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CD: SHIRLEY ANN LEE: There's A Light/ I Shall Not Be Moved/ How Can I Lose/ Please Accept My Prayer; GOSPEL SUPREMES: Sinner Man; COLEMAN FAMILY: Peace On Earth/ People Has It Hard; CALVIN COOKE: Walk With Me/ What Happens To People; REVELATIONS: Take Care Of Us; BOBBY COOK & THE EXPLOSIONS: Untitled Jam/ On The Way; ORGANICS: Footstumpin' (alt); COMBINATIONS: While You Were Gone; APOSTLES OF MUSIC: Wade In The Water; DELIVERANCE ECHOES: Heaven; YOUNG GENERATION: Running Mod; BURGESS BAND: Untitled; BOBBY COOK QUARTET: Riding High; MIGHTY VOICES OF WONDER: Every Year Carries A Number; JUNIOR MAYS GROUP: Round N' Round; PILGRIM WONDERS: He Never Failed; MIGHTY WALKER BROTHERS: He'll Make A Way; VOICES OF DELIVERANCE: The Power Of God DVD: Contains a 27 minute film documentary on 'the project's production' and over 200 audio tracks from reel to reel tape archives. Ecorse, Michigan, with a population of just over 10,000 and area about three-square miles, is one of several southern suburbs of Detroit known as downriver communities. Like much of the surrounding areas, its prosperity (or lack thereof; it was the first US city to go bankrupt!) was based on the car and steel industries. The booklet indicates that the city is a time capsule - the city basking in the comfort of the 1950s, yet never modernising past the 1970s; residents were likely born in the South, went to church on Sunday mornings and spent evenings on the porch; but if their musical aspirations went beyond the church there was one custom recording studio, in a basement on 18th, that would commit your songs to tape. A Mississippian by birth, Felton Williams came to the Detroit area with his widowed mother and siblings in 1941. The family ended up in Ecorse's government housing where it was ushered into the Church Of Living God, a church steeped in rigid musical traditions, and which used unusual instruments such as a pedal steel, an instrument that Felton himself was playing in church by the time he was sixteen. He was also a wizard at electronics, and landed a job at the local Ford plant, where he took sufficient training to enable him to be able to construct a custom built recording studio in the basement of his house; initially because a friend of his at the plant wanted to be recorded. Thus the Double U studio was born, a triumph of ingenuity, it produced a dynamic sound on a limited budget, an unpolished sound, fidelity sacrificed for reality. The term 'custom' usually refers to a local or neighbourhood recording facility that charges nominal rates: hence this issue's title. Amazingly Williams had never heard live music outside his church confines until his studio started up, and probably for this reason never suggested what 'his' artists should record, or how, he merely allowed them free rein. Word got around the area and any artist or artists that wanted to be recorded was recorded, all Felton asked was to be allowed the rights of all his productions for potential exploitation, though in truth there was little of that. If he'd wanted to preserve a cross-section of vernacular down-home culture, he succeeded spectacularly; if he'd wanted to make a hit record, nothing came remotely close. Different labels were set up to represent the styles of music issued; Revival was for gospel; Cass for pop; Composé took jazz and Solid Rock handled r&b, blues and soul. His first recordings took place in 1967, and a variety of material was recorded. However from 1970, Williams only recorded church oriented material, though in fact there was little recorded from that period, a growing family and promotion at Ford kept him otherwise busy. The majority of the music he recorded was gospel; almost all styles of this being represented on the audio CD, from traditional quartet styling to piano backed hand clappers, to solo vocals to church choir aggregations; also included are blues, r&b, jazz, pop and soul, and even some 1960s punk-rock. Undoubted stars of the gospel material are Shirley Ann Lee and Calvin Cooke. Felton had actually met Shirley in the late 1950s at the Toledo CoLG; even then she was a gospel prodigy and a member of the Jewell Singers, along with a young Candi Staton, recording for the Nashboro label. Though she soon left for California and recorded there, a friendship had been formed, and when she returned to Toledo a decade later she recorded many sessions for Felton. Especially fine is her bluesy 'Prayer'. Calvin Cooke, these days a star on a Robert Randolph inspired 'pop sacred steel' circuit, as a youth took his interest in the instrument from seeing and hearing Felton play, his two featured tracks are especially fine. I doubt if many readers have heard the remaining gospel acts at all (apologies if you have), though particularly fine are the Gospel Supremes. Bobby Cook provides jazzy r&b instrumentals, The Combinations bow their head to the Motown sound up the road, The Young Generation lives up to its name with some proto-punk; The Burgess Band give us funk (only 46 seconds of it though); Junior Mays' group has a Mills Brothers sound on the retitled 1956 track 'Around The World' and The Organics provide pure Detroit small label blues. Roman Griswold of the Organics then 'tells a tale', about what I'm not always sure (sub titles would have been nice), though he is laidback and relaxed about it all; and it's enjoyable and nice to appreciate that he is apparently enjoying the interest too. The final interviewee is Shirley Ann Lee; she is of course, at least in the field of 1960s and 1970s contemporary gospel music, fairly well known and she has an air of happiness and contentment about her. All four interviewees perform music for the film in a professional manner; and these segments effectively confirm the unpretentious demeanour of all four of them; all in all the film adds flesh to the 'Felton Williams story' as related in the booklet notes. And then there is the rest of the 'DVD', a motherload of recordings under the generic title of 'Double U Sound Tape Vault'; there are a total of over 200 tracks available in this manner, these are accessible both via computer or a DVD player. The musical categories are similar to the audio CD, but even greater (included are pedal steel tutorials from Williams for starters!), and there is such a wealth of music that it's really impossible to even superficially describe in a review such as this, never mind review it all. Suffice to say that there is much more music from Shirley Ann Lee, Calvin Cooke and the Organics (including a ten-track section) - and a host of others, 'new' and 'old'. This is an incredible issue, the Numero Group is a Chicago-based label formed in 2003 by three self-acclaimed 'record obsessives'; its catalogue includes soul and funk. The promo material with this issue also indicates that this is the first of a projected series on 'customs' (Rockford, Illinois and Beaumont, Texas are mentioned, though I'm not sure if this is in specific or general terms), certainly if the attention to detail that this release has received continues with future issues and the music is of the sort that B&R covers, it will be very, very interesting to see what is released: if the producers could turn up something similar on a 1950s custom blues outfit, now that could be the issue of the century. Byron Foulger
John Primer: All Original Elder Utah Smith and Cogic Friends: I Got Two Wings Broadcasting The Blues Gizzelle: Devil Or Angel The Downhome Blues Sessions Volume 5: Back In The Alley 1949-1954 The Olliet Records Story Bo Diddley: Road Runner/The Chess Masters, 1959-1960 Rufus Thomas: His R&B Recordings 1949-1956 The Mannish Boys: Lowdown Feelin' SAMPLE ARTICLES The Memphis Midget - Little Buddy Doyle - by Bob Groom Barrack Room Lawyer (Lawyer Houston) - by Guido Van Rijn and Chris Smith Soul Music For Grown Ups - by Tony Burke M For Mississippi - by Tony Burke Odie Ervin - The Mystery Man - by Chris Bentley and Tim Healy Talkin' To The Long Man - Dennis Binder talks to the B&R team The Henry Glover Story - by Billy Vera The Cardella Di Milo Story - by Ray Astbury Bill 'Howl-n-Madd' Perry - by Mike Stephenson Bear Family At 33! - by Tony Burke Pagination Error Issue number 237 contained a pagination error. Instead of page 38 being printed, a duplicate page 42 was used. For those who need it, here is a PDF of the missing page. |
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