Roburt

Stories in the press this week about how readership levels of all music mags has dipped to an all time low. Lots of music journo's expected this dip in music mag sales to occur over the last 5 to 10 years but always expected on-line music forums to take up the slack with everyone joining & posting on them. HOWEVER it seems that membership & posting levels on lots of web based music forums is also way down and interest seems to be greatly diminished. In the soul field, some forums have shut down & certain others seem to be populated by people who don't have a great level of knowledge anymore (for instance the Motown section of SDF is just about totally taken up with posts about the Supremes; most dull). Huge numbers of 'kids' today don't buy music (they just do 'free-downloading') and are a lot more interested in computer games & the latest gadgets. Mind you, as well as spending 12 hours a day texting, most young'uns seem to go everywhere / do everything with headphones permanently stuck in their ears so just what they are listening to is beyond me. BUT is the 'writing on the wall' for forums such as this as interest dips in discussing all the various aspects of the worldwide soul scene ?

Why would you need to make a p*ss-poor quality recording yourself when just about every track you hear at a nighter is available on youtube in decent quality. Just write down the artist / title (providing it ain't a stupid cover-up) & check the web when you get home.

Lots of times (these days) the performance of live singers can easily be recorded straight off the 'sound desk'. That is done lots of times & I have quite a few such recordings that date back over the last 30 years. No one actually sets up a real mobile recording studio to capture a live show as the likes of the Stones (& other rock artists) used to do in the 70's / 80's (way too expensive).

A new radio series started yesterday on BBC Radio 4 (in the morning). It runs to 3 x 30 minute episodes & the 1st one went out yesterday but can still be caught on iPlayer ........ BIO: Jazz, Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Rock 'n' Roll, Soul, Funk and Hip-Hop; there's no question African American musical creativity has fuelled the modern music industry. But faced with racism and cultural theft for decades, African-American musicians, DJs, businessmen and women have struggled to have any real control or ownership in the business ............ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c3cmy

Just been reported on the 'Southern Soul Forum' that Charles 'Cole Black' Brown (ex of the Violinaires) recently passed away.

Copenhagen is a great place, have visited the city on a few occasions (my son works for a Danish oil company). Have purchased a few soul 45's (nowt rare) there but never managed to find out about any local soul nights to attend while there.

Pete, you are , as always, right ...... but the tale being recounted above happened in the UK ..... so I was talking about the UK classification of the track in the mid 60's.

A quickly made mock-up ..............

Maurice & The Radiants - Baby You've Got It Back in the 60's when we danced to this at venues like the Wheel it was either 'Club Soul' or 'Big City Soul' ............ R&B never came into it then & it doesn't these days either. ....... it's out & out soul with a big S Much like this similar track ........... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSwmlK_k_XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmXeyPZnkwU

Quite like some Action stuff but their version of "Harlem Shuffle" is a total mess.

You're wrong there Ady. If you walk out across the beach for a mile, then you can catch the Cleggy Water Ballet team in training. They can be quite spectacular when a Humber gale is in full blow.

Good Venue Good Live acts (for me that is. Don't attend weekenders without a live act) Decent music (2 rooms > 60's & Modern) Good atmosphere (combination of music & people > enough of both & both decent) Good accommodation Good soul crowd in attendance Not too difficult to get to (distance, roads, weather).

Probably one of the acts that Jewel has unreleased tracks on in their archive. The person to (probably) confirm that is Paul Mooney who used to check through their unissued stuff listings back in the day.

There have been threads that have tried to explain this topic in the past .......... .......... .......... With regard to a statement in the Shit-fi article above .............. Is there any evidence of 45s on any of the tax scam labels? ..... There are a couple on Dellwood, but I don’t know if they were released before or after the albums. My guess is that Dellwood was a real label, and then was transformed into the tax scam It didn't seem to make any difference at all to the tax scam whether the releases were 45's or LP's though I guess it was easier to make much more money from releasing LP's. You make a claim saying you pressed up 10,000 LP's and can claim back a decent % of the wholesale price of around $4.30 (for a $7.98 retail cost release) ... say $30,000. If you did the same for scam 45 releases, no doubt you could only claim back around $5,000. So it was much easier to make loads of money by claiming for unsold LP's One tax scam label I do know quite a bit about was the LA based Emkay Records. In all there were 12 releases on the Emkay label in 1979 ........ 10 No. 45’s + 2 No. LPs. Six of the 45’s were soul outings with four being rock. The label's releases only included tracks that they legitimately owned whereas many labels put out stuff that didn't even hold the rights to (no doubt using tapes originally sent out by the artist reps in an effort to secure a record deal). In Emkay's case, the guys at the record company were approached by a 'wide-boy' lawyer who told them about the scheme and then operated the scam tax rebate claim on their behalf. Many of these lawyers sailed close to the wind with regard to what they actually claimed back (to increase their fees) and the guy who did this work for Emkay had to head across to Canada, when his dealings were discovered by the US Revenue Service, to escape jail. I guess some of these labels might have actually pressed up their releases in the quantities that were actually claimed back (i.e. 1000's of copies of each release) BUT as most 45's / LP's involved have remained scarce, I guess they did only actually press up dozens of copies of each rather than the 1,000's claimed for.

Close enough to the label switch over to have been pressed up on later version of label ..... IF .... a radio DJ had gotten behind either 45 and was playing it in his area for a few weeks or he had reactivated it coz it was a personal fave. If that was the case, it could easily have prompted label promo team to have 2nd press done & sent them out with sheet saying "big in Jackson" (or wherever). These two 45's released in Feb / March 1966 with label changeover coming in April 66.

......... a slight variation here .......... this could be titled THE PITFALLS OF RUNNING A FEMALE GROUP ........... ...............rest of post copied across from Soulful Detroit Forum ................. When the Velvelettes were auditioned in 1962, there were 5. Come 1963 when Millie became pregnant, they had to perform as four. Later Millie returned but then it was Norma's turn! So during this time, there were mostly four consisting of Cal, Bertha and Kelli plus one more being either Millie or Norma. Kelli left the group officially when she was 20 in September 1964 because that was when she was able to sign a contract herself. However, she had been recording as a Vandella as far back as June 1964. From then on it was reduced to a basic 3 with Norma and Millie interchanging. So that is why you see Millie in the Apollo shots and Norma at the Regal in Chicago. Millie’s decision to reduce her input was down to the negativity from folks who didn’t agree with her leaving her children at home to go on tour. So Millie only helped out in exceptional circumstances. Bertha and Norma (who gave birth yet again) carried on with Cal but both of them wanted to leave permanently by 1965. When I reviewed the studio logs with them in about 2003/4, they concluded that they stopped recording in about June 1965. However, Cal only had to recruit new members for tours, not for recording purposes. All Velvelettes recordings at this time consisted of Cal on lead with Cal plus the Andantes (or whoever else was there) on background. Annette was taken on first as a dancer. Cal would interchange the third girl with Bertha, Norma or even a cousin. The Velvelettes then had an engagement in about January 1966 for 'Where The Action Is' which I gather is based on the West Coast. She couldn't use her cousin or any of the other former Velvelettes for that engagement because it was not local. Cal had to recruit a new girl and she was called Gail and hailed from Baltimore. (Cal doesn't even recall her surname). However Gail wasn’t there all that long before she started to take steps to take over the group! So she was gone soon after that engagement. In that TV appearance of Needle...Gail is furthest from Cal! LOLOL Sandy (Tillie -- from Cleveland) was introduced to Cal by Abdul Fakir of the 4 Tops who had met Sandy in Philadelphia. Sandy was also a great dancer, looked good and fitted in well with the group. Sandy also harboured a secret wish to sing lead but Cal only found out about that much later. In fact Cal hadn’t heard Sandy’s lead vocal on "Honey Love" until I played it to her in about 2004.

UK EMI released a similar compilation on Stateside in 1986 titled 'One Minit At A Time' AND ... in Germany EMI put out 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' in 1981 on Capitol that included old Minit, Capitol, Liberty, Imperial & United Artists tracks. MIND YOU, we've mentioned loads of great soul comp series so far but failed to mention the really good 'This Is Loma' series.

A bit of a different one but still Levi shows his class ............

You could post up classic clips of Levi & the guys all day ......

Over in London & singing to a live track (I think; probably a BBC show as they did this sort of thing a lot) ............

AND ANOTHER FROM THE SAME SHOW ..........

AND ONE OF THEIR MANY CLASSICS .................

Up on youtube, a tribute to Levi .............

An edition of Soul Train that Letta appeared on ............ ... she's on at around 19mins into this clip ............ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4hVCNayUAQ

........... KTF ............ ... YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE ......