The Feel it Mini Advent-ure: Door 12

I can't help feeling that tomorrow morning, whatever the outcome, we Brits are all in the do do (as if we aren't already!).

So ...... let's dance. 

Cannonball Adderley Quintet - Do Do Do (What Now Is Next)  1967    

The Feel it Mini Advent-ure: Door 11

Here is a random pull from a stack of recently purchased 45s. This one came from the little R&R slanted record fair that pops up in town a few times a year. It was the first time in about a year I had been as the one or two dealers who had been carrying some soul had either sold off their remaining records or were not attending anymore. But I thought I would give it another whirl. It was not a good day to go. The weather was terrible and England had been playing New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup. Consequently I got there a bit late, and to find there were only 3 dealers in attendance. One of them was a regular and I knew he had some soul & r&b, although from experience his prices were generally a bit high for my liking. Still, he had a couple of half price boxes so I dug in.

This 45 was one of a handful I pulled out. Ray Agee has been on my radar for a few years now. He is not a well known or well documented singer, but he deserves to be better known. He was fairly prolific, recording for a number of small labels and 45cat currently have 47 different 45s noted. This release, on the obscure Brandin label, may date to 1966, or possibly as late as 1968. Ray, who hailed from Alabama, would  have likely been in his forties when he recorded it. It is believed he passed away in 1989/90, seeming to drop out of the music scene in the early 70s (as so many blues, soul, and R&B artists did in those times, particularly gospel rooted ones). He had developed polio at an early age which left him with a permanent disability, so that may have been the reason for his disappearance from the music scene. (This information has been gleaned from his brief Wikipedia entry and its linked articles).

Similar to “Any Day Now” featured yesterday, looking back in this blog I find this is Ray's second appearance here, and his first was also in a Feel It Advent-ure, almost to the day, back in December 2015.

This is another fine bluesy outing, supported by some fine Big City horns, which could be expected as he had been based in Los Angeles for many years.

Ray Agee – Love Is A Cold Shot 1966?

The Feel It Mini Advent-ure: Door 10

Huh? What happened to doors 1 to 9?

I decided recently I would attempt another Feel It Advent-ure this year - a post a day for every day on the advent calendar. Crazy, considering I haven't even been able to muster a post a month this year so far!

And it was indeed a crazy idea. Inhabiting my newly retired world it is quite commonplace for me to lose track of which day of the week it is, but I have now taken it a stage further – it was the 3rd before I even realised it was December! In all honesty I secretly breathed a sigh of relief – 24 days and 24 posts was a bit of a stretch for a blog that has seemed itself to be flirting with retirement.

The Feel It mini Advent-ure start here!

But now here we are – the 10^th of December – a Tuesday I believe – and I am feeling a bit guilty about how easily I slipped into the do nothing approach here after a false start to the month. So today I present the first day of the 2019 Feel It Mini Advent-ure. Surely I can manage 15 days in a row?

I found this Chuck Jackson single in a record shop £1 box recently. I was buying a handful of other singles so in the end this one was essentially thrown in for free. I didn't know its value but I knew there were some desirable releases on the Red/Yellow Pye Intl label, so I had a hunch it was a bargain. I think it was in the £1 box because the intro sounded completely trashed, but a good clean has improved it no end. Discogs has a median price of £21 on this, so it is indeed a bargain.

Research tells me that Chuck Jackson was the first to have a hit with this song, written in 1962 by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard, and possibly also the first to record it. It has subsequently been recorded by many other artists and I thought I remembered featuring Percy Sledge's version here before, I checked, and sure enough I did back in 2008 – on Christmas Eve. So it seems that “Any Day Now” has developed into something of a Christmas song for me.

Chuck Jackson – Any Day Now 1962*

*originally released in the UK on Stateside

I can feel it

I'm a sucker for picking up records in the wild just on the fact they look to be in great, almost unplayed, condition (M- as the grading would go). I might not have any great desire to have the record for it's content, the condition alone can be sufficient attraction to make me part with some cash if the entry price is cheap enough. I think the motivation is if I see a record that is forty-odd years old and is seemingly as good as new I want to keep it that way and save it from an uncertain future - mishandled in a charity shop box, parted from its birth sleeve, forced to sit unloved and unnoticed between scratched, grubby, and frankly awful Cilla Black and Ken Dodd singles, that sort of thing. (Of course the record must hint at potentially having some merit in the grooves, on those grounds a minty Cilla Black or Ken Dodd record would not qualify!).

And so it was in the case of this single 50p was certainly cheap enough, and I was familiar with Bo & Ruth, although not these particular tracks.

You're Gonna Get Next To Me was a big UK hit in the mid 70s for Bo & Ruth (a much bigger hit than in the US), and one I remember fondly. But in the end it was all over the radio at the time to the point of being overplayed I think.

Bo & Ruth were Bo Kirkland & Ruth Davis. Just another duo in the Peaches & Herb vein I probably thought at the time. It wasn't until a few years ago I learnt that Bo was in fact Michael James Kirkland who, along with his brother Robert, had been in the group Mike & The Censations, and cut a number of few beautifully soulful singles in the the second half of the 60s. Many of those singles are highly collectable now. (Arguably There Is Nothing I Can Do About It is the best of them, a B side at the time). But did I get that wrong? Was Bo in fact Robert, not Michael James Kirkland. "Bo" would certainly fit better as a shortened form of Robert, after all, No, apparently Michael took the performing name Bo when he thought he might be confused with Michael Jackson. Maybe he chose Bo as a nod to his brother? Bearing in mind Mr Jackson's success at the time many people would have probably been happy to be confused with him. Testament to MJK that he believed in his own ability – and there is no denying he had a great voice.

I guess you could call Ruth Davis something of a journeywoman on the Soul scene. She had appeared in at least a couple of groups in the 60s, including a short stint as an Ikette. In 1971 she had a single released on Kent. It was a slab of uptempo funky soul but didn't stand out form the crowd and didn't do anything chartwise. After that disappointment Ruth went back to singing in local clubs until she was signed to Claridge and ultimately teamed with “Bo” Kirkland.

Bo & Ruth had seven singles released in the US, but only two in the UK. You're Gonna Get Next To Me emerged in the US late in '76 and got a UK release about six months later in the UK. It was a massive hit in the UK and went on to be a worldwide hit. To follow up its success in the UK EMI went back to Bo & Ruth's second US single Easy Loving, which had initially seen the light of day in the US a couple of years earlier. Personally, now I have listened to it I think Easy Loving is a bit average, and they probably would have been better going with the single that followed ...Next To Me in the US – Stay By My Side, stronger to my ear and one I remember featuring here many moons ago. I was pleasantly surprised by the B side though. Can You Feel It was included on Bo & Ruth's one and only album but didn't appear on a US single. It is a lovely slice of gentle, soothing Soul with some nice understated piano and horn additions and, yes, I can certainly feel it.

Bo & Ruth – Can You Feel It  1976

I'm reminded

I notice it is a month since my last “comeback” post. How can that be possible?! Retirement has clearly caused me to enter some sort of time warp!

Recently I have felt more pangs of nostalgia for the days when trawling for Soul 45s on the interweb seemed to be easier and more pleasurable. Because my collection was much smaller then it was easy to find things to buy and it was more pleasurable because I was discovering so many artists that were new to me. It was a good deal cheaper too. Those days of $2 to the pound and reasonable postage costs seem a long time ago now. In fact I just looked it up and the exchange rate hit $2.10 to the pound late in 2007. That was a little longer ago than I thought, actually. But just five years ago it was still at $1.65 to the pound. I would be happy with that now.

In the early Noughties I had been bitten (all over again) by the Soul bug big time, and in 2007 I would have been buying a fair amount of 45s from the States on ebay. Of course with hindsight I should have bought more.

I remember I had become aware of Otis Clay's output and I was seeing his One-derful 45s on ebay fairly regularly. They are fairly common and I thought I had bought some at the time. When two popped up from UK sellers recently within the space of a few weeks (I don't recall seeing any copies for some time on ebay, at least on the sellers lists that I have been trawling through) I checked the collection and was a bit surprised to find I had neither. They were reasonably priced so now copies of both of Otis Clay's 1966 released 45s have finally taken a long overdue place in the collection. (Incidentally, when these 45s were released in 1966 the exchange rate was $2.79 to the pound).

Otis Clay – I'm Satisfied 1966

Otis Clay – It's Easier Said, Than Done 1966

What day is it, anyway?

It is evident I have been struggling to keep this thing going. Time to break another long silence.

There has been a life development since the my last post – both Mrs Darce and I are now retired! So at least I should have more time on my hands to post a few more things here. Hmm. Not so fast! Because I should tell you I retired at the end of April. That's nearly four months ago now, where did that time go!

I had been been thinking of retiring for the last year or two but what had stopped me was the thought I might not have enough things to do and I might be bored (for “I” also read “we”, of course). So, having taken the plunge what have we been doing for this last four months? Not much at all really – no big holidays (one is coming next year); unlike some of my friends I'm not a golfer, a sport that can easily take up a lot of time; and I have not yet taken up any new interests. So am I bored? No, and the weird thing is the days seem to go by really quickly. I guess we are just simply enjoying not having to be at anybody's beck and call, and not having to have a routine. I also find I have this real urge to spend as much time as possible outside, that urge had been growing in me for some time now. In that regard the summer has helped, so we have been going on lots of walks, bike rides, and lots of general pottering in the garden. As the days shorten and winter approaches those activities will no doubt reduce and it will be interesting to see what fills the time then.

This first flush of retirement had also, until a few weeks ago, caused the record collection to be a bit neglected. But now I find I'm immersed in them again, already anticipating winter, and long nights, maybe.

So I won't promise anything but there maybe some more action again here from now on (although we are off to Cornwall for a few days next week so straight away that will cause another silence).

I think I have featured this 45 from The Intruders before* but I thought it would be appropriate in the circumstances – in the land of the retired it is very easy to completely lose track of which day of the week it is, so it is easier to say that every day is a holiday!

The Intruders – Every Day Is A Holiday 1969       

* I just checked. In fact it has featured twice before, way back at the dawn of this blog in 2006,  and again in 2011.

Dial O for obscure

If you are a fan of classic Soul & R&B music will undoubtedly know, and love, Joe Tex. It then follows that you will be familiar with the Dial label. In 1961 Buddy Killen set up the Dial label primarily to feature Joe Tex. Joe had the first release on the label and, fittingly, in 1979 he had the last. In between he had countless other singles released, many of which would justifiably feature in any Soul Hall of Fame. The label was primarily a Soul label – for example some other artists you will probably recognise that also had releases on the label are Clarence Reid, Bobby Marchan, Paul Kelly, and Annette Snell – but it was not exclusively so with, I believe, some Pop and Country tinged records featured. Dial was quite a prolific label, and at time of writing this there were 158 US releases documented on 45cat (albeit a few of those are promo doubles). So I think we can say it is as well known, well loved, and well documented.

Looking at the catalog numbers on 45cat there appear to be hardly any missing Dial releases. But recently whilst trawling Ebay I found one of them! I was in the process of buying something else so I thought I would scan the other items the seller had for sale to see if there was anything else worth getting and so diluting the postage cost (as you do). The Dial label caught my attention and when I went off to t'interweb to see if I could find some more info on this particular 45 … I found nothing. Nothing at all. It was not on 45cat, not on Discogs, there were no links to old sales lists or ebay listings anywhere; the only references to it were a few repeated Dial master release lists (e.g. Global Dog Productions). Likewise I could not find any info at all on the artist – Sherrie Hughes.

I was curious now and as the price was small I decided I had to have this record, so I bought it blind.

Info on Sherrie Hughes maybe elusive but not so for the songwriters – Ronnie Wilkins and John Hurley – who were prolific, writing songs for Joe Tex and also some other very well known songs and big hits – Son Of A Preacher Man and Love Of The Common People being just two.

So have I found a lost Soul classic? No. Is it even Soul? Not really. The A side I would class as Pop. My preference is for the B side (presented here) which is more difficult to pigeon hole, it has elements of Country, Soul and Pop to my ears, and on this side particularly Sherrie has a Country edge to her voice I think and is most probably white. It has some nice background vocals, I would be interested to know who the singers were. The pity is the track clocks in at just under two minutes and is sort of over before it really gets going.. But despite this not being the greatest of records it is not always what is in the grooves that counts. I have had my money's worth in researching this 45 (or attempting to) and had the pleasure of filling one of the tiny chinks in 45cat's Dial listing (yes the entry you now see for Dial 45-4043 on 45cat is mine). For these reasons this 45 will, from now on, sit proudly in my collection.

Sherrie Hughes – It's Just My Love That's Showing 1966

PS: Publishing this post sent me off on another quick bit of googling around this 45. I have now found that the A side -  I've Got A Lot Of Love (Left In Me) -  was originally recorded by Nancy Ames and was the B side to Friends And Lovers Forever which got a release (on both sides of the pond) late in 1965. It has been described as Northern Soul, but that is a bit of a stretch in my book. Nancy's version is superior I think with Sherrie's version maybe being pitched more fairly and squarely at a Pop audience.