Pot Black

Steve Davis was at the record fair a few days ago. He of snooker fame.

This is the fourth time I’ve come across him at my local record fair. On all four occasions I have come away with a very satisfying haul of soul 45s.

Steve was a big fan of soul music back in the 80s and 90s at least. He also partnered with a well known DJ and dealer on the Northern scene back then - Rod Dearlove. They imported tens of thousands of records, and Steve also helped with funding for Rod's magazine Voices From The Shadows that ran for about 25 issues.

At previous fairs he had boxes and boxes of 45s for £1 each. I was like a pig in sh*t! He had a lot more albums this time but my focus as usual was 45s. Inflation has kicked in though. Sadly the £1 boxes are no more. This time there were about 6 boxes of priced soul, blues, and R&B and 5 or 6 rows of £2.50 45s on the floor. And a small box of expensive ones in the inner sanctum. In fairness nearly all the priced stuff was of higher quality/rarer than previously present in his £1 boxes, but I reckon a lot of the £2.50 stuff was £1 last year.

The prices evidently didn’t put me off though as I bought another 25 45s off him! I did get a bit carried away though as seeing so many records that float my boat in the flesh in one place is a rarity in the UK. In reality there are only a few of these that I really wanted, and maybe part of my brain was still operating as if they were only £1 each. The provenance had something to do with it as well I think – imagining they had been imported by Steve and Rod as deadstock decades ago and have since been sat around in storage somewhere is something that, strangely, piques my interest. The records are generally in great condition too.

At the fair I didn’t have time to check if I had any in this latest stack already. When I got home it turned out I did have one – The Soul Ambassadors - which cost me £4. I discovered I had bought, an albeit more beat up, copy on my first plundering of Steve’s £1 boxes back in 2023!

I have found that a fair few of these 45s are featured on Sir Shambling’s great (and now sadly no longer updated?) site. So perhaps some of these records were from Steve’s own personal collection as, like me, I believe he has/had a penchant for deep and/or Southern soul.

Here are two deepies from my stack with a similar feel -  melancholic, simple production, nice guitar and horns, and a good vocal to the fore.  

Nat Hall hailed from the Washington DC area and had several singles released in a roughly 10 year period starting in 1966. He doesn't feature on Sir Shambling, but this track would be a worthy entry. I love the way this one just sort of stops at the end.    

Nat Hall with The Mellow 3 – A Broken Hearted Clown 1970

Ricky Lewis has four documented releases, this, from 1968, being his final release. Ricky does have his page at Sir Shambling, but it seems little is known of him beyond the fact his recording career started in New Jersey.     

Ricky Lewis and the Afro Band –Welcome Home 1968

Forever a 45 cat

Ort Carlton passed away in January a couple of years ago. I feel like I need to pay my respects now here as at the time of his passing this blog was off air.

I’m posting this today because in my mind Ort passed away two years ago today. But I misremembered the date, he actually passed on the 21^st January 2023.

You didn’t know Ort? Well, no, neither did I, but I felt like I knew him. Let me explain.

As something of a record collecting nerd I frequent the 45cat site. For those of you who don’t know the site it is something of a crowd sourced venture with the goal in it’s original form (it has since expanded to 45worlds sort of sister site which encompasses albums, magazines, memorabilia) essentially to document every 45rpm 7” record ever released. Anybody can add a record to it under strict guidelines. One can also document their own collection on it via an “I Own It” button, and their want/wish list via an “I Want It” button. Over the last few years I have documented the bulk of my collection by hitting that “I Own It” button, and my own account page is currently telling me I have 3,663 singles (and a further 2,000+ albums and 12” singles on 45worlds). You can also see what other people own.

I found over the years that whenever I added a US release 45 to my collection (predominantly of the soul variety), or hit the “want” button, and then went to see who else owned or wanted a copy Ort.Carlton’s name was there. Wow, I thought, our tastes strongly align. I don’t think it was until I became aware of his passing that I went to his account page and saw how many 45s Ort had recorded as owning (32,714!), or wanting (34,703!!). So maybe our tastes weren’t that closely aligned, it was just that Ort owned or wanted everything! (Interesting to note that he joined the 45cat community in 2015, that’s five years after me, so in just a few years he was very busy documenting his collection).

So who was Ort Carlton? His full name was William Orten Carlton and he was a character, that’s for sure. He was very well known in his hometown of Athens, Georgia, where he was born, and resided for the bulk of his life. He ran a record shop called Ort’s Oldies on College Avenue there for some years and hosted radio shows on WUOG-FM called Ort’s Oldies and Ort’s Radio Problem, starting in 1972 and continuing right up to 2022. He was well known in the local music scene, and was there as bands such as REM and the B-52s blossomed. During some of the 80s at least he was working for a company measuring the strength of AM radio signals (with a view to ensuring local stations did not drown each other out). This meant he travelled extensively, particularly in Tennessee and Alabama. He had a photographic memory and apparently knew the call sign of every AM station in the South and every zip code in Georgia. It’s possible therefore that the act of documenting his record collection on 45cat was simply a case of accessing his memory rather than physically looking up his records. I’m not sure he could vouch for the condition of some of those records though judging by some of the pictures in the reel here! I would bet though that he put together his collection at least in part by making numerous stop offs at thrifts etc. as he travelled through the southern States measuring those radio signals. Sounds like it was a dream job.

I have gleaned this information on Ort from lovingly put together tributes here, and here which also gives links to Youtube clips of Ort on Public Access TV during the 80s. There is also a heartfelt tribute from a  friend describing time he spent in Atlanta here. I urge you to follow these links to get a better sense of the man.

I wish now I had researched Ort whilst he was still alive as I like to think I could have struck up at ast an email/message based friendship with him based on our shared love of music. It seems like he was an easy guy to get on with.

A stash of fliers and other music ephemera of the Athens music scene that Ort had has now been taken in by the University of Georgia (Extent: 7 Linear Feet 1 box, 4 oversize boxes, 1 oversized folder). I can’t help but wonder what has happened to his record collection.

Ort’s account at 45cat is “archived”, but still there in all it’s glory for all to see. The last comment he made on a record was just a month before he passed. The comment reads “For some reason, nice crackly copies of this just sound better to me. Maybe it's too late to hunt down a near mint one.” The record in question is by The Vanguards, a soul group from Indianapolis. When I found out about Ort’s passing as a mark of respect I went online and bought a copy of this record (due to the unfavourable exchange rate, and ever increasing postage and import costs, it was the first record I had bought from the States in quite a few years). Now whenever I pull it out of it’s storage box or just browse past it I think of Ort).

I’m sure Ort will live forever in the memories of his family and many friends he made in Athens. Also, hopefully, he will live forever at 45cat.

The Vanguards – It’s Too Late For Love 1970