Roburt

Three male singers & 3 female singers who were signed to deals with Don Robey ...... Spent some time with Carl Carlton when he was at the Cleggy Weekender but I never thought to ask him if he was signed up with Buffalo Booking Agency when he had his deal with Backbeat Records.

A bit of interesting info contained in this Guardian article ......... https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/feb/09/how-we-made-dancing-in-the-street-martha-reeves-and-the-vandellas

There was a selection of 'go to' female backing singers for much of the studio work in Philly but I'm away from home at present and can't recall their names. Were they perhaps known by the collective name of the 'sweethearts of soul' ?? I think they were mostly active in the late 60's / 70's though. Someone on here will know the full details to answer your question.

A picture lifted from the 'World Record Price -- UK Sue 45' thread ............ It shows the address that Buffalo Booking worked out of before they moved into the Bronze Peacock Club building .....

A picture of Maxine performing on her last visit to the Cleggy Weekender ..... she always puts on a great show ....

Bessie Smith was killed in a car accident way back in 1937 & organist / singer Earl Grant died in a car crash in 1970 as he was driving his Rolls Royce from LA to Juarez, Mexico to fulfil a booking down there. It seems that Jerry Butler was very lucky back in 1961/62 as he had survived 3 car crashes in 5 months up to March 62. One of them was just outside Beaumont Texas in January, so no doubt the venue he was heading to / from was one on Don Robey's circuit of clubs in that area.

BTW, the 3 members of the Impressions backing band killed in a car accident in May 1968 (see post 1 of this thread) were Lenny Brown (bass - age 26), Billy Griffin (drums - age 23) & Joseph Thomas (guitar - age 26). Who knows what they could have gone on to achieve had they not been on the road that night.

Another trick Robey used on a regular basis was to reward his acts for their recording work by buying them a new car & new stage suits. The cost of these items were then charged to their royalties account. The fact that the acts needed cars & decent stage clothes to fulfil their live tour bookings (on which Robey took a good commission) was of course just a co-incidence !!!

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).