We have digitised magazines in the past, Shades of Soul, Backbeat etc so I thought I’d do Rod Dearloves magazine from the early 80s, Midnight Express.
Issue 1. Rod Dearlove / Soul Sam / Danny Feeney / Ian Clark and so much more…..
Midnight Express Issue 1.PDF39.38 MB · 429 downloads
Continue reading Soul Underground with Karl White
Soulful Football Update: 17/11/2023
Billy Baker “Describing Love” / Love-Music Keeps Me Movin” (Garden City Records) 1984
Possibly the top 80s record in my collection. A 45 I located in Hong Kong after a tip off from a Japanese collector in 1988, when I went with Coventry City for an end of season trip. Then in the mid 90s, John Manship offered me another copy, which I sold many years ago, on Soul Source for peanuts. Not a good move, looking back.
Semper sounds have been heard in television, film, and radio, a highlight being 2009 Eddie Murphy film Norbit, ‘The Hands of Time’. Creating music until his last days Geroge Semper transitioned in 2009 in his birthplace of Trinidad & Tobago, WI. Greatly inspired by his fathers musical talent and body of work Joel started The George Semper Music Archives. The archives include Semper and his collaborators’ 5 decades music catalog and restored master recordings!
A digital development consultant Joel resides in the San Francisco, California “Bay Area”. His musical journey began in learning more about his Fathers career. George and his Mother met at a turning point in US culture, a time when Semper backed Ray Charles at the Moulin Rouge hotel-casino. She, a southern Anglo Belle and George, created a booking company with some of the first racially integrated live shows on the Las Vegas strip.
Born into a creative world with mixed ancestry enriched Joel’s cultural and social perspectives with a diverse range of experiences. In his teens, like his Father, Joel pursued a music career as promoter and producer launching a successful live venue, independent record label, and leading production company securing a multi-artist production deal & platinum status. In his twenties, he moved to New York City, and worked with finance, consulting and tech companies, providing staffing & digital solutions. During this time he contributed to the development of the world’s first social site led by Peter Friedman talkcity.com and the first mobile YouTube Eveo.com.
Joel is a married proud father of two sons, whose journey continues with new discoveries of his Fathers music.
Updated 22/07/23
The Exportations (aka Living Proof)
In the early 80’s Anthony Pilgrim, Bernard Gibson, Ernestine Johnson, Rick Gibson, Willie Gibson, from Detroit, Michigan released a couple of singles at VIR-RO Records. One minor hit was “Find Another Day”. The group consisted of the three brothers, Gibson and two other singers. In the mid-1980s, they changed their Name to “Living Proof” and released another album and a handful of Singles.
Updated 9/06/23
ESSAY FOR Dr. Robert Riehemannʼs Course
THE LIFE OF THE MIND, (2010)
THE LIFE OF MY MIND………Lorraine Feather
Iʼve been asked to write an essay about my creative life by your instructor, Dr. Riehemann. He has played my musical work for some of you, but otherwise itʼs unlikely that you would know who I am. Iʼve never been featured prominently on TV, or had a big pop hit. I describe myself as a “lyricist/jazz singer.” I put “lyricist” first because I can envision giving up singing at some point, but never writing. Iʼve been involved with some big projects as a lyricist, have been in and out of work, written lyrics for film and TV, done seven solo recordings since the late 1990s. I have what I would call a most interesting career, one that engages me tremendously.
I donʼt have children and I donʼt know anything about parenting, but Iʼve seen it done. As I understand it from friends of mine with kids in college, thereʼs a fair amount of pressure these days to offer some idea of what you want to do in life by the time youʼre in your late teens or early twenties. The basic point of this essay—to quickly end the suspense as to whether there might be one—is to share a little of my own experience regarding the setting of goals, changing of goals, despairing over whether itʼs possible ever to reach any of them, and lessons Iʼve learned along the way in the course of pursuing my own.
Continue reading Lorraine Feather
My start in the record biz proper came when I suggested to Ace co-founder Ted Carroll at his Golborne Road record stall that I could compile a soul LP from the Kent/Modern catalogue Ace were currently working with. The resulting “For Dancers Only” record was the disc to be seen with in 1982 and went on to sell over 30,000 in its various guises. 97 more LPs were issued and in 1992 a series of CDs was started that is now around the 500 mark.
The Kent job entails finding and negotiating with the US label owners, tape research (and hopefully finding unissued gems), compiling the CDs, writing the sleevenotes and assisting with memorabilia for the artwork.
The last string to my ukelele was added in 1994 when I started the Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender, which is the scene’s longest-running event, annually attracting up to 1000 participants from all over the world and presenting some of the best 60s and 70s soul acts ever to appear in the UK. The 100 Club still packs them in and we are now into our 44th year. www.6ts.info.
Kent Records is in its 41st year and along with the rest of the music industry we are back to vinyl in an appreciable way – though the CD is the ideal format for the zealously documented histories of the great soul labels, producers, writers and acts.
Having reached my three score and ten last year, I have slowed down on the DJing and have a new 6TS partner, at the 100 Club, in Mattie Bolton who helps me make it through to 6am to play ‘Baby I Need Your Loving’ to an emotional crowd of dancing soul fanatics. Kent continues and there is no end to the projects, including a seemingly never-ending stream of great, previously unissued, recordings.
Updated 10/06/23
I was used as a background singer on a few songs produced by Ollie McLaughlin. I sang background on Belita Woods, Magic Corner. I saw an article where someone in the UK was saying that no one knew who the background vocalists were on the song.
They were: Pat Lewis, Diane Lewis, Telma Hopkins, Joyce Vincent and myself.
The same voices did background for the Barbara Lewis song, “I’ll Keep Believing”.
Also the song I wrote for Barbara Lewis, titled,Do I Deserve It Baby had three background vocalists: Telma Hopkins, Joyce Vincent and myself.
The famous handclaps on Cool Jerk by The Capitols were: Deon Jackson, his cousin Rusty Baylis, Telma Hopkins, Joyce Vincent, Sharon McMahan, Don Storball, Sam George, Richard Mitchell. Ollie directed us to add those handclaps. It was my first time experiencing handclaps being added……..Till Next Time Sharon McMahan
Continue reading Sharon Shares
Updated 12/03/23
A lot of people I know today missed my up and coming jazz career. I played with many Jazz greats in New York in the late sixties. I was a eighteen year old baby but playing my ace off cause my daddy was a drummer and i started at 4 years old. Trying to be a great Jazz drummer is no joke. Almost like being a serious athlete. Me, Pharoah Sanders and Bassist Juma Sultan who would later become Jimi Hendrix’s guru, used to spend almost six hours a day in Manhattan New York exploring the new avant garde Jazz boundaries created by our new age musical hero saxman John Coltrane. I realized i would not only starve to death playing that music but also that was the era of Black protest music which was music a lot of people didn’t want to hear. Anyway, I love writing and producing music these days still playing my drums as much as i can.. A lot of my Jazz Heroes’ from the late seventies and eighties have played on my compositions.
Norman Connors just called me as have a few friends from Europe and elsewhere to tell me I got a bonafide hit called “Magazine Girl” on the new Sounds of Oakland CD. Norman claims he’s taking the song and my storyboard video to his dear friend Steve Harvey for support, good luck NORM! Norman is a co-producer on the Sounds of Oakland album.
Continue reading History of – Paul Tilman Smith……So Far
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