Robbk

An end of the '60s or beginning of the '70s Chicago record I've never seen! Pressed in a Chicago plant. Sounds like a Caucasian group, as Mal stated above, in the mold of The Outcasts. Upon several more listens, I've decided the vocalist was an African-American.

I always thought The "Y" spelling was correct, and that the group had used that spelling to be different from the 1950s Mercury R&B group. I never saw the Wand issue until the early 1980s. I don't remember seeing any show posters for them, so I don't know which of the 2 spellings is correct. I have seen them referred to in print as "The Ivorys".

Maybe that's the Spanish pressing? "RECUERDOS TOMÁS"

Too bad that was a misprint. "The Masquaders" would have been an unusual, and, thus, memorable, group name.

At 75+ the memory can play tricks. I've probably seen the two-word "Shot Gun" 3-4 times in my life, and the proper printing 1,657,439 times, and when I looked at the "Shot Gun" label, it looked right.

I know what a "shotgun" is. But, I can't remember ever seeing that record's title as one single word.

And her sister, Dee Dee felt compelled to take it on, as well!

I was all set to elaborate on a very unlikely, roundabout way L.A.'s Dolly and The Fashions could possibly have ended up recording a VJ song for Mercury in Chicago, connecting Richard Parker running VJ's Soul music production in L.A., and VJ's Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken shutting down their L.A. operation and taking the master tapes back to Chicago, and Ewart Abner shopping the unfinished Fashions' masters to Chicago's Mercury office for as much cash as they could get, as they had no money to press anything except Jerry Butler and a few Exodus records they thought might hit. But, after listening to The Tears 2 cuts, and several Dolly and The Fashions' cuts back-to-back several times, I could hear that the two lead singers' voices are not really close, at all. I have no idea how that rumour started, but it must have been started by a deaf person. The Tears' lead singer was a fair amount older than "Dolly" (Miss Moody), and her voice is a lot richer and heavier than Dolly's, and the tones are just too different. And the overall group sounds are very different from each other, as well. But, it is interesting to hypothesize as to how a Midwest or East Coast artist could end up contributing to a West Coast recording, and vice versa. I was blown away finding out how Mickey Stevenson ended up co-writing a couple songs that ended up on Leon Rene's Class Records in 1958, when I was sure he was living and working in Detroit at that time, working for Carmen Murphy's House of Beauty Records, and Gwen and Anna Gordy's Anna Records. It turns out that Stevenson hadn't visited a relative in L.A. He became friendly with a songwriter from New Orleans, who recently moved to Detroit, and they wrote a few songs together. And the guy returned to New Orleans with the songs, and shopped them to Rene, who still commuted between L.A. and New Orleans, because he still had family there, and more importantly, still had connections to the music industry there, and signed singers and groups from there, and used musicians from there as well. So, often, those weird connections of artists and labels and producers from different areas of North America make sense, once we find out the back story. But, unfortunately, in this case, incredibly, no knowledgeable people even from back when The Tears' recorded their Smash cuts, can tell us who they were. Surely they recorded other recordings under another name. But, I'm amazed that with my being from Chicago myself, and having been there during 1965-66, and same for Bob Pruter, and with all the Chicago producers, artists, and collectors we talked to back then, we never found out. And Bob Abrahamian also never talked to anyone who knew who they were is amazing, as well. I'd bet that even if we had talked to Andre Williams, Burgess Gardner, and Wade Flemons a couple years after that recording session, they wouldn't have been able to tell us who they were. Maybe they were from Milwaukee or Des Moines, or Indianapolis, or Fort Wayne or South Bend. Nobody remembered knowing what Chicago high school they attended, or seeing them at an amateur try-out, or singing contest, or a local "sock hop", or "battle of the groups" that were held at the local park recreation centres. I saw lots of the groups Bob A. interviewed at "Battles of The Groups" park events, and saw a lot of posters or flyers circulated to high school bulletin boards advertising those. I never saw The Tears listed anywhere. I saw Donald and The Delighters, The Desideros, The Accents, and many other groups when they were just amateur high-schoolers. Usually, if we never saw anything with the group's name before a record came out on them, the group came from out of town, or the record company changed their group name right after their signing. I think that The Tears likely sang under a different name before that record came out.

I'm pretty sure that Dolly and The Fashions were an L.A. group, and The Tears were a Chicago group. Look at the Smash Record: Chicago's Wade Flemons wrote the song, Chicago's Andre Williams produced it, and Chicago's Burgess Gardner arranged it. It was on a Mercury Records subsidiary, and Mercury had a large office in Chicago, where that label was founded, and had its only office for many years, and The Chicago office specialized in Soul music from 1962-67, especially on its Blue Rock and Mercury labels, but also on its Smash, Philips and Fontana subsidiaries, and even on Limelight, its Jazz subsidiary. Dolly and The Fashions only had releases on L.A. labels, as far as I remember. It IS true that some artists moved to other cities and recorded there, or were sent there to record after being signed. But, I find it difficult to believe that Mercury signed Dolly and The Fashions in L.A., and then sent them to Andre Williams in their Chicago office, to record, under a new name. But, the fact that neither The Yank, nor myself, remember The Tears appearing in Chicagoland, and Bob A. didn't learn anything about that group from anyone he interviewed. I should have asked Bunky Sheppard if he remembered who they were, back in the 1980s, when his family of labels occupied the suite of offices next to ours (Airwave Records). But, I had a lot more questions for him that were more important to me than that one. But it's really strange that no one else based in Chicago who I asked knew anything about them, including Bob Pruter, Larry Montgomery, and all the Soul collectors I used to talk to. So, it's tempting to think that it might possibly be one of those weird situations in which a West Coast group was in a Midwestern or Eastern city on vacation, and managed to get an ad-hoc recording session from a major label through some unusual happenstance. Only, the name changes were usually because the group was currently under contract to record for another company. But, I doubt that Dolly and The Fashions were under contract, at all, let alone to a tiny L.A. label like Ivanhoe or Tri-Disc. Amazing that NO one, in all our researching and interviews has found anyone who remembers who The Tears were. Also amazing that none of the children or grandchildren of the group's members have posted on YouTube that their Mom or Grandma, or Auntie was a group member. I guess there is a good chance we will never find out who they were.

This certainly isn't the version I heard on the radio back in the day. Not only is the instrumental a lot weaker, but Tammy seems to be tired and disinterested. Good thing this wasn't the version they plugged and went commercial. It would have died instantly.

As far as I know, Berry bought all of Myto's rights. But, as far as master tapes went, I'm sure he didn't get all of them physically, as many unreleased masters turned up in the late 1980s from a different source, which were combined with lots of unreleased Solid Hitbound tapes, as well. So, I wonder if those tapes had ended up in Don Davis' hands? Many of them were songs that were released on Wingate or Davis artists, done by other Wingate or Groovesville, or Solid Hitbound artists. I remember cuts by Rose Batiste, Pat Lewis, Gwen Owens, Theresa Lindsey, etc. Almost all were just versions of songs that had been released by fellow artists. Some were better vocals than those released. But almost all had backgrounds that were either less complete or complicated, or just not produced at the A-side production level. So, many of them probably had their production halted when it was decided that a version by another artist had been chosen for release and heavy marketing push.

This is correct. This happened when outside people got into the abandoned, dilapidated Woodward Building, and found things Motown's people didn't care to take with them to L.A many years before, during the initial move. There were several ruined acetates and studio demos. But, I don't think any of them were unknown Wingate -produced recordings.

This is correct. That is why Ed Wingate and Joanne Bratton used "RicTic Music" as their in-house publisher after their buyout in 1966.

The Golden World unreleased tapes were certainly found. I remember that in around 1990, many Golden World/Ric-Tic and Groovesville (Don Davis) tapes of 1965-66 recordings were issued on (homemade) bootleg cassette tapes, seemingly made specifically for The Northern Soul Scene. The Golden World/Ric-Tic tapes had to have been what that company had left as unissued recordings when Motown took over in 1966, and there may also have been some from the Blue Ric-Tic period. And the Groovesville recordings included some from when Don Davis worked for Golden World, and others when he was completely independent, and also working as Solid Hitbound Productions (late 1966, 1967-1968).

I've seen the Jean Shy on Chief several times, but I NEVER saw a record by her on Starville. I doubt that one was released as a regular issue with a decent sized press run. Jean being a member of a duet rings a bell.

Thanks for that research. So, now we're back to square one. We have no idea where the recording was found. Maybe it WAS some kind of re-working of a studio group's budget LP early '60s recording? Maybe it actually WAS Sandy Phillips and The Topovers' Masterseal version?

THIS sounds like the best answer. Crown Records was Modern Records' catch-all, multi-genre 45RPM label from 1952-1956, for records they didn't know how to market, or know what to do with (like VIP was for Motown). In 1957, they used it as a budget LP label for cover records of recent hits recorded by unknown in-house artists given false individual and group names, and for repackaging their own R&B and Jazz oldies, and picking up non-hit-failed Pop, MOR and ethnic music, and repackaging it. Modern's Crown LPs lasted well into the early 1960s. Ray Charles' "Unchain My Heart" was released in Fall 1961. So that Crown LP that contained the Sandy Phillips and The Topovers' cut (not the older Crown label shown on the video, but the later, gray label, without the Crown illustration (only text), could have been released in November or December 1961, or early 1962. My guess of 1964-66 probably happened because of its later processing. The sound on the Crown video above sounds earlier, and 1961-62 matches it perfectly.

Clearly, Remington's new budget LP operation started in Detroit, used a Canadian pressing plant, probably in Windsor (but certainly, somewhere in the nearby portion of Ontario (London, or Toronto Metro Area) to master and press their recordings (and, perhaps, they even used a recording studio there, as well). That sounds reasonable, and explains the old sound of the instrumentation and recording acoustics.

Yes!!! I forgot about James Hunter! When I first heard a few of his cuts, I thought they were Detroit cuts from 1966.

If this is true that it's a 2010 recording, they did a hell of a job making the instrumentation sound "old". It sounds like it was recorded in 1965 or 1966. I can't remember ever hearing ANY songs recorded after 1976, or maybe one in 1977, in which the instrumentation sound WAYYYYY too modern for my taste, and my HATING the sound. However, on this recording, the instrumental has none of those modern elements that I dislike. I can't imagine how that is possible, IF this was a 2010 recording. Why can't I think of even ONE example of a post 1976 song that meets that standard???

So, you think it is NOT Sandy Phillips and The Topovers with Don Raleigh's Orchestra, recorded at the end of the 1950s, or in the early 1960s in a Canadian studio for Masterseal/Buckingham Records, but, rather, a 2010 retro-nostalgic recording? To me, the video above, said to be Sandy Phillips(purported to have been slowed down), sounds EXACTLY the same as the sample of The Green Apples' version, supposed NOT to have been slowed down. This makes no sense to me. I wish Discogs had an audio file of The Sandy Phillips version.

I am well known in Nederland (at least by Disney Comics fans) as a Disney artist and writer, and I draw drawings and sign autographs there. I've placed a pencil drawing of mine and mijne Keerstkaartje below for your viewing pleasure. Also, I'm not quite a foreigner, because my family comes from Den Haag. In fact, my great aunt was the model who posed for the famous "De Visservrouw" (statue of the fisherman's wife) op de strand in Scheveningen.

I was making a joke. But you now see why although I write comedy stories (voor nederlandse Donald Duck Weekblad), I am not a World-Famous comedy writer!

So Sandy Phillips was a fellow Canuck, singing for one of Canada's top budget labels (The equivalent of USA's Tops Records). And he was the male band singer for Don Raleigh's orchestra. I didn't know that Old "Bones" moonlighted as a band leader. Don Raleigh was the centre for our Winnipeg Jr. A ice hockey team the year before I was born. He played for The New York Rangers for 9 years. He retired from professional hockey in 1958, so I guess he could have been a bandleader in 1964. Actually, Sandy did a pretty good job on "Unchain My Heart" - a LOT better than Hugh Laurie, anyway.