Johnny Adams - Reconsider Me (SSS International 770)

Reconsider Me

SHELBY S. SINGLETON, JR.
1931-2009

Shelby S. Singleton, Jr. passed away this afternoon, a victim of the agressive cancer that had spread throughout his body. An absolute giant of the music industry, he never forgot where he came from.

From his work with folks like Brook Benton and Dinah Washington at Mercury, to the initiation of the big company's Smash subsidiary in 1961 (when Huey Meaux brought him Joe Barry's I'm A Fool To Care), to his own Plantation and SSS International labels (along with its own various subsidiaries like Silver Fox and Minaret), this was a man who knew a good record when he heard it.

One of the original, seat-of-the-pants 'record men', he told John Broven; "A good promotion man was one that could stay up for two or three days, could outdrink everybody, still be up when they were all on the floor, and could outeat everybody. Just complete workhorses, that's what we all were."

Singleton's Louisiana and East Texas roots ran deep. He was the guy who broke records like Sea Of Love, Hey Paula, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Chantilly Lace, Running Bear, and on and on in those early days. He had a knack for listening to what the local disk jockeys and juke box operators had to say, and taking it nationwide. Just as with Huey Meaux (who brokenheartedly described him to me this afternoon as 'more than a brother'), Shelby was lifelong friends with Henry Hildebrand, Jr (pictured above), who ran one of the largest record distributors in New Orleans, All South.

It was Hildebrand who turned him on to the work that Wardell Quezergue was doing on his own Watch label with Johnny Adams. When Shelby started up SSS International, he leased Johnny's cover of Release Me from Watch, and took it into the R&B top forty in early 1969. Genuinely impressed with Johnny's unmatched vocal talent, Singleton pulled out all the stops and brought him to Music Row to record this fantastic record we have here today. Written by his old friends from the Louisiana Hayride days in Shreveport, Mira Smith and Margaret Lewis, Shelby's production helped make this Johnny's biggest hit, and one of the all-time great 'Black Country' records.

As we've discussed in the past, when Singleton's Plantation release of Harper Valley P.T.A. became an absolute phenomenon in late 1968, it paved the way for his purchase of Sun Records from Sam Phillips the following year. Shortly after that, he bought up the Blue Cat and Red Bird masters from George Goldner, and continued in that vein, building up an incredible catalogue of great music that he was able to sell and resell over the years. An astute businessman, he presided over his Sun Entertainment Corporation right to the end.

Well loved by all who knew him, Shelby S. Singleton's incalculable contributions to American popular music will live on forever.

May He Rest In Peace.
_________________________________________________
Funeral arrangements for Shelby S. Singleton, Jr are as follows:

Visitation: 11am -1pm
Funeral Service: 1pm
Saturday, October 10, 2009

First Presbyterian Church
4815 Franklin Rd.
Nashville, TN 37220
615-383-1815

Andy Chapman - Double Your Satisfaction (ATCO 6558)

Double Your Satisfaction

So, over on The B Side, we established that the guy singing on the other side of this 45 was not Andy Chapman, but in reality Tommy Tate. Naturally, one would assume that this must be Tommy on the flip as well, right? Wrong!

Another very cool Thomas, McCree, Thomas number, the vocalist on here, everybody seems to agree (except Huey Meaux, who says he never heard of him), is a guy named Big Ben Atkins. Atkins came up out of Vernon, Alabama (the same town that gave us Dan Penn), leading a college circuit band called The Nomads, mining the same territory as Penn's Pallbearers. He cut his first single at Fame, a double sider of Penn/Oldham tunes that was actually produced by Dan, and released on original American Sound partner Seymour Rosenberg's Youngstown label in Memphis.

Singles on Statue and Goldwax would follow, before he wound up at Grits n' Gravy. It certainly seems odd that Atlantic would agree to put out a record on a guy with an established 'name' out there on the street under a different moniker, especially seeing as how there were in reality two different Andy Chapmans on the same record. Like Tommy Tate said, this was also probably cut as a demo, and shopped out to Wexler who remained unaware of the ruse. I wonder what Huey would have done if it was a hit?

Quinton Claunch leased a couple more 45s to Josie, before Ben was picked up by Stax, who released the critically acclaimed Patchouli LP on their Enterprise subsidiary in 1971. Produced by Bobby Manuel and Duck Dunn, it was cut at Muscle Shoals Sound, and broke into the top 100 on the Billboard album chart that year. Like most white guys singing R&B in the late seventies, however, he ended up getting lumped in with the 'Country' guys (just like our friend Len Wade), and his biggest hit would come on the Country charts with We Don't Live Here, We Just Love Here in 1978.

Ben Atkins cut an LP per decade in the eighties and nineties, and is still around. According to his website, he is now performing as a founding member of The Class of '65, "...a complete show and dance band with a rhythm section, four piece horn section, light show, and female background and lead vocalists." His early material routinely fetches big bucks on eBay, and his own hard driving brand of 'blue eyed soul' still holds up today, as evidenced by this rockin' side that Huey Meaux produced on him over forty years ago (even if Huey doesn't remember it).

You can't make this stuff up.

Big Sambo and the Housewreckers - The Rains Came (Eric 7003)

The Rains Came

In the late fifties, Texas sax man James Young led a smokin' band in Beaumont and Port Arthur called Big Sambo and the Housewreckers. This amazing record we have here today was cut with Huey Meaux in 1960 and sold over 500,000 copies. It was well on its way to breaking nationwide when it was killed by the NAACP, who thought that Young's stage name was a little over the top. Meaux says he pleaded with James to change it, but that he wanted to stick with the name that got him there. Young is the man who brought Barbara Lynn to Huey's barber shop, and set all of that in motion. He did, in fact, consent to call himself James 'Big Sambo' Young for a later release on Meaux's Jetstream label, but it didn't sell much. Big Sambo died in 1983.

The Rains Came was also released as the follow-up to Sir Doug's She's About A Mover in early 1966, when it broke into the Top 40 on the pop charts.

I spun this 45 for the first time in ages as part of episode seven on the YouTube thing, and it just knocked me out. This guy could sing, man.

Arthur Conley - People Sure Act Funny (ATCO 6588)

People Sure Act Funny

This one comes via a special request in the comments of the post I did about this 45's anthemic B Side a couple of years ago. Produced by the one and only Tom Dowd at American Sound, it broke into the R&B top twenty in the summer of 1968... are the Memphis Boys just kicking it on here or what? Sounding kind of like Joe Tex (who was recording his own hits at American around the same time), it's a cover of a Titus Turner song from 1962 that was also performed by Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford. Turner's co-writer, James McDougal, was one of the composers of Gardner and Ford's biggest hit I Need Your Lovin'... Great Stuff!

Staple Singers - I'll Take You There (Stax 0125)

I'll Take You There

Barry Beckett
1943-2009

Gene Allison - Have Faith (Vee-Jay 855)

Have Faith

This is, in my humble opinion, one of the best records ever made.

Gene Allison came up singing Gospel, but not long after Ted Jarrett hunted him down in a Nashville poolroom in 1954, he agreed to try his hand at R&B. After a few sides that went nowhere, Ted brought him into Owen Bradley's primitive 'Quonset Hut' studio on Sixteenth Avenue South (soon to become the cornerstone of  'music row') in 1957 to cut a song he had written called You Can Make It If You Try, using members of the Joe Morris Orchestra. He leased the masters from that session to Decca, but only for a limited time. When they failed to appreciate what they had, Jarrett moved on.

Already a force on the Nashville R&B scene, Ted picked up Larry Birdsong's contract when his time at Excello was up. Birdsong had hit big for the label in 1956, when Pleadin' For Love almost broke into the R&B top ten, but hadn't done much since. Jarrett had been friends with Ewart Abner for a few years, and when Abner took over as General Manager of Vee-Jay, he came knocking on Ted's door, looking to sign Birdsong to the Chicago company. "You can have Larry," Jarrett told him' "but only if you sign this kid Gene Allison, too." Abner was none too happy about it, but he agreed to take on both artists. Much to everyone's surprise (except Jarrett's, of course), it was Allison who broke things wide open when the same Quonset Hut recording he had leased to Decca climbed all the way to #3 R&B (and even broke into the Pop Top 40) in early 1958 (Birdsong, unfortunately, would never chart again).

Vee-Jay knew a good thing when they saw it, and was set to pull out all the stops when it came to recording Allison's follow-up record. Borrowing Sonny Thompson's eighteen piece orchestra from Syd Nathan at King, they scheduled a session at Universal Studio in Chicago that Spring. According to Jarrett; "...I slipped up and drank too much before the session. In fact I had so much alcohol, I was in the Twilight Zone... they wouldn't let me in. I raved and ranted... Finally they went and got the president of Vee-Jay, Ewart Abner, and he let me in." In spite of (or possibly because of) the booze, it was Ted who came up with that great big E Flat intro that sets the tone for this monumental recording. I just love it.

With the same kind of inspirational message as Gene's first hit, I had always assumed that Have Faith (which would just miss the R&B top ten itself) was written by Jarrett. Not so... according to the label, it was composed by Sonny Thompson and Henry Stone. Henry Stone? Like T.K. Records, Get Down Tonight Henry Stone? Now, how did that happen? Well, as it turns out, when Syd Nathan re-activated his Deluxe label in 1953, he had leased some sides that Henry had produced on Otis Williams & The Charms for his Florida based Rockin' label, and put Stone in charge of the subsidiary. When The Charms sent Hearts Of Stone to #1 R&B for nine weeks in the fall of 1954, Deluxe, and Henry Stone, were on top of the world. In 1955, amidst all kinds of turmoil in the group, Stone worked out a deal that left Otis Williams with Syd Nathan at King, while he took what was left of The Charms (along with other 'mutually owned properties') to Florida to form his own label.

That label was called Chart, and among it's releases were several singles by Sonny Thompson. These sides must have been part of the deal he made with Nathan, as Thompson remained under contract to King (going on to be the man behind all of those great Federal Freddy King records) until they closed their Chicago office in 1964. On Henry Stone's website, it says that he formed two publishing companies in 1955 as well, one of which was called Pelican. Pelican is listed on the Vee-Jay label here as one of the publishers, and I guess it's not much of a stretch to think that Stone got a piece of both the songwriting and the publishing on Have Faith as part of the deal he made with Syd Nathan. Intrigued by all of this, I called Henry in Miami. I left a message with the guy who answered the phone, who asked me what this was in reference to... Henry hasn't called me back.

Be that as it may, Gene Allison was hot. Ted Jarrett put together a Nashville R&B package that included, at one time or another, Allison, Christine Kittrell, Roscoe Shelton, Earl Gaines and Larry Birdsong, and hired Jimmy Beck & His Orchestra to back them up out on the road. Known as 'The Pipe Dreamers' after their 1959 local instrumental hit, this was essentially the band that The Buzzard, and Lattimore Brown, had taken out of Little Rock the year before. Lattimore travelled with Allison and the band to Fort Worth, Texas, and there is a famous story (repeated by the recently deceased Jarrett in his great autobiography You Can Make It If You Try) about how Gene abandoned the band there in Texas to starve while he went off to perform some gigs in Florida.

Our man Lattimore remembers it differently, as he and the rest of the band saw opportunities on the hoppin' club scene in Dallas, where they could rule the roost in places like The Empire Room, and didn't want to go back to Nashville where they'd be lost in the crowd. The Pipe Dreamers apparently broke up at that point, with Allison deciding he ought to stick with Jarrett (whom he referred to as 'Dainty'), and head on back to Music City. As Lattimore took over the reins of the band, this would begin his 'Dallas period' when he recorded those great Duchess sides, and worked behind the scenes with Jack Ruby at The Atmosphere Lounge...

Sir Lattimore still speaks highly of Gene Allison (who passed away, sadly, in 2004), and remembers those days out on the road with him fondly. At any moment, he is apt to break into his own rendition of Have Faith, and has told me that the song pretty much represents his outlook on life...

"Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled,
Just Say A Prayer At Night.
Have A Little Faith In What You Do,
And Everything's Gonna Be Alright."

I am right there with that.

Eddie Bo - Every Dog Got His Day (Ric 969)

Every Dog Got His Day

I just can't believe he's gone, folks.