Roburt

Robey would book his blues, R & B, soul and gospel acts into the clubs across his ' territory' that he had built up dealings with. He would keep many venues supplied with a regular supply of live acts thus keeping their owners happy & fees rolling in to his agency. If a group wanted to get paid & keep working it had to fulfil the bookings Robey secured for them. Should a group be taking some time off or have a booking elsewhere, it wasn't unknown for Buffalo Booking to send out an imitation outfit to undertake the additional gig.

Don Robey got his start in the music biz via his Bronze Peacock Club in Houston. From there he had the booking agency (to get fees by securing chitlin circuit gigs for his artists in venues across the south). Most venues & just about all black bars had juke boxes installed, so it made sense to start a record company & press up 45's. These were then sold to the venues on the circuit & helped get extra gigs for his acts (the live act selling records in the towns they played & their 45's on local juke boxes getting them more live work). Robey built up a major list of chitlin venues across a wide area. He booked his acts into clubs in an area bounded by Houston, Tulsa, St. Louis, Memphis, Atlanta, Charleston, Miami, New Orleans & back to Houston via Galveston. When the record biz and booking agency became so profitable, he shut his club down and moved the record company & booking agency business into the place.

The 2nd post on this thread featured an ad for a 1964 show at the Island Club in Miami. Also on the bill with Bobby Bland & Al 'TNT' Braggs was Eloise Hester. Eloise had been a member of the Ikettes prior to going solo and had recorded with the group. I guess she might also have been signed up to Robey's Buffalo Booking Agency (anyone know if she was ?). She undertook gigs with her backing band Black Mafia three months earlier at the Rose Room. I assume this was the venue in Beaumont Texas that a lot of Houston based artists played.

As well as being ripped off by record companies, booking agents & promoters, as mentioned earlier, touring singers / musicians risked their lives travelling from gig to gig. Many times, it would be late at night after an exhausting show that they would have to drive many miles to the location of their next gig. As well as being tired, the weather also came into play with icy roads & snow being experienced in the winter months. One major loss in an auto accident was Billy Stewart. He had played UK gigs in June 1966 and was due to play London's Saville Theatre in January 67 but that show went ahead without him (Edwin Starr taking his place on the bill). He did return here to tour in December 68 / January 69, this time playing venues such as the Attic, Doncaster and the Twisted Wheel (11th January). On that tour his backing band was Ellison's Hog Line, an outfit that included a guy who would go on to be a member of the Glitter Band. Just over a year after he returned to the States, he was killed in an car crash. Billy Stewart was killed in an auto accident on Saturday January 17th 1970, he was 32 years old. The bodies of Billy Stewart and three of his band members had been pulled from Stewart's new black Ford Thunderbird which had plunged off Interstate 95 into the Neuse River, 3 miles south of Smithfield. They had played a show at Brown's Chicken and Barbecue House in Rocky Mount the night before and were en route to Columbia, S.C., to do a television show. Richmond L. Sanders ran Sanders Funeral Home on E. Market Street in Smithfield. Back then there was no rescue squad in Johnston County, and black funeral homes would be called to pick up black victims in emergency situations. Fire trucks, tow trucks attended and passing motorists had pulled over but it was a bad accident with the car ending up in the river underwater. Once back at the funeral home Sanders put Stewart's diamond rings on the singer's fingers and dressed him in a nice suit before placing the body in a casket. The body was placed on show in the funeral home and lots of people came to view it before the body was taken by train back to Washington, D.C. Six members of the band survived the crash, Billy Stewart was the driver of the car at the time of the crash. In what can only be seen as fate catching up with Billy, his fatal auto crash followed a similar incident that had occurred less than 18 months earlier in which members of his backing band had been killed.

Anyone know when Al went out on his own ? No doubt it was by 1966 when his "Earthquake" 45 had escaped (in June) & started to take off. The track escaped on a Vocalion 45 in July 66 and then again on Action in October 68. When did his Vocalion EP get released ? Al had certainly gone out alone by November 1966 as this Baltimore gig line-up illustrates ....

A picture of both Bobby Bland & Al TNT Braggs, with an inset of them on stage together .....

Another gig the pairing undertook in 1962. This time it was in early September on Carr's Beach in Annapolis .........

Don Robey obviously had a big say in the gigs his artists undertook. He must have placed a couple of his artists together on tours, the promoter taking the 'secondary singer' in order to secure the main man he was after. Peacock Records Al 'TNT' Braggs seemed to tour almost exclusively on the same bill as Bobby Bland for 3 or so years from the early to mid 60's. No doubt the 2 guys must have got on well together or the arrangement wouldn't have worked, but I bet Robey got a good deal out of the situation. A show in DC both guys played in 62 .............

Of course Bobby had been hooked up with Don Robey as his booking agent (Buffalo Booking) and record label owner (Duke). Bobby had started out in Memphis around 1952 where his early career was overseen by Sunbeam Mitchell and WDIA's David Mattis. In fact it was Mattis who started Duke Records and cut Bland's first sides at WDIA's studio. However, Mattis knew little about running a record label, so Robey offered to help out for a portion of the record label. Before long, Robey eased Mattis out of the picture and transferred Duke Records to Houston (where he ran his Peacock Record company from). So no doubt, Bobby Bland had to fight his corner to get his full due from Robey for both his recording work & much of the fees paid direct to the booking agency for his live work. Bobby Bland had played a gig in Miami just a few weeks before the LA gig, presumably he had been paid for his work that night ...............

Most soul artists back in the day survived by playing gigs on the chitlin circuit. That had to earn money from live gigs as (unless they gained hit records) they rarely made good money from their recording work. Life on the road was tough. The singer(s) and their backing musicians would squeeze into a station wagon and head from gig to gig. If these were in the south then racism reared it's ugly head and they were restricted in where they could eat & stay. Then there was the grind of getting (late at night) from gig to gig. Many road accidents occurred with the singer or the musicians being injured or even killed (in May 68, 3 members of the Impressions backing band + 2 other performers were killed in an auto crash in Winder, Ga). Another pitfall was the promoter clearing off without paying the artists. This didn't just happen in backwoods venues in out of the way locations on shows organised by hoodlum promoters and was a regular event. The likes of Chuck Berry & Wilson Pickett were well known for not going on stage until the performance fee had been handed over. One well known occurrence happened in December 64 in Los Angeles at the famous Hollywood Palladium (a venue so established that the Laurence Welk TV Show was staged there for many years in the 60's). On that night, a few of the artists actually performed (Aretha Franklin, Gloria Lynn) but by the time Bobby Bland was due on stage, the promoter had disappeared taking the cash taken on the door with them. Bobby refused to perform and the crowd went mad & smashed the venue up ..... see attached newspaper piece ...........

Yes, 'The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner' LP was issued in the summer of 61 and does seem to be about the first use of the term on a record release .....

The WBOB stn out of Galax, Va is now gospel stn WWWJ but that plays white gospel not the type of stuff we like. So I doubt it would have had an R & B format back in the day.

There's a talk radio stn out of Jacksonville (Florida) that uses the call letters WBOB. HOWEVER that has only been going since 2010 and being talk radio wouldn't have need for a 45 library that goes back to the 60's. In the 60's this same stn had a pop format but went by the name of WPDQ. There was also a country stn based out of Minneapolis in the mid 90's but that got bought out and flipped to a rock format. From 1947 to 1997 (?), there was also WBOB out of Galax, Virginia and that stn was sold on to new owners in 1984 (format before & after sale unknown to me). This area is bluegrass country, so I have some doubts that the stn would have held a big library of soul 45's. Lots of US radio stns took on different identities down the years & so I guess another one may have used the moniker of WBOB in the past but I have no idea of it's details.

A clip put up on youtube (by a Southern Soul member) of Otis singing live back in his gospel days (with Cash McCall) .........

It seems that SOUL started being used by US blacks in the 60's as a term to help them try to retain ownership of things that had been theirs for some time that were now being taken on by the American population at large. Soul food (the cuisine of southern black slaves & their descendents) was also a term that sprung into general use use in the mid to late 60's. Black poets / writers had started to use the term. It seems that LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), who wrote the book 'Blues People -- Negro Music in White America' (1963) may have been the first to use the word in a musical sense (he was a fan of jazz / gospel / blues & the styles that developed from them). Like much 'street level' slang, I guess we'll never really know where it actually originated but it wasn't from mainstream music journalists that's for sure.

Billboard repeated this supplement in 1968 & 1969, so they obviously saw it as a good marketing tool (bringing in lots of ads). Below see an ad in the mag for their 1968 supplement + a piece on the UK market from their 69 supplement .......

The piece on soul music on Wikipedia gives more credit to Atlantic Records than Motown ................ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_music Whoever it was that first coined the term (in the sense that we mean), I bet they were a lot more 'street level' than the likes of anyone at Billboard mag (or even than Berry Gordy).

I've done a bit more research on the topic, using Billboard mag as my source and it seems there was a Brit angle to all this. See two jpeg's posted below of bits lifted from Billboard. By June 68 they were asking (themselves, rather than their reporters being told) what SOUL was. They asked readers to comment on the question 'what is soul' and published some replies. It also seems that they were also taking into account what Dave McAleer (of Soul Survey, London) was telling them. They had started up a column in their black music section titled 'Soul Sauce' and were picking a 'Soul Sauce Best New Record of the Week" (a bit like Richard's Radio Hallam 80's radio show) ........... ............ HOWEVER .................. the first real use of the word in a black music sense that I can find in Billboard is a piece in which they interviewed WWRL's Magnificent Montague back in May 64. The piece was about his views that lots of US radio stn's still weren't employing black DJ's even though the cuts that black jocks were playing on R&B stn's were eventually ending up top of the charts on 'white' pop stns. Montague defined soul as .......... "the last to be hired, first to be fired, brown all-year round, sits in the back of the bus feeling. You've got to live with us or you just don't have it". Guess he had strong feelings !!!! So it seems that it was the use of the term by black US radio DJ's that brought it into fashion.

Even at the end of June 67, Billboard (& record labels such as Nashboro / Excello / A-Bet) were still calling it R & B music. .... AND YET ......... "Sweet Soul Music", "Soul Finger", "Soul Dance No.3", "Raw Soul" and "Lou Rawl's Soulin" were all on the mag's charts !!

Billboard mag was still calling it's black music charts 'Rhythm & Blues Singles & LP's' way past September 1965 when Stax released the Otis Redding LP 'Otis Blue -- Otis Redding Sings Soul'. Back in April 62, No.1 on the mags 'Hot R & B Sides' chart was "Soul Twist" by King Curtis (this Enjoy 45 having first made US radio playlists at the start of Feb 62). King Curtis was also the artist involved when SOUL next appeared in the title of a charting 45. This time it was May 64 and the tune was "Soul Serenade". So I'd say the term crossed over from the jazz world & started replacing R & B as a common name for popular black music in the early 60's. The 'Soul Twist' was a popular dance in black night clubs across the US in 1962, so the term was being used on a regular basis in that context by April 62. By the mid 60's, although mainstream mags such as Billboard was still mainly using the term R & B, soul was the term used by many music lovers. Soon after she signed with Atlantic (67), Aretha Franklin became known as 'Lady Soul' (her LP by this title being released in Jan 68). And of course she had cut the track "Soulville" for Columbia as early as 1964. So by 67 the term had become the most dominant of those used to describe black music. "Soul Man" & "Sweet Soul Music" both came out in 67.

Of course the A side of "Needle In A Haystack" was a massive US hit. The 45 "Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong" escaped in summer 70 and went straight onto the soul chart. After a few weeks it also entered the Billboard Top 100 Pop chart where it remained until 14th November (being @ # 65 that week). The following week (21st Nov 70) their follow-up 45 (Soul Clock 1005) escaped and so I guess there would be little point in pressing up too many new copies of #1004 after that time. So maybe both the yellow & gold label 45's had been released by November 70 with the 2nd press being to meet the demands made after the track hit the US Pop 100 (when no doubt many mainstream US pop selling record shops would have been ordering copies for the first time). I'd guess that the success this 45 enjoyed would have made Canyon's cash flow situation even worse (lots of money going out to meet pressing plant demands before any of the distributors / shops got anywhere near thinking about paying for the 45's they had received).

Both the yellow & gold versions of this Soul Clock 45 state 'Distributed by Canyon'. Wally Roker's Canyon Records was just about bust at the end of 1970 (the Whisper's "I'm The One" Soul Clock 105 being just about the last 45 they put out on Soul Clock in Nov). By December the group's contract had been sold to Janus Records & their first 45 for the label (Janus J-140 : a Canyon / Soul Clock production By Ron Carson / Art Freeman) had been issued. Another Whispers 45 had escaped on the Roker label ("Where Have You Been") around April 70, so Wally must already have been trying to cling on to his labels at that time. The last 45 on Roker (from Swamp Dogg) escaped some time later (early 71 ?) and some further 45's (most probably old recordings) escaped on RRG (Roker Record Group) in 1971 BUT way before the end of 1971 the whole concern had gone up in smoke. I would guess that the 2nd edition of the Whispers "Needle In A Haystack" 45 came out between the end of 1970 & the middle of 71. So I don't think a date of 1973 (mentioned above) would be correct for a legit issue.

More on WROX .......... https://msbluestrail.org/blues-trail-markers/wrox

A piece on the stn's top jock; Early Wright ........... https://vimeo.com/36804284 More on him here ........ https://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/18/news/mn-45076

On TV now (10.30am) on the Dave channel (& repeated in an hour on Dave ja vu -- Channel 25) is the US programme 'American Pickers'. In this show the 2 guys (pickers) are visiting the ex studio of radio stn WROX in Clarkesdale, Miss. They get to look in the studio where Ike Turner started out & DJ'ed back in the day. See here for info on the radio stn ........... https://www.wroxradio.com/interact/wrox-history