Shelley "SoleMann" King's Posts - E.FM Radio2024-03-28T14:32:19ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKinghttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2187040603?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://msoldschool.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=3ftuqx4hi7587&xn_auth=noSing It To Me Ronnie....LOLtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2011-02-18:1370523:BlogPost:1179302011-02-18T14:18:55.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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<strong>WHEN I WAS 10 YEARS OLD BACK IN 1977, I HAD A BIG CRUSH ON RONNIE SPECTOR OF THE…</strong>
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<strong>WHEN I WAS 10 YEARS OLD BACK IN 1977, I HAD A BIG CRUSH ON RONNIE SPECTOR OF THE RONETTES...LOL</strong>Helen Wooten...Longtime Promotertag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-10-07:1370523:BlogPost:1063402010-10-07T03:38:48.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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An uncaptioned photo in the Numero Group's recent book about south-side nightlife in the 70s set Jake Austen on the trail of this story about one crazy week in the life of longtime promoter Helen Wooten.<br />
<cite class="byline">By <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=868657">Jake Austen…</a></cite><p class="DropCap"><br></br></p>
</div>
</div>
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An uncaptioned photo in the Numero Group's recent book about south-side nightlife in the 70s set Jake Austen on the trail of this story about one crazy week in the life of longtime promoter Helen Wooten.<br />
<cite class="byline">By <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?author=868657">Jake Austen</a></cite><p class="DropCap"><br/></p>
<p class="DropCap">Helen Wooten claims the stroke she suffered last year has affected her memory, but you wouldn't know it from the way she reacts to her picture in <a href="http://www.numerogroup.com/catalog_detail.php?uid=01049"><span class="BodyItalic">Light: On the South Side</span></a>, the Michael Abramson photo book published in November by the local reissue label Numero Group. Though the uncaptioned snapshot was taken 34 years ago and she's never laid eyes on it before, the instant she
sees it she lights up with enthusiasm. "I can tell you exactly when<br />
this is," she says, admiring her elegantly attired younger self holding<br />
court with two girlfriends at the High Chaparral nightclub, near 77th<br />
and Stony Island. Her slinky black outfit, adorned with shooting stars<br />
and radiant moons, is interstellar in its elegance—and her funky<br />
Princess Leia hairstyle predates the release of <span class="BodyItalic">Star Wars</span><br />
by more than a year. "This is 1976, February 14, Valentine's Day," she<br />
says. "I had a show with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. That's the<br />
day Teddy Pendergrass quit the group. He didn't show up, and I had to<br />
use the Chi-Lites. I remember that like it was yesterday."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">The Numero Group's Rob Sevier, <a href="http://www.sittinginthepark.com/">record collector Bob Abrahamian</a>, and I have come to Wooten's South Shore home to give her a copy of Abramson's book, which collects more than 100 black-and-white photos of the inhabitants of mid-70s south-side nightclubs and lounges. None of us has met her before, though Abrahamian has talked to her on the phone. Keni Rightout, best known for recording with local vocal groups the Traits and the Center Stage, put them in touch in November after
Abrahamian showed him a promo video for <span class="BodyItalic">Light: On the South Side</span>—Rightout went to high school with Wooten and identified her in the clip.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Sevier is here because he's keen to <a href="http://numerogroup.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/helen-sees-the-light/">put names to faces</a>—the photos are mostly of ordinary clubgoers, and this is the first positive ID of someone Numero staff didn't already recognize. Abrahamian hopes Wooten will be able to help him brighten a few corners in his quest to document Chicago's vocal groups of the 60s and 70s. And I've tagged along because Abrahamian has told me Wooten was involved early on with the Jackson Five, whose formative years are a special interest of mine
(see my <span class="BodyItalic">Reader</span> cover story from September 10, 2009, <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-jackson-find/Content?oid=1191672">"The Jackson Find"</a>).</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Flipping through the book on a couch in her living room, Wooten names old friends on page after page. Some are infamous—Flukey Stokes, a drug kingpin who liked to play Robin Hood; a pimp named Magellan—but most, like Latitia Binion and Diane Tobra, the two women sharing her table on page 30, wouldn't be familiar to anyone outside her circle of friends.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Judging from Wooten's home, though, her circle of friends appears to include the majority of the residents of the south and west sides and virtually every black celebrity since the 1960s—when, as a teenager, she first made a name for herself booking R & B shows in Chicago. Her walls are hung with wood plaques the size of coffee tables, covered with photos of her hobnobbing with deejays, soul singers, and boxers, their smiling faces barely visible through
amber shellac. Stacked on several couches and tables are albums filled<br />
with still more photos: Wooten with LL Cool J, Wooten with the<br />
Jacksons, Wooten with Mike Tyson.</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/helen-wooten-with-michael-jordan/b/original/1417339/1cb8/michael_jordan.jpg" alt="Helen Wooten with Michael Jordan" width="400" height="411"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit"><a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ImageArchives?oid=1417340&by=1494902">From the collection of Helen Wooten</a></li>
<li class="imageCaption">Helen Wooten with Michael Jordan</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="Body">Her home is perpetually busy with guests, and on this day they include Tyrone Austin, an old friend who used to sing at the High Chaparral in the 70s. Today he videotapes Wooten looking through the book while I interview her—footage for an autobiographical film she plans to produce. Five minutes don't go by without one of her phones ringing: That was Marshall Thompson of the Chi-Lites. That was the mother of rapper Da Brat. That was singer Ruby Andrews, domestic
partner of Robert "Squirrel" Lester, the ailing Chi-Lite (who has since<br />
passed away). A big-screen TV glows with the <span class="BodyItalic">People's Choice Awards</span>,<br />
and it seems like every other artist appearing is someone Wooten's on a<br />
first-name basis with, thanks to a half century on the margins or<br />
behind the scenes of the entertainment business. Her journey has taken<br />
her from playing preteen talent shows to booking international tours,<br />
and along the way it's included stints as a tavern owner, record<br />
producer, stylist, and film financer, among countless other jobs and<br />
hustles. Her many connections—not just to the Jacksons but to all kinds<br />
of old-school south-side movers and shakers whose phone numbers I<br />
thought I'd never get—make her somebody whose brain I could happily<br />
pick for days. But I have no idea what an incredible tale I'm about to<br />
stumble into.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten is still gazing at her own stunning photo. "I'll tell you what," she says. "February 11, three days before that, I had got shot. I came out of intensive care to come out to that show."</p>
<br />
<p class="DropCapSmall">Born Helen Saffold on June 9, 1949, Wooten was introduced to the love of her life—music—by her older sisters, Joyce, Virginia, and Elois. But it didn't hurt that one of her babysitters was Robert "Stringbean" Tharp, who sang with legendary west-side doo-woppers the Ideals, best known for 1963's "The Gorilla." By age ten she and her sisters were writing songs and singing in talent shows. In '63 she entered Marshall High School, then home to teen vocal groups
like the Versalettes, the Constellations, the Ivories, the Kittens<br />
(whose early lineup included Joyce), and the Gems (who featured one<br />
member from Hyde Park High by the name of Minnie Riperton). That year<br />
she and her friend Latitia—the woman wearing the fur hat in the<br />
Abramson photo—started a dance group to support other acts onstage, and<br />
Wooten put together her own vocal group, the Casuals. "They wasn't the<br />
best singing group," recalls Rightout, "but they was the sharpest."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Rightout, who sang with an outfit called the Dimensions while at Marshall, remembers being impressed by Wooten's sophisticated sense of style and adult composure. "She was very, very mature," he says. "She dressed like she was a teacher, and she actually ate with the teachers. She was highly respected in school." That maturity proved to be a far greater asset than her voice. Soon Wooten had taken a major role in organizing Marshall's legendary talent show, the Jamboree,
helping bring in established headliners like Alvin Cash, Major Lance,<br />
and Gene "Duke of Earl" Chandler to anchor lineups of up-and-coming<br />
student groups. In doing so she made contacts that allowed her to help<br />
book similar shows at teen clubs and record hops off-campus, even<br />
though she was still in school herself.</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/helen-wooten-with-muhammad-ali/b/original/1417339/82f5/ali.jpg" alt="Helen Wooten with Muhammad Ali" width="400" height="425"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit"><a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ImageArchives?oid=1417341&by=1494902">From the collection of Helen Wooten</a></li>
<li class="imageCaption">Wooten with Muhammad Ali</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="Body">Wooten says that during her freshman year she appeared on groundbreaking black radio station WVON as the first "teen deejay," inaugurating a long-running segment in which disc jockey Herb Kent would bring in a different high school student each week to choose records for half an hour. She enlisted WVON deejays like Pervis Spann and E. Rodney Jones to emcee and promote the shows she booked, and they became longtime friends; Jones's daughter was among Wooten's visitors
during my first meeting with her.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Though her work for the Jamboree was volunteer, Wooten hoarded the money she earned booking bands elsewhere and working three other after-school jobs—one at a nursing home, one at an Alberto Culver beauty-products factory, and another collecting money at the back door of the High Chaparral, for which she had to lie and say she was 21. By 1967 she'd saved $17,000, which she invested with Spann and Jones, thinking she was supporting their dream of buying their own station. As
she soon realized, however, the deejays were actually putting her money<br />
into developing the Jackson Five. When Spann and Jones gave up on the<br />
group and sold their contract to Steeltown Records' Gordon Keith, they<br />
told Keith they'd invested around $30,000 in the group—meaning Wooten<br />
had technically owned a stake of more than 50 percent in Michael<br />
Jackson and his brothers.</p>
<br />
<p class="DropCapSmall">By the 1970s Wooten was marshaling her impressive management skills to maintain a kind of double life. She was a working mother of two—she'd married William R. Wooten in 1968, a year out of high school, and kept his name after they divorced—who stayed busy with daughter Toyia, son Charles, and a job as a supervisor in the Transportation Service Department at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center. But she continued to pursue her ambitions in the
semi-underground entertainment economy, financing and organizing shows<br />
in Chicago's still vibrant music scene. Though the jewel in the city's<br />
black entertainment crown, the Regal Theater at 47th and King Drive,<br />
had been demolished in 1973, venues like the High Chaparral (where<br />
Wooten had moved up to booking) and Perv's House at 914 E. 79th<br />
continued to draw regular crowds of 1,200-plus revelers, all dressed to<br />
the nines. As the photos in <span class="BodyItalic">Light: On the South Side</span> make clear, even the most intimate spots demanded glamour from their patrons.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten met Teddy Pendergrass around Thanksgiving 1971, when he was still drumming and singing backup for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, a Philadelphia R & B institution since the early 50s. Pendergrass had joined in 1969, and—as many obituaries noted last month, after he died at 59 following complications from colon-cancer surgery—his good looks and gruff, church-trained vocals had earned him a promotion to lead singer by the time the group released its debut LP
in 1972. The Blue Notes quickly became superstars: their first four<br />
albums hit the top ten on the R & B charts (two at number one) and<br />
yielded classic singles like "If You Don't Know Me by Now," "The Love I<br />
Lost," "Bad Luck," and "Wake Up Everybody."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Pendergrass went solo in 1977, releasing a string of platinum-selling LPs. His often aggressive love songs and steamy live shows (including his legendary "ladies only" concerts, which he guessed drew 80 percent women) established him as one of the top black sex symbols of the decade. His career lost much of its extraordinary momentum when he was paralyzed from the chest down in a 1982 auto accident, but he eventually resumed recording and charted with several
more albums.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten says she and Pendergrass had instant chemistry: "We were flirting around and we had a lot of things in common. I don't know how to describe it . . . we became good friends. That was my secret, private boyfriend. Listen, he had keys to my house and keys to my car." Her loyalty to Pendergrass, she says, was a boon to the Blue Notes; she would help them with Chicago shows, and she remembers landing them good gigs in Memphis and Atlanta. She says Pendergrass
would sometimes come to see her even when he didn't have a show in the<br />
area. Though he doesn't mention Wooten in his 1998 autobiography, <span class="BodyItalic">Truly Blessed</span>,<br />
and during those years he had a live-in Philadelphia girlfriend who<br />
would bear his son, Pendergrass writes: "I was, I admit, not always<br />
faithful on the road."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten says they eventually fell out over a disagreement about a piece of jewelry. But they maintained a cordial business relationship, and in mid-November 1975, Wooten paid a $3,000 advance to Harold Melvin to secure the Blue Notes for a big Valentine's Day show at the High Chaparral.</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/harold-melvin-and-the-blue-notes-with-melvin-at-far-right-and-teddy-pendergrass-at-center/b/original/1417339/5b54/harold_melvin_blue_notes.jpg" alt="Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, with Melvin at far right and Teddy Pendergrass at center" width="600" height="415"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit">Courtesy of the Gilles Petard Collection</li>
<li class="imageCaption">Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, with Melvin at far right and Teddy Pendergrass at center</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="DropCapSmall">Three days before the show, by Wooten's account, she was working at the hospital when her boyfriend, Samuel Daniels, parked in front of her house on West Maxwell around 9 PM. Seeing the lights on and assuming she was home, he went inside and surprised three intruders in the upstairs bedroom. Daniels drew a .38 and forced them to lie down on the floor. "They got one of my new coats, they had my jewelry, and he saw they had my money bag," Wooten
says. "So he called the police and he called me and told me not to come<br />
home, because he caught some robbers in my house."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Ignoring Daniels's advice, Wooten left work midshift, and got home in five minutes—ahead of the police. She raced upstairs to see the cowering intruders. "They were frightened," she recalls. "They were saying, 'Miss, miss, he might kill us.' I told them, 'You all don't even know who you're messing with—this is a crazy man!'" Apparently spurred to action by her imprudent threat, the thieves jumped Daniels and grabbed his gun. They shot him several times and
Wooten once, leaving her crumpled on the closet floor. They left the<br />
furs and cash but took the gun and a few pieces of jewelry.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">When the police arrived they recognized Wooten—the cafeteria at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's was a police hangout, and her first cousin, Howard Saffold, was a prominent reform-minded police officer who would later serve Mayor Harold Washington as security chief. They called an ambulance to take her back to the hospital she'd just left. "I said, 'Please don't take me there,'" she says, "because I'd snuck away from work, and I needed my job. So they took me to
Illinois Research," now the UIC Medical Center.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten had been shot at close range. The bullet had punctured her right lung and exited her back. She was taken to the intensive care unit, where doctors drained blood from her lungs. Daniels, who she calls her common-law husband (they were together from 1975 till '82), survived the shooting as well, though he was in coma for three weeks.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Despite these dire conditions, Wooten's thoughts kept returning to her investment in the upcoming Valentine's Day show. "I had spent about $5,000 for advertisements on radio and had given [Melvin] a $3,000 deposit, so I was out about $8,000. All that was on my mind was that I have got to do my show and get my money back." On the day of the concert she called her friend Sandy Wilburn, best known as a songwriter for the Chi-Lites, and had him go to her house and
bring her a dress. She ducked out of the ICU and into a private room,<br />
where she fixed her hair and makeup and donned the stylish ensemble<br />
Wilburn had delivered. "Just like the pictures you got in that book,"<br />
Wooten brags, "that's the way I looked when I left the hospital."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">"When I checked out," she says, "they said, 'Mrs. Wooten, you have a bullet hole in you. You cannot leave intensive care.' I told them, 'What I got to do for Valentine's Day is way more important than my health right now.'"</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten headed straight for the High Chaparral, but there was bad news waiting for her. "[Melvin] said they wouldn't be there because they had broken up," says Clarence Ludd, who owned the High Chaparral and today owns Artis's Lounge at 1249 E. 87th with his wife, after whom it's named. "Early that afternoon they called and canceled."</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/clarence-ludd-and-helen-wooten/b/original/1417339/6b62/clarence_ludd.jpg" alt="Clarence Ludd and Helen Wooten" width="400" height="556"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit">From the collection of Clarence Ludd</li>
<li class="imageCaption">Clarence Ludd and Helen Wooten</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="Body">Though Wooten had expected the Blue Notes to show up that night, the breakup was far from a shock. Tensions within the group had already led to a number of contentious shows. In <span class="BodyItalic">Truly Blessed</span>, Pendergrass characterizes Melvin, who died in 1997, as a difficult boss. Though he'd taught Pendergrass "nearly everything [he] needed to know about surviving in show business," his attitude was that every member but himself was replaceable. (In fact Pendergrass himself had
joined during one of Melvin's complete Blue Notes overhauls.) This<br />
became a problem when Pendergrass lifted the group from the minor<br />
leagues to platinum sales. Melvin had a troublesome temper and<br />
allegedly hid royalties from his bandmates—underneath a mattress,<br />
according to Pendergrass. Cocaine was ubiquitous in that era, and as <span class="BodyItalic">Truly Blessed</span> details, the drug aggravated both Melvin's erratic behavior and Pendergrass's reactions to it.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Several incidents in 1975 suggested that the Blue Notes were headed for the rocks. In Detroit Pendergrass insisted on going onstage without the rest of the group. In New York he bailed on an Apollo show after an argument with Melvin. Though he later claimed to have left the band that October (a date cited in many sources), several of the group's most notorious breakdowns were yet to occur.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">In mid-November <span class="BodyItalic">Jet</span> magazine reported that the Blue Notes had been fired from an extended engagement at Los Angeles's Playboy Club because Melvin had showed up late for one of the first gigs and told the audience to go fuck themselves (or, as <span class="BodyItalic">Jet</span> put it, he was on "C.P. time" and "suggested that they could find sexual release with themselves").</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">The feud between Melvin and Pendergrass seems to have come to a head in Chicago the weekend before Thanksgiving, when the band came to town to do two shows at Perv's House, the self-proclaimed "Entertainment Capitol of the Midwest." Owned by Pervis Staples, by then retired from the Staple Singers, it took up the north side of 79th for most of the block between Drexel and Ingleside (the current location of the East of the Ryan). Perv's was an extravagant venue with
a full light show in its Evening Glo Disco room and an elaborate "adult<br />
playground" featuring a miniature golf course. It's also most likely<br />
where Melvin and Pendergrass shared a stage for the last time.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">As <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/hoekstra/1947310,SHO-Sunday-light20a.article">Staples told Dave Hoekstra</a> in a <span class="BodyItalic">Sun-Times</span> article occasioned by the release of <span class="BodyItalic">Light: On the South Side</span>, "Harold Melvin fired Pendergrass at my club. He slapped him in the mouth downstairs. They weren't going to go onstage. Melvin sent a girl out to the car, got the books, and told Pendergrass, 'I own you like I own the Blue Notes.' They couldn't get out of town until they did my show. People upstairs were clapping and clapping and they were downstairs boxing." The Blue Notes did eventually play, but by Wooten's
recollection they canceled an engagement for the following day at the<br />
Nation of Islam's Salaam restaurant.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten hadn't arranged the Perv's House gig, but she was there that night. "I let Perv book his own shows," she says, "but I was instrumental in getting it so he didn't have to pay no astronomical fee." She wasn't privy to the closed-door confrontation, though. "All I know about whatever happened in that office," she says, "is that I walked in on them and they asked me to dismiss myself—it was personal business."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">The group officially announced a breakup in December, but fans were understandably skeptical. For one thing, the Blue Notes were at the peak of their popularity—it seemed inconceivable they would walk away from it. Their album <span class="BodyItalic">Wake Up Everybody</span> and its title track had both hit number one on the R & B charts that winter, and on the afternoon of the Perv's House fiasco the group had appeared on a pretaped episode of <span class="BodyItalic">Soul Train</span>
performing a nearly unprecedented four songs. Further blunting the<br />
impact of the band's announcement, Pendergrass took a somewhat passive<br />
tone ("We should have talked it out") in the December issue of <span class="BodyItalic">Jet</span> that reported the breakup, and a large ad for the Blue Notes' LP appeared on the same page as the article.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">More than anything, though, what convinced Wooten that the show was on was that Melvin had neither canceled it nor returned the deposit.</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/helen-wooten/b/original/1417339/896b/helen.jpg" alt="Helen Wooten" width="600" height="400"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit"><a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ImageArchives?oid=1417344&by=1492112">Jim Newberry</a></li>
<li class="imageCaption">Helen Wooten</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="Body">When he finally did pull the plug, it left Wooten in a tight spot. Ludd, who hadn't invested his own money in the show, wasn't really in trouble. On big nights, he admits, the High Chaparral could squeeze in 1,600 people, exceeding its legal capacity of 1,300—and since Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday, he was likely to have a big night even without the hottest R & B group in America.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Wooten landed on her feet, though: she called the Chi-Lites. Bandleader Marshall Thompson remembers that the group had just returned from overseas when they got the last-minute call. "She got ahold of me, I think we were coming from London," he says. "We did it because of Helen. She was a friend of ours, and she'd been booking us even when we didn't have hits—so when we got our smash records, of course I didn't forget her." The local favorites were coming off what
would turn out to be the biggest five years of a half-century career,<br />
and for the most part the sold-out crowd was satisfied with the<br />
substitution—by Wooten's reckoning, fewer than 100 people asked for<br />
their money back. After the unreturned deposit, the refunds, and the<br />
Chi-Lites' fee, she'd lost some money, but the evening was far from the<br />
financial disaster it could've been. And though you'd expect her to<br />
have been a wreck—between the bullet hole, the boyfriend in a coma, and<br />
all the trouble with the show—it's hard for someone to look more<br />
relaxed than Wooten does in the photo Abramson snapped of her that<br />
night.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">"Teddy called me that night after everything was over," she says. "He said, 'I'm glad you got a replacement for me,' and he promised to make it up to me." Though as a solo artist Pendergrass was soon too big a star for the midsize venues Wooten worked with in Chicago, he made sure she got some money out of his next high-profile Chicago appearance in '77 by hiring her as a promoter even though she hadn't booked the gig. "He did a hell of a show," she remembers, "but
from then on we wasn't as tight because I was still angry." And Melvin,<br />
she says, never did pay back that deposit.</p>
<br />
<p class="DropCapSmall">Wooten has long since recovered from both her gunshot injury and the financial hit she took from the Valentine's Day show. The crime remains unsolved; neither Daniels nor Wooten recognized the robbers, but Wooten suspects they were sent by a friend familiar with her work schedule who left town immediately after the incident.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Not long after the Chi-Lites concert, she and Ludd became partners in two lounges, the Godfather II on 97th and Stony Island and the Godfather III on 64th and Cottage Grove. (The latter became the Jedi when Wooten's sister Joyce took over for her in 1983.) Though these clubs couldn't support the kind of lavish live entertainment that Wooten was used to scheduling, she stayed involved in larger bookings, and in 1978 she worked with Atlanta-based promoter
Leonard Rowe on a tour by the Jacksons that visited 12 countries and 60<br />
cities—finally recouping her unwitting 1966 investment.</p>
<br />
<p class="DropCapSmall">Given how many friends and associates Wooten accumulated in the 70s, let's consider for a moment how unlikely it was that a stranger would capture one of the most tumultuous nights of her life. <a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=38636">Michael Abramson</a> set foot in the High Chaparral for the first time that Valentine's Day, and not because he wanted to see Pendergrass. "I went because I'd heard it was a happening place," he says. "I was a young white kid in love
with photography, thinking this was a cool place to photograph." Though<br />
Abramson would make many friends at the south-side nightspots he<br />
frequented in the mid-70s, he never met Wooten. And he still<br />
hasn't—he'd never even talked to her on the phone till last month,<br />
after she got her copy of <span class="BodyItalic">Light: On the South Side</span>.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">Many of his memories from those years have faded, but Abramson distinctly remembers taking that photo and how excited he was to print it. "There were a lot of people there—it was packed—but this table was special. The way they held themselves, what they were wearing, and the context of the scene—to me it looked like Paris in the 20s," he says. "It was like an era I had only seen in photographs."</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">In the past three decades Wooten, now 60, has stayed intimately involved in Chicago's black music scene. In 1982 she started a production company, HK & Associates, and when her daughter, Toyia, was murdered in 1988 while at college in New Orleans, she spun off a record label called <a href="http://www.myspace.com/toinikrecords">ToiNik</a> that's named after her. Wooten's companies concentrated on artist development and recording, and in the late 80s and early 90s the
performers she worked with included her goddaughter Da Brat, Donell<br />
Jones, and R. Kelly. Starting in '88 Kelly helped write and produce<br />
music for her artists, and she gave his career an early boost by<br />
getting him gigs opening for acts like Heavy D. and Teddy Riley's group<br />
Guy. She's also recorded her son, Charles, who raps under the name <a href="http://www.myspace.com/doncharlieon">DonCharlieon</a>.</p>
<div class="contentImageCenter"><img src="http://www.chicagoreader.com/imager/wooten-with-will-smith/b/original/1417339/6086/will_smith.jpg" alt="Wooten with Will Smith" width="400" height="302"/><ul>
<li class="imageCredit"><a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ImageArchives?oid=1417345&by=1494902">From the collection of Helen Wooten</a></li>
<li class="imageCaption">Wooten with Will Smith</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="Body">In 2003 Wooten served as executive producer, location manager, set designer, stylist, and music coproducer for a direct-to-video hip-hop feature film, <span class="BodyItalic">When Thugs Cry</span> (distributed by Lions Gate). She and Charles both have cameos—Wooten as a fictionalized version of herself, dressed in eye-catching purple leather. She's working with the director, Parris Reaves, on a sequel, <span class="BodyItalic">When Thugs Don't Have to Cry No More</span>.</p>
<br />
<p class="Body">She's also been giving interviews, like the one I conducted—and that Tyrone Austin documented—the day I met her. Her goal is to use them to make a film about her life. She's anxious to tell the world, while she still can, just what a woman can achieve if she has style, hustle, and the tenacity to make sure the show goes on. <br/></p>
</div>
</div>Johnny Davis...The Tragic Star Of Bandit Recordstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-10-05:1370523:BlogPost:1063042010-10-05T16:30:12.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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The tragic star of the early days of Bandit, he lead The Arrows until it was clear he was a standout performer. The rest of the group continued to back his recordings (“The Love I See Now” and “Boogedy Boogedy” were issued under both the names Johnny Davis and The Arrows). “You’ve Got To Crawl To Me” is Johnny’s signature performance, an amateur funk workout that displays Johnny’s full vocal range as it pulses…
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The tragic star of the early days of Bandit, he lead The Arrows until it was clear he was a standout performer. The rest of the group continued to back his recordings (“The Love I See Now” and “Boogedy Boogedy” were issued under both the names Johnny Davis and The Arrows). “You’ve Got To Crawl To Me” is Johnny’s signature performance, an amateur funk workout that displays Johnny’s full vocal range as it pulses along. Although a musical oddity, its unavoidably catchy.<br/><br/>His career was tragically silenced by an organized crime hit that was never solved. He was hit by a pipe and thrown off a 12 story building, leaving scarce evidence that he had ever existed at all.Sole The Music Pimp...ROFLMBOtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-08-31:1370523:BlogPost:1024052010-08-31T15:03:06.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://api.ning.com/files/FIUNzv2VgI7p1iNKcj4Kb70NaEDsA4w5BvbXzqCf8yfdb7y6Ue5uQQbLqiKDIfcyV7pAPfUDrQBpo40HlUXlOfNB06VKmaG*/OSIRIUS.jpg"></img></p>
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You See, (As I Raise My Drink To You...LOL) Music Is Big Business, It's Been Around Long Before You And Me, It Will Be Here Long After We Are Gone, As A Matter Of Fact, It Will Be Here Until Somebody Turn Off The Lights On This Place We Call Earth...SOLE THE MUSIC PIMP (ROFLMBO)<br></br>
<br></br>A SOLEMANNKING…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/FIUNzv2VgI7p1iNKcj4Kb70NaEDsA4w5BvbXzqCf8yfdb7y6Ue5uQQbLqiKDIfcyV7pAPfUDrQBpo40HlUXlOfNB06VKmaG*/OSIRIUS.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br/></p>
You See, (As I Raise My Drink To You...LOL) Music Is Big Business, It's Been Around Long Before You And Me, It Will Be Here Long After We Are Gone, As A Matter Of Fact, It Will Be Here Until Somebody Turn Off The Lights On This Place We Call Earth...SOLE THE MUSIC PIMP (ROFLMBO)<br/>
<br/>A SOLEMANNKING CREATION...2010<br/><br/><br/>Vintage Chattanooga, Tn. Concert Posterstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-08-31:1370523:BlogPost:1023992010-08-31T14:40:07.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://api.ning.com/files/enkG2R7k1sqK9584MoEoXp0jx9nuC7sVEEQxkNiK0dyUHCgE7OyDICe4CmlPTSvAQDp*LHf4pt889Mj3qvemKJGDiiGb6uRK/Memorial31.jpg?width=421" width="421"></img></p>
<br></br>
Y'all Know Me, I'm Always Finding Something....LOL. Here Are 5 Vintage Chattanooga, Tn. Concert Posters From The 1950's And 1960's. I Sure Wish I Could Find More, From What I Have Been Told By The Old Cats, Chattanooga Had All Kind Of Concerts Back In The Day At The Memorial Auditorium.<br></br>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://api.ning.com/files/auaaPn018FKAEEa7wyLc5Tj8OnoLS2WAozpV*ZXMwG97cRJZhBTlBMlR2AFFg*QEYrtlsifIa0iJz1w*eoEpq4I11Zw-qvI6/VINTAGE4.jpg"></img></p>
<br></br>
Motortown Revue - 1965<br></br>
<br></br>
What an incredible Globe Poster and featuring Marvin Gaye!…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img width="421" src="http://api.ning.com/files/enkG2R7k1sqK9584MoEoXp0jx9nuC7sVEEQxkNiK0dyUHCgE7OyDICe4CmlPTSvAQDp*LHf4pt889Mj3qvemKJGDiiGb6uRK/Memorial31.jpg?width=421" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
Y'all Know Me, I'm Always Finding Something....LOL. Here Are 5 Vintage Chattanooga, Tn. Concert Posters From The 1950's And 1960's. I Sure Wish I Could Find More, From What I Have Been Told By The Old Cats, Chattanooga Had All Kind Of Concerts Back In The Day At The Memorial Auditorium.<br/>
<br/>
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/auaaPn018FKAEEa7wyLc5Tj8OnoLS2WAozpV*ZXMwG97cRJZhBTlBMlR2AFFg*QEYrtlsifIa0iJz1w*eoEpq4I11Zw-qvI6/VINTAGE4.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
Motortown Revue - 1965<br/>
<br/>
What an incredible Globe Poster and featuring Marvin Gaye! Motortown Revue posters are as rare as "hen's teeth" - very few exist; not sure why since they are among the best ever of boxing style concert posters. Look at the acts in this show - makes you want to go back in time, or at least pull out your CDs or Albums to listen to some of the best music of all time.<br/>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/RSHpY*dH5N4OPBligbc84VqUrlMo1qlt23Uee7bFCAj8Ngi47jjRyIB7WcnC*Wwm-19SEIP-Fmf9dWEkf*5aVxfIweXJgMXZ/VINTAGE3.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
1959<br/>
<br/>
What a line-up! a colorful and important poster produced by Globe Posters of Baltimore<br/>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/-jiHQBrbUhf*GFAetJ7FHSFY859wXvFPad1S-z2ff44PGkVNmSkaJIG1sL98GcNtOW2QGSTikJMFF0dyl1sSgRD*BBw9xjIh/VINTAGE2.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
1957<br/>
<br/>
A terrific line up, including Big Maybelle, Jimmy Reed, Junior Parker, 5 Royals and Bobby Blue Bland. Chattanooga was a hot bed of some of the best concerts held in the 1950's and 1960's.<br/>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/OtrydZx5ya42gaS2FbuAIeaDmEDaIich5pTxOK1F-HUppu9ntlRd84oCs4WMMjg1NtlZUeRJkvGDSKpYUK5D3xUTpO5o*xC7/VINTAGE1.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
1954<br/>
<br/>
Very few concert posters from the fifties exist for Muddy Waters, one of the all time blues artist. This is a classic with supporting line up of Ray Charles, Ruth Brown Lowell Fulsom and how about that "Hootchy, Hootchy Man" designation!<br/>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/swG3*Faagb*g-O*wpWHMXSd1roQ208X37s1KVY1bHsVgwuX4T0XzCWb5C9NBsJcGW2qvfygSs0yZ5*lgDpgDnBiaal4FDeAV/VINTAGE.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>
1955<br/>
<br/>
Perhaps one of the more, if not most, important posters in R&R. To my knowledge, the first dance/concert poster to use the term "Rock & Roll" on it! And how about this, it's one of the earliest known posters of Chuck Berry and his first poster with the hit "Maybellene" listed. WOW, what a poster!<br/>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/BBViwzrLUQhjHbrVGPpnH-hr-w-ycU4HJOO3lcX5KwpRKPu3-pUBw2Z*loO2FXZ46LfE2y4710dlGew1tP3HfKAwX2YkeJ7h/memorialinside.jpg" alt=""/></p>
<br/>Little Known New Edition History...ROFLMBOtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-08-13:1370523:BlogPost:1013992010-08-13T18:12:30.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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During The Summer Of 1984, New Edition Came To Chattanooga, Tn. For A Concert At The Memorial Auditorium. Michael Bivins Was Unable To Attend Because He Had Hurt His Knee A Couple Of Nights Earlier, So A Call Went Out For A 5th Member Of New Edition For The Chattanooga Engagement.<br></br><br></br>Radio Station Jet94 Sponsered A 1 Day Contest To Pick The 5th Member Of New Edition And Guys Throughout The City Showed Up To…
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During The Summer Of 1984, New Edition Came To Chattanooga, Tn. For A Concert At The Memorial Auditorium. Michael Bivins Was Unable To Attend Because He Had Hurt His Knee A Couple Of Nights Earlier, So A Call Went Out For A 5th Member Of New Edition For The Chattanooga Engagement.<br/><br/>Radio Station Jet94 Sponsered A 1 Day Contest To Pick The 5th Member Of New Edition And Guys Throughout The City Showed Up To Audition, But In The End, 17 Year Old (SHELLEY "SOLEMANN" KING) Was Picked....ROFLMBO<br/><br/>It Was A Great Show And I Fitted Right In With Ralph, Bobby, Ricky, And Ronnie As You Can See From The Above Picture...ROFLMBO.<br/><br/>Many Years Later During The Spring Of 2009, I Was Surprised To Get A Phone Call From A Manager Of New Edition, They Were Doing A 54 City Reunion Tour Featuring All Members Of The Group, But They Needed A Replacement For Johnny Gill Who Had A Previous Engagement, They Had Remembered Me Filling In For Michael Bivins 25 Years Earlier....ROFLMBO<br/><br/>We Had So Much Fun On That Tour....SMILE/ROFLMBO<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202912306?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br/>The Temprees Featuring Shelley "SoleMann" King & Julius "Barely Saine" Freeman...LOLtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-08-09:1370523:BlogPost:1012212010-08-09T20:05:47.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908191?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
"A Memphis soul vocal trio. This polished group formed in 1970 and recorded for We Produce, a Stax offshoot. Bandmembers Harold "Scotty"<br></br>
Scott, Jasper "Jabbo" Phillips, and William Norvell Johnson rode a<br></br>
sumptuously produced remake of the often-covered Five Royales/Shirelles<br></br>
standard "Dedicated to the One I Love" onto R&B play lists in 1972.<br></br>
After "Love's Maze" made a little noise as a follow-up, the trio moved<br></br>
to Epic…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908191?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
"A Memphis soul vocal trio. This polished group formed in 1970 and recorded for We Produce, a Stax offshoot. Bandmembers Harold "Scotty"<br/>
Scott, Jasper "Jabbo" Phillips, and William Norvell Johnson rode a<br/>
sumptuously produced remake of the often-covered Five Royales/Shirelles<br/>
standard "Dedicated to the One I Love" onto R&B play lists in 1972.<br/>
After "Love's Maze" made a little noise as a follow-up, the trio moved<br/>
to Epic for their final hit in 1976, the entirely self-explanatory 'I<br/>
Found Love on a Disco Floor.'"<br/>
<br/>
Currently touring on the oldies circuit, The Temprees now consist of<br/>
original member Harold "Scotty" Scott and newcomers Shelley "SoleMann"<br/>
King and Julius "Barely Saine" Freeman....ROFLMBO<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
THE TEMPREES...2010<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><font size="4"><img style="width: 445px; height: 233px;" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908424?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" alt=""/></font></p>
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Julius "Barely Saine" Freeman, Shelley "SoleMann" King, Harold "Scotty" ScottSoleMannKing Presents Iceberg Slimtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-04-28:1370523:BlogPost:952802010-04-28T04:35:44.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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Iceberg Slim (August 4, 1918 – April 28, 1992), also known as Robert Beck, was an African American author of books variously categorized as urban fiction, street literature, and black pulp fiction. Iceberg Slim was an important influence on hip-hop artists and rappers such as Ice-T and Ice Cube and Pittsburgh Slim and ...Slim Thug, who adopted their names in part from reading the author.<br></br><br></br><br></br>ICEBERG…
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Iceberg Slim (August 4, 1918 – April 28, 1992), also known as Robert Beck, was an African American author of books variously categorized as urban fiction, street literature, and black pulp fiction. Iceberg Slim was an important influence on hip-hop artists and rappers such as Ice-T and Ice Cube and Pittsburgh Slim and ...Slim Thug, who adopted their names in part from reading the author.<br/><br/><br/>ICEBERG SLIM...PIMP<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202926225?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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The ultimate anti-hero, Iceberg Slim, takes you into the secret inner world of the pimp, and the smells, the sounds, the fears and petty triumphs of his world. A legendary figure of the Chicago underworld, this is his story: from defending his mother against the evil men she brought into their lives, to becoming a giant of the streets. A seething tale of brutality, cunning and greed, "Pimp" is a harrowing portrait of life on the wrong side of the tracks, and a rich warning from a true survivor.<br/><br/><br/>ICEBERG SLIM...MAMA BLACK WIDOW<br/><br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202926389?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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Mama Black Widow is the portrait of a black family's migration from the southern Mississippi fields of the segregated south to the ghettoized black underworld of Chicago during the 1930's. The story follows Otis Tilson's struggle to keep his family together as they navigate through a world of alcoholism, pimping, sexual deviation and racial degradation. The family's journey is a harsh testament of lives lived on the margins of a racist and predatory world. <br/>SoleMannKing Presents Donald Goinestag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-04-28:1370523:BlogPost:952792010-04-28T04:34:16.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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Donald Goines (December 15, 1937 – October 21, 1974) was one of the first African American writers of urban fiction. His novels were deeply influenced by the work of Robert Beck (Iceberg Slim). For Those Of You That Have Read His Books, You Need To Checkout The Two Autobiographies I Have In My Hands..<br></br><br></br><br></br>DONALD GOINES...DONALD WRITES NO MORE…<br></br><br></br><p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202907157?profile=original"></img></p>
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Donald Goines (December 15, 1937 – October 21, 1974) was one of the first African American writers of urban fiction. His novels were deeply influenced by the work of Robert Beck (Iceberg Slim). For Those Of You That Have Read His Books, You Need To Checkout The Two Autobiographies I Have In My Hands..<br/><br/><br/>DONALD GOINES...DONALD WRITES NO MORE<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202907157?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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He started as a kid, the product of a middle-class family. After high school he joined the Navy, and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and wrote of the streets and its people. His success was immediate and exciting, But eventually the streets claimed him. He was murdered as he sat writing a new book. Here for the first time is the completed story.<br/><br/><br/>DONALD GOINES...LOW ROAD<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202907209?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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Having published 16 novels, including Whoreson, Dopefiend, and Daddy Cool, Goines's unique brand of "street narrative" and "ghetto realism" mark him as the original street writer.Now, in the first in-depth biography of Goines's life, author Eddie B. Allen explores exactly how one man could make the transition from street hustler to bestselling author. With exclusive access to personal letters, treatments from unwritten books, photographs, and family members, Allen uncovers Goines's personal experiences with drugs, prostitutes, prison, and urban violence. Fans of Goines's novels will note a dramatic parallelism between his life and his fictional tales.<p style="text-align: left;"><br/></p>Chicago Soul Traintag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-02-28:1370523:BlogPost:911332010-02-28T00:49:33.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202905964?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
The origins of Soul Train can be traced to 1965, when WCIU-TV, an upstart UHF station in Chicago, began airing two youth-oriented dance programs: Kiddie-a-Go-Go and Red Hot and Blues. These two programs—specifically the latter, which featured a predominantly African American group of in-studio dancers—would set the stage for what was to come to the station several years later.<br></br><br></br>Don Cornelius, a news reader and backup disc jockey at Chicago…
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The origins of Soul Train can be traced to 1965, when WCIU-TV, an upstart UHF station in Chicago, began airing two youth-oriented dance programs: Kiddie-a-Go-Go and Red Hot and Blues. These two programs—specifically the latter, which featured a predominantly African American group of in-studio dancers—would set the stage for what was to come to the station several years later.<br/><br/>Don Cornelius, a news reader and backup disc jockey at Chicago radio station WVON, was hired by WCIU in 1967 as a news and sports reporter. Cornelius also was promoting and emceeing a touring series of concerts featuring local talent (sometimes called "record hops") at Chicago-area high schools, calling his travelling caravan of shows "The Soul Train". WCIU-TV took notice of Cornelius's outside work, and in 1970 allowed him the opportunity to bring his road show to television.<br/><br/>After securing a sponsorship deal with the Chicago-based retailer Sears, Roebuck and Co., Soul Train premiered on WCIU-TV on August 17, 1970 as a live show airing weekday afternoons. The first episode of the program featured Jerry Butler, the Chi-Lites, and the Emotions as guests. The show was co-founded by Clinton Ghent.<br/><br/>You might be wondering now how you can see episodes of the Chicago Soul Train. <br/><br/>Well, so far you can't. Tapes probably exist, but there are no episodes at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications. Lehman came across none in his research, and there's nothing on YouTube. No video collectors have even hinted at existing clips. Nate Pendleton recalls having a Super-8 film of the Dontells' performance but can't locate the reel, and among Chicago's home-movie archivists (including my wife, Jacqueline Stewart, who runs the South Side Home Movie Project) footage has yet to emerge from any proud parents who might've filmed their children on the TV screen.<br/><br/>From the 1950s to the 1970s local live television broadcasts often went undocumented, their ethereal existence recorded only in the memories of home viewers. Kinescoping (a special process to make a 16-millimeter film of a live broadcast by filming a television monitor) was prohibitively expensive. Because the only compensation many producers received was the razor-thin remainder of sponsorship money after production costs, few were willing to add even an extra hundred bucks to the weekly budget after three-quarter-inch U-matic videotapes were introduced in the early 70s. (Sears's original Soul Train sponsorship deal was $100 per episode.) Those who did record shows often recorded subsequent shows over them to save on tape stock. Only three episodes of Kiddie-a-Go-Go were preserved, and there are likely no episodes of Red Hot and Blues. WCIU ran local Soul Train tapes for years, but Howard Shapiro says he doesn't think the station still has copies. And as I searched for footage while preparing this article, Cornelius, historically tight with material even from the national show, seemed an unlikely benefactor.<br/><br/><p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202905964?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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<p style="text-align: left;"></p>The Masked Man & The Agentstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-02-01:1370523:BlogPost:908202010-02-01T22:24:49.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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By Terence McArdle<br />
Washington Post Staff Writer<br />
Sunday, January 10, 2010<br />
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While holding down a day job as an Army Department mail clerk, Harmon Bethea struggled for decades to achieve a breakthrough singing group. He went at it so long, and through so many changes in pop vocal trends, that he tried to become famous in jive, doo-wop, rhythm-and-blues and Motown-tinged soul. At one time, he led a gospel group.<br />
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"If patience is a virtue, Harmon Bethea…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202913886?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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By Terence McArdle<br />
Washington Post Staff Writer<br />
Sunday, January 10, 2010<br />
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While holding down a day job as an Army Department mail clerk, Harmon Bethea struggled for decades to achieve a breakthrough singing group. He went at it so long, and through so many changes in pop vocal trends, that he tried to become famous in jive, doo-wop, rhythm-and-blues and Motown-tinged soul. At one time, he led a gospel group.<br />
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"If patience is a virtue, Harmon Bethea would be a saint," music historian Jay Warner once wrote. Warner wrote that Mr. Bethea was in 10 vocal groups over 22 years before finding his elusive hit.<br />
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The turning point was a timely gimmick. In the 1960s, Mr. Bethea found his niche when he put on a mask and became the Mask Man. In honor of James Bond and the spy craze, his three backup singers, formerly known as the Cap-Tans, became the Agents.<br />
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Mr. Bethea, 86, who died of a heart ailment Dec. 18 in Washington, first donned his mask in 1964 and started focusing on humorous material. He was in his early 40s, old by the standards of the music industry. With the British Invasion dominating the airwaves, Mr. Bethea needed something to make him stand out.<br />
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"I remember him as a friendly but low-key guy," said Dick Lillard, a music director at WOL in the 1960s. "I think that Mask Man persona was a way of taking a guy who was not that wild and making him look wild."<br />
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"He had color streaks in his process [hairdo] that matched his suit," said Robert Fry, a disc jockey who goes by the on-air name Captain Fly. "Today we would say fuchsia, but it was almost pink."<br />
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Through his Mask Man persona, Mr. Bethea found an avenue for down-home, streetwise humor. His shows revolved around the Agents' choreography and Mr. Bethea's comedy. In the song "Roaches," Mr. Bethea delivered pointed, but humorous commentary on the gap between the goals of the civil rights movement and the reality of inner-city life. When they performed the song on local television shows, the Agents worked themselves into a frenzy, pretending to fumigate bugs with hand-pumped sprayers.<br />
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On one song Mr. Bethea wrote, "Talkin' 'Bout the Boss Man and I," he ripped into the boss for calling him a boy, telling him, "If you ever slip up and call me a boy again, I'll hang a sign up on your eye that says, 'Closed for the weekend.' "<br />
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"He was taking the day-to-day circumstances that everybody could relate to, almost like a musical Richard Pryor," Fry said.<br />
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Mask Man and the Agents were rewarded with two national hits in the late 1960s, "One Eye Open" and "My Woman, My Dog and My Cat."<br />
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While the records sold well, Mr. Bethea never left his day job for an extended tour, which limited his national exposure. The Mask Man played his last show in 1992.<br />
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Mr. Bethea, the son of a sawmill worker, came to Washington from his native Dillon, S.C., after serving in the Army in Europe during World War II. He attended a local conservatory before launching a singing career in 1948 with the Progressive Four, a group in the jazzy, scat-inflected style of the Mills Brothers. His talents impressed Lillian Claiborne, who co-owned a District record label.<br />
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She introduced Mr. Bethea to the Cap-Tans, a group she managed that sang in the newer doo-wop style. The Cap-Tans never found a hit, although they came close. A ballad, "I'm So Crazy for Love," appeared in 1950, but it lost sales to more-successful cover versions by Billy Eckstine, the Ravens and Lonnie Johnson. A humorous jump number Mr. Bethea wrote, "Chief Turn the Hose on Me" (1950), was covered as "Call the Doctor" in 1953 by a Harlem doo-wop group called the Crows.<br />
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Even without a hit, the Cap-Tans appeared on local television variety shows. They performed at the Howard Theater and cabarets and headlined shows at Chesapeake Bay resorts that catered to black Washingtonians.<br />
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Mr. Bethea often changed his groups' members and names, even rechristening the Cap-Tans as the more exotic-sounding L'Captans.<br />
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"Our key phrase back then was, 'I don't turn down nothin' but my collar,' " recalled Steve Charles, a singer with the Clovers, who sometimes appeared on show bills with Mask Man and the Agents. "There was a constant exchange of phone numbers in the groups."<br />
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Mr. Bethea's wife of 50 years, Ruth Ann Dixon, died in 1997. His only child, Harmon M. Bethea Jr., was shot to death in 1979 in what his family called an unsolved homicide. Survivors include three brothers, Cleo Bethea of Camp Springs, Thomas Bethea of Dillon and Ralph Bethea of Woodbridge; and a sister, Queen Ester Bethea of Dillon.<br />
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If Harmon Bethea never reached the pinnacle of national success, it might have been some consolation that his records are today much prized by collectors of doo-wop and Northern Soul music and live on through music blogs and YouTube playlists.<br />
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The Mask Man & The Agents - In A Crowded Station<br />
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The Mask Man & The Agents - In My Diary<br />
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The Mask Man & The Agents - I Wouldn't Come Back<br />
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Masked Man & The Agents - Roaches<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9sfTI-6ChGg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9sfTI-6ChGg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>California Jam...1974tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-01-31:1370523:BlogPost:906952010-01-31T02:09:05.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202901257?profile=original"></img></p>
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California Jam, also known as Cal Jam, was a rock music festival concert held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California on April 6, 1974 l.It was produced by ABC entertainment, Sandy Feldman, Don E. Branker and Lenny Stogel. Pacific Presentations, a LA based concert company headed by Sepp Donahower and Gary Perkins, coordinated the event, booked all the talent, and ran the advertising. It attracted 200,000 fans that paid, which at the…
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California Jam, also known as Cal Jam, was a rock music festival concert held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California on April 6, 1974 l.It was produced by ABC entertainment, Sandy Feldman, Don E. Branker and Lenny Stogel. Pacific Presentations, a LA based concert company headed by Sepp Donahower and Gary Perkins, coordinated the event, booked all the talent, and ran the advertising. It attracted 200,000 fans that paid, which at the time, set the record for the highest paid attendance and highest gross in history. It was one of the last of the original wave of rock festivals, as well as one of the most well-executed and financially successful, and presaged the era of media consolidation and the corporatization of the rock music industry.<br />
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Acts that performed at the festival in order of appearance:<br />
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* Rare Earth<br />
* Earth, Wind & Fire<br />
* Eagles<br />
* Seals and Crofts<br />
* Black Oak Arkansas<br />
* Black Sabbath<br />
* Deep Purple<br />
* Emerson, Lake & Palmer<br />
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Here is a 10 minute interview session with The Fans, followed by Earth, Wind, and Fire....LOOK AT THEIR OUTFITS...ROFLMBO<br />
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Interviews at the 1974 California Jam<br />
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Earth Wind & Fire / Keep Your Head to the Sky / 1974 California Jam<br />
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Earth Wind & Fire / Time Is On Your Side / 1974 California Jam<br />
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Earth Wind & Fire / Verdine White - Bass Solo / 1974 California Jam<br />
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Earth Wind & Fire / Come On Children / 1974 California Jam<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Q8_oOQTNCzU&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Q8_oOQTNCzU&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>The Sophisticated Gentstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-01-23:1370523:BlogPost:905212010-01-23T23:35:15.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906033?profile=original"></img></p>
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The Sophisticated Gents is a TV miniseries that aired on three consecutive nights from September 29 to October 1, 1981 on NBC. Its ensemble cast featured a number of African American stage and film actors, many of whom were customarily seen in Blaxploitation motion pictures in the 1970s. The miniseries is based upon the novel The Junior Bachelor Society by John A. Williams. Although production of the project ended in 1979, NBC did not air the…
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The Sophisticated Gents is a TV miniseries that aired on three consecutive nights from September 29 to October 1, 1981 on NBC. Its ensemble cast featured a number of African American stage and film actors, many of whom were customarily seen in Blaxploitation motion pictures in the 1970s. The miniseries is based upon the novel The Junior Bachelor Society by John A. Williams. Although production of the project ended in 1979, NBC did not air the miniseries until almost two years later.<br />
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CAST<br />
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* Sonny Jim Gaines - Coach Charles "Chappie" Davis<br />
* Bernie Casey - Shurley Walker<br />
* Rosey Grier - Cudjo Evers<br />
* Robert Hooks - Ezra "Chops" Jackson<br />
* Ron O'Neal - Clarence "Claire" Henderson<br />
* Thalmus Rasulala - Kenneth "Snake" Dobson<br />
* Raymond St. Jacques - D'Artagnan "Dart" Parks<br />
* Melvin Van Peebles - Walter "Moon" Porter<br />
* Dick Anthony Williams - Ralph Joplin<br />
* Paul Winfield - Richard "Bubbles" Wiggins<br />
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* Albert Hall - Det. Swoop Ferguson<br />
* Lynn Benisch - Renee Marcus<br />
* Rosalind Cash - Christine Jackson<br />
* Ja'net Du Bois - Onetha Wiggins<br />
* Alfre Woodard - Evelyn Evers<br />
* Joanna Miles - Sandra Dobson<br />
* Janet MacLachlan - Diane Walker<br />
* Bibi Besch - Simone Parks<br />
* Denise Nicholas - Pat Henderson<br />
* Marlene Warfield - Lil Joplin<br />
* Beah Richards - Mae Porter<br />
* Stymie Beard - Mickey Mouse<br />
* Mario Van Peebles - Nicholas Dobson<br />
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PLOT SUMMARY<br />
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In the mid-1940s, Coach Charles "Chappie" Davis (Gaines) founded a sports club for African American boys in the local community, dubbing them "The Sophisticated Gents". The young men became athletic heroes, and formed a lifetime bond with each other and their coach. Twenty-five years later, those members of the Gents remaining in town decide to hold a testimonial dinner for Chappie, who is now 70 years old. The dinner turns into an impromptu reunion, with nine Gents eventually arriving to honor Chappie. However, the legal troubles of one of the Gents could spell danger for all of them and their wives.<br />
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VIDEO RELEASES<br />
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On March 6, 1992, the miniseries was released on VHS. However, it has yet to be released on DVD or any other digital video format.<br />
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THE SOPHISTICATED GENTS...HOW TO DEAL WITH MOON<br />
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THE SOPHISTICATED GENTS<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ERJ_NnvTXnY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ERJ_NnvTXnY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>The Temptations Live In Paris...1973tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-01-19:1370523:BlogPost:901382010-01-19T14:53:54.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202905878?profile=original"></img></p>
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if you ever witness the Temptations In Paris video, you’ll become more aware that in 1973, they must have knew that live in concert no one was better with the steps, than they were and you’ll be amazed of Damon Harris, delivering his live version of I’m Gonna Make You Love Me, it make you wonder, why they never recorded it without the Supremes, when Kendrick was a member.<br />
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Plus, Richard Street blending with the harmony of First Time Ever I Saw Your…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202905878?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
if you ever witness the Temptations In Paris video, you’ll become more aware that in 1973, they must have knew that live in concert no one was better with the steps, than they were and you’ll be amazed of Damon Harris, delivering his live version of I’m Gonna Make You Love Me, it make you wonder, why they never recorded it without the Supremes, when Kendrick was a member.<br />
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Plus, Richard Street blending with the harmony of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, this should make critics change their minds about the new members to give them the credit that they not only deserve, but truly earned in being placed in the group.<br />
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The Live In Paris, will show you five members, who were stuck like glue to the technically steps that the sixties unit was known for to their fans you will be deeply impressed. Otis might have had a problem with Damon Harris, but this young man like his predecessor was the one that told fans the song center around his falsetta that fans refer to on all records. Almost like, who voice do you hear in the back ground and if, it wasn’t Williams or Ruffin, it most likely was Kendrick, which Damon kept in form, as a member for five years.<br />
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THE TEMPTATIONS LIVE IN PARIS 1973...PART 1<br />
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THE TEMPTATIONS LIVE IN PARIS 1973...PART 2<br />
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THE TEMPTATIONS LIVE IN PARIS 1973...PART 3<br />
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THE TEMPTATIONS LIVE IN PARIS 1973...PART 4<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1qMXw3GUuDg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1qMXw3GUuDg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Musicology (Prince and Solemannking Collaboration) Club Radius Mixtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-01-11:1370523:BlogPost:898072010-01-11T19:48:42.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908332?profile=original"></img></p>
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I have always wanted to Collaborate with The Singers and Songwriters, i have always thought that this would be a unique way to do this plus it can be very creative....I hope everyone enjoys my Collaboration with The Legendary Prince Rogers Nelson...<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original"></img></p>
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PRINCE<br />
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Heard about the party now<br />
Just East of Harlem<br />
Sole's gonna be there<br />
But I got 2 call him<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original"></img></p>
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SOLE<br />
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Party…
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I have always wanted to Collaborate with The Singers and Songwriters, i have always thought that this would be a unique way to do this plus it can be very creative....I hope everyone enjoys my Collaboration with The Legendary Prince Rogers Nelson...<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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PRINCE<br />
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Heard about the party now<br />
Just East of Harlem<br />
Sole's gonna be there<br />
But I got 2 call him<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
Party Party Party<br />
Yo Sole is ready to get it started<br />
Just East of Harlem<br />
Prince my man<br />
Sounds like a great plan<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
Even the Soldiers<br />
Need a break sometimes<br />
Listen 2 the groove ya'll<br />
Let it unwind your mind<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
Everybody needs a break<br />
Relax your mind<br />
By the end of the night<br />
Make no mistake<br />
You will be fine<br />
Listen 2 the groove<br />
As it unwind your mind<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
No intoxication<br />
Unless you see what i see<br />
Dancing hot and sweaty<br />
Right in front of me<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
Prince my Brother<br />
Intoxication yes<br />
The Essence of her<br />
Was like a sensual blur<br />
Dancing right before me<br />
For all to see<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
Call it what you like<br />
I'm going to call it how it be<br />
This is just another one<br />
Of God's gifts<br />
Musicology<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
I call it exactly like you<br />
It's a party unlike any other<br />
That my Brother is so very true<br />
One of God's creations<br />
The gift of Musicology<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
Keep the party moving<br />
Just like i told you<br />
Kick the old school joint<br />
4 the true funk soldiers<br />
Musicology<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
The party is moving<br />
To the tunes of some serious beats<br />
Everybody's dancing<br />
And moving their feets<br />
Old school joints is what its about<br />
This is Sole giving the shoutout<br />
Musicology<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
Wish i had a dollar<br />
4 everything you say<br />
Don't you miss the feeling<br />
Music gave you<br />
Back in the day<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
You say dollar<br />
I say 2<br />
This my Brother<br />
Is what i would need from you<br />
I truly have to say<br />
That i miss the feeling<br />
Music gave me<br />
From back in the day<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908503?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
PRINCE<br />
<br />
Let's Groove<br />
September<br />
Earth, Wind and Fire<br />
Hot pants by James<br />
Sly's gonna take you higher<br />
<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202908526?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
SOLE<br />
<br />
Reasons<br />
After the Love is Gone<br />
Earth, Wind and Fire<br />
Fire and Desire by Rick and Teena<br />
Teddy's gonna Turn off the Lights<br />
And slow it down tonight<br />
<br />
<br />
Written By Prince & SoleMannKing 01/11/2010The Harlem Cultural Festival (Black Woodstock)tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2010-01-05:1370523:BlogPost:895872010-01-05T16:38:44.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906227?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
The Harlem Cultural Festival (also known as "Black Woodstock") was a series of music concerts held in Harlem during the summer of 1969 to celebrate African American music and culture and to promote the continued politics of black pride. Notable participants included Nina Simone, B.B. King, Sly & the Family Stone, Jesse Jackson, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach, The 5th Dimension, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, and Moms…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906227?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
The Harlem Cultural Festival (also known as "Black Woodstock") was a series of music concerts held in Harlem during the summer of 1969 to celebrate African American music and culture and to promote the continued politics of black pride. Notable participants included Nina Simone, B.B. King, Sly & the Family Stone, Jesse Jackson, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach, The 5th Dimension, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, and Moms Mabley, among many others.<br />
<br />
The concerts took place in Harlem's Mount Morris Park on Sundays at 3PM from June 29 to August 24, 1969.<br />
<br />
<br />
Sly & The Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 1<br />
<br />
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<br />
Sly & The Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 2<br />
<br />
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<br />
Sly & The Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 3<br />
<br />
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<br />
Sly & The Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 4<br />
<br />
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<br />
Sly & The Family Stone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 5<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Nina Simone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 1<br />
<br />
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<br />
Nina Simone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 2<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Nina Simone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 3<br />
<br />
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xc49cprX5nc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xc49cprX5nc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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<br />
Nina Simone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 4<br />
<br />
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2gLVvsy7TXE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2gLVvsy7TXE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
<br />
<br />
Nina Simone - Harlem Cultural Festival - Part 5<br />
<br />
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RHXtB9ssnhw&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RHXtB9ssnhw&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
<br />
<embed src="http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=111922784&m=111922769&t=audio" height="150" wmode="opaque" width="150" allowscriptaccess="never"></embed>My Grandfather, The Cotton Club, And Billy Eckstinetag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-23:1370523:BlogPost:889542009-12-23T12:23:53.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271165089?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
As The Sunsets On Another Sweltering Hot Day<br />
In Manhattan, New York. My Grandfather, 24<br />
Year Old Ira Davis Gets Off The Bus After A Long<br />
Ride From Chattanooga, Tennessee.<br />
<br />
His Destination The World Famous Cotton<br />
Club In Harlem, The Black Mecca Of<br />
Entertainment Back In Those Days, Where<br />
Many African American Jazz Stars Performed<br />
Along With The Jazz Swing Bands Of That Era.<br />
<br />
It Was 1944 And One Of The Biggest Jazz Singers<br />
Of The Day Was Billy Eckstine…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271165089?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
As The Sunsets On Another Sweltering Hot Day<br />
In Manhattan, New York. My Grandfather, 24<br />
Year Old Ira Davis Gets Off The Bus After A Long<br />
Ride From Chattanooga, Tennessee.<br />
<br />
His Destination The World Famous Cotton<br />
Club In Harlem, The Black Mecca Of<br />
Entertainment Back In Those Days, Where<br />
Many African American Jazz Stars Performed<br />
Along With The Jazz Swing Bands Of That Era.<br />
<br />
It Was 1944 And One Of The Biggest Jazz Singers<br />
Of The Day Was Billy Eckstine Whom My<br />
Grandfather Came All The Way From Down South<br />
To See.<br />
<br />
As He Walked The Few Short Blocks To The Club, He<br />
Felted The Need To Just Start Singing And In A Clear<br />
Strong Baritone Voice, He Began To Sing<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
SINGING<br />
<br />
"Alone From Night To Night You'll Find Me To Weak<br />
To Break The Chains That Bind Me.<br />
<br />
I Need No Shackles To Remind Me, I'm Just<br />
A Prisoner Of Love.<br />
<br />
For One Command, I Stand<br />
And Wait Now From One Who's Master Of<br />
My Fate Now.<br />
<br />
I Can't Escape For It's To Late Now, I'm Just<br />
A Prisoner Of Love.<br />
<br />
What's The Good Of My Caring If Someone Is<br />
Sharing Those Arms With Me.<br />
<br />
Although She Has Another, I Can't Find Another<br />
For I'm Not Free.<br />
<br />
She's In My Dreams Awake Or Sleeping, Upon<br />
My Knees To Her I'm Creeping,<br />
<br />
My Very Life Is In Her Keeping, I'm Just A<br />
Prisoner Of Love."<br />
<br />
END OF SINGING<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The Crowd Cheered As He Finished The Billy<br />
Eckstine Song. It Was Then That He Realized He<br />
Was At The Entrance To The Cotton Club.<br />
<br />
As He Finish Shaking Hands And Greeting<br />
The Many Fine Ladies, He Walked Into The Swank, Polished<br />
Club, Got Him A Shot Of Bourbon, Lit His<br />
Cigarette And Listened As The MC Came Onto<br />
The Stage<br />
<br />
"Ladies and Gentlemen Thanks For Coming<br />
Out This Evening To The Cotton Club. The First<br />
Performer Of The Evening Is None Other Then<br />
The Man With The Golden Voice. Mr. Billy Eckstine."<br />
<br />
<br />
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VWuGF-Xh-RM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VWuGF-Xh-RM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Ghetto City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-17:1370523:BlogPost:888802009-12-17T18:30:53.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271164990?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
This Is My First Poem In Nearly 3 Years, Inspired By Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues<br />
Hopefully This Will Be My Comeback Of Sorts. Can't Say That I Will Keep On Writing<br />
Because Right Now I'm Just Not Feeling It Like I Use To, But When I Heard The Song And<br />
Saw The Visuals In The Video, I Knew I Had To Do Something....LOL<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271166258?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
GHETTO CITY BLUES (MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER)<br />
<br />
Life In The Streets Is Not a Piece Of Cake.…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271164990?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
This Is My First Poem In Nearly 3 Years, Inspired By Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues<br />
Hopefully This Will Be My Comeback Of Sorts. Can't Say That I Will Keep On Writing<br />
Because Right Now I'm Just Not Feeling It Like I Use To, But When I Heard The Song And<br />
Saw The Visuals In The Video, I Knew I Had To Do Something....LOL<br />
<br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1271166258?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
GHETTO CITY BLUES (MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER)<br />
<br />
Life In The Streets Is Not a Piece Of Cake. Can a Brother Get a Break While His Life Is At Stake....<br />
<br />
Subpar Housing, Crime Infested Streets, Life Is Not So Amazing, When All You Hear Is Guns Ablazing....<br />
<br />
(ALL I CAN SAY IS)<br />
<br />
GHETTO CITY BLUES (MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER)<br />
<br />
Drugs Running Rampent In Our Cities, Recession Hovering Over Us Like a Dark Cloud, Unemployment Is At a All Time High. What Can You Do, But Throw Your Hands Up And Sigh....<br />
<br />
Babies Crying, Fathers And Mothers Are Dying, And If It Isn't The War, It's The Coldness In These Cruel, Bitter Streets. Life Will Cease To Exist, Because Your Soul Cannot Compete....<br />
<br />
(ALL I CAN SAY IS)<br />
<br />
GHETTO CITY BLUES (MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER)<br />
<br />
5th & Ward, Broken Bottles, Broken Dreams, Hood Mentality, It All Seem So Extreme, But That's The World We Live In....<br />
<br />
Maybe Someday It Will All Change And Then The World Won't Be So Strange. Until Then....<br />
<br />
(ALL I CAN SAY IS)<br />
<br />
GHETTO CITY BLUES (MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER)<br />
<br />
<br />
Written By SoleMannKing 12/17/2009Chrome And Hot Leather Featuring Marvin Gayetag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-14:1370523:BlogPost:888012009-12-14T17:21:24.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2164373976?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
(Thanks to Mama Edie for finding out about this movie featuring Marvin Gaye, i tell you, you learn something new everyday....LOL)<br />
<br />
Yesterday he was a hero. Today he s an outlaw! "Action is the prime ingredient" in this "novel twist" on a biker flick starring William Smith Tony Young Marvin Gaye and Cheryl Ladd!<br />
<br />
When a gang of low-down low-riders kills his fiance (Ladd) Mitch (Young) a Green Beret declares his own personal war and discovers that…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2164373976?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
(Thanks to Mama Edie for finding out about this movie featuring Marvin Gaye, i tell you, you learn something new everyday....LOL)<br />
<br />
Yesterday he was a hero. Today he s an outlaw! "Action is the prime ingredient" in this "novel twist" on a biker flick starring William Smith Tony Young Marvin Gaye and Cheryl Ladd!<br />
<br />
When a gang of low-down low-riders kills his fiance (Ladd) Mitch (Young) a Green Beret declares his own personal war and discovers that revenge is a dish best served with a rocket launcher.<br />
<br />
<br />
CHROME AND HOT LEATHER<br />
<br />
<object width="512" height="296"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/zZvKXBvb4JkGIae9xwoAug"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/zZvKXBvb4JkGIae9xwoAug" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="512" height="296" allowscriptaccess="never"></embed><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param></object>Billy Griffintag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-13:1370523:BlogPost:887602009-12-13T22:56:53.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906406?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
Billy Griffin , is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United States for replacing Smokey Robinson as lead singer of The Miracles.<br />
<br />
Like Robinson before him, Griffin co-wrote many of the Miracles' songs, in addition to singing lead. Griffin and original Miracles member Pete Moore wrote all of the Miracles' 1975 platinum selling[1] album, City of Angels). During his tenure with the group, they recorded three hits: the #13…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906406?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
Billy Griffin , is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United States for replacing Smokey Robinson as lead singer of The Miracles.<br />
<br />
Like Robinson before him, Griffin co-wrote many of the Miracles' songs, in addition to singing lead. Griffin and original Miracles member Pete Moore wrote all of the Miracles' 1975 platinum selling[1] album, City of Angels). During his tenure with the group, they recorded three hits: the #13 Billboard Hot 100 single "Do It Baby" in 1973, and the Miracles' most successful single, the number-one hit "Love Machine", in 1975. Griffin also sung lead on "Don't Cha Love It", a Top 10 R&B number 1 single.<br />
<br />
The Miracles left Motown in 1976, signing with Columbia Records. After two albums for Columbia, Griffin and Moore decided to retire from performing and focus on songwriting. In 1982, Griffin released his first solo album, Be With Me, which yielded the UK Singles Chart Top 20 hit "Hold Me Tighter in the Rain". The following year, Respect yielded the club hit, "Serious". After a third album with Leon Ware, Griffin switched record label to Atlantic Records but despite completing an album, only one single "Believe It or Not" was released there before he was left without a recording contract.<br />
<br />
In 1989, Griffin joined UK record producer Ian Levine's Motown-reunion project Motorcity Records, and was the first to release a single on the label, "First in Line". Griiffin also fronted a Miracles reunion with a new recording of "Love Machine". Griffin became a much featured writer and backing vocals arranger for several of the other artists, but despite recording a large number of tracks himself, his album Technicolour (the single by the same name being a tribute to Marvin Gaye) never saw the light of day before the label collapsed in 1992. Most of his Motorcity recordings, however, were released on the 1996 compilation Best Of Billy Griffin.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, Levine and Griffin also landed a couple of hit singles for the UK soul band The Pasadenas and co-produced Take That's debut album, which including the hit singles "Could It Be Magic" (UK #3) and "I Found Heaven" (UK #15). They also worked with Levine's boy band, Bad Boys Inc.<br />
<br />
Griffin has written songs and sung backing vocals for Aretha Franklin, The O'Jays, Ronald Isley, Freda Payne, Edwin Starr, Evelyn Champagne King, Herb Alpert, Martine McCutcheon, The Emotions and many others. In 2006, Griffin released his latest solo album, Like Water. Griffin can be seen performing "Do It Baby" and "Love Machine" with The Miracles on the Motown/Universal DVD release: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles : The Definitive Performances 1963-1987<br />
<br />
Griffin was honored with the other Miracles, when the group received a Star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame on March 20, 2009.<br />
<br />
<br />
BILLY GRIFFIN - 2ND DAY LOVE AFFAIR<br />
<br />
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z6eFAaisS7A&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z6eFAaisS7A&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
<br />
<br />
BILLY GRIFFIN - HOLD ME TIGHTER IN THE RAIN<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ms5PZ13P9nI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ms5PZ13P9nI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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BILLY GRIFFIN - LIKE WATER<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N3v9OA2FARw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N3v9OA2FARw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>The Marquees Feauturing Marvin Gayetag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-10:1370523:BlogPost:886152009-12-10T20:23:37.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202922714?profile=original"></img></p>
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The Marquees were a short-term Washington, D.C., group who evolved from the Rainbows. Chester Simmons, Reese Palmer, James Nolan, and Marvin Gaye sang with the Rainbows at various times; Simmons was a founding member and the latter three filled in for missing Rainbows when needed. The group was part of a group of district singers who congregated in Bo Diddley's basement studio. Diddley's place overran with talent, including Billy Stewart and the Four…
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The Marquees were a short-term Washington, D.C., group who evolved from the Rainbows. Chester Simmons, Reese Palmer, James Nolan, and Marvin Gaye sang with the Rainbows at various times; Simmons was a founding member and the latter three filled in for missing Rainbows when needed. The group was part of a group of district singers who congregated in Bo Diddley's basement studio. Diddley's place overran with talent, including Billy Stewart and the Four Jewels.<br />
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Diddley hooked the Mellow-Singing Marquees up with a record deal with Okeh Records that produced "Hey Little Girl Schoolgirl" b/w "Wyatt Earp" in 1957. Thinking he had made it, Gaye showed his religious father a copy of his exodus into secular music, but Marvin Gaye, Sr. was unimpressed and peeved at the whole ordeal. The Marquees' enthusiasm faded when the single faltered, but they kept their irons in the fire.<br />
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The Marquees loved the Moonglows, and Gaye went on a mission to get next to the Moonglows' Harvey Fuqua when the group appeared at the Howard Theater. Gaye's bugging coerced Fuqua into arranging an audition in an alley outside the Howard; the Marquees impressed Fuqua so much that he fired the Moonglows after the gig and hired the Marquees. He canceled a gig in Baltimore and took the Marquees to Chicago where he added Chuck Barksdale (who had recently quit the Dells) and recorded as the New Moonglows on "12 Months of the Year" in 1959; they also supplied backing vocals to Chuck Berry's "Almost Grown" and "Back in the U.S.A."<br />
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Later in 1959, the New Moonglows released a second single, "Mama Loochie," with Gaye on lead. Lacking the magic of the old Moonglows, Fuqua disbanded the group in 1960 and sent everybody back to Washington but Marvin Gaye and Chuck Barksdale, who lived in Chicago and had reunited with the Dells. Fuqua and Gaye ventured to Detroit, where Fuqua set up some record companies that he eventually sold to Berry Gordy. Both Fuqua and Gaye married sisters of Gordy; Fuqua headed Motown's Artist Development Department along with producing and writing, while Marvin Gaye became a superstar whose life ended tragically at the hand of his father in 1984.<br />
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THE MARQUEES...WYATT EARP (1957)<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hV2m3KKtwkU&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hV2m3KKtwkU&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Harvey Fuqua & The New Moonglowstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-10:1370523:BlogPost:886122009-12-10T20:22:31.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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In 1958, shortly after the Moonglows recorded their final hit, "The Ten Commandments of Love", Harvey Fuqua re-asserted himself as the group's lead singer, putting Bobby Lester further in the background and causing friction among group members.<br />
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The biggest blow came when Fuqua spotted a young vocal group, the Marquees from Washington, D.C., and took the talented quartet of Reese Palmer, Chester Simmons, James Knowland and nineteen-year-old lead…
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In 1958, shortly after the Moonglows recorded their final hit, "The Ten Commandments of Love", Harvey Fuqua re-asserted himself as the group's lead singer, putting Bobby Lester further in the background and causing friction among group members.<br />
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The biggest blow came when Fuqua spotted a young vocal group, the Marquees from Washington, D.C., and took the talented quartet of Reese Palmer, Chester Simmons, James Knowland and nineteen-year-old lead singer Marvin Gaye under his wing. The group had recently recorded (unsuccessfully) on the Okeh record label after being discovered by rock icon Bo Diddley when Fuqua found them.<br />
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Recording with fifth member Chuck Barksdale, who had been (and would again become) the bass singer of The Dells, Fuqua hired them as his new Moonglows. This group recorded songs such as "Twelve Months of the Year" (featuring a speaking part by Marvin Gaye), "Beatnik" and "Mama Loocie", which (the first recorded lead by Gaye), released in 1959.<br />
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The forming of the "New Moonglows" ended the affiliation of the original Moonglows. In 1959 and 1960, Fuqua also recorded several duets for the Chess label with the singer of "Roll with Me Henry" (and future blues superstar) Etta James. The other four Moonglows recruited bass John Bowie to fill their commitments, and then disbanded.<br />
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HARVEY FUQUA & THE NEW MOONGLOWS...TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR<br />
(Marvin Gaye Does The Opening & Closing Recitation Portion Of The Song)<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9M1dLG0bPAw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9M1dLG0bPAw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Charlie Chan In Black Magic (Original Title "Meeting at Midnight")tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-10:1370523:BlogPost:885622009-12-10T05:31:42.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906164?profile=original"></img></p>
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I just love me some Charlie Chan Movies and this one is my all time favorite, i especially love Mantan Moreland, he cracks me up....LOL. I know a lot of people hate these type of movies because of the way blacks were portrayed in them, but that was mostly all they could do at that time.<br />
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I decided to put the whole movie here in case anyone wants to see it....ENJOY<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 1/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 2/10…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906164?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
I just love me some Charlie Chan Movies and this one is my all time favorite, i especially love Mantan Moreland, he cracks me up....LOL. I know a lot of people hate these type of movies because of the way blacks were portrayed in them, but that was mostly all they could do at that time.<br />
<br />
I decided to put the whole movie here in case anyone wants to see it....ENJOY<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 1/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 2/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 3/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 4/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 5/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 6/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 7/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 8/10 (1944)<br />
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Meeting at Midnight 9/10 (1944)<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N05sV25b2vQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N05sV25b2vQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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Meeting at Midnight 10/10 (1944)<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906191?profile=original" alt=""/></p>Dennis Coffeytag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-06:1370523:BlogPost:882702009-12-06T06:27:26.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
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Dennis Coffey (born November 1940, Detroit, Michigan) is an American guitarist. He was a studio musician for many soul and R&B recordings.<br />
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Coffey learned to play guitar when he was thirteen in Copper City in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At the age of fifteen he played on his first record, session backing Vic Gallon on "I'm Gone" on the Gondola record label. In the early 1960s he joined The Royaltones who had had hits with "Poor Boy" in 1958 and…
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Dennis Coffey (born November 1940, Detroit, Michigan) is an American guitarist. He was a studio musician for many soul and R&B recordings.<br />
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Coffey learned to play guitar when he was thirteen in Copper City in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. At the age of fifteen he played on his first record, session backing Vic Gallon on "I'm Gone" on the Gondola record label. In the early 1960s he joined The Royaltones who had had hits with "Poor Boy" in 1958 and "Flamingo Express" in 1961. The Royaltones played sessions with other artists including Del Shannon.<br />
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As a member of the Funk Brothers studio band, Coffey played on dozens of recordings for Motown Records, and introduced the wah-wah guitar sound to Motown record producer Norman Whitfield's recordings, the most notable of which is Cloud Nine by Temptations. He also played on Edwin Starr's "S.O.S. (Stop Her on Sight)," The Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing", and Freda Payne's "Band of Gold". In addition, Coffey scored the blaxploitation film, Black Belt Jones.<br />
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In 1971, Coffey recorded "Scorpio" which was a million selling instrumental single that peaked at #6 on the Billboard pop chart. The instrumental track featured the former Motown "funk brother", Bob Babbitt on the bass. This received a gold disc awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America on 9 December 1971.<br />
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The follow-up in 1972 was "Taurus", both credited to Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band. Since then, he has recorded several solo albums, most of them for the Sussex and Westbound labels. While at Sussex Records Coffey arranged and produced along with Mike Theodore the million selling "Nice To Be With You" by the group, Gallery.<br />
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Coffee was interviewed in the 2002 film, Standing In the Shadows of Motown, which told the story of Funk Brothers and explained that he had sold his Fender Stratocaster to buy a Gibson Firebird after he heard Eddie Willis of Funk Brothers play it during a Motown session.<br />
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In 2004, he published a memoir, Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars.<br />
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In 2008, he co produced the Carl Dixon/BandTraxs sessions at Studio A/Dearborn Heights/Detroit. Four tracks were recorded featuring some of Motown's Funk Brothers including Uriel Jones, Bob Babbit, Dennis Coffey and Ray Monette, plus other distinguished Detroit session musicians. Spyder Turner, Pree and Gayle Butts were vocalists on the session. The session was arranged by legendary Motown arranger David J.Van De Pitte.<br />
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Dennis Coffey: Scorpio<br />
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Dennis Coffey: Just My Imagination<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WNU-fCmwuUE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WNU-fCmwuUE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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Dennis Coffey - Never Can Say Goodbye<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tFvr3kUQ9qw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tFvr3kUQ9qw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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Dennis Coffey - Main Theme (from Black Belt Jones)<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dvuI_vnpbuM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dvuI_vnpbuM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Soul! Journey To The Sun...November 29, 1972tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-12-01:1370523:BlogPost:879292009-12-01T19:05:08.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906207?profile=original"></img></p>
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This entertainment-variety-talk show was not only a vehicle to promote African-American artistry, community and culture, but also a platform for political expression and the fight for social justice. It showcased classic live musical performances from funk, soul, jazz, and world musicians, and had in-depth, extraordinary interviews with political, sports, literary figures and more. It was the first program on WNET to be recorded with the then-new…
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This entertainment-variety-talk show was not only a vehicle to promote African-American artistry, community and culture, but also a platform for political expression and the fight for social justice. It showcased classic live musical performances from funk, soul, jazz, and world musicians, and had in-depth, extraordinary interviews with political, sports, literary figures and more. It was the first program on WNET to be recorded with the then-new technology of videotape, and most of the shows were recorded in real-time—not live, but unedited.<br />
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Soul ran from 1968 to 1973.<br />
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“JOURNEY TO THE SUN”<br />
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Actor Ron O’Neal talks about Superfly and his career; Singer/songwriter Zulema; and funk-jazz ensemble Black Heat, featuring David ‘Fathead’ Newman. Hosted by Ellis Haizlip.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thirteen.org/soul/2009/04/14/november-29-1972/">http://www.thirteen.org/soul/2009/04/14/november-29-1972/</a>The Sylverstag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-11-24:1370523:BlogPost:874692009-11-24T17:37:38.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906109?profile=original"></img></p>
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Prior to becoming "The Sylvers", the four eldest members (Olympia, Leon, Charmaine, and James) recorded as the Little Angels, appearing on variety shows such as "Make Room For Daddy" and "You Bet Your Life," and opening for such acts as Johnny Mathis and Ray Charles.<br />
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During 1972 the act was joined by brothers Edmund and Ricky. The sextet changed their name from the Little Angels to the Sylvers and released three albums on the MGM/Pride label, titled…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906109?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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Prior to becoming "The Sylvers", the four eldest members (Olympia, Leon, Charmaine, and James) recorded as the Little Angels, appearing on variety shows such as "Make Room For Daddy" and "You Bet Your Life," and opening for such acts as Johnny Mathis and Ray Charles.<br />
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During 1972 the act was joined by brothers Edmund and Ricky. The sextet changed their name from the Little Angels to the Sylvers and released three albums on the MGM/Pride label, titled simply "The Sylvers," "The Sylvers 2," and "The Sylvers 3." Released between 1972 and 1974, these LPs were composed of solid soulful numbers written by Leon and produced by R&B legends Jerry Butler (of the Impressions) and Keg Johnson. Four singles from these self-titled albums were popular enough to be recorded on the Billboard R&B charts, starting a sequence of successes for the siblings.<br />
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"Fool's Paradise" was a thought-provoking song that reached number 14 in the autumn of 1972. The single featured Charmaine, Edmund, and Ricky as lead singers, backed by the sumptuous harmonies of Olympia, Leon, and James.<br />
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"Wish That I Could Talk To You" (# 10) was the next single and during early 1973 became the siblings' first top 10 song. The track, featuring Leon and Ricky on lead, is considered a classic by old-school R&B fans. "Stay Away From Me" (# 33) and "Through the Love In My Heart" (# 50) followed; and album tracks such as "I'll Never Be Ashamed" and "Cry of a Dreamer" received significant airplay at R&B radio outlets.<br />
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The Sylvers consisted of nine siblings:<br />
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Olympia-Ann "Olan" Sylvers (b. October 13, 1951) - Vocals<br />
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Leon Frank Sylvers III (b. March 7, 1953) - Bass, Vocals<br />
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Charmaine Elaine Sylvers (b. March 9, 1954) - Vocals<br />
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James Jonathan Sylvers (b. June 8, 1955) - Keyboards, Vocals<br />
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Edmund Theodore Sylvers (b. January 25, 1957, d. March 11, 2004) - Vocals, Percussion<br />
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Joseph Richard "Ricky" Sylvers (b. October 13, 1958) - Guitar, Vocals<br />
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Angelia Marie "Angie" Sylvers (b. April 11, 1960) - Vocals<br />
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Patricia Lynn "Pat" Sylvers (b. March 25, 1961) - Additional Keyboards, Vocals<br />
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Foster Emerson Sylvers (b. February 25, 1962) - Additional Bass, Vocals<br />
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REMEMBER THE SYLVERS<br />
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THE SYLVERS...WISH THAT I COULD TALK TO YOU<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cqvdySFkZ00&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cqvdySFkZ00&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Stevie Wonder...Stevie At The Beachtag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-11-17:1370523:BlogPost:872732009-11-17T16:44:35.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906058?profile=original"></img></p>
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Almost a precursor of California Motown in the 70s, given that the young Stevie Wonder spends a day at the beach!<br />
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Stevie at the Beach is the fifth album by Motown singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder released on the Tamla (Motown) label in 1964. This album—with the exception of the mild hit—"Hey Harmonica Man", was a concept album of sorts, focusing on beach and surfer anthems as an attempt to get Wonder to now sing surf tunes.<br />
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But much like the label's…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906058?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
Almost a precursor of California Motown in the 70s, given that the young Stevie Wonder spends a day at the beach!<br />
<br />
Stevie at the Beach is the fifth album by Motown singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder released on the Tamla (Motown) label in 1964. This album—with the exception of the mild hit—"Hey Harmonica Man", was a concept album of sorts, focusing on beach and surfer anthems as an attempt to get Wonder to now sing surf tunes.<br />
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But much like the label's attempts to first make Wonder the teenage version of Ray Charles and then for one album as a lounge singer, it failed to connect with audiences. Wonder wouldn't have another hit until 1965 when he was finally allowed to showcase his musical talents more.<br />
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STEVIE WONDER...CASTLES IN THE SAND<br />
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STEVIE WONDER...SAD BOY<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FMeWrAHwsPg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FMeWrAHwsPg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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STEVIE WONDER...BEYOND THE SEA<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JBtIaPBL5Jw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JBtIaPBL5Jw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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STEVIE WONDER...HEY HARMONICA MAN<br />
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<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kKFvzEIUiJ8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kKFvzEIUiJ8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>SoleMannKing...Simply Soleful (ROFLMBO)tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-11-14:1370523:BlogPost:871632009-11-14T23:38:36.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202918204?profile=original"></img></p>
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BLUES AND SOUL MAGAZINE ARTICLE...1987<br />
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Although SoleMann was never a Major Music Star, he was well known throughout the south from 1982 to 1986. He had 1 album titled "Come and Get Your Sole" which was released in the spring of 1982 and was well recieved throughout the south...<br />
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The Album contained 12 songs, all of which was written by SoleMann himself, but the one song that generated heavy airplay, was a song that he had written 2 years earlier…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202918204?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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BLUES AND SOUL MAGAZINE ARTICLE...1987<br />
<br />
Although SoleMann was never a Major Music Star, he was well known throughout the south from 1982 to 1986. He had 1 album titled "Come and Get Your Sole" which was released in the spring of 1982 and was well recieved throughout the south...<br />
<br />
The Album contained 12 songs, all of which was written by SoleMann himself, but the one song that generated heavy airplay, was a song that he had written 2 years earlier that became the title of his only album.<br />
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SoleMann has a very Unique Falsetto Singing Style, that reminds one of Russell Thompkins Jr. of The Stylistics.<br />
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PRESENT DAY....2009<br />
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SoleMannKing is back after a 23 year absent. He has started his own Record Label called SOLETOWN RECORDS and has released his first Album since 1982, titled "SIMPLY SOLEFUL"<br />
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The Album contains 10 songs of which 9 were written by Sole himself. The other one is a song by Heatwave titled "All I Am" written by The Late Johnnie Wilder Jr.<br />
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Here is The 45 featuring "All I Am" on the flip side is a remake of "Come And Get Your Sole"......ROFLMBO<br />
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<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202918291?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
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I would like to thank my Producer Berry G, for making all this possible. BG you are the best in the Business my Brother.<br />
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Thank you Mama Edie for putting MY song here....LOLThe Temptations & Funk Brothers...In Studio Session Rehearsal (1967)tag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-11-13:1370523:BlogPost:871192009-11-13T14:17:44.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906168?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
Given the fact that Motown had not been conducting Live sessions with the vocalists and instrumentalists recording at the same time since at least 1963, this session was clearly staged for the CBS News cameras that were doing a brief piece called The Motown Sound.<br />
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Pictured in the studio are songwriters Lamont Dozier (Standing on the steps at the back of the studio), Brian Holland (The guy who cuts in on the band), Ivy Jo Hunter (Does the countdown),…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906168?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
Given the fact that Motown had not been conducting Live sessions with the vocalists and instrumentalists recording at the same time since at least 1963, this session was clearly staged for the CBS News cameras that were doing a brief piece called The Motown Sound.<br />
<br />
Pictured in the studio are songwriters Lamont Dozier (Standing on the steps at the back of the studio), Brian Holland (The guy who cuts in on the band), Ivy Jo Hunter (Does the countdown), Russ Terrana (The engineer standing up), James Jamerson on Bass, Earl Van Dyke on piano, Bobbye Hall on congas, and from left to right on guitars Robert White, Joe Messina and Eddie Willis. The arranger, wearing headphones and conducting the band, is William Witherspoon.<br />
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To the best of my knowledge this incredibly rare piece of film is the only one of two pieces of footage ever shot at a session inside the studio known as the Snakepit.<br />
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<br />
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SBmaiMJdWEA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="never"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SBmaiMJdWEA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="never" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>Impact Featuring Damon Harristag:msoldschool.ning.com,2009-11-06:1370523:BlogPost:868682009-11-06T18:33:51.000ZShelley "SoleMann" Kinghttps://msoldschool.ning.com/profile/SoleMannKing
<p style="text-align: left;"><img alt="" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906219?profile=original"></img></p>
<br />
Damon Harris is most notable as a member of The Temptations from 1971 to 1975. Twenty years old when he joined the group, Harris was the youngest member of The Temptations during his tenure in the group. As a teenager Harris had formed a Temptations tribute band named The Young Tempts (AKA The Young Vandals).<br />
<br />
After leaving the group, the dejected Harris decided to reform The Young Vandals with Simms, Timmons, and Tighman, renaming the group Impact,…
<p style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2202906219?profile=original" alt=""/></p>
<br />
Damon Harris is most notable as a member of The Temptations from 1971 to 1975. Twenty years old when he joined the group, Harris was the youngest member of The Temptations during his tenure in the group. As a teenager Harris had formed a Temptations tribute band named The Young Tempts (AKA The Young Vandals).<br />
<br />
After leaving the group, the dejected Harris decided to reform The Young Vandals with Simms, Timmons, and Tighman, renaming the group Impact, and singing a deal with Atco Records in 1976.<br />
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Working with a Philadelphia soul production team, Impact recorded a number of minor soul and disco hits, including "Happy Man" and the #5 disco hit "Give a Broken Heart a Break". The group released only one album on Atco, 1976's Impact, before being dropped from the label because of low sales. Impact signed with Fantasy Records in 1977 and issued the album The Pac is Back, which also suffered from low sales.<br />
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IMPACT....HAPPY MAN<br />
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IMPACT....MY LOVE<br />
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IMPACT....SOMEBODY LOVES YOU<br />
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IMPACT....SISTER FINE<br />
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