Godzilla

I'm going to be in Berlin for a few days in late November. It's been on my list for a long time, but never seemed to get round to it, so I quite excited about the prospect. The trip is Midweek unfortunately, so probably not the time to check out any local soul/funk nights. I'd still appreciate some tips regarding good bars to hit though, preferably some with decent music. I'm cool with anything funky or jazzy and equally at home with mod, garage, rockabilly etc. No house/techno please and a couple of our mates are not mad on hip hop, so best avoid that. Ideas about somewhere nice to eat would be welcome as I'll actually be there on my birthday. There are a few of us going with varying budgets so I'm thinking not quite fine dining, but a nice sort of mid-range restaurant. I'd also be grateful for any recommendations for things to do in the daytime - although I imagine the three days we're there will be filled up pretty quickly. I would like to hit a couple of record shops if possible, of course... I know we have a few members based in Germany and it would be great to hear from them - and to also hear impressions from UK citizens who have visited. Cheers!

Hey Ponty - sorry if I struck a nerve mate. To be honest what you play and where is absolutely nothing to do with me, so fill your boots. Although I broadly support the OVO approach in terms of Northern Soul type events, I also really enjoy some of the anomalies and contradictions it throws up. The sort of self-talk used by those who support the principle of OVO yet want to rationalise their playing of re-releases is a wonderful example of that.

Yeah but he's a completely different person! I remember a certain dealer trying to pass off a big band jazz record by Larry Clinton the trumpeter/band leader as being the Philly soul man. Very unethical... As you can see, the other LC cut a rather dashing figure though

Well that's an interesting spin on the eternal OVO debate: buy an unplayable copy of a record for pennies and use it to justify playing reissues. Readers! Can't afford to play expensive records but still wanna be a DJ? Why not just photocopy the label of your wrecked originals and stick em on boots

Second time in a week this song has come up - what's occurring..? Complete discography c/o Daddy Bones here, Mal https:///forums/topic/300089-a-soul-recording-titled-dead/

You can add the Atlantic test pressing to that list too, unfortunately

Crikey!!!

Ahh - your pet subject Managed to pick up the Edith Jones 45 thanks to your excellent discography. (The Ponderosa Stomp was great by the way)

Is your computer broken? See image above your last post for the soundtrack CD it's taken from...

I'm supposed to be socially outgoing and often considered the life and soul of the party, but fortunately us Saggitarians aren't taken in by all that bollocks...

The singer of the vocal version of Tough Girl is black? I'd take a lot of convincing...

Well here's another (at least I think it's him) - all their names are helpfully written on and arrowed in marker pen

I know you said you're not interested in knowing if any were played earlier but Checkmates Ltd was definitely played at W*g*n - maybe 79ish...

He wrote, produced and presumably played organ on this psych-funker.

However, keep your trap shut about making those dimples in all the Salvadors boots for God's sake...

I thought you were never going to cough up to it!

Dunno. Maybe on the strength of US sales? There's enough about to suggest it sold a fair few....

I thought the Italian ones were legit 1973 presses: distributed by Fonit-Cetra who also issued "My Hang Up.." as a 45 with the rare flip "All Of A Sudden" in 1973.

Don't forget the label variation with a plainer logo, simpler bird and no birdcage.

I’m offering free postage anywhere in Europe to Soul Source members who can pay by Paypal Friends/family. These 45s will be advertised elsewhere but the offer applies to order received via PM from this site only. Otherwise everything shipped to your destination at cost. I don’t profit from shipping. Grading is strict: VG+ means light marks, nothing unsightly or audible. I see people use Ex to grade records in this condition. Quibble free returns if not happy. Prices are in GBP (£). Marie Knight + Sam Price Trio - Gospel Songs Vol 1 EP Brunswick 60 Now 50 SOLD! Rare UK EP featuring in-demand ‘Who Rolled The Stone Away’. Red label has tri-centre intact and it comes in nice art sleeve. Vinyl is EX. Sleeve strong VG+ with small sticker mark visible top right and slight yellowing to rear but lovely lamination. Beautiful copy. Salem Travelers — Give Me Liberty or Death — Checker 35 Now 30 Nice Gospel dancer - not the later Cadet "Sermons and Spirituals" reissue that's often passed off as the real thing but the pale blue original. Fantastic group with a great song and one of the ones that paved the way for the recent acceptance of Gospel tunes on the Northern and R&B scenes. Strong VG+ Gay Singers — He’s Calling Me — Checker DJ 25 Now 20 Uptempo Gene Barge production with a similar feel to the Kindly Shepherds biggy - looks set to follow in its footsteps. Strong VG+ Little Yvonne Reed — I Can’t Make This Journey By Myself — Burning Bush 40 Now 30 SOLD! Tough R&B style gospel from Alabama. VG+ Art Reynolds Singers — I Won't Be Back — Capitol 12 Now 10 Stomping gospel rave up with none other than Thelma Houston on vocals. Marker on label but vinyl is Ex Rodena Preston + The Voices of Deliverance - Get Ready / I Must Be Ready — BeeGee 55 Now 45 Record of the list for me. Two incredible funk slow burners on a rare 45. Some small dots on label that may come off. Vinyl Strong VG+ close to Ex Gospel Encores — My God — Hob 15 Now 10 Under the radar funky gospel soul with a growling organ riff NM Singing Disciples — We Gonna Make It — Hob 15 Now 10 ON HOLD Soulful finger-snapper from 1975 Date stamp on label. Vinyl Ex condition Here are the sound clips: Marie Knight Sam Price.mp3 Salem Travelers.mp3 Gay Singers.mp3 Little Yvonnee Reed.mp3 Art Reynolds Singers Back.mp3 Voices of Deliverence A.mp3 Voices of Deliverence B.mp3 Gospel Encores.mp3 Singing Disciples.mp3

Dunno how you're searching chaps - they pop right up when I look. Couple have disappeared though - maybe by posting on here I helped advertised em! https://www.juno.co.uk/soul/this-week/

Juno this week is full of new lookalike 45s, many of which are pretend promos including: Vel-Vets 20th Century white label, Charles Sheffield Excello white, Collins and Collins A&M white promo, Constellations (both tunes) Gemini Star white promo, Don Gardner Tru-Glo Town white... ...and then there's Jesse Johnson/Gypsies - Old Town, Mel Britt Fip, Etta James/Doug Banks Chess, &th Ave Aviators/Ritchie Adams - Congress, Willie Jones - Mr Peacock, Marion James/Lillian Offit - Excello, Velvet Hammer - Soozy, Frank bloody Wilson / inst - Soul... Who the devil is behind all this stuff and is has Juno ever been challenged for selling such blatant boots?

Some great background to Numero's reissue of Forte label recordings here: Chicago reissue label Numero Group revives the Kansas City soul label Forte By David Hudnall @davidhudnall Marva Whitney, one of the greatest soul singers to come out of Kansas City, died of complications from pneumonia last December. Whitney was best-known for her association with James Brown – she was a member of his James Brown Revue and later released solo records for Brown's King Records. Brown, sometimes known as Soul Brother No. 1, used to call Whitney Soul Sister No. 1. By 1969, Brown and Whitney's romantic and professional relationship had soured (for those details, see Whitney's book, God, the Devil and James Brown: Memoirs of a Funky Diva), and Whitney returned to Kansas City. Back home, she hooked up with a man named Ellis Taylor, who ran the only soul label in town: Forte Records. Forte Records operated from 1967 until the late '70s and released soul and funk albums from such groups as the Four Darlings, Everyday People, the Fabulous Rhythm Makers, and the Rayons. Unless you're a crate-digging DJ, a serious record collector or a local historian, those names likely don't register. But to the Chicago-based Numero Group – a pre-eminent reissue label that this week officially releases 28 songs from Forte's catalog on CD and a double LP – the songs have been worth years of pursuit. "Forte is one of those labels that's been kind of known to us for a long time – it's been floating around," says Rob Sevier, a Numero Group founder who heads up Eccentric Soul, the funk-soul arm of the label. "Ten years ago, shortly before Ellis Taylor died, he basically dumped all his record stock to a junker – a guy who cleans out houses, basically. So there was this junker selling all these old Forte 45s on eBay, and I bought a bunch and so did a lot of other people. For a moment in time, they were very attainable records." This was before Numero Group was even a label; Sevier was collecting purely out of enjoyment. He says he remembers hearing from other collectors that Taylor's son, Ellis Jr., was considering reissuing Forte's catalog. But that never came to pass. "Then about five years ago, we started thinking seriously about Forte," Sevier says. "By that point, we had gone from being a label that barely existed to one that had done a lot of soul reissues. So we were in a position to get a Forte release some attention." (Forte is the second KC-area reissue from the Numero Group; in 2008, it released a four-LP boxed set of Titan Records' late-'70s and early '80s power pop.) The process was slowgoing. Whitney, who married (and later divorced) Ellis Taylor, owned half the rights to the label's masters; Ellis Jr. had inherited the other half after his father's death. Having been burned by record labels in the past, Whitney was initially suspicious of Numero Group and would communicate with the label only via surrogates. One of those surrogates was Dawayne Gilley, a longtime champion and historian of blues and jazz in Kansas City. "Dawayne was integral," Sevier says. "Marva trusted him." Gilley and Whitney became friends in 1998; they met through another Kansas City diva, Myra Taylor. "I never knew Marva as a funk legend," Gilley says. "I didn't know that about her backstory for four to five years. Then one day at Music Exchange, I saw a reissue of a King album by Marva. Over time, I picked up that she was part of James Brown's show, that she had all these old connections. One time, she had [stax Records owner] Al Bell give me a call about something or other – I mean, she was the real deal." In the spring of 2012, Whitney approached Gilley about looking into Numero Group and evaluating whether the deal they were offering was a legitimate one. "I knew a little about them [Numero]," Gilley says. "So I started calling people I knew I could trust. And everybody was saying Numero pretty much does what they say they'll do. Then I had to educate myself on the history of Forte. I talked to [The Fish Fry's] Chuck Haddix, I had [Cyprus Avenue's] Bill Shapiro look over contracts. And Marva had me talk to Ellis Jr. about it." Ultimately, Whitney and Ellis Jr. decided to move forward, with Gilley negotiating the deal. "As I told Ellis Jr., at the end of the day they're reissuing a nice keepsake of your mother and father's work that wouldn't otherwise exist, and they're writing you a check to do it," Gilley says. "And maybe one of the songs gets used in a TV show or movie and you get some royalty money. Marva held some of the project up with unusual requests, but you can't really hold that against her – when you've had a lifetime of getting screwed over by record labels, it's hard to trust people." Whitney was the star of the label in its later years, but in a lot of ways, the story of Forte is Taylor's. Before founding Forte, Taylor worked in a TV repair shop on Walrond Avenue, and then as an engineer at radio station KPRS (then AM, now Hot 103 Jamz). "Ellis Taylor was a bit of a hustler, and – this is something I've found a lot with old label guys from his era – his inroad to the music business was his knowledge of electrical engineering," Sevier says. "He didn't have a ton of musical talent, but he had the know-how for the equipment. So he hooks up with a DJ named Rick Darnell, who turns out to be kind of a classic music-industry crook who stands between the money and the artists. Darnell recruits Taylor because he needs somebody to generate masters for his artists. They work together on a release, and it flops, and Darnell disappears, but Taylor ends up sticking with the business." "In 1967 to '69, there wasn't anybody else in KC producing soul or funk music for black folks," Gilley says. "Ellis was a guy who was trying to get talent around here rolling and get artists in front of bigger industry people. I think he was more inspired by the technical and studio side of the process than being a business owner or bigwig. And I think he saw Forte as more of a demo label – he was able to get Decca interested in [Forte artists] Tony Ashley and the Rayons using demos he cut. He didn't hold anybody back, which is what a lot of managers, agents and producers did in those days." Gilley also notes that business ethics were crucial to Whitney's agreeing to the deal with Numero. "They [Numero] had to agree to pay artist royalties to everybody on the compilation – and work to find everybody on the compilation – or else she wouldn't do the deal," he says. "She wanted to make sure everybody got paid, even if it meant she got less." Forte continued releasing 45s (never an LP) through the late 1970s, when Whitney and Taylor divorced. Taylor reportedly stored his stock sleeveless, in a squalid garage, until just before his death. After some dark years as a lounge and torch singer, Whitney enjoyed a brief resurgence prior to her death, experiencing popularity abroad and having her work sampled in the DJ and hip-hop worlds. In recent years, certain Forte records have sold online for as much as $3,000. There's much more to the Forte story, much of which can be found in the extensive liner notes that accompany the Numero Group reissue. (Every major record store in town is stocking the release, and Zebedee's RPM is having a soul party with live music Saturday, September 7, to celebrate.) Unfortunately, Numero Group was unable to do a proper interview with Whitney before her death, so some mysteries remain. "She died a few weeks after giving us the go-ahead to come down to Kansas City and interview her," Sevier says. "We have access to existing interviews with her but none that are Forte-focused." "I do wish Marva could have talked to Numero for the album notes," Gilley says. "Because even though she could be difficult, she was, at her core, a people person. She has to be about the most down-to-earth superstar diva that ever lived. She grew up in Armourdale, then moved to the northeast part of KCK. And then she's on the road with James Brown and on the cover of Jet magazine. She was the biggest thing going for a while there, but she stayed humble. And in some ways, I think she could have been a bigger star if she'd stuck with James Brown or made some different decisions. But at least now, with this release, folks in KC and beyond will hear the funk and soul pleasures of her music." https://www.pitch.com/kansascity/forte-reissue-kansas-city-numero-group-marva-whitney/Content?oid=3396308&showFullText=true