Roburt

Back in time ...

Anyone know how you nominate a singer / group to get a plaque on the Camden MUSIC WALK OF FAME ?? Anyone been down there & seen any of the existing ones ?

Another sad loss. Went to see the Isley's in Vegas during our SOUL TRIP 98 ... they put on a really good show ..

When "Dance To The Music" came out here it was massive in UK soul clubs, right from the off on Columbia in March 68.

Lots of movies have also been made about soul stars .... Lots more have been proposed & abandoned though -- Otis Redding movie projects being started at least 3 times in the past, with one even getting as far as talking to Billy Ocean about him playing Otis. At present, a new movie is in the pipeline that will document the work of Earl Young & his mates in MFSB.

The trouble is that though Sly doesn't really regret being a drug addict, it had a bad effect on his music & his later career (as it did with most addicts). His creativity dropped off after 1974 & his unpredictability led to lots of missed / cancelled live shows. The Family Stone members got fed up with him & quit. He had to take guys on who could take up the slack & help him out a lot (Rudy Love & Keni Burke being two). He lost overseas gigs as he was caught with drugs at customs & even when old friends such as Bobby Womack added him as a support act, he still got caught with drugs & was refused entry into countries such as the UK. He lost many friends, all his support team & all his money, ending up living in an old van (it didn't help that his hits came in the period when record companies ripped off many acts). A sad tale really.

Lots of stage musicals are / have been around that celebrate soul music & the folk involved in it .... Dreamgirls, Ain't Too Proud To Beg, Motown; the Musical + others that focused on the careers of Doris Troy, Faye Treadwell, etc.

Some Cleveland related cuts on this album. Mainly via Lou Ragland (& his contacts), Numero has released lots of Cleveland soul tracks, lots being unreleased or rare items ahead of Numero's involvement. I like the Boddies 7" box set in particular that they put out a few years ago. Isn't one of 45's now going for a wad of cash ?

Lots of various music 'Hall of Fame' nominations for successful soul acts + of course the Hollywood Walk Of Fame stars ... Can anyone else post up similar items to the above ?

Not a singer or a musician, but a dancer; Cholly Atkins. After a distinguished career as a dancer, Cholly started to school acts appearing @ the NY Apollo with regard to their stage acts. From there, he was hired by Motown & became a member of their Detroit team. In the 70's, when the O'Jays wanted to become the 'next Temptations', they hired Cholly to tighten up their stage moves. He eventually settled in Vegas (still doing some dance tuition) but whenever Motown acts or the O'Jays played gigs in the city, he was always invited along to spend time with them backstage. I got to visit with him @ his home & his den there was full of mementoes -- His own awards & lots of backstage passes + many gold discs that had been gifted to him by the acts he'd helped. Below is a pic I took while with him (& Lou Ragland) in his den. It doesn't really display the scope of the treasures he had up on his den walls (which were all covered from floor to ceiling with such items). Unfortunately, after he passed , all were sold at auction to provide money for his wife (whole survived him). So his great collection of awards was broken up.

On here, unsung heroes of the soul world get 'paid their dues', mainly via our discussions on their old records. But lots are celebrated in other ways. UK guys (& some US, Spanish, etc.) have gone looking for unreleased gems & have recently made them available to purchase. Enterprising promoters have been bringing 'forgotten singers' to the UK to perform for many years now (BIG UPS to Ady C and his ilk). But not all who made the music we love have gone unrecognised. While Lots (both singers & musicians) went thru their careers without much recognition LUCKILY some got to enjoy loads of success & have the evidence to prove it ... An item in my possession ... of course Gladys got many more awards (both in the pop & soul worlds) ...

Mike Raven got into horror films after he left Radio 1 ... Later on he (& his family) moved to Cornwall, where he became a sheep farmer. His health made him give this up & so he turned to art (creating sculptures). He'd changed his name, which made him difficult to track down. Mike died in 1997, and was buried in a grave he had dug for himself on Bodmin Moor (which is where he was still living at the time).

Guess you mean this guy ... SEE PIC ... if so, he would have been about 6 years old when the 20th Century 45's were released ...

AND MORE ...

The Visitors, who went from Cobblestone to Muse ... jazz guys ...

Are there any experts on Cobblestone Records around ? I know there was lots of non-soul on this Buddah label but there's also quite a bit of decent soul from known & little known artists. Some of their 45's also seem to be rare, which is strange with it being run by such a big outfit as Buddah Records. It had a regular release policy for around 12+ months from April 68 and then seemed to slow right down till it re-emerged in 72. The guy who ran it (Joe Fields) had a jazz background & had worked @ Verve ahead of this label being founded. He ensured jazz stuff was released on Cobblestone too. After Cobblestone ended, he returned to the jazz world. It seems that when he started his Onyx & Muse labels, he took tracks which had been destined to be Cobblestone releases with him & released them on those 2 labels (one such outfit involved being the Visitors). Can't find much of anything about the label in 1960's editions of Billboard mag. I'd really like to know a bit more about the label & its artists.

With his connection to Benny Gordon, not surprised Trude Heller would book him .. .

YET MORE ....

Some more from WWIN ...

A very minor correction ... Roy Tempest's 'fake groups' first played UK tours from September 67 ... a couple at first, followed from 68 by a flood. All were groups at first as we had little knowledge of the make-up of such groups (who their members were) but later (from around early 70), he got more blatant & started advertising solo artists (Chuck Jackson, Carla Thomas & the like). Lots of the groups who appear on the above posted handbills were 'fakes' -- the Platters actually being the Laddins aka the Steinways. Although F4C says I have VAST 1ST HAND EXPERIENCE, I'd say many more soulies who frequented the Wheel in 68 / 69 / 70 would remember more than me. I was fortunate to get my first full-time job in late 1966 (November-ish), I was 'gifted' a pocket diary in Dec 66 and kept detailed records for all of 67. I attended many more WHEEL NITERS in 68 but (not having kept a diary that year) couldn't tell you who I saw that year ... the ravages of time since & intake of substances back then making my memory almost none existent of that period. He was an unwashed teenager from a pit village near Wakefield at the time WHEREAS I was a new school leaver from Donny who got a job working for the WRCC in Wakefield at the time. I was buying my records back in Donny at the weekend but in Wakefield on weekdays (remember a decent record stall on market days & a top record shop down the hill not far from Westgate rail stn -- they had a great back-catalogue tucked away out of sight -- but if you asked for the right 45 you could get lucky). SO our paths may well have crossed all those years ago.

I posted a couple of R&B radio stn charts on another thread & had a request to post more .... so I'm doing so. I know lots about the Baltimore soul scene & as Baltimore was a very important market for 'breaking' soul 45 hits, thought I'd start with that city's WWIN ... As time passed from 1964 through to the 70's (like most other black radio stns), WWIN changed it's policy with regard to what tracks it played. Their DJ's had more say in 64 but coz of the payola scandals, that diminished quite quickly. Radio DJ's made lots of their money from promoting local live shows -- lots of times acts would play DJ shows for free, hoping that their 'gift of a performance' would get them more radio plays from that DJ. It was a ploy that usually worked -- especially ahead of the actual show as the DJ would play that acts records to boost ticket sales. As the 70's approached more big corporations bought out locally owned black radio stns and imposed their 'ways' on them. The likes of James Brown saw what was happening & so he started buying some black stns to have more influence on their 'play policies'. JB bought one of WWIN's biggest rival stns (WEBB) in 1970. Anyway, on with the charts .... I'd say that in general, less local product got major airplay /made stn charts as each year passed from the mid 60's ... HOWEVER the charts I'm posting may not fully reflect that ... I've chosen them at random, not coz of any particular 45 showing up on any of them ...

AS I REMEMBER IT ... Lots of northern mods / soulies would head south in the summer months (July, August, early Sept), to holiday in places such as Gt Yarmouth (64/65) and then Newquay (66/67/68/69. So the Wheel would book cheaper UK acts or host record only nights over those periods. They could make these cheaper admission & still make a profit -- and hopefully still attract the lads who were 'saving up' to go away on holiday. The big 'package tour era' of Spanish holidays started to kick in around the mid 60's but the 20-somethings of the time mainly took UK holidays with their mates still.

Many US acts were booked to do UK tours but pulled out at the last minute (in the 60's / 70's I'm talkin about) -- UK clubs would have been invited to book the acts weeks before they were due to fly over the pond. So they'd advertise the act & have to reschedule the live show attraction if the US artist/s pulled out at the last minute. Joe Tex was booked to tour the UK at least 3 times in the 60's but always got cold feet & stayed in America (don't know if it coz he was scared of flying or coz he had a new hit 45 and could get more money / extra gigs by staying in the US). We always wanted to bring the O'Jays over here to play a UK weekender (in the 2000's) but they insisted that their fee had to be what they could earn for 3 US shows as with the travelling time / jet lag / rehearsal time coming over to do 1 UK show took up as much time as 3 US shows. It wasn't just the Wheel that was let down by acts back in the day who were booked to play the venue.

On Discogs it states that Elbie was LITTLE BOBBY PARKER .... BUT on the Little Bobby Parker / Bobby Parker pages it doesn't reference either guy as being Elbie. Bobby Parker based himself in Washington DC in the early 60's (he kept the city as his home base after then, hence his connection with Shrine Records). The Veep 45 was a late 1966 release (Oct ?) & had input from 2 New York based guys, so I guess the tracks were cut in NY. Bobby played all over in the 60's & had cut for a NY label in 64, so could have recorded there around the mid 60's. The Bobby Parker 45 on Frisky dates from around the same time (summer 66) and that label too was NJ / NY based. Bobby Parker had started out playing guitar for the likes of Otis Williams & the Charms + Bo Diddley, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Clyde McPatter & more after he had started his career to LA. He was also associated back then with Johnny Otis. He first recorded in 1958 & had a big hit in 61 as Bobby Parker. By 1964 though his recording career had gone cold & he cut a soul dance track for NY based Southern Sound but it failed to sell. MAYBE he cut the less bluesy cuts as Elbie to disguise the fact that he was a well known blues guy from the recent past. In 1968 he came to the UK and cut blues here under his 'main name' for Blue Horizon. In the 70's he still based himself in Washington DC and largely stopped touring (just doing local gigs). He was in his mid 30's by that time & had most probably grown tired of being on the road. Most pieces to be found online don't connect Bobby with Elbie BUT they just about all focus on his 'blues' work / career. Maybe Shrine experts might known more info on Bobby in the mid 60's

The Little Ralphie D & Ralphie D tracks almost certainly cut in Philly (though that doesn't mean Ralp D was from the city). His producer did a lot of stuff for 20th Century at that time (mid 60's) -- both soul & pop. Maybe a Philly expert could add more facts on him -- His producer was Dave Appell who had worked extensively for Cameo Parkway up to 65/66. Dave worked in conjunction with Joe Tarsia at the time of the 20th Cent released stuff (the guy who went on to design / build Sigma Sound St), After 67, Dave Appell seemed to do more pop stuff and worked a lot with the Tokens (who were New York based).