(A belated) R.I.P. Red Kelly

Earlier this year I paid belated respects to someone I didn’t know but felt like I did.

Today I need to do the same.

On this day in 2022 Robert Keller died suddenly at the age of 67. It’s no age to die really. To me and thousands of soul music lovers like me Robert Keller was better known as Red Kelly. His “The B Side” blog was one of the many focussed on classic soul music I avidly followed back in the Noughties, in the heyday of the format. Red went on to launch other blogs and websites dedicated to soul music, particularly Southern soul, and helped to bring some long forgotten and underappreciated singers and musicians out of the shadows and in some cases effectively bring them back to the stage. His research and dedication to the cause was prodigious and is sorely missed. A friend of his – John Broven – wrote an obituary for him which described his work in more detail, you can read it here (you will need to scroll down a bit). Most, if not all, of his blogs and writings are still available on the internet, as seems to be the case generally with such things in the digital world nowadays.

Red had emailed me just a few weeks before his death (we had conversed a bit over the years via email but by no means regularly). Back in 2008 he had taken up my cause to try and find out more information on Joni Wilson, who recorded just one very obscure single on the Volt label. He emailed me to say that at the Stax Museum’s wall of singles (an attempt to display a copy of every Stax And Volt single released) there were only eight missing, and Joni Wilson’s was one of them. As I was the only person he knew that owned a copy he wondered if I might consider donating my copy. As of last year, when I visited the Stax Museum, I can confirm there is still a space where the Joni Wilson 45 could sit. I am not ready to part with my copy yet, but it is something I might do one day, and it would be partly in memory of Red. Recently I have hatched another theory as to who Joni Wilson might have been and it would have been great to have passed it by Red. I’m sure he would have been interested, and with the contacts he had built up doing his research projects he may have been able to run with it.

RIP Robert Keller “Red Kelly” who passed away on July 14^th 2022, age only 67.