Majestic Arrows...The Magic Of Your Love

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

This is all i could find on this group, the story was wayyyyy to long, so i just added the parts where the group was talked about....Mannnn i love this stuff....LOL

For a decade or so beginning in the late 60s, Arrow Brown was the head of Bandit Records. Although he never sang or played a note, he was the undisputed star of the label, tapping the talent, writing and producing the songs, and putting his imprimatur on everything from his groups' names--the Arrows, the Majestic Arrows--to their stage moves. Between 1969 and 1981, Bandit released more than a dozen singles and one full-length. None of them came close to being a major hit, but Brown didn't need airplay or sales receipts to keep going. He financed his label with the money he collected from the harem of women he lived with and lorded over. Brown juggled as many as a dozen ladies at a time, among them his wife, his longtime mistress, and a bevy of young girls he referred to as his daughters, lost souls he seduced with hollow promises of stardom. It was a soul-music commune of sorts--Motown meets the Manson family.

In 1973 Brown came as close as he ever would to having a hit, a tune he'd written and recorded with Larry Johnson called "The Magic of Your Love." The Majestic Arrows--Larry Johnson, Tridia, a singer named Palario, and the recently arrived Gloria Brown--began performing on a small circuit of south-side clubs and featured the song in their sets. Brown and Mary Ann's son Altyrone Deno Brown also made his recording debut that year. The cherub-cheeked Deno was a natural theatrical talent, his impassioned performance carrying the song "Sweet Pea" and its pleading B side, "If You Love Me."
Brown's vision of an entertainment empire was finally starting to take shape--or at least that's how he saw it. "He wanted it to be like a Jackson family thing. Like how they started in a small house and then developed and got big," Tridia says. "Deno was going to be his Michael Jackson, and then he was going to build all his groups from there. He had big plans for all of that."

The sound of Brown's raised voice coming from the basement of the house, which doubled as Bandit's rehearsal space, was not uncommon. "There was a lot of yelling," Deno recalls. "He was a yeller, for sure." But there was a flip side to Brown's temper. He could often be found at the piano, gathering his family at his feet to work out a new song or idea. In the midst of a bleak and sometimes rough neighborhood, he instilled in his odd family a sense of community and a defiant pride in their talents. "He made you think all of the success was really going to happen," says Tridia. "He had us convinced."

Outside the confines of his house and neighborhood, however, Brown was not the figure of unquestioned power and authority he strove to be. During the summer and fall of '73 "The Magic of Your Love" slowly grew in popularity. The Majestic Arrows were invited to perform the song on Soul Train, and the track got regular airplay on a number of local stations. But although "The Magic of Your Love" sold as many as 5,000 copies, Brown was hard-pressed to get any money back on it, unable to force the hand of unscrupulous distributors. And when DJ Herb "the Cool Gent" Kent played the song on WVON, he spoofed its long intro by rapping a lengthy dialogue about wild-west train bandits over the opening.

Around this time Brown formed a company, Brown Productions, and signed on to release a single by an up-and-coming local act called the Chosen Few, a rerecording of Elvin Spencer's hit on the Twinight label, "Lift This Hurt." It was an unusual project for Bandit, as Brown had nothing to do with the writing or production, and not a successful one. While touring in support of the record the group was unable to find copies anywhere; Brown hadn't gotten them into stores. "He didn't understand distribution," Sevier says. "He was an island unto himself. He was insulated and didn't grasp the business at all really." The Chosen Few severed ties with Brown and ended up reissuing the single on their own label.

Brown spent much of the next year working to complete the Majestic Arrows' album, the only Bandit full-length ever issued. Among the few surviving documents from the label is a cassette capturing him at work in Paul Serrano's studio during an overdub session for the song "Going to Make a Time Machine." In the course of a few minutes he charms and chides a late-arriving Benjamin Wright ("I would shake your hand, Ben, but you got a cup in it"), scolds singer Larry Johnson ("You gonna have to do a new vocal"), and at one point, when Serrano jokes "You know a man could sell 18,000 records in one minute," cockily shoots back with "Less than that, Paul--30 seconds."

The Magic of the Majestic Arrows was finally released in 1975. The cover art features a hand-colored drawing of the group members caught in the swirling cyclone emanating from a genie's lamp.
The image was apt. Despite their apparent potential, the end for the Majestic Arrows came abruptly just a year later, when an infuriated Brown discovered that "one of the girls was fraternizing--as dad called it--with one of the guys in the group," says Tridia. "Secretly, I think dad liked her himself. That kinda made him jealous." Brown decided to disband the group then and there. "We were getting quite a bit of attention, but dad got angry about what was going on, so he blew up the whole thing," Tridia says. "That was it."

"He had the right instincts when it came to the creative side of things," says Sevier. "But he had this overwhelming need for control. It was a double-edged sword: it served him well when it came to keeping his little kingdom together, but also was the thing that destroyed him as far as the business went."

"He was a power monger and needed to be in control," son Kevin agrees. "As good a singer as Larry was, the Majestic Arrows really should have been something big."
At the time the loss probably seemed negligible to Arrow Brown. He already had a new meal ticket.


MAJESTIC ARROWS...THE MAGIC OF YOUR LOVE

[Edie Antoinette]

You did such an outstanding job with this Sole!

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

He doesn't look like he should have had it going on....ROFLMBO. You want the complete story?

[Edie Antoinette]

I'm loving the pic though--thanks!!!

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

ROFLMBO

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHA

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

dude was a pimp in training....LOL

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

ROFLMBO.....It might be him, i like reading that stuff. You see the blog Smoke...Risen'?

[Edie Antoinette]

Good job 7nator!!!! I enjoyed reading this and hearing the track.

[Edie Antoinette]

"He financed his label with the money he collected from the harem of women he lived with and lorded over. Brown juggled as many as a dozen ladies at a time, among them his wife, his longtime mistress, and a bevy of young girls he referred to as his daughters, lost souls he seduced with hollow promises of stardom."

Lawd......ha.....murcee!!! LOL!!! smh

...and then:

"..although "The Magic of Your Love" sold as many as 5,000 copies, Brown was hard-pressed to get any money back on it, unable to force the hand of unscrupulous distributors. And when DJ Herb "the Cool Gent" Kent played the song on WVON, he spoofed its long intro by rapping a lengthy dialogue about wild-west train bandits over the opening." ---*say it ain't sooo!!! Not my Herbie Baby!!!! smh Lawd!!!

Is that little scrunched up midget by the van him???? *trying not to laugh*