Coming Soon! My new article on Timmy Willis

[Peternickols]

My “new and hopefully much-improved” article on Timmy Willis may still be a few weeks away yet as some extra research and a few more attempted interviews with relevant people are still being undertaken but it will be very much bigger and will contain much more detail and many photos (including photos of Timmy), images and screen-dumps of relevant references etc. There will also be You-Tube hot-links to relevant recordings.

Myself, George Korval and Greg Burgess have already spent many weeks trawling for more – and new – information, including speaking with several “interested parties” from the time.

Just as a tease, here are a few more things to hopefully whet your appetite:

The Joe-Boy 45 of "Such Misery" which was wrongly credited to Timmy Willis was thought to have been recorded instead by Paul Merritt. However, Billy Prince of the Precisions reckons it was someone else. Who? All will be revealed.....

Timmy’s two Jubilee 45s were not cut at one and the same session nor were they even cut at the same studio.

Timmy’s last-known recordings for Epic were not, as previously thought, cut out on the West Coast. No one associated with this recording ever went anywhere near the West Coast in connection with its creation.

Timmy is often regarded as essentially a Detroit recording artist because he migrated there and met up with George McGregor and others but in fact he probably spent more time in Columbus Ohio and “on the road” than he did in Detroit.

So he must have been a native of Columbus? No he wasn’t. Nor did he spend his later life there.

He was much more than just a singer. He composed and co-composed quite a few recordings for himself and others and was also adept at arrangement, a quality clearly requiring wide musical ability and knowledge.

Some of the names you will encounter include the various members of the extensive McMahan family (with one of whom Timmy fathered a child), George McGregor, Bill Craig(head), Billy Prince, Eddie Parker, Cornell McCleary, Ron Johnson, King Twitty, Marlin McNichols, Melvyn Ragin a.k.a. Wah Wah Watson and even Jerry ‘Swamp Dogg’ Williams.

So, all I can say is......stay tuned.

Best to all.  Pete N.

 

[Guest]

Hi Pete, well done and it'll be interesting to see the new article. Best Greg

[Peternickols]

thanks Greg. George is still ferreting believe it or not and he does get hold of some relevant people and stuff so I am waiting on a bity more from him before I go to press. Best. peter.