Garethx

I Got The Fever is probably one of the defining classics of the early Northern scene. RIP Billy.

Once got a copy of Pharoah Sanders' "Black Unity" album wrapped in the sports pages of a neo-Nazi local paper in Indiana. What kind of feedback are sellers like this expecting?

Once received an ebay purchase (Vivilore Jordan on Mojo I think) in a box large enough to fit a washing machine in. The record had no stiffeners around it and was suspended in those white foam 'whatsits'. Fortunately the 45 was unharmed during its trip across the Atlantic. I can appreciate that not all ebay sellers are used to handling and posting vintage records, but the leap in imagination required to package the item in that way was quite something to me.

I think this is one of the best of the lot in this genre. Superior songwriting by David Gates and a vocal of towering quality from Merry Clayton. Covered in Britain to a pretty high standard by a young Elkie Brooks on Decca.

Jackie is the bald guy BTW.

Interestingly both done by Lewis and Wiener on Roddie Joy first. Personally think her versions of both are better, particularly Come Back Baby. Speaking of Jackie Taylor though I love his lead on The Skyliners "The Loser".

Deena Johnson is supposedly Jo Armstead.

Worth bearing in mind that A Clockwork Orange was never banned by any official body in the UK. Director Stanley Kubrick himself withdrew the film after the initial spate of copycat violence, but the film had been on release for over a year before he did this.

Worth pointing out that the other side of the Parlophone 45 is another Ashford & Simpson song "A Rose Growing In The Ruins" also recorded by The Rivingtons on Columbia.

Re: "Uphill Climb To The Bottom" here's the fascinating story of its writer, Fangette (Enzel) Willett courtesy of Spectropop: https://www.spectropop.com/FangetteWillett/index.htm

Cap City product was manufactured and distributed by Scepter.

Some instances on those popsike results of people having paid top dollar for the so-called reissue. The original is pressed at the same plant as the All Platinum / Turbo / Stang records.

That is definitely a photo of Dean Parrish. Not Joey DeLorenzo.

Seconded.

It's on two albums: Occasional Rain (Cadet) and Turn You To Love (Elektra).

Thanks for clearing that up Ady.

I agree with you Dean. It's worth bearing in mind that while his most commercially successful period was while signed to Elektra this music had a more temporary feel. While the Elektra tenure produced some great music the tracks with commercial appeal have a less lasting character: "Sign Of The Times" was his only entry onto the R&B singles chart in his career. The late 70s re-cut of "Ordinary Joe" was played in mainstream soul clubs in the UK, but as was the nature of that scene (concentrating on fast turnover of new music every week with no oldies throughput to speak of) only for a matter of weeks. "Look At Me Now" was collected by Northern Soul fans as a cheap single throughout the seventies, as was "Ordinary Joe" to a lesser extent. What we now think of as Callier's classic period, the three Cadet albums, were almost completely off the radar anywhere until practically the early 90s. While the "Can't Help Myself" album seemed to turn up in deletion lots over here the first two seldom did and were always relatively difficult to source. While I'm sure certain fans never stopped listening to these albums in isolation from the time of their release, they were not collected as there was really no dance scene on which to play tracks like "Candyman" until the 1990s and no real collective appreciation of Terry Callier as an artist. I would argue that it was the Modern Northern scene (and particularly Robin Salter) getting hold of "I Don't Want To See Myself" at the tail end of Stafford, start of Rock City (so 1985-ish) which really led to that particular record filtering down to other club scenes via the eventual Acid Jazz issue, which led to a rekindling of interest in TC's career. Trying to clear a couple of things up from some of the recording points and chronology raised above: "Look At Me Now" was recorded just before it was released late 1968 as mentioned by others, rather than in 1963. The unreleased at the time material from the session includes another version of Candyman knows as "Blues", and a fairly so-so dancer in the vein of Look At Me Now called "You Were Just Fooling Me". There are two earlier sounding tracks eventually released on an MCA compilation called "Essential: The Best Of Terry Callier on Cadet": these are "Lover", a midtempo ballad reminiscent of the type of material Gene Chandler was recording in the mid 60s, and "Take Your Time", a latin-tinged number. These both would have been quite dated if recorded in 1968. I would speculate they were left in the can from a couple of years earlier. They're both quite nice but as they are as close to mainstream Soul as Callier ever recorded there might have been reluctance on the part of Chess to see any sales or radio potential given Terry's highly distinctive but relatively unmodulated folk-blues voice. I think the company knew they had signed a real talent but at that time no clear vision of how to best harness it. Getting his songs recorded by The Dells, Jerry Butler and Brenda Lea Eager etc. was was probably that next step. While Jerry Butler's version of "Ordinary Joe" predates Callier's Cadet 45 by two and a half years there is a Callier version released on the "First LIght" album in the 1990s which was laid down some months before Butler's. It's a long, loose and rambling version with an extended Fender Rhodes solo but with the central riff taken by Callier's acoustic guitar (unlike any of the subsequent recordings of the song). It's closest in character to the way he would play it live for the next forty years. It was maybe fanciful of me to think he could have enjoyed the crossover success of Bill Withers or Richie Havens. While some of his material had a gentle, wistful nature which could have appealed to many markets, a lot of it was a very particular telling of the Black experience of the time. There is a real anger and fire in "Dancing Girl" or "Bowling Green" which maybe wouldn't have played well on even the most adventurous or progressive pop or rock radio stations of the time.

Really sad to hear this. Terry Callier was a monumental singer and songwriter whose music has sustained me throughout the greater part of my life. I was lucky enough to meet him on a number of occasions as a fan and he always seemed everything his music suggested: honest, witty, wise and compassionate but with an understatement which belied his huge, huge talent. It's fairly well documented that he perhaps didn't quite get the breaks in his career which others experienced. He signed to Chess at a time when the great company's powers were beginning to wane. I think the way he saw it was as a position of great privilege to follow in the footsteps of some of the great folk bluesmen on one hand and on the other an opportunity to work with Charles Stepney, a genius of a collaborator with whom he made some truly unforgettable and timeless music. This was at a time when other African American singers with a broadly similar sensibility, particularly Bill Withers and Richie Havens were crossing over to a far wider (i.e. white) audience. I don't necessarily know if TC would have enjoyed the pressures of being a big star but it certainly seems manifestly unfair to this particular fan that he was to die in relative obscurity in his own country. Rest in peace Terry.

Don't know about Northern but this is a pretty in-demand record and maybe the rarest on the label.

PM'd you about this.

That sounds like a track from an LP subsequently released as a single Dave. The master designation would still be the same as its original incarnation, unless it was remixed and then remastered.

A very insightful post Sean.

We know they weren't a pressing company because you see records with their stamp from several different pressing plants from a large geographical area. Each one of those plants had a unique numerical code which was their client number in the Nashville ordering system. Certain big independent labels (Motown being probably the biggest) had a customer number in their own right too, so you'll typically see the Nashville stamp, a numerical code and then the master number which would have been scratched or stamped on the lacquer by the cutting engineer.

Strictly speaking they were neither a mastering company or a pressing operation. They manufactured the largely metal parts which took a master to a stamper. It helps to think of mastering (producing the definitive finally mixed and balanced version of a recording and producing a master lacquer) as something which typically takes place in a studio and plating to a stamper as something which takes place in a lab. In mastering a trained sound engineer will operate the cutting lathe and can adjust a number of factors to affect what's on the tape. The staff at the next stages have virtually no artistic impact on the sound of the finished record.

Clicking on these links for youtube for a mobile have caused a problem for my desktop machine. Has anyone else experienced this?