Jigsaws and geography

This record has been in the collection for a few years now and I have been meaning to feature it for some time. While I was dragging my feet Sir Shambling has recently nipped in and added CarolynVeal to his Deep Soul Heaven hall of fame (you and me both Ana!).

I bought the record off the ‘bay and it was the almost home made look to this 45 that initially attracted me to it. I love the way the track information has been typewritten, carefully cut out, and then glued onto the white label. (Incidentally – typewriters! Remember them?). This copy was described as having come from an ex-record executive’s collection. I wonder, did they receive the record like this? Or did it maybe come as a plain white label together with some promotional blurb from which they cut out the title and artist info? Or did somebody else stick the information on at a later date? Whatever the circumstances, I cannot remember seeing a demo record presented in this way before. Demos of Phil-LA-Of-Soul 45s followed the usual industry practice of sporting full logo and credits but had a white background colour (presumably primarily to make it easier for disc jockeys to read). So this must have been an advance advance copy! The Phil-LA-Of-Soul label is probably my favourite of all designs so it would have been nice to have this 45 with the proper label, but it’s just as good having it in this form, which must be very unusual, and I think looks rather wonderful in its own right.

When I initially acquired this 45 I tried to find out some background on Carolyn Veal. I didn’t manage to turn up anything. Then, a few weeks ago, as I said, John Ridley added Carolyn Veal, and her seemingly only 45, to his peerless site.  John evidently hadn’t been able to turn up anything on Carolyn either but mused that the track had possibly been cut in Florida.

This sparked me into another web trawl in search of more information on Carolyn or this record, and this time I found something.  This track has been on YouTube now for some time and recent comments are interesting:

1. Carolyn Veal herself appears to have left a comment.

2. Another commenter mentions that it was a hit in the Netherlands in late '70. (Although I don’t think it was released on Phil LA until 1972, but read on). 

3. Somebody else mentions that the track will always be number one in the Caribbean community (or something like that), and somebody else again then refers to a 45 by Carole Veal that went for a tidy sum on ebay a few months ago. That is really interesting: it was released on the Ditanfra label with Miss Veal credited as song writer. The label says “Recorded in V.I.". VI turns out to be the Virgin Islands I think as I have seen a couple of albums also released on Ditanfra which are calypso or soul/funk style and also purport to be from the Virgin Islands. So it would appear that Carolyn recorded the song in the Virgin Islands (where she was resident?) with the help of Florida based Tom Markham, who then leased the song to Philly based Phil-LA-Of-Soul. There was certainly precedent for a Florida link for the label with the likes of Helene Smith and Little Beaver having had releases on the imprint. Almost certainly the Ditanfra release was first so that could fit in with the comment that it had graced the Dutch airwaves in late ‘70.

I have passed on this info to the good Sir and in his reply he mentioned he would put out some more feelers with friends in Suriname. Of course, I thought! I was wondering how this record could have become a hit in Holland of all places, but Suriname used to be known as Dutch Guiana until it achieved independence from Holland in 1975. Positioned on the north coast of South America, Suriname has trading links with the Caribbean islands so this could explain how this 45 came to get exposure in Holland. But there's more. I followed my nose on Wikipedia and ended up at Negerhollands a Dutch-based creole language that was once spoken in the Danish West Indies, now known as...... the U.S. Virgin Islands. So there is a direct link between the Virgin Islands and Holland. Sorry if you knew all this geography and so forth, but I didn't! Anyway this can explain how this 45 came to get exposure in Holland. Of course that would suggest there is a Dutch press of this record in existence. Will one turn up?

Once John collates this new information and anything else he manages to find out from his own further investigations I am sure we can look forward to an even fuller picture on Deep Soul Heaven of this great piece of lost soul. 

Remember that difficult jigsaw that used to be kept under the tablecloth for weeks on end? Piece by piece we’ll get there.

CarolynVeal – Your Love Is Like A Chain Around My Heart  1972?

GG / B = AA

Gloria Gaynor – Searchin’ 1975

I am still getting round to playing records I bought at car boot sales last year. The particular batch I’ve been working through recently is a small crate full of mainly 80s pop 45s, with a few 70s thrown in as well. 80s pop isn’t really my scene but this lot of records came with a bunch of mint Depeche Mode singles – their first 27 singles to be precise – and the whole lot (about 150 singles) only cost £5.

Anyway in this bunch of records was Gloria Gaynor’s ’75 disco outing “Reach Out, I’ll Be There”, looking the worse for wear. I gave it a rub with the magic fluid, put it down on the turntable B side up – and discovered a mid tempo gem.  I can’t stop playing this record, it has a top notch arrangement with irresistible strings, understated horns, a simple xylophone(?) motif and Gloria Gaynor’s fine vocals drenched in heartache.

This sent me upstairs to dig out my other Gloria Gaynor 45s and proceed to play all the B sides, and I found it was well worth the effort. Gloria will maybe be forever known as a Disco Diva (and especially for "I Will Survive") but these sides prove that there was much more depth to her, and the arrangers she worked with.

Most of these B sides can be found on Side 2 of her first two albums” Never Can Say Goodbye” and “Experience” ("We Just Can't Make It" was only ever a B side). Side 1 of those albums featured her Disco hits and were segued to run continuously which was both a novelty and a hit with the club DJs in the, then, very much fledgling Disco scene. It was those tracks that gained all the attention and I doubt that many people turned over the singles or the albums to find out what lay lurking. A pity. Now, all these years later Gloria’s hits definitely sound of their time but I think it’s the B side of Gloria that has stood the test of time better.

Buy “Never Can Say Goodbye”.

Buy “Experience”. (The B side of this album contains "What'll I Do" which is another hidden gem).  

Gloria Gaynor – We Just Can’t Make It  1974

Gloria Gaynor – Real Good People  1975

Gloria Gaynor – I’m Still Yours  1975

Hoping to get back in the ......

It’s been a busy few weeks both at work and socially. There are signs that things may quieten down a bit on the life front soon and with that a more normal service can hopefully be resumed here.

In the meantime I’ve dug deep into one of my original Schweppes boxes for this 45 from the Rhythm Makers. Always a favourite of mine, it’s a hypnotic instrumental from 1975 performed by the band that would change their name to GQ and hit big with “Disco Nights (Rock Freak)” towards the end of the 70s. “Disco Nights” was in fact a reworking of “Soul On Your Side” which was the title track of the one and only LP the band released as the Rhythm Makers, which also featured “Zone”. I used to play “Disco Nights” a lot back in my DJing days and “Zone” would have got a few airings too. Back then I wasn’t aware of the “Soul On Your Side” album and, although it’s quite possible I read at the time about the GQ backstory in a copy of Blues & Soul, the link back to the Rhythm Makers certainly hadn’t stuck in my mind. Now, of course, we have the Internet. 

      

Rhythm Makers – Zone 1975

R.I.P. Jimmy Castor

JimmyCastor passed away earlier this week. I have a number of his records and his songs always put a smile on my face.

Here is probably my favourite from the "Bunch" who were known for weaving humour into their funky grooves. They got it spot on on both fronts with this one.

    

The JimmyCastor Bunch – Potential 1975

RIP Jimmy.

(I wonder, Will Jimmy’s first question in heaven be addressed to Ray Charles?).

PS: Just before I wrote this my daughter text to tell me she has heard Etta James has passed away. Not a good start to 2012.

Help! : a mystery track

I thought I had bought this:

But when I played it it was this:

mystery track 1969 (UPDATE: now identified as Billy Butler & Infinity "Soulation" the B side of "That Aint Water That's Pollution" released on Mercury in 1970).

To look at, the 45 is Fountain FOA-1102 - the other side of the 45 is what it is supposed to be i.e. Infinity "Get On The Case", and the etched matrix numbers in the dead wax agree with the labels on both sides so there is no clue there.

It sounds like they are singing "soulation", but googling that doesn't help.

It's possible, I suppose, the group singing is Infinity although the style is somewhat different. 

The mystery track is worth hearing but I just wish it had replaced "Get On The Case" instead of  "Keep It To Yourself", which is a really nice track.

Can anybody identify this track? Please!   


UPDATE: Thanks to Ana and Johnny (see comments) and Colin Dilnot via email for identifying this track for me. I also found another link (now mislaid!) that gave a bio of Billy Butler and stated that Stax were caught by surprise by the success of the Fountain release and couldn't press them quick enough. So in their haste to get some more pressed I guess they must have sent out the wrong master for the B side! I wonder how many more mispressed Fountain FOA-1102 45s are still out there? 

 

Scotch and Esther

Esther Phillips – like Marmite: you either love her or hate her (voice). It’s a bit of a cliched analogy but I have seen that written about her. I would like to offer a different analogy based on my experience.

My introduction to the music of Esther Phillips was her rendition of “What A Diff’rence A Day Made” back in the mid Seventies. It left me cold at the time. I thought it smacked of showbiz disco, and then there was her voice - it sort of made me want to make a face like you would if you sucked a lemon.

Around the same time as that 45 was giving Esther her one and only Top 10 hit in the UK I turned 18. Custom at the time amongst my friends dictated that on your 18th birthday you had to drink a lot of shorts (shots nowadays, I guess) – preferably at least 18 – and whisky had seemed to become the short of choice. So it was that a number of us, including me, had a, shall we say, bad experience with whisky and for many years never went near the stuff again.

Fast forward about 20 years and I was introduced to the world of malt whisky, an altogether different kettle of mash I decided, and for a few years there would always be a bottle or in the cupboard which would get occasional attention. Some I liked, some I thought I liked sometimes, some made me want to make a face… well not exactly true but you get my drift. After a few years, though, I seemed to fall out of the malt whisky habit.

Fast forward again, probably to the mid Noughties, and I heard (eventually!) Esther Phillips version of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Home Is Where The Hatred Is”. Why I had I taken so long to discover this piece of music I asked myself. I have always been Gil Scott-Heron fan and have a few of his albums, but Esther’s version of “Hatred” is really something special. (If you don’t know it look it up on YouTube or wherever right after you read this). I had to buy a copy of the 45 and it has had a fair few plays since, in fact if I was ushered off to a desert island right now and told I could only take a handful of records with me this would quite possibly be one of them. For all that, though, I didn’t explore Esther Phillip’s catalogue any further at the time.

Last year Mrs Darce bought me a bottle of Jura malt whisky which lasted no time at all, and a few months ago, after a dinner with a couple of our friends, I dug out half a bottle of Laphroaig that had been languishing at the back of the kitchen cupboard that passes as our drinks cabinet for a good few years (it was fast becoming a 20 year old rather than a 10 year old!). Laphroaig was a malt whisky that I thought I liked a few years ago but then found that I couldn’t drink anymore – think TCP. Anyway, the half bottle didn’t last very long and so it seems that I am now appreciating malt whisky again from the soft and sweet to the deep the spicy and the intense. (Another bottle of Jura appeared under the Christmas tree a few weeks ago).

A few weeks ago I heard Esther Phillips' version of Dr. John’s “Such A Night”. Esther sings this in a beautifully soft (for her) and playful style and you can tell she really is into the sentiment of the song. And at that moment I think I finally "got" Esther Phillips. It made me go off and buy the 45 (of course!) and listen to more of her recordings. (The picture of her here is from the front cover of a late 70s compilation album of hers on Kudu that arrived today - around 30 years old and from the look of it had never been played before it dropped on my turntable! – so you can see the Esther collection is up and running). Her voice is still not to my taste all of the time but I now recognise that she really inhabits the songs she sings and have begun to recognise and appreciate the nuances in her delivery. I feel I’m still only just scratching the surface, and I can foresee now a good few nights in the future getting to know Esther a lot better - with a glass of malt in my hand.


So there you have it, in my experience, Esther is not so much like Marmite, more like malt whisky, a bit of an acquired taste.
 

“Phillips is an acquired taste, if you only like sweet, pretty voices then she's not the one. Her tart, bluesy delivery is vaguely reminiscent of Dinah Washington but also evokes bits of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone -- without ever truly sounding like any of these ladies or anyone else.” Not my words, I think they came from a customer review on Amazon, but I couldn’t put it better. Dinah Washington was the first singer that came to mind when I heard Esther and apparently Dinah was a big inspiration for her. But, as was said, Esther Phillips really sounded like no one else. She was plagued with drug addiction and, at only 48 years of age, died way too young.

Esther Phillips – Such A Night 1974

and here’s the B side a Hayes/Porter song which is just as good…

Esther Phillips – Can’t Trust Your Neighbor With Your Baby 1974

Both these tracks appear on the album “Performance”.

Lap wars

I’ve had some technical difficulties recently….!

She managed to disable the mousepad, which makes sense I suppose. This new found technical prowess has really gone to her head. Here she is setting up a series link to Top Cat:

Lucy is her name. I have been warned!

Rhetta Hughes – You’re Doing It With Her –When It Should Be Me 1969

Rhetta has a great voice, Jo Armstead is the composer, and Mike Terry is the arranger. This track has it all - and the intro is just stunning. This got a 45 release on the wonderfully named Tetragrammaton label. Recently it appeared on the excellent compilation Sister Funk 2. My tonearm swings back and forth on this one, I fear the disc is pressed off centre but as Rhetta Hughes is the first track we just about get away with it here.

Happy New Year to you all.