Garethx

Dylan the Robbie Williams credit comes about because of the sampling of Barry White's "I'm In Ecstasy" for "Rock DJ".

Great info as ever Rob. It still remains that the Pennsylvania address is something of a red herring. These are LA records through and through. Comment about the odd address being designed to throw Motown in some way were made a few years ago and obviously now we know a bit more. Maybe the money men behind the label resided in Rydal, PA. If it was some kind of marketing tactic it failed miserably as the records on this logo are pretty scarce. I don't know where Hazel Martin fits into all of this. No doubt he sings in a similar style to Paris but to say it it definitively the same singer is stretching things a bit. This David Paris is the same guy who recorded with Gene Page and Dick Glasser for Uni later in the sixties (with apparently an album "Paris Has Arrived", which got at least as far as having a catalogue number, UNI 73067) and who, under the name of Ekundayo Paris wrote for Barry White in the 70s. Those events place him fairly firmly in California while Hazel Martin and The Tempests were recording in the Carolinas and in New York.

Yes. Chester and Gary Pipkin, well known Los Angeles music figures. Recording artists on Philles as The Alley Cats and sometime members of Gold Star Studios' famous Wrecking Crew session band. They later had a hand in much of the output of the A&M subsidiary Omen. The Pennsylvania address seems to be a bit of a red herring as everything about the releases on Doc shouts "LA". Other posters have suggested the records might have been meant for east coast distribution but why not then press on the east coast? The Doc singles are all manufactured on the west coast.

I doubt if they're the same person. Len Wade and his career are fairly well documented from his band The Tikis to the later soul material cut with Finley Duncan and Buddy Killen. He has been acclaimed as being responsible for one of the best blue-eyed soul ballad 45s ever made in the shape of the Dial release "It Comes And Goes". Willie Wade would appear to be Wilbur Wade of The Jades of "I'm Where It's At" fame on Nite LIfe. The credits of the two Nite Life 45s seem to suggest a New Orleans origin for the records. Whether they are the same Jades as on another New Orleans release "Lucky Fellow" on Mode is open to debate. I remember talking to Tim Brown years ago about the Willie Wade 45 and he was 100% convinced that the artist was white. I wasn't so sure then and still aren't. "I'm Where It's At" is deliberately quite garage-y whereas Willie Wade channels Little Anthony and Smokey Robinson on the other Nite Life 45. Some of the phrasing on those slower tracks makes me think he may not be a white guy but with New Orleans soul it's sometimes quite hard to tell. I was very surprised recently to learn that Lonnie (Louis) Jones on Jenmark and Decca was apparently a white singer.

Which side of Eugene Gamble did he play?

Great to have BW interviewed in this way and good that he's got a record deal again. Wouldn't be The Guardian if it didn't include one glaring error. It was "It's All Over Now" I would think he's referring to rather than "The Last Time" which was in The Staples Singers repertoire until appropriated by Jagger/Richards.

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.

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

Collected on the Popcorn scene in Belgium by all accounts. Whether it was actually played out anywhere is open to question as it's a bit fast for 'Popcorn' dancing.

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!

As Roburt says the best chance would be on some item of company stationery like a letterheading, business card or invoice. Maybe even on a tape box.

Should add that Bestway also produced vinyl 45s too. I can think of a few vinyl 45s on Bell distributed labels like Sansu, Jet Set, Goldwax and others where there is a 'BW' as part of the master number, like on this one by Art Neville:

Bell owned the Bestway plant at one time. Those Bestway records with the label print direct on to the styrene are probably the best styrene ever made: the fidelity can be awesome. The Bestway factory also produced styrene records with glued labels at the same time. I have no idea why some orders were for paper labels and some for screen print onto plastic for the same titles at the same time. Bell pressed at several other plants throughout the country: Monarch in LA, ARP in Michigan, Plastic Products in Memphis etc. In 1969 Columbia bought Bell and the records were pressed at Columbia plants as well as still at Bestway and the other places mentioned. Morris Chestnut's Too Darn Soulful was pressed at Bestway and Monarch. Most of the Bestway promos have labels on the wrong sides. On the Monarchs they are the correct way around. There is a Monarch issue of TDS but I have yet to see a blue label issue pressed at Bestway.

I think all the obsession about the 'detail' or lack of it in Quadrophenia misses the point massively. It was a film I'd always avoided seeing until the opportunity arose to watch it at the NFT with a talk by the director Franc Roddam beforehand. He thought it was interesting that a whole generation of mod revivalists had tried to use the film as a template on How To Be A Mod when the entire point of the original subject matter by The Who was a vicious satire on conformity itself and the damaging effects on a borderline personality of being made to follow a set of rules imposed by society on one hand and the peer group on the other. A lot of the period detail in Quadrophenia is indeed wide of the mark: the scooters are wrong, Sting's haircut is wrong, blah, blah. Yet to me that is immaterial really because not one jot of of that detracts from the film's emotional power and resonance. Sitting in a cinema and muttering that you 'wouldn't have worn those socks in 1973' would be to kind of miss the point.

Good stuff Dennis. Thanks!

This 45 is genuinely scarce on Paradox. Steve is correct in stating that it was until relatively recently a twenty-five quitter on Volt, but I'd have to say that price tag didn't really reflect the degree of difficulty in finding an issue versus the double sided demo which only features Love Changes. The blue issue has never been particularly easy to pick up but there was no specialist demand on any dance scene for Can You Win until the last four or five years, so really the price premium reflected the fact that it was mainly for label completists only. White demos have always been in the 'common' category. Fast forward a few years and every man and his dog now recognises the appeal of the dance side. The prices being quoted today are realistic because demand currently exceeds supply and will continue to do so until deejays at all levels of the foodchain are sorted and everyone is sick of hearing the thing. For what it's worth I think this is a pretty special record with an identity and charm all of its own.

Very insightful and honest post Len.

Very sad news. Chuck's live shows were, as everyone has said, something else.

It is Ike Noble. As others have said a pretty rare record. The uptempo side was known about on the scene for some time but never really stuck, maybe down to a shortage of copies on one hand and there just being too many better records about on the other. The deep soul side is really magnificent, maybe one of the very best true deep rarities.

I'd say the Mono copy should have a higher value than the Stereo, where the separation on some tracks leaves a lot to be desired.

Maybe I was a bit harsh in saying it's just another song. Laura Barton wrote an interesting piece on it in The Guardian a couple of years back which gives it its due: https://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/21/hail-hail-rock-n-roll

Rhys's story about the song is interesting but tantalisingly incomplete. Presumably the other people he mentions who bought the master to Amy Mala Bell were The Wildweeds or people connected to them via the Syncron Studio in Connecticut. Rhys's version makes no real mention of how the song became the record or how Tobi Lark/Legend got involved. The original germ of the song was obviously a good one, but it is the arrangement, production and the vocal which makes the finished record a masterpiece. it's ironic that the cheque Rhys received was probably off the back of Kylie Minogue's execrable version which shows that without the beautiful Tobi Legend vocal and the majestic arrangement of the Mala 45 this is, let's face it, just another song.

The master number on the Baby Washington 45 (the first on the label) seems to indicate a 1967 release, as does The Poets record.

That's KT surely?

J-2 was a short-lived successor of Sue. There is an extremely rare Baby Washington 45 on the label, a version of Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone.