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Roburt

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Everything posted by Roburt

  1. The main man for teaching soul act stage routines was Vegas based (in later life) Cholly Atkins (half of Coles & Atkins) ........... ... see here ... https://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/23/local/me-atkins23 Cholly was the guy who Motown hired in the 60's .... to teach all their acts .... BUT ... he wouldn't have anything to do with the Contours (he called them idiots, coz all they did was fool about & mess up his routines) ... after Motown, he went freelance & took on the O'Jays (& more) .... all the acts loved him & gave him gold records + back stage access to ANY shows in any Vegas casino / concert hall. He was a really humble man & made me SO WELCOME when I would visit him. He had a den full of memorabilia from so many acts & I'd ask him about working with each. He had so many items that one day he just picked up a hand full of laminated backstage passes & said .. YOU CAN HAVE THESE ..... I almost broke into tears & just took 1 Temptations backstage pass.
  2. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Little Queen Street, Hull .... home in the mid to late 60's of The Gondola (Hull's top mod / soul club on a night + coffee bar by day) .... This door used to be the entrance to the club, Chris Farlowe passed thru here when he played live @ the place ....
  3. The current version of the Volumes were over in the UK to perform a few years back (March 2009). I wrote their bio for the Weekender web site .... AND ... got to spend hours with the guys over that weekend. All great fellas & very interesting to chat with. For a brief period, they also recorded under the name of the Magnetics, that story is really fascinating .... wrote it up & it went in a UK soul mag (Manifesto I think) .... talk about being in the right place at the write time (me that is).
  4. That book is here ....... https://www.amazon.com/The-Chitlin-Circuit-Road-Rock/dp/0393342948 and the thread it got mentioned in was 'Soul Artists Had It Tough'. The BBC doc on Nashville music was mentioned in the thread (moved to General section) ... Heart of Country -- BBC4 TV show
  5. I agree, massive urban renewal projects killed off the soul club scene / basic recording studio facilities in many cities; Miami (the I-95 blitzing the Overtown area), Baltimore & Norfolk (the city's chitlin theatre & surrounding buildings getting bulldozed) went the same way. Think some Chicago black districts were also affected & obviously whole areas of Detroit fell into decline. Harlem hung on OK but the Bronx & areas of Brooklyn wasted away in similar fashion. Loads of clubs in the Brooklyn area went under in the early 70's. The book about the Chitlin Circuit (can't recall the exact title at the mo, but it was mentioned in a thread on here recently) deals with how this killed off the entertainment in black areas of a number of other US cities. I'm interested in the Nashville story. Watched a BBC music documentary a couple of weeks back on the Nashville music scene. It was 99% about country music (which I hate) with only a fleeting mention of local black music output.
  6. There was also a famous (American) football player & wrestler in the 40's / 50's who used the name (nickname) Baby Ray ...
  7. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Bet he got his RSG ticket direct from Stringers @ a Mojo session .... great days !!
  8. RE: Otis Williams - Ain't Gonna Walk Your Dog No More OKeh ........... ........that Okeh 45 is OK but not as good as Otis Williams "Take Me Back" ....
  9. All I know is that the CapCity 45 from Baby Ray was an in-house production; DC thru & thu ...so that would make Baby Ray a local resident at that time (spring / summer 1970 ?).
  10. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Yep it was Mick Walters, though I don't really remember him from those days (67). But when I lived in Worksop, I got to know him well & he always claimed to have been a Mojo regular !!
  11. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    For fans of Dony's Horse & Groom soul sessions (that don't already know this fact) .... the Excel Bown was right next door to the H&G ... don't know what's in the building now (the bowling alley / disco occupied the entire 1st floor above all the shops at ground level).
  12. Ady, you're too busy to be on here at present ..... though ..... can you check out the most recent posts on the King Mojo Club 67 thread !!!
  13. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    I'm so pleased that this thread has brought folk out who were around & involved back in 67, it was a GREAT TIME to be on the Yorks soul scene ... Al Turner (along with Al Chappel) were close friends (but I mixed Turner up with Taylor in my initial post) ... .. the Viking pub, ain't that where they had all the fake acts on, I seem to remember a lot of problems when a fake Carla Thomas appeared there (groups they could just about get away with BUT fake solo acts were taking the biscuit) ... St Leger Bar ... in the Danum Hotel, centre of Dony ... our usual watering-hole for many years (draft Double Diamond please) .... Top Rank on a Tuesday, to see how many new Mojo 45's the DJ had managed to get his hands on & just who could do the latest dance steps ... Excel Bowl, I spent the summer of 66 in there, the discotheque room with a jukebox as DJ ... I wanna play 'Sugar for honey's lunch, what the hell is that records real name, Oh it's a 4 Tops record is it ... we all used to park our scooters out front of the Excel & wander off onto the Town Fields if it was a slow sunny day ... ... RE: a possible Mojo sounds CD .... I'm sure that could be a 'go-er', I'll speak with Ady ... WHEN he's not 2 weeks behind with Cleggy Weekender arrangements as he is now !!! Thanks to everyone for joining in !!!
  14. Well Buddy Bailey's real name was John .... if he had a middle name ... say Jerome (guessing here) .... that would make him J J Bailey OR Jay Jay Bailey .... .... a guy trying for a new image (coz he was known for stuff that was 10 years old), could easily have gone for a slight name change .. OR ... as Buddy, he could still have been signed to a deal elsewhere. Do we know if Tina #900 came before or after Tina #503 ??
  15. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Been contacted on here about Charles Pettican of Goole ... they are related ... and it turns out that Charlie (it still has to be Charlie for me) only lives around 15 miles from me these days .... small world .... used to also go to the Paradise Club in Goole with Charlie & other Goole soulies. Records only nites but still good fun (think it was mainly Sunday nites there coz Saturday's were for the niters elsewhere).
  16. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Went on-line to see if I could find any pics of the Favorita Coffee Bar where we all used to meet & hang out till time to catch the bus up into north Sheffield .... no photos to be found but did pick this wisdom up ............ ..... anyone go to La Favorita in the mid 60's on Carver Street (think it's a fashion shop now). Think it was one of the few places you could hang out listen to Motown and the such like ...... .......... I can remember drinking "hot lime" with a drop of sugar in it.It was served in a pyrex glass with a stainless steel holder. Might try one again just to recreate old times. Saturday afternoons used to be good, putting your order in to the shoplifters (Angie and friends), Levis for 50p, tab collar shirts from smc. Then getting "blues or bombers” for the all-niter at the Mojo from your local pusher or the lads from Peterborough.
  17. Robb, I came across this on an old computer memory stick when lookin' for sumat else (always the way when I'm looking thru my record boxes as well) ... still this shows that by 1970 Carl carlton was represented by Detroit based management ........
  18. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    He certainly liked cars ... BUT ... he liked the ladies a lot better .... the times he'd have to get punters @ the Mojo to delay his wife making into the dressing room on a club night were too numerous to mention. When he moved on for Sheffield, his 1st port of call was a club in Leeds ... a bit more upmarket (was it called Millionaires or was that just his Manc club's name). Anyway, his party piece there was measuring the distance between female's nipples (up on stage with everyone else watchin) ... according to him this proved something really significant about a woman if they were the perfect distance apart !!
  19. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Our lass wanted to know what I was doing on the computer & when she saw the last post she reminded me of some more facts associated with that Tin Chicken dance competition .... seems that her & Tom Sleight noticed that I'd been selected as dance judge (Dony's Len Goodman), so shot onto the dance floor as a couple. They gave it their best moves & the crowd got behind them ... then this stunning blonde in a short dress (who she recalls came from Stoke !?!?!) joined in .... I picked our lass as the winner ... BUT Stringers (always one for a game looking bird) overruled me and gave her the prize ... he always did have an eye for the ladies & sought out ways to impress them !!
  20. A relevant ad ...............
  21. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    When the Mojo was closed down, we had to MAKE DO with other venues .......... At one of the Crystal Bowl niters I even got to judge the dance competition. Stringers was always pulling some stunt & this night, he decided to run a dance comp. He knew me & I happened to be close to the DJ stand, so he pulled me up & set me on as judge. I watched the dancers & when asked who should get the prize, I nominated a good female dancer ... why should she win, he asked ... coz she's my girlfriend I replied ... needless to say, the prize went elsewhere. Just shows how strange your memory is ... I can still recall the track they danced to ... Doris Troy's "I'll Do Anything" (always a fave of mine). The Tin Chicken nights were held in 1968 but I haven't kept my old diary for that year so can no longer be sure which of them I attended (as we alternated between Castleford & the Wheel in that period). BTW, the Isley Bros were actually the Diplomats (SAm, Erv & Tom), the Drifters were the Invitations, The Fantastics had been the Fabulous Temptations (& Stringers had become their manager). Can't recall who the Impressions really were at the mo .... checked my article on fake groups & the Impressions who toured the UK in 68 were really the Topics (NY / NJ group on Carnival / Chadwick / Heavy Duty, etc.).
  22. Curt Moore owned Tina Records & ran his record shops ... More info on Curt's ........ In the postwar United States, record stores like Curt’s (here) in Greensboro, North Carolina, were perhaps the place where consumers most commonly interacted with people who made their living from popular culture. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 400 to 500 black-owned record stores—and probably closer to one thousand—were in operation throughout the region during this period. Photograph courtesy of Curt Moore (here), owner of Curt’s. Records is a market that can be used to brighten the future of lots of black people with jobs and higher prestige all over the country,” Jimmy Liggins announced in 1976 to the readers of the Carolina Times, Durham, North Carolina’s most prominent African American newspaper. Liggins, a minor rhythm and blues star of the 1950s, was publicizing his Duplex National Black Gold Record Pool, headquartered in Durham, which sought to “help and assist black people to own and sell the music and talent blacks produce.” With the aid of this “self helping program,” aspiring hit-makers could record and release music that Black Gold sold through mail order and at Liggins’s shop, Snoopy’s Records, in downtown Durham.1 Kenny Mann vividly recalls his frequent trips to Snoopy’s as a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Liggins “was like a god” to Mann and other young customers who patronized the store. “Everybody knew” Liggins and his two business partners, Henry Bates and Paul Truitt. “These guys, I was listening to them talk about bringing Tyrone Davis and Johnny Taylor and Al Green to town . . . It was fun to go [to their store] because it felt like the place to be; there were girls in there, and I was twelve, thirteen years old.” Not only that, but Mann “never felt the pressure to buy something” like he did in stores in his hometown of Chapel Hill, where white shopkeepers frequently followed young African American shoppers around their businesses, suspecting they might shoplift. “They had a double standard,” Mann remembers. Chapel Hill “really was set up as if they didn’t want to do business with us black people.” In sharp contrast, Liggins envisioned Snoopy’s as “our mall”—a “hang out” where black consumers could buy black music in a record store owned and operated by African Americans. Black-owned record stores like Snoopy’s represented a crucial nexus where African American enterprise, consumer culture, community, and of course, music all met. And by the early 1970s, Liggins was booking and promoting shows for Mann’s band, which eventually became Liquid Pleasure, the popular Chapel Hill-based funk and soul outfit still active today.
  23. This label was associated with Curt's Records stores of Greensboro .... see these articles which have info on Curt's .... .. https://www.carolinasoul.org/site/index.php/site/category/greensboro/ https://www.carolinasoul.org/site/index.php/site/comments/quality_music_for_greensboro/
  24. Any chance of a review copy for on here ?? ...
  25. Roburt replied to Roburt's post in a topic in All About the SOUL
    Thanks Ivor.