Ady Croasdell

Mary Love Remembered I first came across Mary Love’s wonderful music as a teenager, dancing to ‘You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet’ and ‘Lay This Burden Down’ at “Old Soul” gatherings for lovers of the uptempo mid 60s soul sound (soon to be coined Northern Soul in the UK). As a record collector I had picked up other Modern label recordings like ‘Let Me Know’ and ‘Hey Stoney Face’ over the years and got to love her ballad ‘Baby I’ll Come’ too. In the late 70s my friend and eventual co-founder of the 6Ts Randy Cozens turned me on to ‘I’m In Your Hands’, the flip of ‘You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet’, that I had foolishly neglected for the excellence of the disc’s other side. With Randy’s championing of it that track became something of an anthem for the early 6Ts dances and when we switched to all-nighters it was adopted as an appropriately emotional and majestic ender to the night’s soul session. In 1982 I got to compile an LP of Modern and Kent recordings for a new UK reissue soul label that Ace Records were setting up which was to be called Kent. Mary’s contributions to the influential Los Angeles labels were the most important of an impressive discography of mid 60s soul. Her unaccompanied sweet and soulful voice enunciating “Yooou” meant that ‘Bitter’ just had to be the opening track. It heralded a series of soul LPs that would influence the vintage soul scene for decades to come. ‘Let Me Know’ saw the album out as the final track, but a second LP was already planned. Sales more than warranted it and we had saved ‘Lay This Burden Down’ to be the opener and ‘I’m In Your Hands’ was track eight, side two. The opening and closing tracks for any compilation are prestigious and have to be musical highlights, for Mary to earn all four on the first two LPs speaks volumes about her music. ‘Baby I’ll Come’ and her duet with Arthur Adams, ‘Let’s Get Together’, were then featured on the third Kent LP “Slow And Moody, Black And Bluesy” while most of the rest of her sides were dotted throughout the following (just short of a hundred) vinyl albums. By 1993 I had decided to try running a Northern Soul Weekender at a great venue in Cleethorpes that I knew and was considering which artists to bring over to attract the rare soul crowd. I had already established a good relationship with Mary over the phone from getting artist royalties to her, for which she was always grateful. I had not been in touch for some years though, and knew that she was now a minister apparently only prepared to sing songs of a religious nature. She had performed a set, mainly from her inspirational 80s releases on the Co-Love label, for the UK’s modern soul crowd who had adopted ‘Come Out Of The Sandbox’ as an anthemic, soulful crossover play for their weekend get-together. Rod Dearlove’s magazine Voices From The Shadows championed these releases and organised her first UK visit. I did not get to that Fleetwood show but heard that she had sung a version of ‘You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet’ with the lyrics devoted to her saviour. I knew the Northern scene would not really want a show like that but thought I would ask Mary if she would reconsider her policy of not performing secular songs. I caught her at the right time, she was with her musical and life partner of the time, Brad Comer, and they were happy to visit the UK again and would sing the songs we thought would suit the crowd best. This included inspirational ones such as ‘Sandbox’ and the stunning ballad ‘The Price’ from the same era, which had blown me away on hearing the new material. The couple duly arrived and were a pleasure to deal with. It was the first event of that size that I had run and their patience at my utter incompetence helped me through; the whole weekend had an air of adventure about it. It was also the first live gig I had arranged and my lack of experience meant that I was out of my depth and very nervous that I could have a major flop on my hands. Tony Middleton had already given a good performance but problems with the sound and lack of rehearsal made it a slightly shambolic set with great moments and awkward moments. However when Mary got onto the stage and hit the first notes of ‘Let Me Know’ the energy levels soared, the musicians responded and she delivered a stunning set that washed away all my fears and relieved the pressure of a very tense time. The fact that we have just celebrated 20 years of the event is partly down to Mary’s first performance for us. By the early 90s the transition from vinyl releases to CD was almost complete and in 1994 Kent issued all the Modern recordings in conjunction with the best of Mary’s inspirational sides for Co-Love and some unissued secular recordings she had cut a decade or so earlier. We named it “Then And Now” CDKEND 109. Mary’s continued popularity with the vintage soul crowd meant she made occasional visits to Europe and when it came to singers for the big soul revue we organised to celebrate Kent Records 25th anniversary in 2007, Mary’s name was first on the list. Again she gave a wonderful show and it meant a lot to have her there with us. We have deleted Mary’s CD while we plan a new compilation covering her whole career, sadly Mary will not be around to see that tribute to her wonderful singing. I learned of Mary’s passing by email while attending a memorial all day dance to my original 6TS partner Randy, being run by his two sons Terry and Paul. The news hit me hard but it was probably the perfect environment to make the announcement and celebrate Mary’s life and talents. I ended my set with ‘I’m In Your Hands’ which was a tribute to two fine soul people who had been separated geographically, but were united spiritually. Ady Croasdell http://www.6ts.info photo courtesy of John Smith.

I am sorry to report that Mary Love died on Friday. She will be hugely missed by all soul fans and 6TS and Kent fans in particular will always have a special place for her in their hearts. Ady Below added by site Clip from Soul Source Article (see below for link) ...sterling efforts on demos were soon rewarded, as again with Marc Gordon producing a number of mainly Frank Wilson penned songs were cut with a view to landing Mary her own recording contract. Arthur Wright was the arranger on the work and although Mary was still very young and unschooled in studio techniques with the help and encouragement of the talented team around her the tracks that resulted were of a very high quality.Marc Gordon secured Mary a deal with Modem Records and her 1st single "You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet / Im In Your Hands" (Modem 1006) was released in 1965. This was an instant hit, first locally and then nationally and its success led to it being released.... Interview by John Smith and Paul Dunn on Soul Source Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Love Soul Walking page http://www.soulwalking.co.uk/Mary%20Love%20Comer.html

William Daron Pulliam — better known as funk and soul icon Darondo — passed away from heart failure on Sunday June 9th. Born and bred in Berkeley , California , Darondo first played professionally at the age of 18 in the Witnesses, a blue-eyed soul troupe resident at East Bay teen club the Lucky 13 in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the early 1970s that the singer-guitarist hit his stride. He fashioned a unique blend of down-and-dirty funk and sweet soul, informed by Al Green, James Brown, the Dells and others, but always identifiable by his own special delivery, as he slid from gravelly baritone to wailing falsetto in the space of a measure. Being a musician was however just one facet of this gregarious, flamboyant individual, who made the scene in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area with snazzy threads and a tricked-out Rolls Royce Silver Cloud as his wheels. As a natural entertainer, it makes sense that Darondo would move into the then-developing world of video. Appearing weekly on local cable television, as the host of a local talent contest, or a music video “vee jay”, he spread his infectious bonhomie to homes throughout the Bay Area. After leaving the cable TV arena in the mid-1980s, the entertainer took a sabbatical and decided to see the world. He travelled to Hawaii , spent time in London and Paris , before basing himself in the Caribbean for several years, where he island-hopped as an entertainer on a cruise ship. His stories from this period range from voodoo ceremonies to frequently being mistaken for Little Richard, but eventually Darondo returned to the Bay Area, and a new, and perfectly appropriate, vocation as a physical therapist. He used an unorthodox, entertainer’s approach, utilizing music as his primary therapeutic tool, yet saw success in rehabilitating patients deemed untreatable otherwise. Darondo’s original recording career stretched to just three self-penned singles, ‘How I Got Over,’ ‘Legs,’ and ‘Didn’t I,’ the last named released on the Berkeley-based Music City label in late 1973. Discovered by the crate-digging fraternity in the ‘90s, Darondo’s records came to symbolize that appealing tributary known as “lost soul.” The heartbreaking downtempo ballad ‘Didn’t I’ would subsequently become the artist’s signature tune, sampled and featured on soundtracks around the world. It also led to Darondo’s rebirth as a cult performer in the late 2000s, delighting a new set of fans with a show that drew heavily on his trademarked style and repertoire. I got to know Darondo during the assembly of “Listen To My Song: The Music City Sessions” in 2011. A couple of years prior, the dozen or so reels bearing his name were amongst the first that I put on the tape machine, as I commenced the exhaustive process of auditioning and transferring the recently-liberated Music City masters. As each song played through, I was blown away by his consistent and compelling sound. This was prime mid-70s East Bay street soul, rough-hewn but infused with a tremendous atmosphere. ‘Luscious Lady,’ ‘I’m Lonely,’ ‘I’m Gonna Love You’, ‘The Wolf” — even the unadorned, bare-boned takes were essential, as Darondo alternately preened and pleaded in equal measure on a brace of fantastic unheard originals. The man was as charming as could be when we first talked, singing the lyrics to some of the titles down the phone to me before we had even met. His reaction when first hearing the forty year-old recordings was a mixture of incredulity and jubilation: “I cannot believe that you got this stuff; you done mystified me, like the Twilight Zone or something! But this is the root, you got the root!” Darondo’s reminiscences were priceless, whether it was about “cutting up” as a player back in the day, or joking about his testy relationship with Music City ’s obstreperous Ray Dobard. He did however adopt a serious tone when refuting the sensationalist claims of some commentators as to his being a pimp: “ain’t no way in the world could I do something like that, ‘cos to me, that’s just too low.” We kept in regular touch and it was always a pleasure to pick up the phone and hear, “heeeeyyy, it’s D!” As he had recently completed a new album, we discussed his adding vocals to a pair of uncompleted backing tracks from the Music City stash. When we sat in my car to listen, Darondo began to softly sing the lyric to one, the lilting ‘Sayanora,’ and it was as though he was right back there. How I wish now I had recorded that moment. I only got to see him perform once, at a small club in Oakland doing a guest spot on a Sunday night to a sparse crowd. When Darondo bounded on stage, the energy level in the room, stagnant most of the night, rose one hundred percent as he launched into what proved to be a twenty-minute extrapolation of ‘Didn’t I,’ complete with an X-rated, if good-natured, rap and some rather lasciviously timed press-ups. As tireless as he seemed on stage, Darondo admitted to me on the phone the next day that such shows really took it out of him. It was obvious in our subsequent meetings his health was not the best, particularly after he’d had to cancel an appearance at the prestigious Bonnaroo festival last summer, on doctor’s orders. But he knew he had made a mark with his music, and seemed especially happy that the Music City recordings, long thought lost, had survived. And it was a thrill for me as a reissue producer, and a fan, to share with the world the infectious artistry of this one-of-a-kind cool cat. I’m really gonna miss him. By Alec Palao originally posted on ace records http://acerecords.co.uk posted via Ace Records Ady Croasdale

Today the grand old man of Black Music celebrates being an octogenarian. Apart from giving us records of the calibre of 'Human', 'Didn't I Tell You', 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself', 'Words Can Never Tell It', 'I'll Make You Happy', 'New Neighborhood', 'Your Man', 'The Pretty Part Of You' and 'Loving On The Losing Side', he was a singer with the Flamingos and apparently was one of the best live acts ever to perform at the Appollo in the early 60s. His name is revered by many US singers and many acts want to hook up with him when they hear he is living over here. Please share your memories of him and if anyone can post up the video of him dancing like a dervish with the Flamingos that would be a great reminder of how he was the real thing.