A
belated Happy New Year to you. “Happy” is a stretch at the moment
I know, so perhaps a Better New Year maybe a more appropriate wish.
What
follows will have you
scratching your head a little with some references in relation to
where we are right now, but stick with it and all will become clear.
C.M.
Lord is my shepherd... she restoreth my faith in charity shop
digging... she leadeth me back to the blogging world.
Charity
shop digging has been challenging this year but just recently I had
seen a return to almost normal service. Most shops were once again
happy to put vinyl out on the floor, and stock turnover was
improving. Finds have been thin on the ground though. And now we are
back in a lockdown of sorts for at least another four weeks and the
shops are shut again.
For
just a few weeks before our latest “pause” one of my favourite
charity shops (venue of some consistently good finds in the last year
or two) had started putting vinyl out again. On my first visit there
since the vinyl had reappeared I found an Undisputed Truth album,
which was a nice surprise. However, the album was ultimately
disappointing when I got it home and gave it a spin. Nevertheless it
served to instil some fresh hope of future finds, and on my very next
visit, just a few days before “lockdown 2.0”, I picked up this
C.M. Lord album for the princely sum of 99p. For some reason it was
placed next to the two boxes of albums for sale and I almost missed
it completely. Maybe someone had pulled it out with a view to buying
it and decided against it. Their loss. It is a fine album.
Catherine
Mitchell Lord is a new name to me. This album was released very late
in 1981 I think, and a single came out around that time too, but they
made little or no waves it seems. I was still DJing in '81 but by the
end of that year I think I had hung up the headphones and walked away
from the wheels of steel so I had lost touch with the scene a little
by then.
I
can find very little info online about Cathy. Seemingly her first
appearance on wax was in 1974 when a London single bore her name. By
1976 she had moved to Capitol – a major label that did a good job
of releasing some very fine Soul music, especially in the mid '70s. -
and an eponymous album appeared, and spawned a single Oh Mama which
did nothing but is excellent, and now in demand. Her Discogs page
tells me she released five singles and three albums between 1974 and
1983....
And
that is where my “copy” stops. You see I wrote this back in early
November last year, about a week into Lockdown 2.0. It was going to
be my first post here for a while but it didn't happen. It just goes
to show the blogging mojo is a fleeting and very fragile beast, even
managing to desert me in mid composition (photo had been taken, mp3s created too). In the end it took almost
another month before I snapped out of my blogging malaise and burst
into life again with another Feel It Advent-ure before another radio
silence kicked in. Now here we are almost another month later and
into yet another Lockdown. Taking up where I left off with my two
month old half a post above feels like a Groundhog Day.
So
what else is there to say about CM Lord? I think I was just starting
a deep dive into the internet back in November to see what else I
could piece together on her when I very abruptly went off air, so to
speak. I have finally completed that task now.
Initially
I found reference to an article that appeared in Blues & Soul
in August '76 but it was behind a paywall. That prompted me to dig
out my old magazines. No August '76 copies though, I was
predominantly buying Black Music back then. I fast forwarded
to late '81 to see if I could find any coverage around her 1981
album but it seemed I stopped buying Blues & Soul in
August of '81, a few months before this album of hers was released. A
dead end.
In
truth there is not a lot to find on Cathy. She also goes by the name
Catherine Mitchell Wilmore, possibly her married name. My research did
lead me down some interesting paths though that I think are worth
highlighting here.
Robby
Adcock, part of a late '70s Disco group Midnight Rhythm, offers some
insight to her early career. There is a long piece here which is
worth reading. C.M. Lord was, in fact, a name of an LA band active in
the early '70s (and a youtube comment suggests they were playing at
the Starwood in
Hollywood around '73). CM Lord, the band, turned up at a small
California based 8 track recording studio called Fat Chance Recording
early in '72. They took their name from Cathy who was their lead
singer. Their debut single, on London, was released in '74. I am sure
the band would claim credit for it although 45cat show a pic sleeve
where it is clearly pushing Cathy as a solo artist. (Another group
comes to mind here – Rufus. Chaka Khan was, of course, their
charismatic lead singer, but in their instance it was the group, not
Chaka, who were very much the marketed entity in the early years).
Around then the band had become part of the, then, deeply underground
early disco scene in California. Cathy was a great writer apparently
but she lost the rights to much of her early work it seems when Fat
Chance's owner Joe Long wrangled the rights to her songs – a
depressingly common story back then.
In
'76 CM Lord – Cathy or the band?, might have thought they had
her/their big break. An album was released on Capitol. Writing
credits include all the band members names, although it is only Cathy
who appears on the cover and it was clearly Cathy as a solo artist
who was being pushed. The album did nothing. Around the same time, possibly earlier, the band, including Cathy, would appear to have been sucked into a
group of musicians who became very prolific on at least one shady
record label – Baby Grand. In '76 the Steven Hines Band had a
release on Tiger Lily Records. Steven Hines had been / was in the
band CM Lord. Cathy co-wrote many tracks on that album.
In '77 there
followed, at least in terms of release dates, A Fat Chance (evidently named
after the recording studio), released on Baby Grand. This is more of a group affair and may well have been recorded earlier than '77. Both the Tiger Lily and Baby Grand labels
were, essentially, tax scams. Baby Grand in particular was prolific
in '77, you can read more about the label here, and here. Fascinating
stuff.
Later
in the '70s and into '80 Cathy had a few writing credits on disco
slanted records but nothing else as far as I can find. Then,
seemingly out of nowhere, at the end of '81 suddenly she appeared
again on a major label – RCA Montage – with the album featured
here. She was evidently on major label's A&R radar. After that
though , again, I can only unearth a few writing credits and a sole
12” disco release through into 1983 at which point she seemed to
essentially disappear from the music scene.
I
did find only two other co-writing credits after 1983 – on a 1989
Natalie Cole track, and a 1991 electro/hip-hop track (DJ
Extraordinaire with Lord Hakim House Tha' Set), but
it is possible this was just sampling one of her earlier
compositions.
On
a copyright database I found her name listed a couple of times with
1943 given as a birth date.
Catherine
Mitchell Wilmore, I think you will agree, is not a common name and I
did find a reference to a woman of that name currently living in Los
Angeles. Her age is given as 78 which would be consistent with the
birth date I found, and interestingly a relative (son?) is listed
with a given name of Lord. It all stacks up. If it is Cathy then it
seems she has never strayed from LA, or at the very least returned to
her old stamping ground. There is an address and a telephone number
given. I guess I could try and make contact, but maybe nowadays that
could be viewed a bit too much like stalking.
C
M Lord – Don't Run Me Away 1981
C
M Lord – Can't Wait 1981
