Manchester with the three ladies in the car.

They went nuts and told me in no uncertain terms to change the track! I said, "are you serious? You really don't like this tune"? and they said that it was banned on any tour buses they went on as the song glorified pimps and ultimately denigrated women!

Ian D

[Guest]

Anyone ever seen a 'gravy Cadillac'

Gawd bless the 60s/70s translation departments

[Only Dreaming]

Anyone ever seen a 'gravy Cadillac'

Gawd bless the 60s/70s translation departments

Anyone ever seen a 'gravy Cadillac'

Gawd bless the 60s/70s translation departments

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing Dave - :-)

Edited May 26, 2012 by Only Dreaming

[boba]

Anyone ever seen a 'gravy Cadillac'

Gawd bless the 60s/70s translation departments

this is the best thing in the history of anything

[boba]

Here's one of their productions that was released on their label and actually picked up by bell. I've never seen it on bell (but I also wasn't looking very hard...)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/390424726434?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649#ht_500wt_1083

[Steve G]

Yes Bob, Rod Dearlove used to sell them on Bell.

[boba]

did any other of their productions come out on their label and then a bigger label?

[Andy Reynard]

Two days ago I was driving and stopped at a stoplight at the near north side of Chicago. I'm looking at the traffic on the cross street and I see this pimped out caddy come by. It is painted like two slightly different shades of light blue / periwinkle and there's a bunch of blue felt all over parts of the car which made it look super-pimp. But most importantly it had the rear diamond shaped window. I can't believe I live in the city of pimps and have been looking for a diamond in the back for like 15 years and never seen one before.

ya want to visit Keighley west Yorrkshire wherever ya look Ya see A Diamond in the ruff n I'm one of em coz that bottle o single malt Whiskey told me so cheers!! BOB Edited June 4, 2012 by Andy Reynard

[boba]

ya want to visit Keighley west Yorrkshire wherever ya look Ya see A Diamond in the ruff n I'm one of em coz that bottle o single malt Whiskey told me so cheers!! BOB

thank you

[Guest DeeJay]

Hi All,

Look's like we very nearly had yet another Shrine release to try and track down

[media=]

Cheers, Heath

This track sounds quite nice can someone give me info please

DJ