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music history
Bobby Taylor “discovered” the Jackson Five who were billed with him for a ten-day stint at Chicago’s Regal Theater
The Regal Theater was a central mainstay of South Side public life from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. Built in 1928 and located in the heart of “Bronzeville” at 47th and Grand Boulevard (renamed South Parkway that year), the Regal catered specifically to the entertainment tastes of African Americans. Part of the Balaban and Katz chain, the lavish Byzantine edifice with its tall columns, plush carpeting, and velvet drapes hosted some of the most celebrated black entertainers in America. Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, and Duke Ellington performed frequently at the Regal, and a few native Chicagoans like Nat “King” Cole got their professional start there. The Regal also featured motion pictures and live stage shows like the all-black cast Carmen Jones, which played in the mid-1950s.
Considered the apex of the entertainment world in Chicago, the Regal rendered a tremendous boost to the city’s black culture and black economy. So important was the Regal Theater to the Grand Boulevard community that when the Chicago Land Clearance Commission razed the theater in 1973, many businesses in the surrounding area went into decline.
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Bobby Taylor a brief outline of his story…
Bobby Taylor co-wrote with me for The Elgins, Mary Wells, Rare Earth, and so so many others, often turning his work around overnight.
Bobby Taylor sits over morning coffee and talks of the magical days of Motown music in the ’60s, when black pop artists from the Detroit label were vaulting over the recording race barrier and galloping through the white market.
Taylor had already signed his own group with Motown: Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Now, in the summer of ’68, he brought in a group of young kids he wanted to introduce to Motown owner Berry Gordy, the Jackson 5. It should not be surprising that Bobby Taylor was somewhere in the Jackson 5 mix.
The 63-year-old singer/composer/producer had only one big hit himself–”Does Your Mama Know About Me?” in the mid-’60s–but he seems to have hung out with practically every important R&B and pop artist of the second half of the 20th century.
As a child prodigy, Taylor grew up in a Washington, D.C., housing project “doo-wopping” on street corners with a long, skinny kid named Marvin Gaye, played with Louis Jordan, hung out with Big Mama Thornton, performed on TV on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour alongside good friend Gladys Knight, formed Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers up in Canada with guitarist and backup vocalist Tommy Chong (who later turned to comedy with Cheech Marin).
Once fired a then-unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix because “his solos went on too long, like about a half an hour, and he played his guitar so loud you couldn’t hear the rest of the band”; toured for a while with George Clinton, played command performances for the Queen of England and “that guy with the big nose in France” (Charles de Gaulle); and got discovered for Motown by Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard of the Supremes.
Bobby recorded three albums for Motown, and recently had all his unreleased tracks released in the U.K. on a new CD. He is constantly remembered for his Northern Soul classics like “Oh I’ve Been Blessed” and the incredibly rare single on Mowest, “Just A Little Bit Closer”, but the killer was the album track “Don’t Be Afraid” which is beloved as one of the greatest classics. But around 1970, Motown’s hold on its great artists began to weaken. “Berry Gordy pulled the hooks on me in 1971,” Taylor says. He left the company, suing for unpaid royalties. Taylor says that he won the suit, but has still not gotten his money.
Bobby recorded for Playboy, Epic, Philadelphia International, and made a whole album for Motorcity, including this fabulous remake of his biggest Motown hit.
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Songsheets for the legendary 1985 recording of ‘We are the World’ signed by artists including Diana Ross and Lionel Richie were displayed at the Idea Generation Gallery on July 24, 2008 in London, England.
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Musicians Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie attending Nineth Annual American Music Awards on January 25, 1982 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.
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Label founder Berry Gordy made a point of catching up with the Beatles in 1964 before they returned to England to film “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Do you think that is Berry’s daughter, Hazel?
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Stevie Wonder, singer, songwriter, producer:
Because Berry Gordy owned the company, it was not “tore up from the floor up.” It was something he built. It was not something that somebody else had and passed on to him; it was his and his family’s and all the people who were part of it who built this thing. That alone gives us a sense of pride.
Smokey Robinson:
Way before we started Motown, Berry said, “I’m going to work with you and your group,” and he just turned my whole life around. I played him about 20 of my songs, and he critiqued every song. He told me the songs made no sense because I was talking about five different things in one song; the first verse had nothing to do with the second verse, and the second verse had nothing to do with the bridge. He told me a song has got to be a short book, a small movie, or a short story. He taught me how to structure my songs.
Berry Gordy:
At Motown, I hired a white salesman to go to the South. I didn’t have pictures of black artists on the record covers until they became big hits. The Isleys had a cover with two white people on the cover. Smokey’s Mickey’s Monkey had a monkey on the cover. No one knew or cared; they thought it was brilliant.
Stevie Wonder:
The competition at Motown was not the competition that said, “I don’t like you.” It was more like the Brill Building: it was a challenge to come up with great music, great songs, and to me that was cool. I love Berry to pieces—Berry Gordy was, for my life, a blessing.
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Gaye was married twice. His first marriage was to Berry Gordy Jr.’s sister, Anna Gordy, who was 18 years his senior. Marvin and Anna were married on January 8, 1964 when Gaye was 24 and Gordy was 42. The marriage imploded after Marvin began courting Janis Hunter, the daughter of Slim Gaillard, in 1973. Anna filed for divorce in 1975; the divorce was finalized in March 1977. Gaye had three children. Marvin Pentz Gaye, III (b. 1965 see below) was adopted by Marvin and his first wife Anna.
Stories on how Gaye eventually met Berry Gordy and how he signed to Motown Records vary. One early story stated Gordy discovered Gaye singing at a local bar in Detroit and that he had offered to sign him on the spot. Gaye’s recollection, and also a story Gordy later reiterated, was that Gaye invited himself to Motown’s annual Christmas party inside the label’s Hitsville USA studios and played on the piano singing Mr. Sandman. Gordy saw Gaye from afar and upon noting that Gaye was connected with Fuqua began to make arrangements to absorb Fuqua’s labels to Motown bringing all of the labels’ acts to Motown. Gordy said he immediately wanted to bring Gaye to Motown after seeing him perform, impressed by his vocals and piano playing. While working out negotiations, Fuqua would sell fifty percentage interest in Gaye to Gordy, which Gaye would find out later. After Gordy absorbed his brother and sister, Anna and Harvey to work with him in March 1961, Gaye was assigned to Motown’s Tamla division.
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Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
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Maya Angelou on the set of the film Poetic Justice(1993) with director John Singleton. Angelou played a role on camera as well as writing the poetry heard in the film
Poetic Renioun: Here they are again in 2004, 10 years later…
Maya Angelou appears in a cameo during a family reunion, and her brief ruminations on love, right and wrong, parents, and children provide an emotional anchor for the film.
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I reckon this is the stuff that inspired Joe Jackson
Vee-Jay was founded in Gary, Indiana in 1953 by Vivian Carter and James C. Bracken (later that year, Mr. & Mrs. Bracken), who used their first initials for the label’s name. The first song they ever recorded made it to the top ten of the national rhythm & blues charts. In a short time, Vee-Jay was the most successful black- owned record company in the United States. By 1963, they were charting records faster than some of the major labels.
For our Music History lovers check the links below
Click Here to see a complete list of their recording artists
Read the Full Story Here and Here
www.vee-jay.net
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Vee-Jay Records founded in Gary, Indiana, was the first U.S. company to have the Beatles. In one month alone in early 1964, they sold 2.6 million Beatles singles. Two years later, the company was bankrupt. Vee-Jay acquired the rights to some of the early Beatles recordings in a licensing deal with EMI in which the main attraction at the time was another EMI performer, Frank Ifield.
Vee-Jay’s biggest successes occurred in 1962-1964, with the ascendancy of the Four Seasons and the distribution of early Beatles material (“Please Please Me” and “From Me to You” via Vee-Jay and “Love Me Do”, “Twist and Shout”, and “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” via its subsidiary Tollie Records), because EMI’s autonomous United States company Capitol initially refused to release Beatles records. Vee-Jay’s releases were at first unsuccessful, but quickly became huge hits once the British Invasion took off in early 1964, selling 2.6 million Beatles singles in a single month.
Cash flow problems caused by Ewart Abner’s tapping the company treasury to cover personal gambling debts led to the company’s active demise; Vee-Jay had been forced to temporarily cease operations in the second half of 1963, leading to royalty disputes with The Four Seasons and EMI. The Four Seasons then left Vee-Jay for Philips Records, and EMI’s Capitol Records picked up the U.S. rights for both The Beatles and Frank Ifield. Read More
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REMOVE THAT SCARF! YOUR HANDSOME!
Awww…
