Category Archives: Contributors

Category for contributors and guest authors for posts, articles and recordings.

Micky Gynn – Soulful Football

Soulful Football Update: 12/04/2024

Enlightment  “Faith Is The Key” (New Release Records Inc. ) 1984

This record, has been my favourite Gospel album for many years. I was fortunate enough to get in touch with the producer Larry. H. Jordan, who produced this wonderful album. He had 6 sealed copies back in 2010, but I only had the one off him, due to the high price.
In 2011, he auctioned a copy on E-Bay, which went for a lot of money. He did tell me, that it was a very rare album and predicted the French would put out an unofficial version, which they did in 2013, without permission. In 2017, it got an official release, which allows everyone to enjoy this brilliant album.  The production from Larry, is top draw. As good as it gets.

The best track on the album, is the stunning, UP And Away. The first time I was able to play it out, was on Bob Smith’s Starpoint show, one Sunday night in May 2012. The response was amazing. The whole gospel album, is well worth a listen. As with many groups & artists, this was the only album they released. But what an album !!

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History of – Paul Tilman Smith……So Far

17/2/24
I basically started my music career as a starving avant-garde jazz drummer, 19 and almost penniless on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side in 1967. Jazz drummer Norman Connors and I were best friends and roommates for a while, the difference being he could run home to his momma in Philly to eat and my momma was way in California. Rent was like 40 dollars a month, and I was lucky if I had that. Kenny Dorham and Cecil McBee whenever I would see them on the streets always bought me food. Playing the angry experimental jazz of that era mainly with saxophonist Sonny Simmons, Pharaoh Sanders and Albert Ayler was definitely economically dangerous.

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Sharon Shares 

Updated 10-01-24

Sharon was born in Sevierville, Tennessee but raised and musically disciplined in Detroit, Michigan.

Sharon began her career, as a teen in Detroit, Michigan. She wrote her first songs at the age of 12. After auditioning her, Ollie McLaughlin launched her writing career by publishing and producing and releasing several of her songs on his own record lables, KAREN, CARLA, MOIRA & RUTH Records. McLaughlin recorded Sharons songs on major artists, Barbara Lewis, Deon Jackson, Gracie Darnell and Johnnie Mae Matthews. He also secured a UK release for Sharon’s song, Someday We’re Gonna Love Again, recorded by the London based group, The Searchers. It charted to #11 in Billboard, in several countries and to #23 here in the United States, in 1964/65. Thus, Sharon has a tremendous fan base in the UK and Western Europe.

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The George Semper Music Archives – Joel Semper Brockman

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.

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U.S.A – Across The Pond With Don E. Brown

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.

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Lorraine Feather

Contributors, Lorraine Feather

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.

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