Garethx

Real name Oma Heard. One 45 released on VIP in 1964, "Mr. Lonely Heart": fairly rare and pretty good. Motownjunkies give it a full rundown here: https://motownjunkies.co.uk/2012/04/03/471/

It's a fair bet that many of the pressing plants in that general area used LW metalwork Pete. The equivalent mark you see on many records from the midwest was Nashville Main. That was also a maker of metal parts as opposed to a mastering studio, so a lot of records can have both the mastering marks plus the insignia of the metalwork manufacturer.

The LW on ABC 45s stands for Longwear Stamper Co., a company which produced metal stampers, mothers and fathers. It is sometimes seen as LWP (Long Wear Products) on other labels' releases. You can often find the LW or LWP marks on Atlantic singles. Just plucking some random 45s on ABC Paramount from the shelves and it seems most of the vinyl singles from the mid 1960s have this. Will have a look at some ABC styrene to see if it's also on those. Possibly not as styrene tooling was a different process.

Bell Sound was a recording and mastering studio in New York. Records will have that mark if they were mastered there. It doesn't necessarily follow that all ABC Paramount product of the time would be processed in that way. Not even all New York sessions would have gone down that route to become finished records. ABC also mastered at Capitol's New York studios as well as at other facilities beside. Conversely sessions recorded elsewhere might well have had tapes sent to Bell for mastering. That's a less likely scenario as the recording engineer and producer would ideally have been at the cutting of the lacquer as there is still a lot which can be done to the sound of the finished master at that stage, nonetheless a lot of independent productions picked up by ABC would have been treated that way. The Eddie Regan examples above were pressed at Sonic in New York (vinyl) and Monarch in LA (styrene).

Must say Dave's site is an invaluable source of this type of information.

Not quite Tony. The 4 means RCA themselves mastered the record. W = mastered in 1968 4 = mastered by RCA from client's tapes K = a 45rpm master M = a Mono master The stamped R means pressed at RCA Rockaway New Jersey.

Such a shame that so much of this story appears to be shrouded in mystery due to 'business considerations' as the music these sessions provided was uniformly great.

Great stuff.

Flomar came us as Marc identified it as a common denominator between the Jack Montgomery Scepter release and the Honey Bees on Garrison whereas the more pertinent link which ties these records plus the Just Brothers on Garrison and Empire together is Travler/Traveler Music (spelled both ways on various releases). As you point out Steve Flomar was the publisher on many Scepter Wand releases.

^ Indeed.

Flomar was a publishing company owned by the Scepter partners Flo Greenberg and Marv Schlacter. A number of outside masters released on Scepter and associated labels would have been published through this company as well as material recorded in New York and paid for by Greenberg on signed artists. The other common publisher credit with the Jack Montgomery / Honey Bees / Just Brothers material was Travler, named after the motel owned by Don Montgomery, the co-proprieter of the Barracuda and Empire labels. As an aside the address of Flomar was the same as that of Scepter's recording studios at 254 W.54th Street in Manhattan. Premises which later became the famous discotheque Studio 54.

The Honey Bees on Garrison couldn't be more Detroit if it tried to be in terms of its credits and its sound, so not NYC except for being distributed by Scepter. I'd take the Andantes thing with a pinch of salt personally. The group member talks of it as possibly an 'early' session (meaning predating their Motown involvement from the gist of her comments?) when clearly from the sound of the record it's contemporary to its release, so circa 1967. It wouldn't be the first instance of a session musician refusing to deny taking part in a recording they had no connection with in actuality.

The mentions of Honey & The Bees (Josie, Arctic) on this topic are all pretty irrelevant to the actual question. It's not even as though it's the same name! They were, however, at least the nucleus of The Yum Yums on ABC Paramount, so at least some 'scene' relevance. The Honey Bees on Fontana were really two separate groups, albeit the same entity as both were pseudonyms for other, moonlighting groups fulfilling the one Fontana-Mercury contract. Their first single, "One Wonderful Night" is reckoned to be The Cookies under a nom de disc, while the second lot (who had the original release of Goffin and King's classic "Some Of Your Loving") was a studio aggregation which contained members of a group who also recorded as 'The Orchids' on Columbia. I'd assume there is no connection whatsoever between any of these and the Garrison record.

I think it's the same lead vocalist on both sides of the Garrison single, just singing harsher on "Let's Get Back Together" and sweeter on "Never In A Million Years". Surprised no-one's mentioned the very prominent male backing vocals on the (Edwin Starr penned) topside. I wonder of anyone's ever asked Dennis Coffey about the possible identity of this group? Also has there ever been any evidence of a stock copy of the 45? Whatever the answer is to these questions it's still a great record and one I wish I'd bought when it was still relatively cheap.

Notice the Storm issue has a Speed catalogue number: SP 1005. Maybe it's just a case of the pressing plant just using some 'overs' of another of Morty Craft's labels, rather than the Storm copy being any kind of definitive first pressing. The typesetting is exactly the same on both copies, just silver ink on the Speed copies, black on the Storm ones. There are also two Storm variants: logo and address in black and logo and address in burgundy/deep red. I'm also pretty sure there is a demo of the Storm copy: white label with blue type. Don't know that of I've seen a demo of the Speed version.

On the flip of The Whispers "Take A Lesson From The Teacher" and, according to soulfulkindamusic, two other Doré 45 from around the same time.

Soul music can be very immersive and can breed insularity, although I'm not using 'insularity' in a pejorative way. For the best part of twenty years I didn't really listen to anything else in a serious way outside of the odd jazz record, so can understand that position. Also another thing to bear in mind is the notion that many people got into the soul scene (and soul music itself, although the two things are by no means the exact same thing) as an exact antidote to Pop Music and mainstream music industry marketing and other aspects of mainstream popular culture. I used to think I was immune to aspects of that world while still listening to contemporary black music until realising that too was a machine in exactly the same mould as the 'white' or 'pop' music business.

I've had another think about this and will say that the problem or issue white singers faced when trying to 'sing soul' was in many ways the same problem later black vocalists themselves faced. When I asked whether Dan Penn or Eddie Hinton were as good as their heroes it must be borne in mind their heroes were singers like Bobby Bland, Sam Cooke, Little Willie John, Ray Charles, Jerry Butler and Joe Tex. The original template was so good that the bar for what became 'the soul era' was set very high. These named vocalists were stylists who were often slavishly copied, by black and white vocalists alike. Another thing to bear in mind is that Blue Eyed Soul came in as many regional or stylistic flavours as Soul itself. At least one strand of it that I can think of was probably best done by white groups or singers: the Gold Star sound of Hollywood as practiced by The Righteous Brothers, Jerry Ganey and so on. In that case the records lose a little something in the sound's iteration by black vocalists like Bobby Sheen, Billy Storm or Joe Phillips. Just my opinion though.

I don't think there would be anyone who uses the site who couldn't agree with the particular proposition as you interpret it above Mike.

This topic often opens a huge can of worms. Do you have to be an African American to sing Soul Music? I might once have said 'Yes' but my position has shifted somewhat over the years. I think the very best soul music has its roots in the black gospel tradition and the very best soul singers have this deeply ingrained in them: OV Wright, Otis Clay, Candi Staton, Judy Clay, Wilson Pickett and so on. Beneath that elite group there was a wide range in ability though. Many of the soul records of the classic era were made by amateur singers. Some were fabulous vocalists who for a whole host of reasons never got the breaks, but a great many performed deservedly in obscurity. As John says above there were a number of white singers who could make more than a decent fist of 'authentic' soul music: Eddie Hinton and Dan Penn are obvious and stellar examples. These guys also wrote and played on some of the truly defining records of the soul era. They weren't playing at it: they really lived it. Were they as good as the black vocalists who were their heroes? The jury's out. What I do know is that I prefer Penn's original version of "I'm Your Puppet" to any of the covers and Eddie Hinton's "Dreamer" is better by him than even a great vocalist like Patti LaBelle who also attempted the song. These two examples may have more to do with preferring the songwriter's own interpretation of their own material than anything else though. I suppose one of the most important things to establish in these debates is a frame of reference for 'Blue Eyed' or 'White Soul'. The American music journalist Dan Hodges approached a definition in this way: "I'm unwilling to call something "Ëœwhite soul' that wasn't recorded during the historical period of soul music. Whatever else, for example, the Beastie Boys may be, I don't consider them blue-eyed soul."Â What he called his two compelling criteria were: "One... that the white singer and song should "Ëœfit' with what we recognize as soul music already. It would mean that, for example, the white soul singer was recorded by a record company that released soul records and that the records were made as they would have been with a black singer."Â "Two... that the white singer's performances should be accepted as soul music since they would be so accepted if sung by blacks [italics added]... and [that] if a black singer recorded the song, it would be considered soul. In contrast, whether a white group or the Supremes made an album of Rodgers & Hart show tunes, it wasn't soul music."Â These definitions help with such questions the wider world of Soul. Then there is the case of the Northern Soul record. I suppose a lot of answers to this topic will centre on the ethnic or racial identity of artists who came to have records played on the UK Northern scene. That's where all such distinctions go out the window from my personal perspective. For me today and in Northern Soul terms the ethnic identity of the singer matters less than the overall feel or flavour of the record. Of course it's great when a Northern record has a piledriver of a soulful vocal like an Eddie Parker or a Jock Mitchell, but conversely it can work just as well with the vocal approach of, for example, Ronnie & Robyn. In terms of Barry's original question although I love soul music deeply I think I can also appreciate a great singer regardless of their race. Outside of soul I love certain Sinatra records, think Elvis was a phenomenal singer, am astounded by the quality of Peggy Lee as an interpreter of songs, am a huge fan of Brian Wilson, Laura Nyro and so on and so on. None of those named singers were 'inferior' to anyone. In terms of their artistry they were without peer.

The original of "Walk Away Renee" is by The Left Banke on Smash. The 4 Tops record is a cover version from two years later.

Sonny Moore "Erase & Replace" on Mercury was often pitched down significantly at Popcorn dances. The actual 45 is quite sprightly but listen to this youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTFjzmfx9ho Practically playing at 33rpm!

John Manship had a red label styrene issue for sale on his website for quite some time until about six months ago. There are at least two white label formats for the demo. A brilliant double sider.

Not forgetting this one, on another recut of the same basic track:

Interesting. Has anyone got a 45?