Tss issue 66 digital edit

The Quintessential info provider for the Soul Survivor ISSUE 66 - 1ST OCT 2016 - 30TH NOV 2016

“THE

ISSUE

NEWS REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS Ralph Tavares (Elder Duke of the Tavares Royal Family) The British Collective (The Emperors) Pete Adarkwah, BBE Records (Knight of The Sound Table) Will Downing (The Sophisticated Prince of Soul) GARY HINES, SOUNDS OF BLACKNESS (Nubian Messenger) Lloyd Bradley (King of Authors) NUMBER MAN AKA DJ 279 (Jedi Knight of The Sound Table) Leon Herbert (Lord of the Dance & Thespian Actor & Filmmaker)

WHAT’S INSIDE? 3 FITZROY TALKS

RALPH TAVARES 8 DARRELL’S FUNK BOX 10 LLOYD BRADLEY

SPEAKS WITH THE

BRITISH COLLECTIVE 12 ROLL CALL OF FAME:

PRINCE BUSTER 14 FITZROY SPEAKS

WITH PETE OF BBE RECORDS 18 RECORD REVIEWS 22 FITZROY SPEAKS

WITH WILL DOWNING 26 FITZROY SPEAKS

WITH LLOYD BRADLEY 36 MIRA PARKES

Soul Survivors

Balkan & Worldwide

correspondent Speaks

to NUMBER MAN

AKA DJ 279 40 FITZROY SPEAKS TO

GARY HINES OF THE

SOUND OF BLACKNESS 44 FITZROY SPEAKS TO

LEON HERBERT 52 EVENT REVIEWS 52 COMPETITION 54 WHAT’S GOING ON All adverts are placed in good faith and The Soul Survivors Magazine take no responsibility for any issues arising from the use of those who have advertised.

All dates are correct at time of going to print – please check with venue or promoter if unsure.

All rights reserved 2006 - 2016 © The Soul Survivors Magazine It is essential to note that all artwork, adverts and listings must be confirmed and sent in to fitzroy@ thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk before Friday 4th November in order to meet the graphic designer and print 3 week preparation. This will ensure that the magazine for December and January is ready and out on the street ahead of 1st December 2016.

Thanks in advance. The Soul Survivors Magazine Team!

Suite 013, 986 Garratt Lane, Tooting Broadway, London SW17 0ND E: fitzroy@thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk M: 07956 312931 C fitzroy.facey C Fitzroytheoriginalsoulsurvivor C TheSoulSurvivors MSoulSurvivors1 www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

Page 2 - Issue 66

WELCOME TO ISSUE 66 Greetings and before I do a James Brown ‘Get Up, Get Into It & Get Involved’, being of dual nationality heritage, I wanna say well done to team GB for their mammoth hall of medals in the Rio Olympics. Second in the medals table is an achievement that the melting pot of athletes from the UK could only have imagined. On a more deeper cultural understanding and sense of understated acknowledgement, in being a colonial island and child of the British Empire motherland, Buuuuudddrrrrruuuupppps to Jamaica. In particular long may Usain Bolt walk like a Buju Banton champion with his inexplicable and historical triple treble gold fest, three Olympics in row.

It’s been a great summer, but as we approach that cross over of seasons of a Hi Tension ‘Autumn Love’ we could be potentially entering a quite a chilling Gil Scott Heron ‘Winter In America’, depending on who is elected for the US presidency. In the UK although it’s one of the coldest months one of the hottest season topics is the fact that October is celebrated as Black History Month. This issue 66 represents that with a transatlantic collaboration of eight interviews with soul surviving depth, all connected through the love of music. That’s why the magazine feels slightly heavier because more pages have been added to accommodate the wealth of information with much poignance coming ‘Straight From The Heart’ like Patrice Rushen. Representing the UK, actor Leon Herbert (Guyanese ancestry) and author Lloyd Bradley (St Kitts ancestry) both represent the original first generation black teenagers who ventured into the capitals west end clubs like upstairs at Ronnie Scotts’ in the early 1970’s. In search of finding their identity at a time where racism was rife like the “black plague” no pun intended, they found solace dancing in getting down to jazz funk and soul music. There is mixture of first and second generation West Indian cultures within The British Collective band. Lloyd Bradley on behalf of the magazine spoke to Noel McKoy and Junior Giscombe (both Jamaican ) and Leee John (St Lucia). All three have 40 years championing rock, soul, reggae, Northern soul, funk and jazz individually but collectively are fusing their experience together with their Renaissance project. From DJ-ing backgrounds both Pete Adarkwah (Ghanaian) and Number Man aka DJ 279 (St Lucia) are maverick champions of their musical endeavours. Pete is one of the few black owners of an internationally renowned record label BBE and Numbers is an accolade award winning Hip-Hop DJ authority with plenty soul. ‘Born In The USA’ like Bruce Springsteen, Mr ‘Sophistication Of Soul’ Will Downing is one of the leading black voices championing smooth jazz and soul. Ralph Tavares of Tavares has Cape Verdean roots and grew up during the turbulent times of racism in the 50’s and 60’s USA climate. Gary Hines, director of the well loved and respected Sounds Of Blackness has Jamaican roots and has remained humbled in defending the essence of his groups name despite facing various adversing encounters.

Now if we all claim to truly love the music, we must also respect the richness and challenges of its indigenous African culture, because those factors are what we dance and listen to as sung by the O Jays the ‘Message In Our Music’. At a time where their is a clear disparage of understanding between the different races on the level of blatant and subliminal racism, lets ‘Come Together’ like Kool & The Gang, and not hate but appreciate on the words of wisdom from our interviewees.

Each one, teach one I’d say. We have a competition to win some BBE albums in celebration of their 20th year anniversary continuance. Lastly as we were about to go to production we felt is duty bound to include a tribute from Lloyd Bradley to the Jamaican “King Of Ska” Prince Buster who passed 8th September. Special thanks to Anna B, Ayshea, Scarbutts, Darrell S and Lloyd Bradley.

Enjoy Fitzroy, HRH (Fitzroy aka Son of King).

FITZROY TALKS TO

Ralph Tavares (Elder Duke of the Tavares Royal Family)

Our manager introduced us to two good friends of his from RSO Records who were Barry and Robin Gibbs. Both were flabbergasted with our show and they said they’d like to write a song for us to sing written by the Bee Gee’s called ‘More Than A Woman’

In their own way there is another famous family dynasty of performing brothers that out rank in years the history of The Jackson 5. They are known to us as Tavares who gave us a string of ballads and up-tempo disco classics with the most fantastic production and arrangements. Ralph Tavares gave me an insight to the journey of his brothers continual sauces ahead of them appearing with some other singing groups of the 1960’s The Four Top, The Temptations and The Stylistics in the UK. With determination and perseverance and experiencing a few ‘Bad Times’ experienced and overcome Ralph was keen to celebrate the five plus decades of his Cape Veridean families roots in making music.

How was early life for the Tavares family with black Portuguese Cape Verdean roots growing up in Massachusetts with a multi instrumentalist father?

Those were great and important days with the ground roots that our parents set for us and how we grew up and conducted ourselves. We stuck to what we were interested in, which was music and with our background we didn’t know if it was going to be lucrative to make a living from.

Your musical influences ranged from country music to Frankie Lymons & The Teenagers, what else were you listening to?

We listened to everything but because of our Cape Verdean background we heard plenty of that music. My father used to play at picnics with his band and we performed on one particular occasion. There was a kid who went on before us and sang a Frankie Lymons & The Teenagers, song and the girls went crazy. We looked at each other and realised we were doing something wrong and soon decided to change our repertoire and started singing rock & roll.

What kind of music comes from Cape Verdean?

It was music we heard from my father and my aunt Vicky. It was historical songs from the island about leaving the island and coming to America, wishing that what the USA had to offer was available in Cape Verdean. It was songs about family, romance and missing folks mainly.

The guys became the Del Rio’s in 1962 and you had a spell in the services?

After The Del Rios when I came back from the army we became The Turnpikes trying to find anybody who’d listen to us. We were picked up by Mob Holsman who was associated with a small branch of Capitol Records established in California, with a branch office in New York City. We sang for him, he liked us and then we cut four songs in the studio ‘I Know The Inside Story’, ‘Nothing But Promises’, ‘You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try’ and the last I can’t remember. We kept calling him to find out when the records were going to get airplay with no joy, and he stopped taking our calls, as he was getting annoyed with us. After a period time we drove to New York and went to the office where we’d met him. We knocked on the door and before we could say a word, he threw the record across the desk which was ‘I Know The Inside Story’ with our name The Turnpikes on it. He’d kept his word and it shut us up, thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

however it didn’t do much but it helped our confidence. This was around 1966.

At one time the band had Aerosmith’s drummer Joey Kramer and the late P Funk keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell before you became Tavares. What instruments do any of the brothers play?

Yes we played with Bernie Worrell in the Gymnast club in Boston and it’s where we established our repertoire. Our musical director at the time was Quinn Harris of Quinn Harris And The Preachers.

We went to do an amateur night talent show at the Basement Street where The OJays were headlining. We sang for the establishment to see if we could work the weekends and Quinn Harris liked us and we hooked up with his band. So we had Bernie Worrell, Joey Kramer and Bob Boogie Bowles who is now today Smokey Robinson’s music director in our band.

How did you guys manage to get arrested for singing on a street corner?

(Ralph laughs..) That’s a true story. It was a hot summers night and we were singing songs and having a good time.

A policeman came and asked us to move along and we advised we lived in the area, to which he said we had to stop singing as we were disturbing the peace.

Us being teenagers we advised that we lived here and didn’t feel we were causing any trouble. The policeman didn’t like that so he called for back up and we got arrested.

How did your parents feel about that?

Our father was furious at the police and he had to come down and pick us up. He had problems trying to sort things out because back then being a minority, there was a lot of prejudice. There are still elements of that today except back then it wasn’t done so violently. My father left the station without us but half an hour later they let us out and we walked home.

So you really were singing jailbirds! (Ralph laughs “Absolutely!”)

How did you personally manage to land Chubby & The Turnpikes with a major talent agency in New York City at The Bowen Agency Ltd run by Ruth Bowen, the first African-American woman to start up a booking agency?

We met with a gentleman named Tommy Hunt who had a group called The Flamingoes. Tommy had seen us perform and recommended Ruth to come and see us. She liked what Page 4 - Issue 66

she saw and gave us a three-year contract with ABC booking agency. She was a great inspiration at the time. She was an entrepreneur starting her own booking agency and very nice.

We stayed a while until we established ourselves and moved on because we needed more experience to travel around the country, but she was very instrumental in how we handled our career.

A romance developed between Ms. Falana, an up and coming actress, and your brother Butch Tavares and ABC began setting up package tours for the two acts. What’s the story behind the name change instigated by you after a conversation in which an agent on the tour enquired about the meaning of the Turnpikes?

Ah, we were singing at the El Suan Quan hotel in Puerto Rico headlining in the Hunka Munka room. Lola was singing in the major room, the Paradise room. We went to see her show and invited her to come and see ours. After a couple of days she became curious and had heard the buzz about our shows.

We had lines all the way down the street outside the main entrance of people coming to see our show as The Turnpikes.

She came down and became fascinated with my brother Butch who was the choreographer of our show. He still dances great today in the shows we do.

They struck up a relationship, and Butch proposed to her and they got married lasting 8 years. The gentleman who suggested the name change was Gerard Strongfield and we were touring in Italy with Lola when he asked me “Raphael what is a turnpike?” I tried to explain to him that we were travelling when they were building route 95, and they called it a turnpike. He said it doesn’t mean anything here and with his strong accent he rolled our name ‘Tavares’ of his tongue. The way he said it sounded so good and we changed our name from Turnpikes to Tavares and then things started to happen.

How did you find working with Johnny Bristol on your debut album with the hit single ‘Check It Out’ featuring Victor Tavares and how did that affect the group when he suddenly decided to leave?

Johnny was a great entertainer in his own aspect and we did the ‘Check It Out’ album with him. We had a great rapport with him and I thank our manager Brian Panella for introducing us to all these amazing producers we worked with. Yes Victor recorded ‘Check It Out’ and for no reason he knocked on my room door advising that he no longer wanted to be part of the group and that this was not the life for him.

I was lost for words because the song had just been released and had started being played on the radio. Promotional events had been set up too. Then I had a thought, to call up my brother Chubby. He flew out and learned all the songs

for our shows. People thought Chubby was the lead singer on ‘Check It Out’. When we went to get our gold record at Capitol Records the president of the company was amazed when they called Victor’s name and Chubby got up. The company were panicking of potential legal implications without having Victor in the group until Don Zimmerman assured him that everything had been taken care of legally.

I’m guessing that song has a bitter sweet memory for you because of the tragic incident that occurred to Chubby and your late sister.

Yes my sister was killed and Chubby was shot and we didn’t know if he was going to make it or not but thanks to God’s blessings Chubby pulled through. Out of 10 in the family 3 sisters and 7 boys in our family, she’s the only one sadly that has gone. If it wasn’t for that violent altercation she’d still be here.

What’s your memory of being presented ‘It Only Takes A Minute’ later covered by Take That? It reminds me of The Trammps in a way, that was a funky disco top ten hit in 1975 from the 3rd album?

We were kind of surprised as we were trying to push a ballad instead of that.

The radio seemed to pick up on ‘It Only Takes A Minute’ and we started to include it in our shows and it became a hit.

In essence Tavares were a maturer family version of The Jackson 5 (Ralph laughs) as a singing quintet congealing sweet harmonies. So I guess it’s poignant that Fred Perren’s had previously worked with them at Motown before he produced the 4th ‘Sky High’ album at Motown. There are a few non commercial classics on there including ‘The Mighty Power Of Love’ and a signature sounding Chubby lead vocal ‘Riding High’. On behalf of every soul fan I want to thank you for the two major hits ‘Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel’ and ‘Don’t Take Away The Music’.

That album was dedicated to your mother Albina Tavares so how special was it recording with those lush orchestration strings and disco melodies?

When we went into the studio to do that with Freddie who was a great personality as well as a producer, a combination I cannot explain, something extraordinary and magical happened. When they finished sweetening the album with the orchestration, Freddie called me and sent me a copy of the album and I was flabbergasted. We only had a five piece band backing us up. So I’m was listening to this with all the strings horns and harps and I called Freddie, and asked how would we reproduce this on stage with all this arrangement. He

couldn’t stop laughing and said when the song gets played on the radio we need not worry about string arrangements ever again because either will always be there and he was right.

Was ‘Don’t Take Away The Music’ inspired in anyway by The O’Jay’s ‘I Love Music’?

It was because as a family we wanted to express not to take away the thing that inspires us to do what we do for our audience. Freddie felt that when he wrote that song with Kenny St Lewis and we still get a great response to this day.

Love Storm was an interesting album with the hit ‘Whodunit’, ‘I Wanna see You Soon’ with Freda Payne, ‘One Step Away (Heaven Must Be Missin part 2)’ and my ultimate favourite ‘Watchin’ The Woman’s Movement’. I think ‘Watchin’ The Woman’s’ Movement’ showcased how easy it was for Tavares to ride future mid tempo grooves like Madam Butterfly. What was the groups approach to record that particular song?

When we started singing we were ballad singers, which we loved. Doing the uptempo songs was kind of more like the Jackson 5 who you mentioned. In fact we were very good friends with the family, Joe and Katherine who used to come and see us at the Whiskey And GoGo. We toured with them and played amateur basketball to raise money for different organisations. We were trying to establish ourselves with the choreography like The Jackson 5 did in putting more action to what we were singing about into our performance.

‘Watchin’ The Woman’s Movement’ I think was dedicated to Lola Falana because she moved so gracefully.

What’s the story of you recording the Bee Gee’s song ‘More Than A Woman’ and getting a Grammy for the song appearing on the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ soundtrack?

We were performing at Madison Square Garden in New York at the time and during the show we noticed two guys in the orchestra pit to and weread were curious as to full who they were. Our the manager Brian Panella introduced us to two good friends of Ralph his from RSO Tavares Records who were interview Barry and Robin Gibbs.

I said “You’ve got to be subscribe kidding”. Both Barry and Robin were please via flabbergasted with our show and gave us so much praise.

They said they’d like towww. write a song for us to sing and we said ok thinking it was just artist talk. In a couple of weeks thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.

Brian called us and said he had a song written by the Bee Gee’s called ‘More Than co.uk A Woman’ and that it was a terrific song, he recommended we should sing it. We were due to go into the studio to record the song but we had a tour to do in thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

South America during the time they were making the movie.

They wanted to wait for us to come back and then interject the song into the movie, but whilst we were away they fired the producer or director of the film. The replacement producer or director wanted to shoot the scene even though we hadn’t recorded it yet as we were out of the country. The Bee Gee’s did a demo version figuring that when we got back we could interject ours into that space. When we got back and recorded our version it didn’t fit to where they wanted it in the movie, and there was a big legal altercation between RSO and Capitol Records. They ultimately worked it out that John Travolta and Karen would do a separate new dance scene in the studio where our song would be interjected into the movie and that’s why there are two versions in the movie. (Fitzroy: “Wow, shows the power of your version.”)

pointed it out that he thought we were a ballad group and the emphasis was to do that type of album. The way Bobby always approached us was in a very calm manner.

May I ask have you ever heard the instrumental of ‘Never Had A Love Like This Before’? (Ralph: “No.”) Oh my gosh, I’ll send it to you by email, it will get to you emotionally. The album ‘Love Uprising’ title track written and produced by Rene & Angela sounds very Earth Wind & Fire ish.

The producer was Benjamin Wright and he saw something in us that no one else prior had. He managed to get out of us something that nobody else had managed and again we owe so much to our producers who always saw something in us that we didn’t realise we had.

Please see advert on page 7 for Tavares dates in the That came off the ‘Future Bound’ If I’m honest despite all the other groups like The Temptations, album but it’s the next Tavares album The Four Tops, Main Ingredient and more Tavares are one of the ‘MadamOctober Butterfly’ that is my favourite. 2016 most consistenttour male vocal groups alternating with baritone,

It’s a pivotal album due to the fact that having enjoyed so much success with up-tempo disco tracks, that this was more ballad led. I love ‘Madam Butterfly’ and your version of ‘I’m Back For More’ but it’s all about ‘Never Had A Love Like This Before’ written by Grey & Hanks. Who sang lead and how high as an achievement is that album for you and the group?

No kidding I didn’t know ‘I’m Back For More’ had been recorded other than by us (Fitzroy: “Yes Jean Carn, Al Johnson and Leo’s Sunshipp too.”) The lead vocal on ‘Never Had A Love

tenor, falsetto octaves and between ballads and up-tempo arrangements, you have to give it up for Tavares. I don’t know if it’s because you are a tight family but I can see why the various producers saw the potential beyond your own estimations.

I thank you so much for what you just said because it makes me feel so good in what we wanted to achieve. The lord has watched us in every step of our career with people we have performed with like the Temptations, The Four Tops, The Jackson 5 and Marvin Gaye all out of Motown Detroit and established how we managed to this day to survive. We come

Like This Before’ is Chubby, Tiny and Butch. Bobby Martin from Massachusetts which is unheard of and so I look back Thank you to Sharon Chevin of The Publicity Connection for arranging the interview Page 6 - Issue 66

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You know what it’s like when you’re out for the night and suddenly the DJ drops a tune that makes you think “oh no, not this again”, and then later on in the night he plays some cheese. Or does he? As the saying goes, one man’s poison is another man’s pleasure.

I’ll let you into a secret, just so you know where I draw the line. I cringe when I hear the obvious trio of Candy, Wifey and Starship, I roll my eyes and hiss between my teeth once I hear the intro to any one of those records. But what really makes me reach for my coat is ‘Ordinary Joe’ by Terry Callier. I can hear the howls of disdain as I type! What is the point and allure of this record? And don’t get me started on Mario Biondi’s ‘This Is What You Are’. BORING! That’s just two records that spring to mind. Ooh no, here’s a third ‘I Really Love You’ by Norman Hutchins. Please God, spare me. I know that they’re three records that really set the dance floor alight, but I think that there are times when we can all get a little bit snobby about our music, and think that we know better as to what should be played.

I’ve even known DJ’s come off the decks, after playing a set, and be almost apologetic about their selection. But we have to remember that us self-proclaimed musical elitists make up a very small percentage of the majority of nights.

Some of the most vibrant and kicking events are the ones that play anthems. There are times when I hear a tune, turn, and see my friend rolling his eyes and making sarcastic remarks about the chosen record, and I’m left thinking “this isn’t an anthem!” Once, when this happened, the record playing was Dan Hartmans ‘Relight My Fire’. I LOVE this tune and quite why my ignorant antisocial buddy doesn’t, is beyond me. Then, to top it all, my shallow chum starts jumping around like a loon when the overplayed ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’ is dropped!

We all know the type of nights that I’m on about, but there was this one time (in bandcamp) when I went to see the great Norman Jay at a gig in my home town of Oxford. I was used to seeing His Highness at the sorely missed Southport weekenders when he’d do his rare groove session and also at Carnival with his Good Times

Page 8 - Issue 66

sound system. So the chance to hear him play somewhere different couldn’t be passed up. I went and the night was pumping. He played a House set and I was in my element. I’m not a House person, I just like what I hear. When the night was over my friend, a proper Househead, said that it was just full of anthems. I was none the wiser and, in my opinion, my mate was just oblivious to how good the night was and was being a little bit too stuffy.

My mate has come to a few Soul nights with me, and after hearing Sounds Of Blackness - Optimistic, Loose Ends - Hanging On A String...... you get my drift, my mate was thrilled with the music and I was just ‘blah’ about it. He said, in the nicest way, that I was being precious about the music and that I should enjoy the night for what it is. I told him he was a birdbrained moron who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We haven’t spoken in two years.

But what is the difference between an anthem and cheese? Cheese, who the freak came up with that term? I was playing at a night when myself and the other DJ went one for one. I played Chemise ‘She Can’t Love You’ and the other jock said “ah yes, let’s play some cheese”. What the F**K is that supposed to mean? It’s not bloody Abba or Kajagoogoo. So what does he follow it up with? Another, in his unschooled mind, cheesey choon, Kano, ‘Can’t Hold Back’. I felt like snatching the record off the deck and telling him that he is not worthy of owning such a piece of waxy excellence. I chose to bite my tongue.

Anthems make a night, regardless of the musical genre. And no matter what the musical purists may say, without the traditional floor fillers, many nights simply wouldn’t be able to function. For a lot of us, going out is a regular feature of our lives and it’s easy for us to become blasé about the music played on a night. Which is where the smaller more specialist nights come into their own. But even on these nights you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will be slagging off the musical selection!

thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

LLOYD BRADLEY SPEAKS WITH

THE BRITISH COLLECTIVE (The Emperors)

Between The British Collective they have over 150 years worth of musical experience between them. Leee John, Noel McKoy and Junior Giscombe spoke with Lloyd Bradley on behalf of The Soul Survivors Magazine about their new ethos in maintaining their legacies in todays new fan dangle version of the music industry. Currently promoting their new album as advertised in this magazine, here is an insight to how important The British Collective’s stance is in being recognised.

Special thanks to Lloyd Bradley for conducting the interview.

In spite of Don-e having jetted off to join the Grace Jones tour and Omar MIA – last reported as sunning himself in Southern Italy – Three Fifths of The British Collective was more than enough to launch their debut album at The Library, a plush private club in London’s West End. On one of the warmest evenings of this summer in front of a packed, boisterous crowd of industry types, friends’ n’ families and a more than a few famous faces, it was a frantic affair as Junior, Leee John and Noel McKoy took the stage to talk about the album, take questions from the audience and, of course, finish with a song. Somehow, with the mayhem and the music, the guys found time and a quiet space to talk to Soul Survivors about the making of the album and the impact on the contemporary black music scene of five British soul legends joining forces.

For you guys to come with such an exciting, soulful and varied album as vol 1: ‘The Renaissance Begins’ is not really surprising to us, but thirty years into your careers did the music business as it stands today have any surprises for you?

Leee: There is no music business any more and that has left us able to get back to the business of music, which is what this album is.

Junior: It was funny because the way things are now, without artists having to rely on record companies, it’s much more like the sound system or club vibe that we all started off in.

You make music for your audience, not for the company or Page 10 - Issue 66

to get on Top Of The Pops or whatever, but for the clubs and the dancehalls and the people in them and you can reach them directly. You can try things you can push your music in whatever direction you think they’ll like and they’ll let you know if they do or not like it.

Noel: We started off free, because when you start you don’t care, we’re doing this because it’s exciting and we just want to make exciting music. Now, at the stage we all are it’s like we’ve come back to square one, but this time we don’t care because we know we don’t need to. It’s incredibly liberating and that comes out on the album.

Junior: Yes, that’s what has really contributed to us all enjoying ourselves so much with it.

Leee: Now that there is no record industry, basically you can do what the hell you want. The fact is, you’re in control of your own destiny, you are your own record company, you are your own management, you have your own legal stance to do it. If you want to open your own magazine, you can do it, then there’s the social media situation. You as an artist now have so much control over what it is you want to do. Not everyone can deal with that and they want the security of a record company, but we all came from the street, so this holds no fear for us. We grabbed it with both hands to make exactly the album we wanted to make. No compromise.

“A Seminal Moment In British Soul Music History” The long awaited album release.

Five UK Soul Legends: Don-e Junior Leee John Noel McKoy Omar and Guests Volume 1: The Renaissance Begins...

Order Your Copy @

www.thebritishcollective.com Junior: This is about making sure that we make great music, because we know all the rest of it will take care of itself. We’re all of us at the point now where we can see the bullshit before we even smell it and we know what matters and what doesn’t.

What matters is the music.

When you were making the album, how democratic process was it?

Noel: For me it was very democratic, because Junior and Don-E, the main producers totally acknowledge that there are five different voices and five different personalities involved and worked to bring all of those out. Everybody was allowed to fully express themselves so nobody could complain.

Leee: Of course we’ve all got our egos, but we saved them for when we needed them, like on stage, not for the studio when it’s only us there.

The album’s title, “Vol 1: The Renaissance Begins”, implies this is the start of a movement, is that the case?

Leee: Soul Renaissance, I think it will be movement, I believe a lot of people are going to come behind us. There are radio stations that are supporting what The British Collective is doing, because they are anxious to have the music that they love heard. They all support the body of work that we have been doing both individually and collectively. The eighties had

a wealth of gold of musicians and artists that were really out there doing stuff, it was great to be part of this unit, then the nineties came and now we have to bring it back. We have to educate the youngsters because there a body of people that are not only in our age group who don’t seem to be being fed what they want.

Junior: It’s about passing on a legacy, which should not be confused with just repeating what was done before. I would like to see the music that we’ve done from back in the day taken to a whole different level by today’s kids, who hear it and say ‘You know what, I like that, but I could do better.’

Same soul, different sounds.

Noel: Beyond the album, we all go into schools and colleges and take workshops for kids, I’ve been working with young people for 35 years, I’ve been mentoring that, I’ve taught degree courses in vocal jazz. The youth is what is really close to my heart. Today there are plenty of young people making positive music, but they don’t have the kind of scenes we had where everybody knew each other and hung out or were in bands together, they’re doing it individually or online, There are some figureheads, what Chronixx is doing is powerful, then there’s Akala over here who is like a pied piper and a leader for the youth. We’d like to provide another focal point, by making good, relevant, modern soul music.

Thank you to Diane Dunkley for arranging The British Collective interview

thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

Soul Survivors

Roll Call of Fame Prince Buster 1938-2016 Although, following a severe stroke, Prince Buster had been ill for several years his passing still shocked a music world that held him in affection as much as it did in respect. As a music man Prince Buster was vitally important to the development of ska, Jamaica’s first modern indigenous music, by standing with Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd as one third of Kingston’s legendary, late-fifties sound system trio. Buster’s ska may not have been the absolute original but it was, without doubt, the most significant for the island as it approached Independence. Rather than merely invert R&B or stir in aspects of jazz, he sought to connect what was Jamaica’s people’s music to their roots in Africa, he built his riddims on Rasta drumming and time signatures, so drawing a thick black line back to the Motherland.

As a man, Prince Buster was simply a wonderful human being. When I was writing Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King, he and his wife Mola more or less adopted me, as he steered me through the complexities of PRINCE BUSTER reggae past and present. His name opened dubwise doors for me all over the world, while afternoons spent at their house in Miami were as memorable for the generous hospitality as they were for the litanies of hilarious, often scandalous stories of Kingston’s vintage sound system scene. Such was Buster’s unassuming character, when I asked if he’d consider writing the foreword to Bass Culture he was genuinely surprised and felt very honoured – he concluded his essay with “At last, Jamaican music has the book it deserves.” It was my privilege to repay that favour posthumously, when I was asked to lead a BBC 5 Live tribute to The Prince the evening after he passed.

It’s a passage from that introduction that deftly sums up Prince Buster, as a man of great ability and talent, whose first thought was how could he share that with world while advancing the cause of his beloved Jamaica and Jamaicans: “In 1957, in Kingston, I built my sound system at age nineteen, naming it The Voice Of The People. It was the first sound system to have a name that did more than just talk about the operator or about music and dance. The other sound men were at ease with the status quo; unlike them I grew up as a disciple of the Right Honourable Marcus Garvey, as did my parents. My sound system was to be the people’s radio station by way of the dancehalls, where their points of view would be heard, for they were not being heard on the major radio stations.”

The world will miss such humanity. Me, I’ll miss randomly answering the phone to hear a brief pause then a gruff yard-style voice intoning “Bradley … it’s the Prince.”

Written by Lloyd Bradley Page 12 - Issue 66

The Greatest Hits UK Tour

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The one thing I am proud of as one of the few black guys who owns a record label in the UK, is that it’s helping to tell our story. We are otherwise surrounded by those who pretend to be guardians of our cultural music, when we can do it ourselves.

FITZROY SPEAKS TO

Pete OF BBE Records (Head Monarch of BBE Records)

Celebrating 20 years as an independent UK label that’s known universally for churning out quality releases, BBE’s head honcho Pete Adarkwah chats about how he manages in “Barley Breaking Even” terms to survive in today’s music industry climate. When you have MAW, DJ Spinna, Paul Trouble Anderson, Giles Peterson, Kevin Beadle, John Morales and Will I Am turning out albums for your label, I think it’s safe to say you’ve made waves and not ripples in this business of music. From London’s Cricklewood NW2, to Holloway Road N.1, to Berlin USA and other continents returning back to base in London BBE have released over 300 titles as digital, vinyl and CD formats. As we both celebrate anniversaries Pete and I had a long overdue catch up.

Tell us about growing up and how you were influenced by music?

What clubs were you going to and what DJ’s were you following?

Apparently I was born in Clapham. Recently I was advised by my father that aged three I used to play records on the family stereo.

I didn’t start buying until I was 15 when I had pocket money. My father was more of a straight ahead jazz fan, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Jimmy Smith, Thelonius Monk and Hi Life from Ghana music listener. My mother was more into Isaac Hayes, Teddy Pendergrass, James Brown and later my uncle was into Cameo, Gap Band, Raphael Cameron and those kind of sounds.

‘The Good The Bad & The Ugly’ with Freaky Reidy and Norman Jay at Cask & Glass, Jazzie B at African Centre, the Abashanti, Good Times, Westwood and Rappattack sound systems at Notting Hill Carnival. DJ wise Norman Jay’s show on the radio and before that Robbie Vincent, Steve Walsh, Tim Westwood and WLBS with Marley Marl. Club wise people like yourself, (Fitzroy: “Thanks, Pete.”) David Rodigan, Chris Phillips and Jez Nelson’s Something Else Crew, Solar Radio, LWR, Kiss and Choice FM much later.

Do you remember the first record you bought?

Didn’t you used to be at “Gon Clear”?

It may have been a Street Sounds compilation at around 1984.

I lived in Ghana from the age of 6 to 13 and then came back and used to make the tapes from recording off the radio. I’d play them on a portable stereo at school and bought records from Bluebird and Our Price Records. I remember buying Quincy Jones’s ‘The Dude’ and shortly after there was the rare groove revival era, with all the James Brown and rare stuff that became popular second time around. I started listening and picking up pieces of hip-hop, swing, house and the acid jazz genres that followed.

Yes and I DJ’d there as well.

Page 14 - Issue 66

Was that your introduction to Dj-ing?

No I used to do house parties with a crew that I hung around with in Hendon, and do parties in Paddington. I used to have random parties in my house and I was the neighbour from hell playing music and inviting people round. My first west end gig was ‘The Good The Bad & The Ugly’, gigs at The Raw, and ‘Fresh & Funky’ with Brian Norman. Ben Jolly, my then business partner and a DJ friend of mine started doing the very first BBE parties at Number 9 Young Street, Kensington.

My first recollection of meeting you was when you approached me to DJ for you at The Chunnel Club in Vauxhall. (Pete: The first time I heard you play was at Gossips and you played something and I asked you what it was, and then asked you to play for me.) That was in the mid 1990’s (Pete: Around 93-94) At what point did you decide to start the record label?

That started in 1996 after 4 years of doing clubs and parties.

Ben kept a box of all the flyers that we’d featured on, almost everywhere across London, from Bah Rhumba, Ministry, Fabric, The Raw and Velvet Underground. A friend of mine sold his newsagent shop, he had some spare cash and asked if we wanted to do some records. So in my head I said yes and wanted to continue the tradition from what Street Sounds and Mastercuts had previously done. The predeceasing K Tel and Tel Star compilations didn’t have good volumes for playing in the clubs. Mastercuts were the first to do 15 minutes a side, as the engineer will tell you that going over 13 minutes a side, starts to be too many songs for one side, and that dips the volume and you start getting feedback. We wanted the records to sound like a 12 inch and if you were a DJ, you could leave your originals at home, and take out a compilation to play from. If you weren’t a DJ and not many were back then, not like there are now, you didn’t want to spend £30-40 on an album. It was more feasible to buy a compilation with a few more good tunes on, so we would cater for that.

I wanted to get away from the generic afro’s and flares concept of packaging and for something to appeal to people with better imagery.

You went right back to K-Tel and Tel Star and spoke of Street Sounds but you missed out the Rare series on RCA. Yeah they weren’t so bad in terms of the loudness and they certainly had less tracks each side. It was a very influential series of records, and I remember there were 5 of them. They were very significant even though 5 doesn’t sound like a lot. They were left out when I spoke earlier only because Tel Star really bugged me because there were too many records and it wasn’t good for DJ-ing.

How did you manage to get BBE going and even though I know it stands for Barely Breaking Even can you clarify what inspired the name?

The name is clearly inspired by Leroy Burgess’ Barely Breaking Even classic. As I said before, my friend AJ had £10,000 to invest and I was in partnership with Ben, at BBE. AJ actually left before the first album was released and decided he just wanted his money back. Luckily at the time people were still buying records. We spent about £2000 on mastering and the rest on manufacturing, licensing and artwork. ‘Stop, Look, Listen’ Volume 1 was done with Bob Jones, and that cost about £6,000,

spending roughly about a £1,000 on each track. We pressed up about 1000 vinyl and CD’s, put them in the back of my car. I travelled to every record shop I could find in the yellow pages. I got in touch with exporters and by the first weekend we started getting orders. Eventually we made enough to pay back the loan with interest. We carried on doing the label, then about 1998-99 Ben Jolly decided to pull out. So after the first two years, it was me doing pretty much everything, until I met Lee Bright who was working upstairs at Release The Groove with Jean Claude.

He’s been on board ever since and we’ve done several series which made sense like ‘Stop, Look, Listen’ which we did with Bob Jones, Jasper The Vinyl Junkie, Bobby & Steve, Patrick Forge and then Masters At Work. I met Keb Darge around 1994 who was playing crazy funk at a club I think you and I both played at which was Ormond’s Jermyn Street W.1 (Fitzroy: Yeah, I remember that in Orange Tree Yard.”) I thought I knew about funk records until he blew my mind with his collection and knowledge. We’ve done about 20 compilations with Keb including the 60’s Garage, Rockabilly as well as the funk series. I forged a relationship with Masters At Work around 1996 and did a few things with Louie and Kenny. Kenny Dope introduced me to JD aka the late (Dilla) and that led to the ‘Beat Generation’ series and ‘Welcome To Detroit’ and doing records with Jazzy Jeff, DJ Spinna, King Britt, and Pete Rock which brought more hip-hop to the label.

You also did the ‘Strange Games And Things’ series In the early days this was a similar thing to the Rare series which had heavier mastering for playing for people like yourself, which you know if you get the girls dancing the boys will dance too. (Fitzroy: “Exactly.”) For me it was looking for the anthems that attracted, the girls who loved the singing from artists like Gwen McCrea, Don Blackman or Roy Ayers. They are probably going to buy an album with 15 killer songs as opposed to buying one album for a song. Especially back then when some of those albums were going for £30-£40, and maybe there were two other tracks that you liked on there if you were lucky. With the compilations featuring 15 killer tracks that you like universally, it’s something I’ll take to my grave as the compilation that people have mostly thanked me for.

I remember when you first started this venture, when you were based in Cricklewood NW2 and you’d phone me up and say “Fitz come and pick up some comps”. This went on to premises in Holloway Road N.19 (Pete: “Then I went to Berlin.”) Yeah, and then I’d hook up with Lee Bright who was in South East London when I was living in Kent. I also used to do my own events and you’d kindly let me have stock as giveaways and I’d stick your logo on the flyer, so they were good times. I’m slightly intrigued about you landing Roy Ayers and landing the signing to your label of his unreleased Ubiquity tapes.

How did that happen? thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

Basically he had a production deal with Polydor. He would record in New York doing various versions of a song, submit an albums worth to them, and move on to the next project. Roy had done 20 albums for Polydor between 1970 and 1982 before he went to Sony. He did 6 or so on Warners before then and some Japanese albums, as well as the Uno Melodica ones in the 1980’s. With that kind of discography I figured there must be some other material that wasn’t released between the 1960’s and 1980’s as he was so prolific. In 2001 I was working with Marley Marl on an album and it was obvious that these hip-hop DJ’s didn’t just listen to hip-hop with all the sampling of older music. Going shopping with them you see them buy house, jazz, funk, soul to rock and library music. I suggested to Marley about doing something with Roy Ayers and Marley was good friends with Edwin Birdsong. Edwin and Roy Ayers had a falling out years ago and we were talking about doing one of their collaborations which was ‘Humming’. We met Edwin a couple of times and thought a reunion was a good idea.

So through my girlfriend in New York knowing Edwin and me speaking with Louie Vega who had Roy’s number from working the Nu Yorican Soul project, we spoke with Roy. We discussed money and he agreed to appear on the track, we supplied the vibes and recorded the song and it was a great session. I asked Roy if he had any unreleased material and he replied that he had a whole bunch of music. He said that there had been other parties who had asked and been interested but that it hadn’t been followed up on, yet. I said I was very interested so Kiri, my best friend, and I went to New York into the warehouse going through a bunch of tapes and went through hours and hours of music. We transferred the 2-inch tapes that were in good quality and many of the parts, managing to make two volumes of the Ubiquity albums on BBE. We could have possibly done three but it certainly is a highlight in the 20 years of BBE. I have dreams of having that same scenario with Quincy Jones or any of those guys because they were working with top musicians. I’m sure Herbie Hancock and Earth Wind & Fire are sitting on stuff that never came out. It’s about having the right mindset of what’s possible and what’s doable and having the confidence to put it out there.

As you were speaking you mentioned a few of the wider spectrum BBE has covered. You also did the album with Larry Gold, The DJ albums with Gilles Peterson, Kenny Dope, Kev Beadle, Paul Anderson, and John Morales. When you went down that road what made you choose those respected DJ’s?

In the early 1990’s Ministry Of Sound had just started and it was very house orientated, and that styled demographic the ‘Judge Jules’ type wasn’t quite for me. It was obvious over time that DJ’s are the tastemakers and there were DJ’s that we followed, because of what they played and some had been around a lot longer than us and were more soulful minded. So to make it viable as a product and to reach the biggest audience people like Dimitri from Paris and Sadah Bahar means we are not standing

Page 16 - Issue 66

still. The disco boogie is the biggest market we’ve entered and that rocks my soul the most. There are so many that have stupid collections and I’m not qualified to curate everything so I go to people who are. It’s like an education.

You’ve had Mr Thing and Zaf from west London and have digressed to other genres outside of jazz, funk, latin and soul which being honest are not my cup of tea. However I understand that the label does not want to remain stagnant, therefore including other artists and influences that seem to come from Europe. 20 years later you now have a shop so tell us about that venture.

An architect friend of mine is the brainchild and investor of this. I was in Berlin for a while and went to pursue something in Ghana that didn’t quite pan out the way I wanted. London will always be my home and although I sold everything before I left, I felt I needed a physical presence, as the online presence is very limiting. We found the space and got the finances to have a multi space cinema, bookshop, bar and a record shop too. We are selling our products and some old soul, latin, hip-hop, disco and sound tracks. Myself, Mr Thing and Jeremy Newall work in the shop which has been going a couple of months now, and we are trying to connect with people on a human level and not just on a keyboard.

I feel like I’ve been on that journey with you because your 20th anniversary coincides with The Soul Survivors Magazine’s 10th and my 30th year DJ-ing all happening in 2016. You’ve done so much it’s impossible to cover it all.

We’ve done a lot like we are on our 370th release and with compilations, the licences run out or the artist has a right to revert so it’s not a constant 370 albums. We’ve done about 20 albums a year and some things work better than others so it’s certainly been an interesting journey.

What else is happening with BBE in the future?

I’ve tried to stay away from doing events because at our time of life it’s harder to do a nine to five after many late nights.

The climate has changed, peoples hearing are declining with bad sound in clubs, for example my ears were ringing for three days after an event in La Scala. Our space is there to do events which

we do not charge for, people can come and eat and relax as we are now the wrong side of 45, taking three days to recover after long nights.

The space is in Hackney right?

Yes it’s two minutes from London Fields Station overground and it’s a few arches from there. How Hackney has changed!

Indeed Hackney and Shoreditch was a no mans land 20 years ago.

That’s right, we went there to see Norman Jay at Bass Clef and you feared for the safety of you car... (Pete laughs) Well thanks for doing this I think we’ve pretty much documented your history and it’s apt because this is a Black History Month Special. We have interviews with Gary Hines, Leon Herbert, Will Downing and Ralph Tavares.

The one thing I am proud of is, having been about for 20 years as one of the few black guys who owns a record label in the UK, that ite helping to tell our story. I’m not dismissing the white authorities, but we are otherwise surrounded by those who pretend to be guardians of our cultural music, when we can do it ourselves.

To read the full

interview ThatPete leads me Adarkwah to ask if you had any obstacles along the way as a novice making complications because for example Ian Dewhirst please subscribe via was known and had worked on many complications before he did Mastercuts, Dez Parkes waswww. known in the industry when he did the Rare series. thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.

Luckily it was all pre-Internet and I called up people from co.uk the yellow pages, got through to Alan Brown at Sony who is still there, and was asked to send a proposal. I bought a fax machine and hand wrote a licence request and got the tracks for a thousand pounds a track. Universal was fine and the very first album was full of major label material, the only ones who wouldn’t licence to us was Warner Brothers. Sony and Universal would licence at £1000 a track which is inconceivable now, when you’re selling 1-2,000 copies. The difficult ones were the ‘Deep Funk’ albums where the labels were no longer around or artists had passed on. Some members of bands have been found and they may not necessarily be the right person who legally had rights. We managed to dig people out of the woodwork who’d given up on the business who would end up receiving some unexpected royalties. We put my contact details and disclaimers on the albums that generally sufficed, there are maybe one or two that aren’t completely happy, but generally people are happy and we moved on. The only obstacle was to stick with it because after 9/11 there was a big crash in the industry, which affected sales and re-presses. Now you are doing more work to sell less volumes of records so now it’s about keeping your head above water and generating sales.

Thanks for your time Pete Pleasure Fitzroy

NEW RELEASES AVAILABLE AT BBEMUSIC.COM OR COME AND VISIT US IN PERSON AT THE BBE STORE @ INSTITUTE OF LIGHT ARCH 376, 10 HELMSLEY PLACE, LONDON, E8 3SB

Record Reviews Showcasing a real mélange of the black music family tree we have some Afro beat funk from South Africa via East London and two comprehensive jazz funk disco and boogie double CD anthologies. From the UK check out an experimental jazzy dimensioned album from one of London’s finest trumpeters and a Headhunters influenced fusion piece of excellence from a new school outfit. From the USA a future jazz project from the esteemed Blue Note label and thankfully some reincarnated Jap Jazz. To finish check out a selection of BBE exclusives and a quality must have Jazz & Blues box set from a true musical pioneer.

It really is a case of experiencing the diverse Sounds Of Blackness. So enjoy… Fitzroy

Dele Sosimi – “You No Fit Touch Am in Dub” – (Wah Wa 45) This is an excellent remix package of one of Africa’s finest via east London ex Fela Kuti keyboardist Dele Sosimi.

With ounces of indigenous grooves from the Motherland, esoteric sonics, militant drums and Jamaican sound system equalised dub techniques, these vibes will vibrate through your speakers with equilibrium. The added ingredients include the exceptional cross pollination of afro, dub, reggae, jazz and funk. ‘You No Fit Touch Am In Dub’ feat Prince Fatty & ‘Nostal E Go Betta Dub’ in particular have secreted elements of the afro influence that Talking Heads’s classic ‘Once In A Lifetime’ bullet sourced. ‘Sanctuary Dub’ instrumentation and breaks between vocals, showcase afro centric lead and background vocals, and uses subtle hints of computer technology keyboard sounds. ‘Na My Turn’ is a much slower lowdown funky body twister with a very hypnotic moody groove, followed by ‘I Don’t Care’ a slightly more up-tempo mix showcasing with Dele’s trance like keyboard stabs.

Dexter Wansal - Stargazer The Philadelphia International Records Anthology 1976-1980 (BBR) He is the mild mannered man aka the Superman of PIR Records. His musicianship writing and production skills bounce Kryptonite back into the solar system far and beyond the ‘Rings Of Saturn’. Dexter Wansal evolved from an outfit Yellow Sunshine on Gamble & Huff’s own label before their mammoth PIR empire with the amazing jazz-rock fusion classic ‘Yellow Sunshine’. This anthology actually has every track from his four PIR albums but not chronologically in their original format. All I can say is, enjoy the major bullets of pure unadulterated jazz funk and disco meteorites ‘Life On Mars’, ‘I’ll Never Forget’, ‘You Can Be What You Wanna Be’, ‘Let Me Rock You’, ‘Dance With Me Tonight’, ‘Latin Love’, ‘Ode Infinitum’ and his P Funk influenced ‘Funk Attack’ on CD 1. CD 2 is more of a journalistic selection with Terri Wells’s unforgettable delivery of a very salacious ‘The Sweetest Pain’ and the very relaxing ‘Holding On’ with PIR’s first lady Jean Carn. More atmospheric mellowness with Dexter sharing lead vocals on ‘One Million Miles From The Ground’ and the eerie sonics continues with Idris Mohammed on ‘What Is The World Coming To’. Dexter is relentless is experimenting with jazz-rock and fusion on the very dramatic ‘Voyager’ and ‘A Prophet Named KG’ instrumentals. Dexter’s leadership certainly gave PIR different aspect of brotherly love and astral travelling entities with the mesmerising ‘Theme From The Planets’, fast forward in later years to being sampled heavily in Hip-Hop. He gave lead vocals to Terri Wells on ‘Together’ remembering that this is 8 years before her solo hit ‘I’ll Be Around’. Lastly I have a passion for the ‘New Beginnings’ cut, a sample by The Lox’s ‘for Money Power & Respect’ on Bad Boy Records. Dexter gave platforms to so many to shine including the Sigma Three’s Carla Benson, Evette Benton and Ingram’s sister act Barbara Ingram as well as producing all his material. A true ‘Stargazer’, enjoy this consummate anthology.

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GQ Standing Ovation The Story Of GQ And The Rhythm Makers (1974-1982) (BBR) With some of the most jazz improvised rhythmic intricacies in their disco funk arrangements that gave a flourish of infectious boogie, GQ are one of the unsung heroes honoured respectfully on this double CD. Starting off their recording history on Vigor as The Rhythm Makers in the mid 1970’s they were one of many of the emerging talent that came out of the ‘Big Apple’, the Bronx to be precise. With Keith Crier’s rumbling bass skills, Emanuel “Rahiem” LeBlanc on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Kenny Banks on drums we were first exposed to the space oddity essences instrumental ‘Zone’ and the prelude ‘Soul On Your Side’ to their future classic ‘Disco Nights’ as examples of what was to come. This is a collation of their three Arista albums as GQ and their debut as The Rhythm Maker. CD 1 harbours the earlier mentioned cuts alongside ‘Standing Ovation’, ‘Shake’, ‘Is It Cool?’ ‘Spirit‘ and a personal favourite the short and so sweet ‘GQ Down’. Mixed in randomly are ‘Monterey’ and ‘Touch’ as Rhythm Makers alongside their unique alternative version of A Taste Of Honey’s ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’. CD 2 features some of the classy ballads of GQ’s repertoire more notably ‘Sitting In The Park’. Sitting in between their more familiar 120 plus BPM’a and a ballad is a slightly less up temp and happy feeling cut ‘Wonderful’. GQ had a signature sound a bit like Chic, and even with slight production changes in the 80’s, tracks like ‘Shy Boy’ still sound very refreshing today. Two more examples of their complex disc boogie include a fave of mine ‘Someday (In Your Life)’ and ‘Reason For The Season’. Amongst the CDs are three alternative remix versions of ‘Make My Dream a Reality’, ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’ and ‘Disco Nights’. As a bonus there is, from what I can tell, a previously only released single from the Rhythm Makers ‘Soul On Your Side’ album cut of the ferocious ‘You’re Never Too Old (To Get On Down)’. With a comprehensive sleeve notes this is a real “Good Quality” compilation of GQ

Kenny Wellington - Free Spirits (Expansion) For 40 years Kenny Wellington has been one of the most consistent horn players the UK has produced. His new solo album showcases the current musical talent and is a homage to those pioneers who’ve inspired Kenny. David Baptiste, Camille Hinds, Breeze McKrieth, Steve Salvari and Side Effects, Augie Johnson RIP all contribute on the project written, arranged and produced by Kenny, that provides a nice variety of jazzy dimensions. With minimal vocal dialect of the inspiring street jazz funk players The Blackbyrds persuasion, ‘Heading Home’ the album titled ‘Free Spirit’ and ‘Dreaming Of Futures Bright’ kick-starts this album. The appetising ‘Kings For A Day, Masters Of The Night’ preludes the befitting homage to the trumpeting royalty via ‘Fat Cherry’. For the dancers ‘Manic Monday’, ‘Magic Sunday’ and ‘The Cat In The Hat’ showcase Kenny’s raw and muted trumpet prowess. ‘E3 Symphony’ encapsulates some hypnotising orchestrated strings and ‘Rebop’ embraces an excellent morphing of Hip-Hop meets be bop jazz. To close a touch of brass with class is exampled on ‘Miles 2 Go’. Recommended!!

Resolution 88 - Afterglow (Splash Blue Records) Tom O’Grady and his band of merry men, as Resolution 88 have certainly impressed their musical professionalism on me. Heavily influenced by fusion concoctions of Herbie Hancock and Jeff Lorber Fusion, their second album is a top quality one. Layered with moog, sythns and rhodes intricacies, horns, electric bass and tight drums, and experimenting in varied tempos, you’ll not disappointed with the end result. ‘Taking Off’, ‘Tuggin’ The Pug’, ‘Three Four Or More’ and ‘Changing Times Pt 1’, are as different as chalk and cheese and amazingly funky. ‘Homing In’ is a great slick up-tempo foot shuffler, and in contrast ‘Raios Do Sol’ harbours the Bruk beat style drum pattern, with some very precise rhodes stabs. ‘Phantom Of The Oberhiem’ is most certainly an enterprising throwback of The Headhunters meets Azymuth combination. ‘Changing Times 2’ and ‘Afterglow 2’ provide the more sombre and mellow choices of another value for money album.

Robert Glasper Experiment - Art Science (Blue Note) This album certainly has a Jeckyl & Hyde persona with RG mixing up his musical test tube potions in his Art Science lab. Robert Glasper, far from being a Nutty Professor, does actually experiment like he’s in like a laboratory concocting an array of soothing serums full of rock, fusion, RNB, jazz, hip-hop, soul, disco, funk and pop simmering to a boiling crescendo. Robert starts cleverly with a simmering fast and furious be bop meets hip-hop ‘This Is Not Fear”. RG flips the script with a 4floor disco funked auto tuned and vocoder vocal ‘Day To Day’. Live drum and bass is performed on ‘No One Like You’, and the slow jam bump band grind grooves ‘You And Me’ and ‘Let’s Fall In Love’ are both atmospheric and ambient in their production. Herbie Hancock’s classic ‘Tell Me A Bedtime Story’ is the perfect formulated solution and the un-compromised experimentation with Human Leagues ‘Human’ has surprising results. One for the class of 2016.

The Grasso Brothers Presents We Know How To Boogie (BBE) Churning out undiscovered holy grail gems like cows do milk, BBE do it again. These are the album cuts or A & B side 12’s or 7 inch pieces many wished they had bought ‘First Time Around’ like Skyy. There is an abundance of funk influences to start like Moods ‘Funk It Out’ and the clavinet brass ensemble get down, hustle and boogie cut ‘Plastic People’ by Living Colour. Many will favour the Gospel Seeker’s uplifting bass thumping mid 80’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. On a disco boogie dimension Sharon Johnson’s almost Andrea True Connection tinged ‘A Better Days’ is very is sweet on the ear. The album titled ‘We Know How To Boogie’ reminds me happily of a mid 1970 The Rimshots ‘7654321 (Blow Your Whistle)’. Stinging infectiously from its intro Sherman Hunter’s ‘Dance To Freedom’ from 1981 marinates that late 1970’s disco gloriousness of dancing freestyle. Something for everyone on here!

Takuya Kuroda - Zigzagger (Concord) Hopefully Takuya Kuroda is not ‘The Last Samurai’ as we see the return of ‘Jap Jazz’ thankfully remerge in 2016.

Continuing the tradition of his native ancient warriors of the horn, trumpeter’s Terumasa Hino and Shunzo Ono, trombonist Hiroshi Fukamura and and saxophonist Sadeo Watanabe, this is as tasty as top quality Sushi. Very well produced in a brilliant fusion conclusion ‘R.S.B.D’ reminds me so much of early Eddie Henderson’s ‘Realization’ period. ‘Zigzagger’ sees Takuya synchronise with his trombonist on an almost broken beat template, whilst “’ Don’t Remember How It Began’ is a more relaxed but rugged funkier cut. More lowdown funk comes courtesy of ‘Thirteen’ and there are a few more laid-back mellow productions like ‘Good Day Bad Habit’ for the discerning ear. The most intriguing inclusion is the afro beat influenced version of Donald Bryds ‘Think Twice’. This is one ‘sayonara’ I’d avoid at all costs, a quality album!!

Ray Charles - The Atlantic Years In Mono (Atlantic) This vinyl box set was still shrink wrapped 3 weeks after I received it because the thought of opening it was quite a daunting one. I’m won’t pretend to be a Leonard Feather aficionado in breaking down the big band, jump and jive R&B, boogie woogie, jazz and blues fundamental language of this collection. These 1957-1961 classic 7 albums from Ray Charles showcase his vocal, instrumental and arrangement skills on Atlantic Records. Listening to these mono recordings on a Sunday afternoon, literally transported me to the smokey filled cool jazz beatnik bars, full of people transfixed to the mesmerising sonics. Amongst the lucky 7 are “The Great Ray Charles” and “The Genius After Hours ” which are both purely instrumental. Some of the stand out cuts include few covers i.e. Fats Wallers “Ain’t Misbehaving”,and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and two exceptional uptempo productions “Charlesville” “Music Music Music”. Many classics gospel and story telling blues ballads like “Drown In My Own Tears”, “Come Back Baby” and the metaphoric “Losing Hands” are truly captivating musical memoirs. Included are the classic “Mess Around” and “I Got A Woman” and the funky organ genius of “What I’d Say”. Check out the Raylettes singing lead on “What Kind Of Man Are You” and the famously used in The Crosby Show magnificent “The Right Time”. Brilliant ‘Ray” of sunshine from Ray Charles.

Book Review: Philadelphia Music Makers - Kenny Gamble & Leon A. Huff Legendary R&B Songwriters (First Impression Design Group) When Jean Carn personally gets hold of a copy and gives it to you as an encyclopaedic piece or TSOP oracle history, it would be rude not to review it. It documents the complete discography from the album jackets between 1966 to 2002 made under the leadership of Gamble & Huff. This includes over 50 artist’s acts, some of which certain individuals made solo albums under the ‘City Of Brotherly Loves’ founding fathers of that prolific Philly sound. Spread over 6 labels in those 36 magnificent glory years, there is a brief biography of the acts whose backgrounds vary from mostly African American to Caucasian and Hawaiian. The variables of this dynamic duo’s writing production and enterprising skills, far surpasses the hopes and dreams that a black owned label could have imagined, on a white corporate entity like CBS. CBS had little input previously in promoting black music, so following in the footsteps of ownership, like Berry Gordy’s predeceasing Motown empire a decade before, was a huge deal. Gamble & Huff’s importance can be measured moreso when you observe that so many black acts including Earth Wind & Fire and Herbie Hancock were later being championed by CBS and their subsidiary labels. This 240 plus page book is beautifully crafted and features many of the iconic imagery albums sleeves we have in our prided possessions. It’s all laid out in alphabetical order of artists who made the O Jays sung “Message In The Music” catalogue of recordings. Definitely a good choice and a good read present wise with the festive season coming up.

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I remember the first time I heard ‘Glow Of Love’. That Change record had me locked to the radio, aside from going to the bathroom. I remember going to a concert in 1980 with Change, I just wanted to see who was singing lead vocal.

When Luther opened his mouth, everybody just lost it, we were in awe of him and that’s when I decided, this is what I want to do.

FITZROY SPEAKS TO

WILL DOWNING

(The sophisticated Prince of Soul)

Growing up in Brooklyn a young Will Downing was an exposed to a wealth of soul, jazz and funk music. We almost lost Mr ‘Sophistication Of Soul’ to the marines as a teenager, were it not for the intervention of him being too young to sign up. His high school chum was James D Train Williams and Will started recording as early as 1983 until his main break in the late 1980’s real easing ‘Love Supreme’. At an early age even his tutors realised there was ‘Something Going On’ with Will as an individual talent, and that’s why today he is one of the best loved soul and jazz singers of his generation. With plenty charm and lot of humour Will and I had a long overdue chat… Enjoy.

Tell us about being brought up in Brooklyn and at what age your musical inquisitiveness started?

(Will laughs…) I’ve never heard it phrased that way before. I started like most kids in junior high school where you either had to sing or play an instrument. My thing was singing. A teacher heard me sing in the class one day and thought I was different from the others. The teacher advised my parents to make me do some extra curricular activity outside of school to cultivate my singing. This would have been around the age of 13. I ended up going to an arts high school and they moulded me to what you hear today. It was 80% learning about music and I got to meet people that were as serious as I was. My initial intention was to go into the Marines service but I wasn’t old enough to join and my parents wouldn’t sign the papers, so really going to college was an alternative. When I left college I kind of jumped into this business with both feet.

5, James Brown, and then years later The Ohio Players, Earth Wind & Fire and Slave, anything that was brought into the house. Radio wise I remember the first time I heard Luther and Change. I heard ‘Glow Of Love’ one time and remember this is long before the Internet. I sat by the radio all day listening and waiting for that song to come on because musically and vocally I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Later Al Jarreau’s ‘This Time’ and listening to Stevie Wonder really influenced me.

Musically what inspired you as you grew up?

I spoke with a high school chum of yours in a recent issue, James D Train Williams, and he told me that you introduced him into his wilder and exploratory side when he did the play South Pacific (Will laughs out loud). He also said you were very popular with the ladies making them swoon with your singing (Will laughs again and adds “I don’t know about that, he got half of that story right”). He went on to say you introduced him to Earth Wind And Fire, Stanley Clarke and George Duke too. What are your memories of that with James D Train Williams, who was at the time, a butch captain of the football team?

I didn’t have enough money to buy my own music so I used to listen to my brother and sisters records. Artists like The Jackson

He was one of those kids who you never saw in class as he was always hanging out. He had two things he really loved, football

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and singing. He had a church background and I always tried to get him involved in different things. He’d come over to my house and we’d listen to DJ Rogers, Nicolette Larson with Michael McDonald, Peabo Bryson and The Gap Band’s ‘You Can Count On Me’. When I heard him sing along to Charlie Wilson on that record I knew he was the real deal. Another guy we went to school with was Hubert Eaves Vl, whose father introduced me to some music and for one of his projects he needed a vocalist. Once I heard the music I knew it wasn’t for me but I said I thought James would be perfect for this project. I hooked them up and from then on you hear ‘Keep On’ and ‘You’re The One For Me’.

I’ve always been a fan of James’s work and we’re both very proud of what we’ve achieved.

James said you were doing some writing with Melba Moore and Freddie Jackson and that you wrote a song called ‘Real Deal’. What happened with that song did it ever come out?

(Will laughs) He’s given you way too much information. No, it didn’t come out. I was very ambitious when I was at high school.

I was the kid who went into the studies and had no idea what I was doing. We were all musical students so there was always someone who was a keyboard player or a drummer and it was like the TV show Fame, where we’d get together and have a jam session in the school’s studio. I wrote this song which I thought was the greatest song ever but the song was really terrible. I have four or five versions of this song that we tried to do. It was the introduction into the recording world, just trying to cultivate our craft. I called Hubert Eaves Snr to play keys on my work and he took a shine to me and he schooled me on the industry.

At the time he was working with Mtume. Hubert was the first professional musician that I’d met, who took some time out to listen to me and show me something.

So what period was it when you worked with Jennifer Holiday, Billy Ocean and Kool & The Gang?

I would say 1984-85 and pretty much throughout the whole of the 1980’s. I was singing background vocals. That was how I made my living before I got my solo deal. I was working with Nick Martinelli and Arthur Baker and it’s actually how I met my wife.

Yes Audrey Wheeler of Unlimited Touch. Did you record anything around the 1981-82 period?

In 1981 I went to college in Virginia for a year and I think the first dance record I remember recording was with a group called NV. (Fitzroy: “Oh they did ‘It’s Alright’ in 1983) Yes, I didn’t sing lead though but I sang background.

I sang lead on the next song ‘Let Me Do You’ and after leaving that group I sang with Shep Pettibone for an outfit called Pilot ‘You Are The One’ on Prelude. Then I did a whole host of records with Arthur

Baker under the many guises of Wally Jump Junior, Criminal Element, and The Goon Squad. We put out so many records under those groups, believe it or not, that was how I got my solo deal. The record companies kept recognising my voice and asking whom the voice belonged to and asked if I was interested in a solo deal?

I hope you don’t mind me saying this but with your high and low alternative octaves, you do remind me of the late Luther Vandross in your own unique way. (Will: “Oh I’ll take that.”) I thought you would as you have a way of weaving in and out of a song, with the greatest of ease, it would seem. Similar to you Luther was a background singer as a well as a lead vocalist for several outfits before he got his solo deal.

Absolutely and as I mentioned earlier that Change record had me locked to the radio aside from going to the bathroom. Back then, on the Changes album there were no photos of the artist. So you didn’t know who was doing what. I remember going to a concert in 1980 with the strangest line up, Change, Larry Graham and Sylvester with Two Tons Of Fun. That show came to New York, I told my parents something so that I could sneak off and go to the show. Everyone in the audience and I just wanted to see who was singing Change’s lead vocal. When Luther walked out on stage, he was big in stature back then, and we said “No, that cannot be the one.” But when he opened his mouth, everybody just lost it, we were in awe of him and that’s when I decided that this is what I want to do. So he influenced me greatly.

Listening back to your first album it reminded me of how great it must have been working with Norma Jean of Chic, Lisa Fischer, Danny Madden, Stanley Turrentine and Mike Maineri. With a cover of Deneice Williams’s ‘Free’, my favourite is ‘Set Me Free’ (Will: “Really?”) Yes, wicked tune. My question is how many record labels were in pursuit of you before you decided to sign with Island a UK based label?

Yes, I was signed to 4th Broadway. I pursued all the dance labels initially because that was the world I was living in. Island came about through putting out a Wally Jump Junior project via a 4th Broadway subsidiary label. So signing the record deal came to me rather than me going to it. I hadn’t really thought about overseas to be honest, as when you first start out you want to be heard on the local radio. You want all your friends and family to hear you on the radio so I wasn’t really thinking about an international label at all, more of a domestic one like WBLS so my mum could hear it. But ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Love Supreme’ made more noise in Europe than the USA where they were considered a flop.

The first time I heard ‘Love Supreme’ it was your version, before I discovered John Coltrane’s. (Will: “Really?”) What led you to record that song as a full vocal? thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

Arthur Baker always loved the song and had the idea to record it because it was so hypnotic to him. He heard something on top and asked me and David Cole to make a jazz house version of it. We got Stanley Turrentine to play sax on it. When we turned it in, we had to get the approval of John Coltranes’s wife, Alice Coltrane, and at first she didn’t like it. So we had to change it before she gave it her blessing.

I distinctly remember purchasing the Arthur Baker Rapid Eye remix of ‘In My Dreams’ that was huge with that Acid House vibe. How did that do for you?

It was big in Europe but again did nothing here. It had a range of remixes by Frankie Knuckles, Gail Scott King did a remix too and I loved them.

You’re not afraid of doing covers like ‘Where Is The Love’ with Mica Paris and ‘Wishing On A Star’ which a mate of mine called Chris says a lot of babies were probably made to that version. (Will laughs). Your album ‘A Dream Fulfilled’ from 1991 is my favourite 4th Broadway album because of the jazz cut ‘SomethIng Going On’.

I loved dancing to it and playing it. It was written by the late Diane Charlemagne and Lenny White. What memories do you have of recording that?

I don’t quite remember but that album for me was the opportunity for me to show what I can do musically. The record company wanted me to do a whole album on the vibe of ‘Love Supreme’. The record company and I fought like cats and dogs over the making of this album, and they took money off my budget to allow me to do what I wanted. It was a bit of a stand off between me and the record company and I remember calling in favours from my friends like Lenny White, Barry Eastman, Wayne Braithwaite and Onaje Allen Gumbs, advising them that I was willing to pay them something but that I needed to record this album my own way.

I see that Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbush of Wood Brass & Steel and also part of the Sugar Hill Label house band played lead and bass guitar also.

artist’s songs as a male vocalist. It seemed like a good opportunity to record ‘Don’t Ask My Neighbour’ and ‘Don’t Let It Go To Your Head’ a song I always sang, and Jean Carne is a friend of mine. I decided to tackle some more up-tempo songs like ‘Street Life’ and it all fell into place.

You did a song ‘This Song Is For You’ and unbeknown to you it was entered into a chart concept that I’m involved in. Your song was submitted and came in at number 17 as a new entry, and went to number one for four months from May till August 2016. (Will: “Wow I had no idea and that’s good to know”.) It’s voted by the people who vote for their favourite songs. (Will: “Wow that’s amazing.”)

Do you remember doing vocals for a DJ called Louie Martin and a sax player called Mike Stephens for a version of ‘Just Can’t Give You Up’?

I don’t think so? (Fitzroy plays the track to Will and asks if he can hear it) “I can hear my voice, what year was this?” (Fitzroy: “It was about 1991.”) “Wow I don’t remember doing that.”

I was at a BBQ a week ago and I mentioned that I was going to be speaking with you and the host told me he had just been given a CD of you singing Mystic Merlin’s ‘Just Can’t Give You Up’ so they gave it to me to play to you.

It certainly sounds like me, (Will laughs) but I really don’t remember. Who produced it?

Louie Martin and Mike Stephens and the outfit were called Dreaming A Dream.

I used to do a lot of vocals back then. I’d love to hear the full version.

I’ll send it to you Will, thanks for your time.

Thanks and it has been my pleasure.

Yeah, we all kind of came up during the Arthur Baker days in Shakedown Studios and these were some of the live musicians we recorded with and I had built a relationship with.

I love the new album which is very well produced. It’s an ode to some of your favourite female artists and in particular my favourites are ‘Nights Over Egypt’ and ‘Don’t Let It Go To Your Head’. What led to this concept?

It came about in a conversation I had with a friend of mine. We were discussing the possibility of me covering ‘Meet Me On The Moon’ by Phyllis Hyman who I used to open shows for at one stage. No one had ever covered the song before so I took a stab at it, and then decided to cover some of my favourite female

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Thank you to Steve Ripley at SoulFood for arranging the interview

thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

George introduced me to Bootsie as “Lloyd from London”. Bootsie asked if I had one of those London accents and I said “ yes.” Next thing I knew I had headphones on and Bootsie was saying “Roll the track”. I can hear Bootsie, in my ear saying, “Say something London. Just introduce Jamaica, like it was a lady”. Suddenly I found myself on the Sweat Band Album credited as ‘Lloyd Bridges’.

FITZROY SPEAKS TO

LLOYD BRADLEY (King of Authors)

I have much admiration for this author and elder statesman as a soul survivor because he is understated in what he has achieved as an author documenting the importance of black culture coming from the UK. Lloyd Bradley not just an author but also an authority sought after to document his knowledge by Ian Dewhirst to compiling The Mastercuts Funk album that many of you have in your possession. Lloyd is an original upstairs at Ronnie Scotts in the 1970’s frequenter who managed with tenacity to create an opening by default in becoming a journalist for some of the major writing publications. What’s even more poignant is that he was always the only person of colour working in those Page 26 - Issue 66 tall in stature as well as in his principals check out Lloyds interesting story. establishments.

Standing

I grew up in Hornsey, North London. I would say I had an unremarkable childhood. I can remember on days like today a load of kids would go out, call for each other at about 9 o’clock in the morning to play football all day in the park.

I guess the first time I heard music was Top of the Pops. This would have been the 60’s as I was born in 1955. My older brother, who I shared a room with, was a mad Beatles fan, he absolutely loved them, and was also a member of the Beatles fan club. He had all the Beatles records so I grew up with them and bits of Motown and Trojan Records. Other than that everything else I got to hear was via Top of the Pops, like The Temptations and such like. This was before Radio 1 started in 1967 so it was TOTP that brought pop music to the fore.

The first big gig that I ever went to was a Motown Review in Finsbury Park Astoria and The Four Tops were top of the bill.

They also had Junior Walker, Martha and the Vandellas on the bill and Stevie Wonder opened the show. This was before 1970 so it must have been about 1969 as Stevie Wonder was still young then. The Four Tops were absolutely brilliant and I guess because that was the first big show I had ever been to, I absolutely loved the Four Tops for the rest of my life. They had such an impact on me.

So what about going to school? You said your childhood was unremarkable but was there a point where being a person of colour at school made a difference to you or was it very multicultural?

My parents were from Saint Kitts. There was no such thing as multiculturalism at that time. I think that term was invented in about 1978 and it was a funny time because while there was opportunity, there was also blatant racism. I had teachers at my school who had been in the war and they didn’t really get the idea of there being a lot of black people in London. They could be pretty nasty and as for the kids, they were just kids.

It’s quite funny, I went to a school reunion after 50 years from the time we came into secondary school, and pretty much everyone had turned out as I expected they would. A lot of the kids that were dicks at school are just middle-aged dicks now and the kids that were alright, I am still mates with. I still hang out with people I went to school with because until three years ago I lived very close to my old school. It was one of those things that we just kind of got on with. It was like a ‘Sound System’ mentality, if you couldn’t get into a club you just started one of your own where someone would rent a hall and set up a sound system.

You knew as soon as you went outside your house you would face a degree of residual racism and you knew you were likely to get trouble off the old bill. I say, you are who you are. Don’t let what they want to put on you, define you, because that isn’t who you are. There wasn’t a victim mentality then, we didn’t know what victim meant. For an example, one evening

around 1976 three or four of my mates and I left home and met up in Camden Town about 9pm. We were planning to go to Ronnie Scotts, it was a Thursday night. We were walking down Camden Road minding our own business and the police pulled us over. We were there for about half an hour maybe three quarters of an hour turning out our pockets. We were asked where we were going, where we lived and then they sent us on our way. Now, we could have got bitter about that but actually how we looked at it was, we are just off to Ronnie Scotts, we are going to hear some of the best music in London, we can have a few drinks and maybe pull a bird. Then you look at the copper and you think to yourself, if their idea of entertainment is making me turn my pockets out, who is the winner here and that’s how we thought. You win your little battles. We never felt downtrodden, you knew it existed but you just had to work around it. I am not saying everything was rosy because it wasn’t and I am sure improvements could have been made. I think the important thing is, that as immigrants, we mustn’t let that define us.

When did you start going to the west end and what took you to the west end?

Word and mouth I think. I remember we went to go the Lyceum once but couldn’t get in because they had such a racist door policy, so we never went back. We went to the Roaring 20’s in Carnaby Street. (Fitzroy: You mention that in your book, don’t you?) Yes, that place became Columbos. The first time we went to Ronnie Scotts we went on the wrong night, I think we must have gone on a Friday or something. There was a group on and I am not sure if I am remembering this correctly but it might have been Gonzales the London funk band. They were really good but we were actually expecting a disco but then someone told us that we needed to come back on a Thursday.

So were you upstairs or downstairs?

At that time they had small bands on upstairs. When I was 19 in 1974, I went to America for the first time. First of all I went to stay with my cousin in Wisconsin, then I went to New York and stayed with the cousin of a man I grew up with in Hornsey. They were brilliant and took me all over Brooklyn, where I was going to clubs and it was like a whole different world of clubbing. It was just brilliant there were pure Funk clubs with no white people in them. When I was coming back I had so many albums that I couldn’t fit them into my suitcase, as it would have been overweight. So I put them all in my hand luggage, trying to pretend I didn’t have that much in it. I didn’t want them to take them off me at Customs so I thought I would try and front it out. I went in the goods to declare line and as I opened my bag up, I had about 50 albums in there. I told them that I didn’t know what to do about them and the bloke looked at me as if I was a nutcase with all thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

these records, but he said that I didn’t have to worry about it. That really opened my eyes to importing what was being made in America. Around that kind of time we started looking for more underground clubs, off the beaten track, that would have better soul and funk. That was when we started going to Ronnies Scotts. I seem to remember the first time we went was in 1974 or 1975.

Most people I have spoken to who speak of upstairs at Ronnies Scotts say that this was a place that you had to be there to experience the ambience of what was going on there. Having spoken to Dez Parkes, Leee John, Kenny Wellington and Leon Herbert I would like to see if you endorse what they have said. So what was your impression of Ronnies Scotts?

(and it may have been them) who shaved their heads. Around this point only Errol Brown and Telly Savalas had bald heads and this caused a bit of a sensation. The place was so packed that the whole joint would move when a good track came on. I remember the dancers down the end on the dance floor showing off. What is so wonderful about Ronnie’s is that because it is in the centre of town you met people from all over London. I met my wife upstairs in Ronnie’s on a Thursday night and we have been married 33 years now. Ronnie’s was just this great place where everybody became a part of something that was going on, in London that we felt that we controlled and it brought us so much joy.

It’s interesting that you said that it was something that you felt that you belonged to and that in some ways you controlled. What can you remember of some of the tunes that remind you of being at Ronnie’s?

Oddly because we saw them last night, early Fatback and early Kool & The Gang tracks like ‘Jungle Boogie’, ‘Open Sesame’, ‘Hollywood Swinging’, ‘Light Of World’, and all that stuff from the Delight movement. All the early 70’s James Brown, some of the Blaxploitation stuff, War, ‘Me and Baby Brother’ and ‘Galaxy’, which would have been around 1977.

Jazz Funk too including Grover Washington, Bob James, Idris Mohammad on the CTI Kudu label.

What about the ratio of people in terms of black, white, Greek, Chinese etc.

It was hilarious. When I went there years later and during the day I was astonished at how small it was with no one in it and how low the ceiling is. It used to get dangerously packed.

I remember one of the funniest things was that we used to go with a bunch of guys all from the same football team, and a bunch of women from a netball team that we knew from the area where we lived. One week was really funny, this would have been mid-seventies probably about 1976 ish.

Up until then people had been wearing platform shoes, guys too. Three or four of us from the team were really tall so we never wore them. It was funny as it was rather like a memo went round saying don’t ever wear platform shoes again as we went to Ronnie’s one Thursday, and everyone was wearing plastic sandals. We hadn’t realised that everyone we knew had been wearing platforms and suddenly, as they were now all wearing plastic sandals, it was like there was a load of dwarfs in there! It was really funny. I just remember Ronnie’s as just being a good laugh and playing wicked tunes.

It was a dancers club so what’s your memory of that and does anyone in particular stand out?

I remember Trevor Shakes and Leon and a couple of boys Page 28 - Issue 66

Our football team had a white goalkeeper who’s name was Dave Stacey, he is a great geezer and a brilliant dancer and moved with us. I saw him a couple of years ago, he hasn’t changed at all and has still got moves. The thing about Dave was that he was just one of us, he wasn’t trying to be black, he was just there. It was mostly black men and a handful of white guys, and quite a lot of white women. Because back then black women still were not being let out, there was still a bit of a curfew going on. So if you wanted to meet black women you would probably have to go to ‘Blues clubs’.

You were telling me that when it comes to buying music, one of your haunts, as most people would say from around that period, was Contempo records. You have a story of that led to you having a long lasting relationship with Mr George Clinton. So what are your memories of Contempo?

When I used to buy records I would buy singles from Contempo. I rarely bought albums from them. I would buy import albums from One Stop that was at the top of Dean Street. They would get James Brown, Kool & The Gang, Ohio Players and such like and the great thing was that they had listening booths, so you could listen to the whole album. This was before places like Bluebird opened.

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Blues and Soul had their offices above Contempo and John Abbey owned it although I don’t think he owned the whole building. My mate was a printer and he used to have something to do with printing for some of the record companies.

He found out somehow that George Clinton was going to be reviewing the singles for Blues and Soul as apparently they always had a guest reviewer for singles. My mate suggested we take the afternoon off work, hang out outside and we will meet George Clinton, so I took a pile of Funkadelic and Parliament albums with me. So we were hanging about on the really narrow pavement outside Bradley’s Bar when this huge Bentley turned into the street. George Clinton, his press officer Tom Vickers (who was their in-house press officer) and the press officer from Pye Records, Graham Becks all got out of the car. We went over and introduced ourselves and Tom and George thought that we were from Blues & Soul. We just followed them in and went up the stairs. Being two black guys when we got into Blues & Soul, they thought we were part of George Clinton’s posse! We spent the afternoon reviewing the singles with George Clinton and just hanging out and we were having such a laugh. At the end when we went downstairs, George, Tom and Graham Betts got into the car and the guy from Blues and Soul asked us “Aren’t you going with them?”.

We said no, we only just met them outside! I have been friends with George ever since and this was 40 years ago and Tom the press officer every time he visits London, comes to dinner with my wife and I.

was saying, as he was mumbling and slurring. It was a mini press conference there were two other guys there who were James Brown’s nerds, trying to impress him with how much they knew about him. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I was also terrified as I was sitting down in a room with James Brown! I just did what I could as I didn’t even have a tape recorder, so I was trying to write things down. I managed to get some sort of feature out of it and I actually felt that I got away with it. A couple of months after this, I was still in touch with Tom Vickers and George, and Tom said why don’t you come out to Los Angeles. I was in a job and doing ok but in order for me to go to the next step up to being a sous chef or head chef, I knew I would have to wait another 20 years or so, and that it would be hard work. I thought what have I got to lose? So I went out to Los Angeles, stayed in some dodgy hotel and joined up with the P Funk crew and stayed for 6 months.

When I got home I knew what I was going to do as I had done some interviews whilst I was over there. I had bought a tape recorder and I thought this is what I am going to do now. I got a job in the early mornings delivering fruit and vegetable from 5am to midday so I had all afternoon to do other stuff and it just went on from there.

the time? (Lloyd: “I was a Chef, I wasn’t a cook!) Oooh sorry Gordon Ramsey…

Soul because of a mounting debt issue. He got the publishing bug and decided to carry on running it. At the time IBC was selling a title ‘Black Music and Jazz Review’ also just known as ‘Black Music Monthly’ because they didn’t want it anymore, so Roy bought that too. I started working for both magazines on a freelance basis. I was still driving early mornings because the writing wasn’t very well paid. Then a bloke who used to work for Black Music Monthly who also worked for NME told me that the NME wanted to do this thing called the ‘Funk Wall Chart’ and that they were stuck with it. Cliff White, who was a James Brown expert knew me and recommended me to NME as someone who knew all about funk. I went in to see Neil Spencer at the NME. I had a brilliant couple of afternoons with them sorting it out. At the end of it, he said I had better sort you out some money. I was thinking blimey I am going to get paid for this, when I would have paid them for the experience!

He said how does £50.00 sound for each day? Remember, this was early 80’s so then I realised not only was I getting paid £100 for having a few drinks, and a good laugh, I also had my foot in the door at NME. He suggested I went to see the

When was this?

It would have been the end of the 70’s probably 1979. By 1983 I was a full time writer.

what were you working on from 1983 to the 90’s? to read the full SoLloyd Bradley I went to work for the NME that was a real big break for me. interview please via Was this also the incident that eventually got you into working Bluessubscribe & Soul that was previously owned by John Abbey was for Blues & www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk Soul and getting into what you are now known for, now owned by a lovely bloke called Roy Doman. He had been as a writer and author? Am I right in saying you were a cook at owner of the printers they had used and took over Blues &

Blues & Soul were pretty impressed with the fact that we had blagged our way through this. We were outside talking to George and Tom and they had invited us down to their hotel and Blues & Soul said to us that if we were going to hang out with them after their gigs in Hammersmith (they were doing 4 nights there), that any little news stories we could pick up would be great, and that they wanted to have them. My mate wasn’t interested but I thought ok why not, so I did that and then they asked me if I wanted to review some records. I thought blimey, I will have a go. It was great, I really couldn’t believe that they were letting me keep the records. So I started writing for Blues & Soul doing a few record and gig reviews.

One day they phoned me and asked me if I would go and do an interview for them, now I had never done an interview before in my life but I wasn’t going to say no. I said ok and asked who it was with and they said James Brown! Talk about a baptism of fire, I could only understand about ¾ of what he Page 30 - Issue 66

reviews editor and pick up some albums to reviews for them.

So I then started working with the NME and stayed with them for a while. I was still doing stuff for Blues & Soul but Black Music folded about 1983/1984. Whilst I was still working for NME doing their funk and soul stuff it was suggested by a former colleague at Black Music that I speak to the guys at ‘Look In’ (the junior version of the TV times) as they were looking for someone to do music stuff for them and I got the job. Everything was unionised back then and the pay for a freelancer was linked to their huge TV times circulation. That allowed me to develop as a writer, to stop working as a driver in the early mornings and still have loads of time to work for the NME. I left the NME about the same time in 1985 and was wondering what to do next and went to an album launch at a club in Shaftesbury Avenue. I met up with a couple of guys that I used to work with at NME and they were telling me about a new magazine launching called Q. They said that it was going to be something completely different, a glossy rock monthly. It was a magazine for grown-ups and I thought that sounded good, so they suggested that I meet the editor, Mark Ellen.

They had just produced the first issue and upon looking at the magazine I had never seen anything like it, big long features, loads of really good photography and it was printed on glossy paper. I was really impressed in fact, knocked over by it. Mark and Dave Hepworth were the guys who did Smash Hits so I knew they knew what they were doing. They asked me, if I were going to do a piece for them, what would I do? I said I have only just seen it and that I didn’t really know yet, but maybe it would be good to look at things from another angle. I mentioned ‘Five Star’ who were top of the pops and huge at the time and Mark looked at me sideways. I could tell he was thinking I am not putting Five Star in Q and I said “No, not Five Star the group, let’s do an interview with their dad. Their Dad is about our age or maybe a little bit older and he runs them. That is interesting, because he becomes interesting subject and not them” Mark was really impressed at how I looked at it differently, so I went to do an interview with Buster Pearson and that was the start of it. That interview went into issue 2 and after that I contributed to every issue up to issue 80 I think. From Q I worked on the launch of Empire, then I and another guy called Scoffer aka David Bustock launched BIG magazine between us. We developed it and launched it and I was at EMAP virtually full time for years.

So working in what I would regard as institutional publications such as Look In, NME and Q. What was the representation of people of colour?

What you mean apart from me? Well that was it. Claudette, the receptionist at EMAP Metro was black and we occasionally used Dennis Morris who was a photographer. That was it. It could get lonely.. (Lloyd says in jest…)

Let us fast forward a little bit, how did you manage to liaise with Ian Dewhirst when he started his first Jazz Funk Mastercuts series?

You were asking me just now about working in the mainstream.

There was no other black people working there but that didn’t matter because as soon as I got home I would hang out with my friends who I went to school with. That was my life as I’d got a really, really good education in magazines, better than if I had stayed at Blues & Soul or had gone with The Voice or anything like that. I learned the magazine craft from the best people in the country and I made sure they did that. It was all about attention to detail and getting things right. The first few features that I did for ‘Q’, I was astonished at the level of detail I was expected to pay attention to. It really shook me up and when I came across Ian, and I can’t quite remember how that came about, but Ian’s attention to detail reminded me of those guys who I worked with. I was at ‘Just 17’, I think, when I was doing Mastercuts. The theory is get it right and people will be happy to pay a bit extra. Everything had to be precise and then you could put an extra 50p on the cover price. I was impressed with Ian because here was someone, at last, who was taking jazz and jazz funk totally seriously. Up until then it was just palmed off by the record companies as Ian went round to all the record companies with his idea. He told them we are going to do this, we are going to press it up properly, we are going to get the right people to compile it and write the sleeve notes, big heavy sleeves etc. They were saying “No, no, no it’s only disco, so who cares. There is a black guy in the post room and he can knock something out…” But Ian never ever wavered and he ended up going with Beechwood who were a Publishing Company. I remember at Beechwood they totally understood the notion of compilations and allowed Ian to do what he wanted. When Ian explained this notion to me I just couldn’t believe it, here was someone who was putting the care and love and attention to detail into funk and jazz funk. That is what they do in America without even thinking about it but in the UK it was always a poor relation. By that time, and we’re talking now about late 80’s early 90’s people were saying… “Well it’s just disco isn’t it..” It wasn’t and Ian understood the relationship between the people that made that music and the music itself and I can’t big Ian Dewhirst up enough for what he did.

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BLACK M 'S

He said to me that when he started the concept, one of the reasons why he came to you was because he didn’t really feel that he was an aficionado of that music. He did some research and your name came up. Which is why he contacted you and he also said the same thing about Dez Parkes. He didn’t know about Rare Groove but people were talking about it. When did you meet Dez Parkes?

I probably knew him from Ronnie’s. The thing was in Ronnie’s you all kind of knew each other and you would walk down Oxford Street on Wednesday lunchtime and you’d see someone who went to Ronnie’s and say all right mate etc.

But you had no idea what people’s names were and if you saw some of them out of context you wouldn’t even recognise them. The first time I remember having a proper conversation with Dez was about Mastercuts. We must have known who each other were and by that time I was running my own Funk Sound System called ‘Dark Star’. I had a funk show on DBC Radio (Dread Broadcasting Company) that was about 1979, 80 and 81 music so Ian may have found me though that.

E PEOPL TH E

I remember you telling me that you had done some research and you were taken aback that it hadn’t really been done before from a certain perspective so what was the significance of Bass Culture?

It wasn’t me who did that research it was Penguin. Penguin were looking at what sort of music books should they could do, or should do. There was a guy who was their music consultant, he was one of my best mates. We had known each other from the NME days, his name is, Matt Snow. He became editor of Mojo. He’s a really brilliant magazine editor and his best mate was one of Penguin’s senior editors. They were talking over dinner one night about two things that were missing from the popular music book world. They said there had never been a book about Reggae, written by a black man and there had never been a narrative history about Reggae. There had been encyclopaedias and lists of records and that sort of thing but there had never been a narrative history or the story of. They decided that they needed to do it and discussed who they should ask and my name came up. Literally Penguin then phoned me and asked me if I wanted to write a book about Reggae. My first reaction was “No, not really…” but then I thought about it, realised that it was Penguin who was asking and thought you don’t really say no to Penguin! I went to met this guy called John Reilly who is a really lovely bloke, asked them what sort of book about Reggae they wanted and they basically said it was up to me and that they were going to let me write it my way. Penguin are just so brilliant and respectful of their authors. They work on the basis of you being the author, they are the publisher. I spent about two months writing the synopsis because I wanted to get it right. I went to see them and explained that it’s not really a story about music, it’s was the story of post independence of Jamaica, a socio political story hung on the hook of music.

Page 32 - Issue 66

They said that it sounded brilliant, paid me a very good advance and said off you go!

Did you go to Jamaica?

Yes, for the very first time in my life. Jamaica is incredible.

It’s so small and parochial. I had been in Florida when I flew out to Jamaica and I booked myself into a hotel and started going through the phone book in my hotel. Derrick Harriot is in the phone book, Leroy Sibbles and Augustus Pablo are all in the phone book. So I just started phoning these characters up, telling them what I was doing. I was polite and they seemed really glad that someone was taking them seriously. When I met Leroy Sibbles he mentioned other people that I hadn’t met so and offered to take me to meet them, so I was taken to John Holt’s house. They got excited that someone wanted to tell their story properly. I think being a black man helped and it was like I was in this inner circle and it was great.

to read the full Lloyd Bradley interview please subscribe via www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

So, what led to you writing 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital?

First of all, again it wasn’t my idea. I was doing a book on the official story of Studio 1. I know the Dodd and Coxsone family and I had done a couple of books for Rough Guide.

One of the guys who used to own it had left and gone into another publishing company. As I had done stuff for him before he said pretty much anything you want to do I will

CHART

90,000 listeners a month worldwide, interact and decide the top 40 for

THE PEOPLE’S BLACK MUSIC CHART.

BLACK M 'S

IC US

Listen, enjoy and vote at

www.blackmusicchart.com

E PEOPL TH E

Find us on Facebook The Peoples Black Music Chart and on Twitter @blackmusicchart

1I

‘Keep That Same Old Feeling’

11 I

‘Dance On’

2I

‘Nights Over Egypt’

12 I

‘Pain’

3I

‘Caleidoscopico’

13 I

‘Everyday Grind’

4I

‘Guiltiness’

14 I

‘Royalty’

5I

‘Nearness’

15 I

‘Heed The Message’

6I

‘Let Me Be The One’

16 I

‘Carnival Le Grande’

7I

‘Raios Do Sol’

17 I

‘Intro’

8I

‘Freedom Of Dance It’s the Beat’ - Brutha Louie & Brutha

18 I

‘1960 What’

9I

‘The Party After’

19 I

‘The Obsession’

‘Do It Again’

20 I

‘To Tomorrow ’

10 I

Karlitos Way

Will Downing

Sunlight Square

Maimouna Youssef

Nuff Said

Marc Staggers Nigel Lowis Mix

Resolution 88

Basil (Brutha Vega’s Ritual Mix)

Muzart

Lady Wray

Next Evidence Feat. N’Dea Davenport

De La Soul feat. Snoop Dog

Incognito

Sounds Of Blackness Feat. HRSA

Al McKay Allstars

Azymuth

Bugz In The Attic

Amp Fiddler

Gerado Frisina

Da One Away Feat Bembe Segue

IN COLLABORATION WITH CHART POSITIONS

I = New Entry G = Climbing Up H = Going Down thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

SOUL SURVIVORS

get it commissioned for The People’s Black Music Chart, I am very happy to be apart you. I had been doing this of. It is creating a platform that has been neglected. When I Studio 1 story, and they looked at it, Sounds Like London tells a story, Bass Culture hung on to the proposal for told a story. The People’s Black Music Chart creates a chart about 6 months. Then they that people can vote for that allows underground black music announced that no one had heard of Studio 1 so they didn’t think it would work.

Initially what they wanted was a guidebook to different music scenes in London, which I wasn’t remotely interested in doing. Then I thought the only way to do this is to do it with a cultural impact about music coming from somewhere else but settling in London. I realised then, that there wasn’t really a story about it. There was a story regarding Irish music, which I researched all the way and loved it and there was a whole book in that. The only other one was for black music or people from the Commonwealth.

I said to them, that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to document the history of black music in London from the last 100 years, music of the 20th century. They were a bit unsure as to how this would work at first but they had already paid to be brought up to the surface. It operates under that kind me an advance for the other book, which they knew I was not of sound system mentality that has kept black music moving going to give backNEW, so theyHARD moved it TO on toFIND this oneAND and said forward for 100 UNISSUED years. I am reallyTRACKS pleased to be a part of it.

INCLUDES PREVIOUSLY yes. I hadn’t thought about it fully until I actually got into it.

I kicked ideas around with my agent about how to work it. The one thing that we haven’t mentioned is that since your initial 1. some Getpoint, Your Head Outwhen, Theit just Phone 7. Aquarian - Louise At I can’t tell you hit, me there was meeting with GeorgeDream Clinton your relationshipPollock is very tight and I this fantastic it’s all- the it’s all&joined up understand that he is godfather to your son.

(Funkyargument DancethatMix) Billsame, Curtis and itFriends all connects.

I started the big players, people 8. Our Time Is Coming - Soul People with Therealising Fatback Band like Lord Kitchener, Eddie Grant, Dennis Bovell, Dizzy Rascal Yes that is right. and B are(Frankie all essentiallyValentine the same person and it that 2. Jazzie Heaven Remix) - it 9. Open Sesame - Beggar & Co was the city and how it runs with the City.

In other words the We went to see Fred Wesley recently M.O.D.E feat Leroy Burgess 10. Beta - Nu-Era most important is thing is London. Once I had cracked that, and it came Waves to my attention that you I could follow the story. I wouldn’t say it became easy but I recorded on the track ‘Jamaica’ on the 3. When What LoveitHas - do that Sweat didn’t have toYou go toFeel Jamaica to research I could Band album. did that come - Eric 11. Don’t HideHow Your Wings Lenny Fontana feat.

James D Train with my Oyster Card! Researching it back wasn’t that difficult aboutRoberson and what is your memory of that?

Russ Williams Henderson who played the steel pans has since passed away was 90+ when he died. He came here in 1951 and he It12. Whatever was very, very funny, I went to- meet George at the United It Takes Angela Johnson 4. hung Don’t Go (Shane D’sthat Solar Clubaround Mix)since Sound Studios in Detroit where P-Funk recorded all their had around with musicians had been then.-I DJ met Skip someone whose grandfather had been part of stuff.

I were chatting- in the canteen area. This feat.

Shalamar 13. InGeorge The and Open Space Vladimir Cetkar the Southern Syncopated Orchestra who were the first jazz was before I went on the road with them. He asked me if band to comeMe here.Love This was fairly Who recent history and it had I14. Ordinary had ever met Bootsie to which I said, no. He toldRe me he 5. Show (Yam Rework) Day (Scratch Professor never-been written down.

MyCarleen only regretAnderson to that book is that was working downstairs. So we went downstairs to one of the Incognito feat. r Twist) - Oma the first 50 years are compressed into two chapters because studios and George introduced me to Bootsie. He introduced no one is alive to tell the tale, although it’s still close enough me as “Lloyd from London”.

Bootsie asked does if I had one 6.

Round & Round (Old School Mix) to get second hand or second-generation knowledge. I really of those London accents and I said, “Well yes, I did when I Thedoing Pasadenas enjoyed it because it was about London. left London a couple of weeks ago.” He said That’s it, that’s it!” Literally the next thing I knew I had headphones on and You and I are involved in a potential atom bomb in terms of Bootsie was saying “Roll the track, roll the track.” All I can the The People’s Black Music Chart that is turning out to be an hear was Bootsie, in my ear saying, “Say something London” interesting collaboration between us with Anna B of Fair Trade 4 so I said “What do you want me to say….?” So I said some Music and Steve Salvari of Central Line. old nonsense. This continued for a while and then he asked

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Mira Parkes

The Official Soul Survivors Balkan and Worldwide Correspondent.

7inch most weeks I recall. Then there was uncle Roland, who has a huge collection of 7” vinyl, and I was repeatedly pulled from his Blue spot gram where I would be found playing on the floor with his precious collection. I’ve been told by my mum that he never got mad, even though I used to try to play them as he did.

number man aka DJ 279 (Jedi Knight of The Sound Table)

In these times of strange and not so good happenings in the world of music, where many greats have left us, there are still people who spread the true word, with skills and knowledge, people who keep the music real and alive. This is part of the story of DJ 279 aka ‘Numbers’, a true UK Ambassador for Hip-Hop with real skills. Accolades: 4 times MOBO-nominated, ‘Best HipHop Radio DJ’ award from Blues & Soul Magazine and national radio stations like Radio1, KISS FM and Galaxy Radio, etc. 279’s career highlights can be traced back to the early 90′s when the young Hip-Hop aficionado caught the attention of London-based station Choice FM’s Rap Show host, Steve Wren. The success of ‘Flava Of Da Month’ and retro soul night ‘Throwbaak’ led to rapid expansion of 279’s production company. Numberman Productions created and presented a series of shows featuring a variety of US artists performing alongside some of the UK’s finest home-grown talent, resulting in rare exposure within the British Hip-Hop scene.

Let’s go back to the early years of DJ 279 aka ‘Numbers’. Where did you get your musical inspiration from, and who were your musical influences?

Music was always around me, it was just a standard thing. My parents are from St Lucia so soca and reggae music were always on rotation. My Pops used to love Jim Reeves and used to buy a

Page 36 - Issue 66

Correct me if I’m wrong, in your early radio days, in the late 80’s/ early 90’s you were on Dance FM pirate radio the same radio station as my husband Dez Parkes, and also Easy O aka E.Z, where you played house, funk, soul, jazz, boogie etc., before you were known as a Hip-Hop DJ. What’s the difference between pirate and legal radio? How did you become a Hip-Hop DJ? What inspired you?

I had one Hip-Hop show every week on a Saturday, and then I was asked to do a broader show playing everything good, which I did for 6 months. Yes, it’s true that this show meant I played everything, but even at that point I was very much a Hip-Hop DJ. I grew up always buying music, starting with my pocket money and paper round money that I earned by dropping off the papers to houses in the morning before school. I love and played lots of styles of music then, and I still do now. My dad got so mad of my obsession for music he gave me a radio one Christmas, the radio was followed by a portable turntable, so I would stay off the family stereo. I used to listen the radio religiously. I went as far as taking an exercise book from the school cupboard and in it I wrote down every song that I had heard on the radio that I liked.

I pledged to myself that I would buy every one of them when I got older... AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID. Dez Parkes was a great early influence on my fledgling career and a man I have great respect for, he encouraged me to learn more about what came before rap music, i.e the breaks. I’ll never forget the first time he invited me to his home, and I saw an organised record collection that was simply ridiculous. He asked me to bring some Hip-Hop tracks and he listened to each one and without hesitation pulled out the breaks used to make the songs.

I’ll never forget that because he just knew. I also remember him pulling EZ and me to the side and telling us that we could make it to the top if we just stayed focused, so I hope he’s proud of us.

Legal radio is worlds apart as the degree of professionalism and dedication are on completely different plateau. The equipment you have at your disposal is second to none so the pressure to be flawless during live broadcasting is intense, and the commercial

radio aspect adds yet another dimension, but I loved the journey during all of those years.

mild or plain? You also have ‘It’s Tha Bomb’ night with B-Boy and Soul dancers. Are all your nights cosmopolitan?

Which song has had the biggest reaction the 1st time you played it on radio?

I have promoted many club nights over the years and each one of them is aimed at a different audience. ‘Flava Of The Month’ was created for the real Hip-Hop heads back in 1991.

I was a studio assistant for Steve Wren in those days, he used to present Choice FM’s Hip-Hop show before me, that’s how I learnt the professional ropes. I told Steve he needed to start a Hip-Hop night and take his radio show to the club. He agreed but presented me with a few objections, but I told him to leave it to me, so I put my money where my mouth was, because he was not convinced, and I went and made it happen.

Without question it’s ‘Nature Of The Threat; by Ras Kass. The first time I spun that on the radio show the phone lines were on melt down for an hour straight, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Between 1984 and 1987 there was DJ Mike Allen who was considered to be the UK’s first Hip-Hop DJ on Capital radio 95.8 FM. Did you ever check out any of his Friday night, Saturday or Sunday shows?

Of course, Mike Allen is the ‘Original’ when it came to Hip-Hop Radio and everybody who knows the history appreciates that.

Fresh start to the week, Groove Records Chart, UK Fresh 86 and all of that. Respect to that man.

Your show ‘Friday Night Flavas’ ran for 21 years on Choice FM Radio, and your ‘Flava Of The Month’ show was one of the most important club nights. After all that time, they pushed you out because of Tim Westwood. Was it the first time for you to feel the ‘taste’ of white privilege? How deep was the rivalry before and after Tim Westwood had taken your place on Choice FM as the new Hip-Hop DJ? It seems to me there is a lot of ‘white privilege’ in the world of black music industry. Are they trying to say that there isn’t any good black DJ’s that can play black music?

Well, when you join radio land it is inevitable that you will eventually be let go, sacked, fired however you want to term it, that’s just the way it works, as nothing lasts forever. If you aren’t prepared to take all that comes with that moment, I suggest you don’t sign up. I had a great time with everything I did at Choice FM and I’m proud of my contribution to the Hip-Hop Scene in general. I’ve helped a lot of people at the beginnings of their careers and beyond and I’m proud of that too. Re Westwood...

Hip-Hop is built on competition, from B-Boy Battles to DJ Battles and the Battle of the airwaves is no different, so it’s all good to me. The listeners ultimately benefitted and I would like to thank that loyal listenership for tuning in over the years. In regard to losing my show, and ‘white privilege’ all I can say is, the executive at any company makes decisions based on what he feels is best for the company’s overall picture and not my well being, bottom line. I never spoke to anyone at Global officially as to why the decision was made to not renew my contract, therefore I can’t answer with any level of validity as to whether I am a victim of white privilege and I would hate to believe that executives at Global Radio feel that we as black people can’t represent our own music. That part of your question needs to be aimed at the decision makers with Global Radio.

You have successful club nights ‘Throwbaak’ and ‘Flava Of The Month’. When people come to your nights, being as you are the musical chef, what kind of musical soul food can the people taste?

What kind of flavour would you be serving on the night, hot, spicy,

‘Flava Of The Month’ is a meeting ground for everything that is good about Hip-Hop, we had Emcee battles, DJ battles, Live PA’s, Open Mic segments and all the banging tunes. It’s an event that a lot of people have frequented over the years, even Janet Jackson. As a result of my Hip-Hop exploits some people actually think the only type of music I like is rap music, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am a MUSIC MAN, I have always had a love for soul, funk, boogie, rare groove etc, even some house and I used to buy those records well before I started buying Electro and Hip-Hop. ThrowBaak was born out of a desire to play another side of my music collection, so I started a night called ‘ThrowBaak’. It was something I wanted to do for years, so I did it. If you want to know more just visit throwbaak.com there are more than 20 mixes you can download or listen to for free.

‘It’s Tha Bomb’ again is aimed at an audience who love their RNB, Party Hip-Hop, and Dancehall etc; Again I started that brand with Jo from Grassrootz, she actually came up with the name, because I love that music too. So when it comes to me spinning I can do different things musically, and I try to do them well, so my flava will differ from party to party. One thing is for sure I’m still very passionate about what I do as a DJ, I just hope it shows.

I know you are someone who has a large record collection yet you currently use Serato and a laptop why?

Well, I came up playing vinyl and when everybody migrated to CD’s I refused to do that because I had spent so many hours practicing my skills, scratching and cutting up beats and breaks at home, so there was no way I going to succumb to just touching thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

a little CDJ jog wheel. There was however a point where the vinyl of the new songs became difficult to acquire, then I came across Vinyl Scratch, which I saw at Cutmaster Swift’s house. That was the first time I saw software technology that would allow me to continue spinning on turntables and still keep myself up to date with the new releases. Vinyl Scratch II followed shortly afterward which was so much smoother and that’s when I knew this was a game changer. I then did a live broadcast with Jazzy Jeff and he introduced me to Serato during the sound check, he let me loose on it and that was it. I immediately purchased the software and set about digitising my record collection and my laptop is simply a digitised record box, and it no longer weighs 40Kgs. Now I have an extensive arsenal at my disposal whenever I play, so now there’s no reason to say “I don’t have it with me”.

Unfortunately, I feel that too many of the old skool DJ’s frown upon new technology, so whilst I am all for preserving vinyl’s special place, those who don’t move forward will become extinct sadly, but ultimately what ever you use you should make sure you’ve master it. The only problem is peeps can’t get in free carrying the record boxes… (DJ 279 laughs) What would you say are the high and low points of your career so far? What do you think are the differences between UK and American black Hip-Hop culture?

I keep a very even handle on what I do, I gave myself a small window to reflect/evaluate and then I move on to the next hurdle/obstacle. I don’t get carried away with any success, “You’re only as good as your last game” to use a sporting phrase, and I make sure that nothing messes too much with my equilibrium.

The difference between UK and American black Hip-Hop culture is negligible, people who are into Hip-Hop (Not Rap) are the same the world over, that’s the beauty of it, whereas the Rap side of it will be regionalised given the different languages, and styles etc.

How do you feel about Hip-Hop right now in it’s present state, i.e. the Bambaataa and KRS1 controversy and what do you think will happen now with Zulu Nation? It seems that there is an agenda to destroy black Hip-Hop culture.

Hip-Hop is fine, but the rap part of it needs it’s standards redefined, as it’s going backwards in my opinion. Blatant copying has now become the accepted norm. The Bambaataa situation is a real embarrassment, I will never know if he’s guilty as accused, but if what has been said to date is true, then members of the Zulu nation have covered things up for some time now, therefore nobody else outside of Hip-Hop culture can be accused of having an agenda. In my opinion, the Zulu Nation will have to be abolished if this mess isn’t dealt with quickly and decisively. KRS One is a person I have huge respect for, as a political spokesperson, however I feel some of his comments have been highly insensitive at best. I for one will not be leaving Hip-Hop if I have a problem with Afrika Bambaataa. Child molestation is simply unacceptable, but let’s see how it unfolds,

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the witnesses accounts of past events are from very credible people, particularly Poppy and Brother T. What do you think of the new term called ‘urban’ replacing the word ‘black’? Can you, please, explain what is the difference between Rap & Hip-Hop music for the people who always get confused?

I feel the word ‘Urban’ in relation to music was designed so everybody could play... But black music is black music and good music is good music irrespective of the artist’s colour of skin.

Rapping otherwise known as RAP = Rhythm & Poetry which is a part of Hip-Hop. Hip Hop’s basic elements = Break Dancing, Emceeing (rapping), Graffiti, Beat Boxing and Turntablism...

Simply stuff...

What does the future hold for 279, and do you think you will be back on radio in the future?

I’m still having fun spinning so that’s all good, also my own parties have been going really well, so I’m blessed and I will probably go on to create a few more brands. In relation to the radio if something interesting comes along you just never know.

Overall I’m just me! It’s a phrase I use all the time and unlike a lot of entertainers I’m quite happy just being me, minus the DJ 279 part.

Thank you, Number Man! Big up to my greatest supporters, my son and husband Vuk and Dez Parkes. Endless love.

thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

FITZROY SPEAKS TO

GARY HINES OF THE SOUND OF BLACKNESS (Nubian Messenger)

Born into a musical dynasty and being exposed to the various forms of black music, Gary Hines grew up in the same twin city of Minneapolis neighbourhood as the late Prince Rogers Nelson. As the director of the amalgamated spiritual hybrid we know as Sound Of Blackness he has had ‘Many River To Cross’ in maintaining the groups integrity and consistency. Embracing every African Diaspora music genre in SOB’s DNA universally, Gary remains ‘Optimistic’ 45 years directing the old and new school members of his ever popular group of gospel preachers and teachers. Still ‘Going All The Way’ Gary speaks with Soul Survivors.

How was life for you as a youngster growing up in the twin cities area of Minnesota Minneapolis and how did you become involved in music attending Macalaster college?

Well brother Fitzroy, my background and history begins in New York as a native New Yorker. My mother who we just recently lost was a famous jazz singer. That was the beginning of me laying the foundations for my musical routes for Sounds Of Blackness. Around the house my mother had all varieties of african american music and other ethnicities as well. Jazz, blues, spirituals, gospel, R&B, soul and rock, were played. Minneapolis was actually a jazz mecca which prompted my mother to move there for what was supposed to be for a short while but that eventually turned into a year, hence our relocation from New York. You mentioned Macalaster college, that was my alma mater in St Paul that had a very ambitious program of higher learning. It was a wonderful college and a predominantly white based institution. They were very determined to recruit a more diverse culture of students including african americans, latino and native Indians and became successful in doing that. Many

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of the students started organisations amongst themselves and one of those was a 50 voice choir called the ‘Macalaster Black Voices’. This would have been in 1969. When I came to the campus in 1971, they asked me to become the musical director.

I was very proud to do that because they were excellent and back then they were singing about black consciousness, freedom and spirituals songs. The good lord had led me to Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones as jazz musicians who did the music of the black experience, jazz, blues, gospel and spiritual music of the culture.

So we patented ourselves on those two, plus Earth Wind & Fire.

We needed a name that described us aptly, hence Sounds Of Blackness the music from Africa to America.

That for me is such a brilliant introduction. As a young black man who roots come from Africa via Jamaica as that’s where my parents are from. (Gary: “Ah please forgive my interruption but the family from my mother’s side are from Kingston in Jamaica so we may be related my brother.”) We could be! (Gary: “You never know because of the details of our history”.) No that’s very poignant.

Hearing all of this is food for my soul. So, you joined the group

in 1971, you made three albums in the 1970’s, before we discovered you in 1991 on A&M with Jam & Lewis. I’ve listened to some of the tracks on your first album, from 1974 ‘Images of Blackness’ and the second one that was called ‘Images’. I managed to hear ‘Lift Every Voice And Sing’, Ray Charles’s ‘Hit The Road Jack’, the jazz gospel. ‘Oh Yes’ and rendition of Aretha’s Till You Come Back To Me’ and they all sound wonderful. How did you end up recording that first album?

Brother Fitzroy, you’ve really taken me back. We used to perform all of those songs and more in our performances. We performed a song in the native African tongue like ‘Harambee’ which is Swahili for ‘Let’s All Pull Together’ or ‘Odun Tundun’ which is Yuroba for Happy New Year. As students back then we were encouraged to record and we went to a local studio here in called Sound 80 to record the three albums ‘Images Of Blackness’, ‘Images II’ and ‘The Night Before Christmas’.

What’s great about the ‘Image II’ album is the jazz influence covers from your mothers side with Duke Ellington’s ‘Satin Doll’ and Billie Holliday’s ‘God Bless the Child’. Plus I’d love to have heard your versions of The 5 Stairstep’s ‘Oooh Child’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Living For The City’, but I did hear ‘God Can’ which had the R&B elements of The Delfonic’s, The Intruders and The Dramatics groups (Gary: “Yes.”). Is ‘Ease On Down The Road’ the same song from the film The Wiz? (Gary: “Yes, it is our homage to The Wiz and Quincy Jones.”) Because Michael Jackson and Diana Ross did a disco version of that.

I imagine that some had difficulty categorising whether Sounds Of Blackness was a gospel, soul or R&B group. (Gary: “They still do.”)

How challenging was that, to find that equilibrium, as I imagine again in that period of the 1970s that it would have been difficult to get that concept over without facing some kind of adversity?

Excellent question brother Fitzroy, what’s old is new, as what was the difficulty then is still the same for some today. How we dealt with this was to gently correct people when they label us as a gospel or an R&B group. We’d explain that we do the music of the African Diaspora and so it’s not accurate to pigeon hole

us into one genre, when we represent the music of a culture and not just one member of the family. There are several members of this musical family that God has blessed us with throughout our history. We would be doing a disservice to the culture to try and limit to one style of music. We’ve never and never will compromise even from our early 1970’s days as we would not be true to our name Sounds Of Blackness. (Fitzroy “Exactly.”)

Coming from the Twin City what was the presence of Prince Roger Nelson who we sadly lost a few months ago, in the early days, as a youngster, before he got his Warner Brothers deal in 1978. Did you cross paths with him?

I was blessed to know Prince personally for almost 50 years, my brother. It seems surreal to be speaking of him in the past tense. We went to the same junior high school and same high school and even though I’m five years ahead of him, the schools were literally a few blocks apart.

Ryan Junior High School and Minneapolis Central Senior High School both interacted quite a bit with musical and sports programs. Here is something your audience may not know, Prince despite his diminutive physique was an all singing all star basketball player. When I was at Minneapolis Central Senior High and he was still at Ryan Junior High School, we got word about this young guy who was a beast on every instrument, just a virtuoso, even back then. When he formed his band Grand Central with Jessie and Morris, we were blessed many times to perform with them at events in the Twin Cites like the Annual Black Minnesota Pageant and the North Side Festival.

In the 1970’s Prince’s Grand Central was always the closing act and frequently Sound Of Blackness would open. We’d see him backstage, he never left his community, always interacting and reaching back and including his community. When he was asked to do the soundtrack for ‘Batman’ with Jack Nicholson the first people he called was Sounds Of Blackness. He brought us out to Paisley Park for what was supposed to be a two-hour session that went on typically all night. There were many other projects and events that we were involved in right up until the time close his passing. So I was fortunate to have a professional and personal relationship with Prince.

Were you on the ‘Love Sexy’ album?

We were not on the album but we were on the open leg of the tour here at The Metropolitan Arena and that was amazing.

Bringing things up to 1991, although I mentioned this earlier, it’s a fact that many record companies asked you to streamline the name Sounds Of Blackness to Sounds Of Music for example. At that point how many record companies made that stipulation and gave you that ultimatum?

There were two or three that I remember specifically and I don’t want to embarrass them by saying their names. I don’t think it was with any malice and as you know most companies want to define you in one particular style for ease of operation, for thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

marketing imaging and promotion.

We understood that, but they had to understand that is not who we are.

The great Paul Roberson said “Every true artist has a responsibility to their people” and Sound Of Blackness took that quote seriously and we would not compromise ourselves. I must point out our relationship with Jam & Lewis goes back to the early 1970’s before they were with The Time Band, when they were known as Flyte Tyme in the 1970’s. Again we did performances with them then and they knew our repertoire back then, so Jam & Lewis knew exactly what they were doing when they signed us. When they did sign us they said don’t change as we want to present you to the world as you are. (Fitzroy: “Excellent.”)

My introduction to you was back in 1991 when I used to be a regular guest DJ at Bobby & Steve’s Zoo’s Club at Zoo, Soho Theatre, Falconberry Court, Soho, London W.1. What was astonishing was that the music genre was jazz, funk, disco boogie and US Garage predominately, the only record that defied that ethos was Sounds Of Blackness ‘Optimistic’. As a contemporary, gospel R&B production it was the first time I’d seen these people dance like they were in church with their hands up, being so euphoric. Later when I bought the album and saw the front cover my thoughts were these people are not joking, they are as serious as a heart attack. (Gary: “Wow” and Gary really laughs). The album ‘The Evolution of Gospel’ released ‘The Pressure’ and ‘Testify’ with club mixes as singles but I also really liked the jazz influenced ‘Harambee’. How was that journey of making that album with that title ‘The Evolution Of Gospel’ and the fantastic cover and what was the impact to the mass world out side of the Twin Cities?

name of our concert show as was ‘Evolution Of The Gospel’. So Jam & Lewis called me in and suggested we used those titles as the concept.

I think it’s the messages in the album that are un-compromised and many would struggle to not to buckle under pressure and make it less impactful. But we have a saying it ‘it does what it says on the tin’ hence ‘Sounds Of Blackness’, what do you expect? I like the accapella and howling wind production of ‘Strange Fruit’ and my friend Joanne Wilson whom I’m godfather to Solaire, her son absolutely loves ‘Black Butterfly’ Now you mentioning that brother Fitzroy, reminds me of Jellybean from The Time Band who was so adamant and insistent to Jam & Lewis to make ‘Black Butterfly’ our first single. I saw him even the other day and it’s something he always says still and I’m telling that story for the first time.

I think in the early 1990’s for those of us from the Diaspora and anyone with an open heart, when you listen to those first two albums, it gave us hope. There was not an abundance of positive and conscious music at the time and although there were elements of conscious rap before it went gangster, what we were hearing was up lifting. I also love the frankness of ‘You’ve Taken My Blues And Gone’ it speaks of a truth about what happened with black music and how it was tainted all in the name of Christianity. If anyone wanted to argue about anything I’d suggest they listen to that record. (Gary laughs) What’s interesting on a similar tip was Jadakiss who was caught up in that gangster rap period, he did a track called ‘Keep Your Head Up’ replaying SOB’s ‘Optimistic’ with Ann Nesby singing the vocals and it was a very positive track. And back then I wanted to play more things like that, so thank you for the first two albums.

To read the full Gary Hines interview please subscribe via www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

The impact was phenomenal, with the release of the first single ‘Optimistic’ and it really catapulted Sounds Of Blackness artistically and internationally in a big way. The UK is internationally The Sounds Of Blackness’s biggest market until this day and we want to thank you all for that.

For me, the next album ‘Africa To America The Sound Of The Drum’, I loved more than the brilliant first album. On the previous album tunes like ‘Testify’ and ‘The Pressure’ were more acoustic and had remixes that took them to the club level. But you kind of improved on that with the second album with ‘I’m Going All The Way’ that was massive over here and ‘Everything Gonna Be Ok’ did well too.

I liked the Al Green and Willie Mitchell influence on Jimmy Wright vocalising ‘The Lord Will Make A Way’ (Gary: “Absolutely with Al Green.”) and ‘The Bigger they Are The Harder They Fall’. I’ve had this conversation with you before regarding my favourite cut ‘The Drum’ because you definitely raised the bar with the consciousness and production. What was your approach doing the second album?

Well I was blessed to be hired as a staff producer at Flyte Tyme with Jam and Lewis and practically lived with them for ten years in the studio. Jam and Lewis were always in touch with what Sounds Of Blackness were doing remember and Africa To America was the

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How did it affect the dynamics when Ann Nesby left the group?

Ann was groomed from day one by Jam & Lewis to have a solo career. So by the time we got to around 1996 and she went solo we were ready for that. We were blessed to this day to have talented soloist who added their sounds to the group. We were prepared so it was no surprise at all and we still have a great relationship with Ann today.

I’ve DJ’d for The Sounds of Blackness twice at the Jazz Cafe and seen you a few times at The Southport Weekender. People are spiritually uplifted to say the least and I’ve heard at least one person remark that watching SOB made them cry as it was so emotional. I remember once at Southport in the main houseroom it was packed right to the back where I was standing. What is it like when you come to the UK and see the diversity of the crowd (Gary: “Yes.”) and see the utopia feeling that’s impacted upon the crowd, and then get asked to come back and do it again with the pressure of can they equal that? (Gary laughs). This happens around the world I’m guessing so how do you digest that?

My brother, we as Sounds Of Blackness speak about this all the time and we are overwhelmed and humbled at the same time.

It really justifies and encourages Sounds Of Blackness albeit Southport, Jazz Cafe or Hammersmith Apollo it’s beautiful to see this rainbow of people. When we see the tears in the eyes of people from different shades black, yellow, white, brown Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Hindu or atheist, we see we’re bringing black music to people of all backgrounds, and embracing them after the show with them having been uplifted. Our mission is accomplished especially when we go to counties where English isn’t spoken or is a second or third language and this like Stevie Wonder says is where music is the universal language.

How often have you been to Africa?

That is the perfect segway speaking about Stevie Wonder, as brother Fitzroy, we have been blessed after singing about the Motherland Africa once and it was Stevie Wonder who brought us there. There is a wonderful festival in Ghana West Africa in the Cape Coast called Panafest which lasts about three days. I am speaking right now with some promoters in South Africa about performing in the other African continents.

this day. At the time Prince released a song specifying what happened in Baltimore called ‘Baltimore’ and despite people playing it down, Prince was always about the blackness of his people’s consciousness. Prince called me sometimes at three in the morning wanting Sounds Of Blackness to impress upon the youth how important it was to know who we are. That was a genesis for ‘Royalty’ and a local radio station KMLJ brought together Sound Of Blackness and The High School For Recording Arts as we were speaking about collaborating doing a song, so this is all the recipe of recording Royalty. We’ve just released a ‘reggeaton’ version and a video of the song available.

I love the consistency of The Sounds of Blackness in your messages as years ago you did an album called ‘Kings And Queens’, so thank you for ‘Keep On Keeping On’ as Curtis would say.

Thanks for the support and all the conscious people who support us because like the OJay’s there is a ‘Message In Our Music’.

Who is responsible for the artwork of ‘Royalty’?

Glad you asked that because The High School For Recording Arts updated the logo that we always use of The African continent.

We showed it to the students and the staff and they interpreted it with the gold and black image for the logo. That concept goes back to Jam & Lewis and Earth Wind & Fire who always had a continuation with their theme on the album sleeves.

I actually want to use your logo as your front cover so who do I get permission to use that?

Brother you have our permission and bless you brother and I’ll send you the artwork.

I’m going to move things up to date with your new single ‘Royalty’ one that you’ve dedicated to the late Prince who supported your work. The song is about up lifting of people of the Diaspora. We know what’s happening worldwide but more so what’s happening in America. We have our version over here, not on the scale of the USA as the gun laws are very different and with less highlighted prominence. I’ve entered ‘Royalty’ into the People’s Black Music Chart as it fits in with the Sounds Of Blackness ethos of embracing all aspects of black music. There is a disparage in the understanding between the black and white communities which is evident when you see some of the social media comments from those who clearly think on an extreme level, justifying for some of the brutality. I sometimes ask myself are we not watching the same video? (Gary: “Right I hear you.”) How is the song being embraced with its timing being paramount right now?

The urgency and necessities of Royalty have a few foundations.

About a year ago Sounds Of Blackness released a song called ‘Black Lives Matter, No Justice No Peace’ and that was in response for what has been going on for generations with the disproportionate incidences and interactions with the police to

Thank you, lastly tell us more about your inspirational mother Doris Hines.

She didn’t do a lot of recordings but was known for her live recordings round the world like Japan, Australia and Canada but she didn’t make it to The UK. She travelled all around to other continents and The USA. She was known as the entertainer’s entertainer and people came to see her like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Della Resse, Maya Angelo and Nat King Cole. In fact Nat King Cole told Ella Fitzgerald do not miss Doris Hines and they both came to the show and I have the photo to prove it.

Thanks Gary for your time.

Thank you my brother Fitzroy.

thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

FITZROY SPEAKS TO

LEON HERBERT (Lord of the Dance & Thespian Actor & Filmmaker)

I walked into this place and I can only describe it as like being in Prince’s black and white movie ‘Under The Cherry Moon’. This was an elite, vogue, model, movie star, and renaissance ambience. I was thinking with my mouth wide open ‘What the fuck is this?”

Tell us about your earliest memories of growing up and learning to dance and where your roots outside of the UK are from Leon.

My mum is from Guyana. The first place I started going to was a club in Richmond Road near Stoke Newington that was off Kingsland Road in Hackney. It was full of 14-16 year old teenagers. At the time I was growing up I didn’t really get to hear a lot of soul music, it was more blue beat and rock steady. When I was 11, there was a guy living above me who we called ‘Junior’. His real name was Carlton Bentic. He had one leg shorter than the other, but he could dance, he really could move. It wasn’t so much from his feet, he just used to groove with a certain style and grace. He still makes people laugh and smile to this day in the same tradition. He was the one who started to show me moves, how to shuffle and eventually he started taking me out to a few parties.

How did you get away with that with your parents?

I would wait until my mum went to sleep, then I would sneak out,

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As a first generation black child from Guyanese parentage growing up on the fringes of north and east London, a young Leon Herbert developed an everlasting itch he had to scratch when it came to dancing. Leon’s transcending journey from the local reggae scene to a trendy Chelsea clubs and then into the affluent and creative west end club culture, initiated him into becoming one of the fashion and dance figureheads of the 1970’s. This cross pollination of dipping toes into both the black and white culture circles, led to Leon modelling around the world and eventually becoming one of the UK’s leading and established black actors who can still shake a leg, even in his early 60’s. It’s an interesting story of an evolving first generation black teenage soul survivor.

then I would get whooped when I got back. I didn’t care as it was all fun to me. I came from a religious 7th Day Adventist background so my mother was always going to church, so me trying to get out was a big deal. Junior’s parents were having parties every weekend. I remember in particular, the song ‘Red Red Wine’ being played over and over again, it was a big hit at the time. Junior would show me how Jamaicans moved to it and this led to me getting into dancing.

I hung out at college with a guy called Tesley Francis, who was the same age as me. We used to play table tennis and stuff at Tesley’s brother’s college. To be honest I can’t remember any other 12 year olds who were out on the scene other than us. In one way having a low voice as a young kid, I used to get the piss taken out of me at school with people imitating my gruff sounding voice. However, that became the reason why we got into places because people assumed that we were older. Tesley’s brother spoke very well. We adapted to speaking in the ‘Queen’s English’ dialect as well as being able to speak cockney, and Jamaican. The ‘Queen’s English’ also got us attention from the girls. This changed my speech pattern.

Back then, music and fashion were synonymous. The way someone

walked, wore their clothes and how that accentuated their moves when they danced, was all part of the style. These memories were about dancing and looking as sharp as a knife. At Richmond Road, there was a group of older guys who liked me, and they could dance, look sharp and get all the girls. They wore tonic suits and Corey Van Brogues, which would cost £500 today. They had a kind of Jamaican rude boy style, sometimes wearing loafers and in the winter you’d see them in Crombie overcoats.

So how did you make your mark at Richmond Road?

Frequenting Richmond Road regularly, I became very good at shuffling and taking people out on the dance floor. A white hanky would be thrown on to the dance floor that had to be picked up with as much style and finesse as possible. Due to this, some people would want to fight me but the older boys would protect me like I was their little mascot in their corner. All the girls would watch me dance and the attention I got gave me status. An example of how the envy could get ugly was when Tesley, who was also a good dancer and a musician, and I, went to a place in Wapping with some friends. They put on some James Brown records so we started dancing and this got us some attention from the girls. Some of the local guys clearly didn’t like what they saw and I heard one of my crew shout, “Run!”. We literally had to escape and run to the train station nearby. It was like a scene out of the film ‘The Warriors’. We just made it on to a waiting train and the doors shut. Unfortunately one of our friends didn’t make it and got beaten up really badly which was featured in the newspapers.

Where else did you go?

The ‘A Train’ in Mile End was a club that Tesley (aka Francis John Junior) and I used to go to. I used to rinse out all the dancers as none of them could take me on. The only soul we would hear was Motown sounding ones like The Four Tops ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Love’ and tunes like Freda Payne’s ‘Band Of Gold’. Generally the dancing was more of a sway that white folks would do. You’d hear lyrics ‘Every night I go to sleep and have wet dreams, lie down gyal let me push it up, push it up’ or U Roy’s ‘Ten Commandments’. Then you would hear some pop stuff with T Rex and David Bowie. Mind you when Prince Buster’s ‘One Step Beyond’ and ‘Al Capone’ came on, the whole place was shuffling and you would see skinheads doing the moon stomp style. It was quite exhilarating. The shuffling was my bag. We were then coming out of the rude boy fashion era into the flared trousers era.

What years are we talking about here?

I’d say around early 1970’s to 1972. Teddy Boys were out of fashion, Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh and the Rastaman influences are coming in. The tonic suit boys were growing dreadlocks and their fashion changed but the music is still super cool. I had a friend called Nyron whose older brother took me to my first encounter with funk.

He was a good-looking 6’2” guy who looked a bit like Ron O’Neal from Superfly with his long hair. He was half Guyanese and half Indian. His hair was naturally straighter and oh my gosh, he could dress! He took me to Bluesville in Manor House, which was the only club that played funk music that I had never heard of in my life,

and the dancing was really different. I was hearing The Temptations ‘Psychedelic Shack’ and ‘Ball Of Confusion’ and one of the tracks I remember was James Brown’s ‘Sex Machine’. My shuffling then took a different turn with new moves and then I could really move, dancing to both reggae and soul. I can still remember and do those moves to this day. Bluesville was a difficult club to get into. Word got around about its eliteness, and that often left people curious about the whole fashion and dance culture, that they felt they were not part of. There was a guy who used to go there called Desmond Barkley who was second best, dancing wise, to Nyron’s brother, but Desmond could dress and move and get all the women. In general everyone enjoyed watching the dancing but the fact was that in particular it was the dancing that got you all the women. Woman get turned on watching the batty (bum) move, as they visualise that sexually, just as men do, watching women dance. So that was my real initiation to funk. I learned everything from Desmond by watching him and everything else I picked up from others, I was off and ready to go.

So, having done the local circuit, when did you move on to the west end in London?

When I was about 14 I had a fight in Richmond Road and after punching a guy he pulled a knife on me. I somehow overcame him but he stabbed me in the bone on the back of my neck. A 20 strong gang chased me home for 3 miles but they stopped after 2 miles, as I was quick on my feet. I never forgot that. Word went round ‘Stokey’ (Stoke Newington) that the guy I punched was threatening to kill me so I never went back to Richmond Road. I didn’t come from the neighbouring areas of ‘Stokey’ such as Holloway or Finsbury Park, because I lived around City Road near Old Street. This providentially led me into the west end via an older good-looking Greek friend of mine called Steve. Steve looked like a well-dressed ‘Department S’s’ Jason King character, aka actor Peter Wyngarde. He was really into his James Brown and funk, he played the saxophone and was always playing the sax riffs on James Brown tunes. Although I was too young he managed to get me in to ‘Trafalgar’s’ in the Kings Road Chelsea. By this time I was 14-15 years old with a nickname of ‘Baby face’ but my deep voice confused the bouncers and I got in. I was introduced to Steve’s crowd who were older, aged 18-19 and once they played a James Brown tune I started to throw it down on the dance floor. The whole entire place was then asking who is this little guy and from then onwards I had no problems from the bouncers and the owners of the venue because they liked me.

What’s was the fashion and ambience like with this new crowd?

An older guy from Steve’s crew used to drive a 1970’s ‘pimp my ride’ car and he had a silver tongue with the ladies. These new older mates of mine dressed in the fashionable ‘Village Gate’ style. Village Gate was a shop owned by Woodhouse Menswear’s, Philip Start’s father. I became the dancer who the women used to crowd around but being so young, I was out of my depth and really shy. These girls were from Kings Road and were attending the local college, but they gravitated towards me. The older guys would take their pick of the women and I became their kind of ‘babe magnet boy mascot’. They took me to nurse’s parties even though I was as shy as hell, but the driver would take me home to my house in his car. My mate Steve thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk

met some girl and drifted away from the scene but I remained with the older crew at the age of 16.

So at what point did you start working with Whilie in Tottenham Court Road’s Centre point shopping arcade?

I got a job in a shoe shop called Barter International in Oxford Circus and met Whilie there. He has since passed away but Whilie was also a very well Whilie dressed man, wearing suede clothing and polo necks. (Fitzroy: “You worked in his shop?”) Yeah and then I was mixing with everyone from Oxford Street and we’d meet regularly at Oxford Circus station and arrange where to go to at weekends. Whilie took me to Ronnie Scotts that was on every Thursday. It was hard to get in because they would randomly pick out people to come in. I didn’t get in the first time but Whilie got me in the following week. When I got in I saw Desmond Barkley from Bluesville club who was tearing Ronnie Scotts up with his dancing. I could do what he was doing but he had the hold on the club.

Eventually we would dance together as people noticed that I could move. Desmond was an icon, like a pop star, and he had a crew in the corner that would surround him.

One day I met a girl called Margo in Ronnie’s, whose friend Mark White, was a tall, good looking, exquisitely dressed, gay, white guy, who looked a bit like James Dean, but boy he could dance at Ronnie Scotts. I seemed to be the only one that noticed the way Mark moved, at first I didn’t know he was gay I was just memorised by his grace. I discovered that Mark was a designer for Irvine Sellars and I was suddenly surrounded by this very creative art and fashion conscious crowd. Mark fancied me but I put him straight and told him “No, thank you I like ‘poom poom’ (women) far too much” (Leon laughs). Besides that I was fucking his female friend Margo, however Mark and his friends realised that I also attracted men with my dancing and took me places with them, the first being Sombreros in Kensington Hight Street. I walked into this place and I can only describe it as like being in Prince’s black and white movie ‘Under The Cherry Moon’. This was an elite, vogue, model, movie star, and renaissance ambience. I was thinking with my mouth wide open ‘What the fuck is this?” It reminded me of when I first went into Bluesville. There were black and white guys, beautiful models and fantastic music that I’d never heard before in my life. I remember hearing Barry White’s ‘Your The First, My Last My Everything’, ‘The Bottle’ by Gil Scott Heron, and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Boogie On Reggae Woman’. I looked to the dance floor, mesmerized, watching their moves and I was literally paralyzed. I was just thinking, I’ve got to learn these moves, as I’d never seen anything like it. Remember this is 1974 I am just 18, having left school with no education, no GSE’s nothing. I’m a dyslectic and draw pictures all the time in my mind, but all I can do is dance. I loved their fashion, the way they danced and looked in Sombreros, and although they were gay, it made no difference to me. Mark started to take me places like art galleries and I was moving into completely different circles. I was

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also meeting other people on the camp scene that were not gay.

The girls were so beautiful, I didn’t have to do anything, they just gravitated towards me. I’m not sure if it was my looks or what, but I was getting rushed by men and women. I was full of vigor, basically fucking all the most beautiful women, not the men, not to say I didn’t try it, but I learned very early on that I was into women.

How did it work for you being on two scenes at the same time?

I met a gay French DJ called Claude Belamue who was the DJ at Sombreros and Monkberry’s. Monkberry’s wasn’t anything special at the time, just a hang out place for movie stars to chill, but Claude had me around him, because I attracted men, so I became useful to him doing his thing. I was on two scenes, and dancing was my passion, so after an absence I returned back to Ronnie Scotts in Soho. ‘The Bump’ was a new craze and I saw Desmond Barkley doing the bump with some girl. I was doing an alternative version with another girl and to the shock of everyone at Ronnie’s, I wiped Desmond off the floor, because it was completely different. His was a flat foot version and mine was executed on my toes. He wanted to learn my version so I showed him and eventually we became best friends. But I was the dance king of Ronnie Scotts from that night onwards. I had a crew around me protecting me including Desmond himself. Around that time, I met a DJ called Ronnie, a straight guy who could dress well, and I wanted to know where he got his clothes from.

Around those times he used to get them from places like Sterling Cooper. I couldn’t afford expensive clothes, even with a discount, as I was only earning £10 a week. One morning Ronnie took me shopping at 6am in the morning to Portobello Market. He lent me a couple of pounds to add to the pound I had. I bought three suits and two pairs of shoes from a vintage shop and took them home for my mum to alter. I became the vintage clothes king because that’s all I could afford. All my other friends were paying big money at Joseph, Sterling Cooper and Village Gate shops. I was initially a complete laughing stock when I used to go back to the black scene as my friends would ridicule my clothes. I kept everything separate, so my friends didn’t know I went to places like Sombreros. I was king of Ronnie Scotts and I was learning different moves from different people as a young kid in the gay scene. I was also around Mark the designer and Claude the DJ at two of the best clubs in London so there was an elite aspect to my surroundings.

So when you went back to Ronnie Scotts who were some of the characters?

Ronnie’s was a serious dance club with the remit of taking people on.

Everyone’s into funk. I can say this today with absolute confidence not arrogance, what I brought to Ronnie’s changed the black funk scene and it was something unique and different. I came in and started wiggling things up, people thought I was a batty (gay) man but I put my own twist on things. There was a Spanish DJ called Felix that used to DJ at Club 7 in Paris. He played new orchestrated string music that was considered gay, but it was really quality new music with a Philly feel. Felix introduced me to another set of music

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that I heard Claude play only at home which was jazz funk. I had heard earlier forms of funk and jazz from Tesley’s brother, who introduced me to Kool & The Gang and Weather Report. I’m talking War, ‘Rock Creek Park’ ‘Wind Parade’ by Donald Byrd and Johnny Hammond as example of what Felix was playing when he took me to Monkberry’s’. For me this is where the dancing DJ thing first starts. It was bizarre to see a DJ get on the dance floor. Felix started to dance to ‘Wind Parade’ in his cowboy boots and he looked like he was dancing on air. I had to learn that groove so I stuck to him like glue. (Fitzroy: “So this must be 1974-1975?”) At the same time I was hitting Ronnie Scotts and I saw this guy dancing and I saw him and his friend doing my moves. They were almost trying to edge towards me and take me on, but, as I said before, there were too many people around me to protect me from that happening. Desmond Barkley kind of danced in between me and them to prevent that from happening. Those guys were Trevor Shakes and Dez Parkes.

Then I started to hear word on the grapevine that there were quite a few guys looking to take me on. For me, to be really honest I didn’t realise this was happening. I was very shy and didn’t have an ego, even though I’m saying today about taking those guys out, I just loved to dance and I had stacks of moves and loved my music. I used to trail places that played good music and used to travel with eight very beautiful black girls who took me everywhere. One night we went to Union Tavern in Oval where they played Philly sound. We were sitting down and I was watching this guy dance. It felt like I was watching myself, it was as if he had studied every nuance I had.

I didn’t even dance as I was so mesmerised watching him. I went up to him and started talking to him and this person was Trevor Shakes.

Was he on his own?

No, he was with Greg Craig, and Greg used to dance like a ballet friend of mine James. (Fitzroy: ”Oh you’re talking about James Lamey?) “Yeah how do you know about James?” (Fitzroy: “I know people who know people man.”) James was my best friend and he could move and dress too. We went to church together. Anyway I was going out with a girl in Shepherds Bush and bumped into Trevor Shakes. We got talking for about four hours. It turned out we were both dating the same girl, she was the first black, page three model, Gillian De Terville. (Fitzroy: “Yes, I remember her.”) That cemented our relationship and we started hanging out together. When I went to Crackers, I can honestly say there was not one person that could come near to Trevor and I dancing because they were all doing my moves. Those moves became ‘our’ moves, which many people had seen at Ronnie Scotts. I’d stand and watch Trevor literally tear up the dance floor from moves I’d trained him in. Some of the boys used to try and get me to dance, like Fitzroy. (Fitzroy: “You are talking about Fitzroy Gaines?”) Yeah, Fitzroy could fucking move, even though he had my moves. He was also into jazz and I used to watch people like him in admiration. I am competitive, but not out to out dance anybody, it’s more about pushing someone else to give a good performance. I also do that with my acting.

Gillian De Terville & Leon Page 48 - Issue 66

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Philly sound to Sombrero and this stuff would rock a floor all night without any funk. The reason why it appealed was that you could become really creative. I actually listened and danced to the beat inside the music regardless of it’s changes. I went for an audition No, only Trevor. I liked Fitzroy Gaines for a modeling gig whilst I was in Paris and I got the job. I went and Paul Anderson but they were both to Berlin, and made a heap of money and then went on to Milan doing my moves. Many of them did it for the rest of the holiday. When I came back to London, Christine well, but I had ten more moves that I Pearce (the owner of the modeling agency) tried to get hold of me could have dropped but I didn’t want to and was unable to, but a year later I took Trevor over there with me and we auditioned for Christine. We ended up working for her for 10 show off, if that makes any sense.

Leon & years. We were Christine’s main guys for her modeling agency and Trevor Shakes The other people that I have spoken to, the whole concept of dancing took on a completely different level. like Leee John of Imagination, Kenny Wellington of Beggar & Co and All our moves were different, we were travelling around the world Dez Parkes, they all mention others like Donald Peters, Foxy, Desmond from Paris, Milan and Japan getting standing ovations. Imagine Barkley, and Lincoln Reiss. All of these guys could move and off course travelling around the world with your best friend terrorising women and getting paid loads of money. Trevor and I can dance similarly so Travis Edwards, we were able to create different moves for the variety of shows we I met Travis at a party and we admired each other primarily because performed at. We were able to create different moves like the ‘slowof each others dress sense. I got to know him and he could dance. motion’ which has an interesting story. We were in our hotel and Out of all the people, Travis had his own style, he could do flips into Trevor had just bought a new tune called ‘Rotation’ by Herp Albert splits and sometimes I didn’t want to get up and dance. That was a that we were listening to. I started doing everything in slow motion in style that everyone wanted to copy but Travis was someone I’d met our room which initiated Trevor to follow suit and we continued this going down on the funk scene along time ago. the stairs and going to the shops still in Dez Parkes who used to go around with Michael Taylor and Michael slow motion. We bought something in Wood (Whilie’s nephew) said of you when I asked him, what it was the shop in slow motion which caused about you that stood out, he said you had good arms and leg movement. the shop assistant to also respond in Dez came off the scene around 1976 because he became a father with slow motion and then we snapped out of it, it was crazy. The women in the hotel his eldest child Deon. thought she was having a heart attack Trevor Shakes Yeah, Trevor told me about his own childhood growing up in East London and wanted to beat us up because what & Leon like a cockney white boy who had no culture. Trevor confirmed that Dez she saw freaked her out. When we came Parkes showed and taught him things that helped bring him cultural back to London Trevor was now also DJ-ing at Monkberry’s with Claude and we were all hanging out together. Claude was teaching awareness about himself and into the scene.

Trevor about music. We were also coming back with dance moves The point I want to make, in my own way without sounding from abroad. Each of us had people following us like Norman and arrogant, is that the whole funky thing wasn’t around until I took Bassey Walker and little John Reilly. We brought a few of the boys it from the gay clubs and brought it to the Crackers style. If I didn’t in slowly to do modeling with us and we’d do these new moves at bring it, they wouldn’t have had it. That’s the real truth and I’m Monkberry’s. Then these moves would spread to those who wanted to learn it. Back then we were ghetto superstars and trying to explain my journey. Going back to Felix and I cannot put into perspective how that worked. I can the jazz moves that Dez mentioned regarding my only describe it this way, when I won an award for my footwork, I could really move my feet shuffling. The film called ‘Emotional Backgammon’ the man who moves I learned from Felix were his footwork. One day presented it to me was John Akomfrah. He said to the Trevor was looking for me and he tracked me down Trevor, Travis 1000 people “You know Leon for this film making, but I at Claude’s house. I wondered how he found me. From & Leon know him differently. In the 1970’s he was the number that day we were together for 20 years day in day out. It was almost like Trevor became my boy, as in my protégée one dancer around town, that’s how I remember him.” Everywhere I because, with me having taught him everything, I didn’t have to went, everyone knew me and this is pre Facebook and social media, dance anymore, so people had to deal with Trevor. In the end he and whatever moves we made up were replicated everywhere from learnt the moves down to a tee, and I encouraged him discover that day. his own dancing identity to become the top man at Ronnie Scotts and I took a step back. I was making changes and went on holiday When was this modeling adventure for you and Trevor Shakes? with Mike Wood, as Mike’s lady, Marcia, was an amazing dancer in Paris. We went out partying and I began to realise that it was Paris It was in the early 1980’s when we started modeling and whilst in where all the music we were into had came from. It was considered Paris doing a show we went to a club called The Bandush. It was sophisticated music which the celebrities and the rich had an innate like stepping into the 1960’s as everyone was into vintage clothes. ear for. We were so used to dancing to the down and dirty stuff but We saw people dancing to new wave music. One of the moves was theirs was cooler. Claude used to bring this stuff back from Paris, the to a track called ‘Planet Clair’ by The B52’s sounding very 1960’s.

When you went to Ronnie’s and Crackers wasn’t there anyone else who caught your eye other than Trevor Shakes?

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Page 50 - Issue 66

Trevor and I just watched and watched. Being dyslectic, something I was really good at was replicating what I saw. Where that ability comes from I cannot tell you. I said to Trevor that he had to buy that tune. We learned those moves to a tee, bought some tight 50’s ski pants and tops and pointed boots and brought them back to London.

Trevor and I wore our outfits to Monkberry’s. At the height of the night Trevor dropped the B52 tune and everyone is flabbergasted because it was not a soul or boogie one, and looked at him like he was mad. He came out the DJ box, we danced to the tune and everyone went insane. He played it again and everyone was trying to emulate the dance. Two weeks later everyone was in ski pants and pointed boots that then went viral on Oxford Street. I’ll never forget that because we made a change.

As you are aware there is a lot of activity on the social media forums of people talking about the jazz funk and soul scene from the 1970’s, with different interpretations. There was recently a forum orchestrated

by Roual Galloway and Terry Farley that mentioned people like Jabba, Muhammad, Tommy Mac and Clive Clarke. But there was also a white guy called Gary Haisman and this is what he said…

“My inspiration for dancing came from Jabba and Leon Herbert, I did not want to dance like Tommy Mac, I wanted to dance like the best black guys. My fave record I first heard Mark Roman play was MFSB’s ‘Sexy,’ a real Crackers classic. I can remember watching Trevor Shakes and Leon doing this dance to it with amazing arm movements. I thought, at the time, I could never dance as well as those guys. To be honest, no one could.”

Have you heard that before?

No, I haven’t and it’s very touching and feel quite tearful. I can talk about it now in an egotistical way but I didn’t know that was happening at the time and that we were having such an impact on people. Trevor said that no one was doing what we were because we were making it up for Christine Pearce who was so creative. I was in pure admiration of her wishing I could be that creative. I’ve spoken with Trevor about this and all the foolishness that certain people speak of about who created things. We brought dancing with finese to London as there was no one else doing that, and everybody else wants to write about it and claim it as theirs. We hardly speak, and many people write about us but speaking on behalf of both of us, all of this came about because of us working with a very creative woman and bringing things back to London. Because of her high standards we had to come up with ideas by observing what was around us. We did a boxing and skiing slow motion dance in a show and this produced one of the many standing ovations Trevor and I experienced.

were more avant-garde, I worked on many college fashion shows.

I was also modeling. I was earning a lot of money but I’d always wanted to be an actor and was advised to go to acting classes. Trevor and I were at Monkberry’s one night and Alton Camala who had a theatre company called Temba, was in attendance. The Herp Albert track ‘Rotation’ was playing and Trevor and I, at the back of the club instinctively started running in a slow motion dance. We did this to the whole tune like it was a race from ‘Chariots Of Fire’. We were caught in the moment and kind of oblivious that the whole club was watching us. As Trevor got to the end, he pushed up his chest like he was breaking through the finishing line tape in slow motion. The whole club cheers “Yeeeessss” like he’d won the Olympics and as we snapped out of the zone, slightly embarrassed. We were greeted

by Alton Camala who was totally amazed. He said when we danced people could feel our hearts in the dancing and we certainly had that energy. He wrote a play about us and that’s how I got my equity card. In the late 1980’s landed a job on Death Wish 3 with Charles Bronson and went up for the film Scandal and got the part getting noticed heavily.

Right, so is this where you next work with Leslie Grantham and Don Henderson on the BBC TV series The Paradise Club in 1989?

Yeah and then I did Aliens with Sigourney Weaver headed off to America living in LA for a year. I came back because of my children and then my career dipped.

Wasn›t this because you refused to play negative typecast black roles ?

Yes and I turned down lots of parts and I was number three actor in the country.

How much did you interact with Danny John Jules?

He’s my buddy and I knew him from back in the dancing club days.

He’s actually a child actor and turned into training and becoming a professional dancer. My acting career has been up and down and I’ve been famous since I was 17 starting on the dance scene and today at 61 years old I’m a film director, and I can still drop it on the dance floor. How many can still do that today? I came out of acting but I have some unfinished business. I actually protested about the BAFTA Awards about the lack of black acknowledgement. (Fitzroy: “I actually saw you discussing that on Good Morning Britain.”) Well because I do not conform to the system, I am seen as a bit of a renegade, it cost me my acting career. I’ve come a long way with myself and Trevor as black men dancing and modelling around the

How did you make the transition from dancing and modeling into acting?

Trevor became the number one DJ with his name getting bigger and everyone one knew who he was. It’s a shame it wasn’t like it is now with the DJ celebrity status because he would have been an enormous celebrity. He went away and did shows and played at parties for George Michael, he was amazing. I didn’t have anything other than dance and thought I was going to be a choreographer, so I started choreographing shows that received a lot of attention. These

Thanks to Trevor Shakes and Leon Herbert for the images

Travis, Trevor & Leon

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Roy Ayers

EALING JAZZ FESTIVAL - 23RD JULY 2016

I took a trip down memory lane visiting my old stomping ground of west London to see Roy Ayers perform at the Jazz Festival in Walpole Park, smack bang next door to my old Ealing Green High School For Boys. It was already a momentous day, having earlier randomly bumped into my school pal and fellow soul survivor Jimmy Mo, who now resides in Manchester, after a 25 year gap of seeing each other. I guess you could say ‘Love Will Bring Us Back Together’ was our swan song. It was a beautiful ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’ day and I bumped into so many old faces I’ve not seen some of them for best part of 20 to 30 years. There were a couple of other stages other than the main one that attracted the audience who were dancing in the glorious sunshine. I used to go to this event years ago and according to many who still go, the Ealing Jazz Festival never had there been a turn out like this before, it was heaving. So many were asking how could Roy Ayers come to Ealing and then they miss out for such a reasonable price? Roy did what Roy does best and gave the audience what they wanted with his professionalism and artistry. I arranged to meet up with some girls from the Ellen Wilkinson Girls School circa 1976-79 including Janine Dingwalls, Esterina and Julie Dearman, all soul girls back in the day and we had a good catch up. That’s what Roy Ayers does he reminds us that ‘Life Is Just A Moment’ so enjoy it and those that went certainly did.

Event Reviews

Margate Soul Festival MARGATE – 5 - 7TH AUGUST 2016 For some GQ ‘Reason For The Season’ the weather always decides to be clever with sunshine as so many descend upon the Kent town seaside town of Margate. Celebrating 1 years, Eli Thompson and Mick Bradley in conjunction with south east London’s Mi Soul Radio, managed to pull out the stops with some A Class soul acts, and some of its resident and loyal DJ’s from around the UK in support.

With quite a few acts performing, the highlights I caught were Jean Carne in the glorious weather outside in The Winter Gardens. With a tight band Jean had that place jumping more than House Of Pain and thanks Jean for the shameless magazine plug. Jean sang ‘Time Waits For No One’ after many years of me asking her to. CC Peniston was unbelievably astounding and Kathy Sledge put on a real show with background vocalist, dancers and costume changes. It was a welcome return to see her perform the songs as we know them with her lead vocal. Mike Vitti had the Friday night crowd eating out the palm of his hands but for me the most impressive DJ set was from Jon Jules in the main club Saturday night. He didn’t play the norm and although World Premier ‘Share The Night’ is certainly not a commercial anthem, nor is it a deep or rare track, the way he mixed it in and kept that floor going is etched in my memory. His three deck mixing was made to look easy peasy lemon squeezey, and it was refreshing to hear Detroit Swindle ‘How’s Music’ in the mix too.

How do they top this next year? Well they’ll do it if they B&Q it. Book early as the accommodation becomes sparse very quickly.

To win Vinyl and CD copies of BBE October and November releases please answer how years are BBE celebrating this year?

Email fitzroy@thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk Thanks you.

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COMPETITION

Loose Ends JAZZ CAFE - 25TH AUGUST 2016 I was on call for DJ duties and it was a great excuse to delve back into the early 1980’s and spin some moog boogie and 80’s soul sounds. Another packed night with one group of girls (who knew every single IMAGE BY ANNA B word) travelling all the way from Wisconsin USA, to see Loose Ends feat Carl McIntosh. Being honest I was a little dubious having seen the outfit in recent times as to how they would go down on this occasion. But this was no ‘Cheap Talk’ someone certainly did ‘Dial 999’ and the boogie police made sure we were in for one of those ‘Nights Of Pleasure’ . Dressed in 1930’s Gatsby and Charleston attire, Loose Ends were ready to go back to those ‘Golden Years’ and sounded like they had once again found their ‘Magic Touch’.. The live band sounded good as they performed, ‘Love’s Got Me’, ‘Don’t Be A Fool’, ‘Slow Down’, ‘Gonna Make You Mine’ and ‘Don’t You Ever’. Naturally ‘Hanging On A String’ tore the roof off. But for me the transition of ‘Stay A Little While Child’ into a cover of ‘Nights Over Egypt’ stole the show for me personally. Carl mingled with fans afterwards and I caught a photo shoot with ‘Mr Batchelor’ Carl McIntosh. It was a very good show indeed.

Brighton Beach Party PRIZM 28TH AUGUST 2016 I’d been looking forward to my pending rumble with Brighton Rock’s Gangster Boogie maestro Pinky Brown at Paul Clark’s Brighton Beach Party 5, and finally the day had come. People had travelled from all over and as far and wide as Thurrock Essex, Cambridge and Ipswich staying at local hotels just to IMAGE BY ANNA B experience the gig. The bank holiday revellers flowed into the Prizm club at a steady pace creating a nice atmosphere. I managed to catch Graham ‘Grumpy” Browns eclectic set followed by Abi Clarke’s classic soul session finishing off with something just for me, Two Tons Of Fun’s ‘Just Us’. Big thanks to those who hit the dance floor during my set, which journeyed from latin, salsa soul, to funk and jazz funk heaven. Dr Bob Jones played another inspiring set and I don’t think I knew one tune it was that good. Terry Jones got my attention playing Doug Willis’s ‘Crystal Lover’ a newer and improved version of the classic Crystal Glass ‘Crystal World’. Many thanks Paul Clark for a good ol’ knees up in Brighton.

Campsoul AUGUST 27TH-28TH, IN A FIELD IN OXFORDSHIRE Campsoul, now in its sixth year, covers two days in August with early bookers treated to an extra day in the shape of the Friday club. This is when the quirky A-Frame tent opens it’s bar and sound system to heavyweight DJ’s Shaun Gallagher, Nicky Holloway and more, to really get the party started. Such is the magical feel of Campsoul that it is easy to lose yourself in the music and, in what feels like a Narnia time zone, hours seem like mere minutes. On the Saturday all three venues, the main stage, marquee and A-Frame tent kick-off at 11am and it is a heady mix of the finest Soul and Jazz/Funk to get you into the right frame of mind.

And it’s a quick glance at the programme to suddenly realise that you won’t be able to fit all the DJ’s in! The Saturday headline act was the fantastic New Street Adventure, who are a new band for these ears and boy were they good! Sunday, and it’s the day that everyone has waited for. Fatback live in concert. They went through the hits like a steam train and left no stone unturned. Meticulous and on point, with the fantastic vocals of Isabella Dunn Gordon, Fatback reigned supreme. The end of the concert was a signal for the Campsoul party to be ramped up to eleventy stupid. All three venues were pumping until the very end. It was a joy to catch Marie Garaccio and Christian McClean DJ-ing on the main stage and A-Frame, respectfully. But the highlight was Vivy B’s Hip-Hop set which saw Fatback band members partying hard with the future Soul generation. Priceless. Campsoul is a truly unique event that isn’t equalled anywhere else. Take a bow Shaun Gallagher.

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Friday 28th October - and last Friday every month A FAMILY AFFAIR with OBJ’s spinning jazz funk, soul, latin & boogie + DJ Pepper Sleeves and Dj Bugsy Wan playing their mix of soul & funk The Rocket, 11 Churchfield Road, Acton W3 6BD. 6:30 pm ‘til 1am —FREE ENTRY Venue has full wine & dine menu.

Saturday 29th October Soultrain Haunted Mansion party Ashton court Mansion, Long Ashton Bristol, BS41 9JN, 9pm -4am. Performances from Don-E & Rick Clarke, 3 rooms, Room 1 Ricky 2 Tuff & Paul Alexander (Bristol), Room 2 London’s Fitzroy (Soul Survivors Magazine) celebrating 10 years), Room 3 Nytro & Nikey (The Party Specialists) See flyer for hotels, dinner offers and ticket info. (See advert)

What's going on?

The Stylistics in Concert (The All Hits Tour) Various 28th Oct Stevenage Concert Hall 29th Oct Isle Of Wight Shanklin 30th Oct Nuneaton Princess Theatre

OCTOBER The Four Tops & The Temptations plus Tavares (Three Legendary Artist on one bill) 20th Oct Gateshead Sage 21st Oct Liverpool Echo Arena 22nd Oct Manchester Arena 23rd Oct Leeds First Direct Arena 25th Oct Nottingham Motorpoint Arena 26th Oct Birmingham Genting Arena 27th Oct London 02 29th Oct Bournemouth BIC 30th Oct Southend Cliffs Pavillion (See advert)

The Stylistics in Concert (The All Hits Tour) Various dates in NOVEMBER around the country including Dartford, London, Wolverhampton, Wales, Brighton, Bournemouth, Chatham, Birmingham and St Albans see advert

NOVEMBER Saturday 5th November 2016 Flicks 4th Annual Reunion 2016 @ The Clarendon Royal Hotel Royal Pier Road Gravesend Kent DA12 2BE DJ’s Colin Hudd and David Williams see advert

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Page 54 - Issue 66

Let The Music Play (About Cancer Haircare) Saturday 19th November @Knebworth House with live PA from Kenny Thomas 8pm-2am DJ’s Bigger, Chris Brown, Richard Lobhan, Victor Anderson and Fitzroy (Soul Survivors) see advert Shalamar Sunday 20th November @Indigo2, The O2 Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX see advert Friday 25th November - and last Friday every month A FAMILY AFFAIR with OBJ’s spinning jazz funk, soul, latin & boogie + DJ Pepper Sleeves and Dj Bugsy Wan playing their mix of soul & funk The Rocket, 11 Churchfield Road, Acton W3 6BD. 6:30 pm ‘til 1am —FREE ENTRY Venue has full wine & dine menu.

FEBRUARY Cotswold Park Weekender 25,26,27th Feb 2017 with Live performance from Leroy Hutson with DJ line up see advert South Cerney GL7 5 Cirencester, Gloucestershire see advert

APRIL Bless The Funk Afloat 17th April 2017 Easter Monday soul cruise down the Thames more ticket info contact www. blessthefunk.co.uk

JANUARY

JUNE

Friday 6th January 2017 Breakwater + The Pockets Live @ The Brooklyn Bowl The 02 Peninsula Square London SE10 0DX, DJ’s Greg Edwards, Gordon Mac, Jeff Young, JM see advert

The Blackpool International Soul Festival 2 A Winter Gardens Blackpool 16th -18th June 2017 starring The Impressions, Little Anthony and Leroy Hutson plus various rooms and a top dj line up see advert

Friday 6th Sunday 8th January 2017 Expansion’s 22nd Luxury Soul Weekender @ Blackpool Hilton Hotel, North Promenade Blackpool FY1 2JO Live performance from Breakwater + The Pockets See advert

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