46 years ago this month, Miami-made soul music was hitting its stride. It was the year before the scene would break nationally with a couple of big hits in 1968 from local teen sensations Betty Wright and Della Humphrey. Here are 5 very solid tracks all recorded in Miami that debuted in May 1967, a sample of what was just around the corner for Miami Soul.
Sweet Sweet Lovin’ - Paul Kelly
Released on the Philips label, this song became a local hit by July 1967. Paul Kelly was a Miami-born vocalist who enjoyed an extensive career well through the 1980s. His biggest hit was Stealing in the Name of the Lord, which reportedly created a stir among some black communities because it exposed the hypocrisies of some church leaders. But controversy sells; the song reached #14 on Billboard’s R&B chart in July 1970. Three years earlier, Kelly released the song featured here, Sweet Sweet Lovin’. There was no controversy about this very upbeat song, which was produced by Buddy Killen, a music producer from Alabama who made his bones in country music but also had slightly comparable success with R&B hits.
Girl I Got News For You - Benny Latimore
Benny Latimore is a keyboardist from Charleston, TN who moved to Miami and became an integral part of Henry Stone’s TK Records as a session musician and singer-songwriter. He had 2 national hit records of his own in the mid 1970s with Let’s Straighten It Out (#1 in R&B, #31 in Top 40) and Something ‘Bout Cha (#7 in R&B). Girl I Got News For You, issued on one of Stone’s first R&B record labels (Dade), was released in May 1967. One month later, this catchy, pre-disco track was one of the top songs jamming on local soul stations, and probably would have been a bigger hit if it had been (re)released during TK’s impressive disco run a few years later.
I Feel My Love - Little Beaver
Willie “Little Beaver” Hale moved to Miami as a teenager from Forrest City, AR. He joined the Miami nightclub band, Frank Williams & the Rocketeers as lead guitarist in 1964 and later recorded a few tracks as a solo artist including this one, which was released on Octavia Records. Beaver later joined up with Henry Stone’s TK Records and had five hit songs including the 1974 Party Down which reached #2 on Billboard’s R&B chart. He is considered the grand master of Miami Soul guitarists and is most revered for, among many of his musical accomplishments, playing all three guitar tracks on Betty Wright’s exceptional gold record Clean Up Woman (1971).
I Love You Baby - The Moovers
The Moovers recorded their first 2 songs, including this one, with Deep City Records, Miami’s first black-owned independent label which was run by partners Willie Clarke and Johnny Pearsall. The Moovers later changed their name to The Prolifics and released the song If Only I Could Fly in December 1968. They later recorded under the band name Living Proof in the 1970s. The song featured here was written and arranged by Willie Clarke, Johnny Pearsall, and Arnold Albury. The song has a Delfonics’ flavor to it (and incidentally would have been suitable for the soundtrack of Tarantino’s 1997 film, Jackie Brown). Favorite lyric? “With you, I’m a king, without you, I’m not a dog-gone thing.”
True Love Don’t Grow on Trees - Helene Smith
Widely considered among people in the know as Miami’s first queen of soul, Helene Smith recorded more than 20 songs between 1966 and 1969, mostly with the aforementioned Deep City, and then a couple with Phil-LA-of Soul out of Philadelphia, after Deep City’s partners split in 1968. Smith released True Love Don’t Grow on Trees in May 1967, a modest hit. But her big break would come three months later with A Woman Will Do Wrong, which reached #20 on Billboard’s R&B and #128 on the crossover pop singles charts. Today, she is a public school teacher in Miami-Dade County.
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Joey Gilmore is a blues man, but not the kind that brings you down.
Whether as a response to discrimination, poverty, injustice, or simply a lost love, traditional blues music has forever been synonymous with melancholy and human misery. You’d think that blues singers were the same; always feeling, well…, blue. If so, then Joey Gilmore is the light that cracks through that stereotype.
See the thing about blues, well, you know that’s what R&B means, rhythm and blues. It’s blues with rhythm to where you can dance.
There was such a stigma about the blues [back in the day]. Blues was mostly considered music for poor people; poor, black and ignorant…
The sad part is that people miss out on so much about the blues because there’s such a terrible misconception about it.
Blues is great music, man.
Gilmore, 68, plays blues with an upbeat. He uses guitar progressions and rhythms that make you feel good, even if [he]used to wake up every morning, to get to work by nine, but then [he] lost his job and now [he] can’t even borrow a dime.
Gilmore was born in Ocala, Florida. By the time he was 5 years old, he was an orphan. His mother passed away and his father ran off, leaving him and 7 brothers and sisters behind. The children moved in with whoever would take them. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Young Joey found solace in music.
I started banging around on tin cans, buckets and barrels and stuff. Whatever I could find a beat on.
He taught himself well enough that he was invited to join the high school band at Lincoln Park High as a drum major. Gilmore also taught himself guitar and started his own band at 14. One afternoon, the band was invited to play a gig at the opening of a gas station in Mascotte, FL. The year was 1959, and small Florida towns like Mascotte were deep into segregation, much like the rest of the south. Gilmore’s band proved to be quite popular at the event. People were dancing, mingling, integrating. And then, from a distance, Gilmore saw a truck. As it approached, he could make out the passenger. It was Fred Thomas, then Mascotte’s mayor and chief of police.
He came stormin’ in… while the party is going on. Rolled in with his foot dragging out the door. The car didn’t hardly stop long enough. In those days they had one of those big long whip antennas and the dirt road wasn’t paved like they are now and he come in with a cloud of dust behind ‘em and the whip antennae just going back and forth…He jumped out the car and came over and said, I ain’t gonna have it, I ain’t gonna have it, I ain’t gonna have these nee-gees and white folk mixing in my town.
He broke the party up and everybody had to go home.
It was funny.
To others, the memory might have had a lasting emotional effect. But to Gilmore, it plays like a comedy. He goes on to say it was no big deal, we got through it. ‘It’ being the ‘it’ that segregated people by the complexion of their skin, the period when whites and blacks stood at diametrically opposite ends of the social ladder. And Gilmore’s reaction, some 50 years later? It was no big deal.
For the most part…, blacks and whites got along better [back then] than they do today.
That’s how Joey Gilmore carries himself. He doesn’t let things make him blue.
And in return, the universe seems to bestow goodness onto him.
In 1962, after graduating from Lincoln Park High, Gilmore was looking for a proper reason to leave his hometown of Groveland (FL). One day, Gilmore received a phone call that would change the course of his life. It came from his brother-in-law who lived in Miami. The call went something like this: Hey Joey, Frank William’s band is looking for a guitarist. Do you want to come down here?
Soon after, he was on a Greyhound bus, one-way ticket stub in hand. Gilmore arrived in Miami on a Sunday. By the following Wednesday, he was performing at Cafe Society in Overtown with Frank Williams & the Rocketeers, one of Miami’s most popular R&B bands of the 1960s. But the progression from Groveland to the Cafe Society stage wasn’t so linear.
After meeting Frank Williams that Sunday, Gilmore learned that the band was actually looking for a bass guitarist, not a lead guitarist. They told him he had three days to learn how to play it. Gilmore got to work.
They had a dressing room upstairs over the stage. That’s where I would go, every day, day and night, and practice on bass.
It turned out Gilmore was no stranger to the bass guitar.
When I was at home, I used to get on my back porch, turn my record player on, get me a stack of records and I would take my amplifier and I’d turn all the treble off the amplifier, nothing but bass. Just turn the bass wide open and turn the volume up high so I can get that punchy sound. And I’d take my guitar and tune the strings down…and I would sit down with the record player and play the bass line on every song.
The Wednesday night performance at the nightclub went smoothly and launched Gilmore’s professional career, one that would figure prominently in Miami’s surging inner city nightclub scene of the 60s and 70s.
Frank Williams & the Rocketeers. Gilmore is second from left.
Gilmore played bass guitar with the Rocketeers for two consecutive years until 1964 when he joined the Army. When he returned after a two-year stint, Frank Williams had found a replacement, bringing in Arkansas-native guitar virtuoso, Willie (Little Beaver) Hale. No worries. Frank Williams formed a new band for Gilmore and named them The Rocketeers No. 2. And this would be Gilmore’s band. He would play lead guitar and often handle lead vocals. The Rocketeers No. 2 performed at popular nightclubs in Overtown and Liberty City, among them, Double Decker Lounge, Mister James Club, and the Continental Club. This went on for a few years.
Then in January 1971, The Big Break:
Gilmore cut his first ever record as lead. The song was written by Little Beaver and titled, Somebody Done Took My Baby And Gone. It was issued on Frank William’s independent label, SAADIA RECORDS, which was named after one of his twin daughters.
The record was then reissued two months later by the Philadelphia soul label, PHIL-LA-OF SOUL, one of the major soul labels of that time.
It was a national hit record. It was in the top 10 on every soul radio station in the country.[1]
I ask him to tell me about that experience.
Sad to say it but I was green as grass. I didn’t know anything about the business end of it so consequently I never got a dime from none of it.
But I had popularity as far as going to different towns and playing. I had radio play all over the place. I would go to places and it was like wow, this is a superstar. But I didn’t know it. I thought I was a band player.
When he says he was green as grass, he means it. Joey Gilmore got ripped off by concert promoters over and over again. He didn’t have a manager to help him with those things. He says all he knew how to do was put a band together and play music.
But Gilmore doesn’t dwell on it, and we move on.
In 1976, Gilmore signed with the Henry Stone label, BLUE CANDLE, a division of TK Records. He released a few singles and a self-titled (Joey Gilmore) funk album.
He rode that wave for a few years.
Musicians thrive on the whims of the public but that can be risky because things might be roaring today and tomorrow it’s different. That’s the way the music world is, constantly up and down.
Gilmore then turned to blues music. In 1989, he released So Good To Be Bad, a blues album in the style of his hero, B.B. King. The record landed him gigs overseas, including a 12-week tour in Switzerland.
Since then, Gilmore has recorded four additional blues album, the last two titled The Ghosts of Mississippi Meet the Gods of Africa (2006) and Bluesman (2008), both to critical acclaim. A few years ago, he won the prestigious International Blues Challenge awarded by The Blues Foundation of Memphis, TN. These days, he’s still going strong. This summer he’s booked to play blues festivals in Austria, Italy, and Germany. You may occasionally get a glimpse of the man performing at the Sunday Jazz Brunch in Fort Lauderdale. And when you listen to Joey Gilmore play the blues, don’t expect melancholy. Not from him.
Everybody has stories and you want to spend time whining about yours? [No way.] I could be down in the dumps and I turn on the TV or go out and talk to people and man, if you listen for awhile, you say, I ain’t got no problems. Homeless people… and people who don’t have jobs.
Every day I wake up on the green side of the earth is a blessing to me.
I don’t let anything get me down.
… even if somebody done took his baby and gone. Here is Gilmore’s 1971 hit song:
_______________________________________________
Footnote:
[1] I checked the Billboard Book of Top 40 R&B Hits, an anthology that covers the period 1942-2004. While Gilmore’s song Somebody Done Took My Baby and Gone does not appear to have cracked the Hot R&B chart in 1971, a reflection more of the times, in the 1940s, there were 2 similarly titled songs that did garner a mention: Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door (Louis Jordan, 1945) and Somebody Done Stole My Cherry Red (Eddie Vinson, 1949).
By the time Della Humphrey graduated from Miami Edison Senior High in 1971, she was beginning to lose her groove. Three years earlier, the young Miami singer from the Scott Projects in Liberty City had her first ever music recording reach the Billboard Top R&B song charts where it enjoyed a six-week run, peaking at #18. It was #1 in Miami. (Source: Billboard R&B Anthology).[1]
She performed in front of audiences every weekend, packing schools, theaters, and auditoriums around town.
One day she was invited to sing at a concert at the Philadelphia Convention Center with a lineup that included Stevie Wonder and other heavyweights of the Motown and Philadelphia soul scene. But it was 15 yr old Della who brought down the house, I am told.
Her manager at the time: Jack Corbitt.
The owner of the record label got down on his knees so that Della could use his back (as support) to sign autographs. I had Stevie Wonder in line, I had Johnny Taylor, and who’s autograph did they want? Little Della.
A brief background on Jack Corbitt and how he came to be Della’s manager. In the mid 1960s, Jack was a nightclub manager, first at the The King of Hearts (60th St/NW 7th Avenue in Liberty City), and later at the Mr. James Club (36th St/NW 2nd Ave). He was, he tells me, the first black maitre’d in the area back then known as Black Town. The King of Hearts and the Mr. James Club became, under his watch, two of the preeminent black nightclubs during the segregated 1960s. One day he received a call from his wife’s cousin, Beulah. Beulah was Della’s mother. Della was then a 12-year-old singer tearing up the talent show circuit in Miami. Beulah wanted Jack to manage Della’s career, but also act as a kind of guardian to her young daughter. Everyone in the family knew Jack had connections in the music business. He had managed the early careers of Sam & Dave.[2]
Quickly Jack lined up contacts in Philadelphia to record Della. Her first recording was Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad, composed by Clarence Reid[3] and issued by Arctic Records, a division of Jamie/Guyden Records of Philadelphia. The song got lots of radio play in Philly and Miami, and the combined influence of these cities buoyed her up the charts.
The sky was the limit for Della. Following the Philadelphia Convention Center performance, the soul hit-producing team of Gamble & Huff wanted to sign her as their first artist to launch a new recording label, Philadelphia International. New York’s Apollo Theater called and wanted Della to perform there.
Here’s what Jack remembers:
Oh man, it was a blast.
But you know, as soon as Della became somewhat popular …. Then I got involved with this mama-drama. And I had to deal with that crazy stuff, man.
Like many times before and since, in the high pressure world of an artist, especially a young black artist in the 1960s, booms and busts go hand in hand. And Della’s career was no exception. That was absolute. Things began to gradually fall apart. Della’s family became more involved in her music career. Jack saw it as meddling and a distraction. He was losing his authority. It came to a tipping point one day when Della showed up to a rehearsal with a friend, violating one of Jack’s fundamental rules.
I said to her what did you bring this girl here for? I told you to never bring anyone to our rehearsals.
And she shouted back at me – What did I do wrong this time?
It was then that he told Della they were done.
That’s when we split. I left her…It came down to that rehearsal. That’s what capped it. That broke our connection.
Here’s Della’s response.
No, it didn’t go quite that way. Something else had happened and that’s what caused the distance there…
You know, money can do a lot of things.
That something else she’s referring to had to do with events leading to the Apollo Theater performance, which never happened. She said the fee payment was sent in advance to Jack and that he didn’t send her all the money she was due.
When it came to me not getting the money that I should have been getting, there was a big stink.
My dad and my mother were concerned about that. How can you do this? It was breaking me down. For my mom and dad to give the guardianship to you (Jack) and this is how we do it? That was not a good feeling.
And that’s what I remember. That’s when the break up came.
It all fell apart when he stopped telling the truth.
Jack has a different memory.
As far as the Apollo Theater was concerned. I went through this mama drama situation where she figured that Della was supposed to get more than she was getting paid. But you see what she didn’t understand was that, hell, entertainers would die to get into the Apollo, man. People would pay just to perform. Because if you can rock the house at the Apollo, you made all over the nation, you follow what I’m saying?
I tell him what Della said, about him taking the money.
Man, I got no damn money up front. The deal was never closed.
We had discussed certain issues [with The Apollo’s director]. He made me an offer for a performance. The offer [$500] was fine with me but it wasn’t fine with Della’s mama. She figured she was a big star … she should get more money. Not understanding that the appearance at The Apollo was worth, you know, more money than she can think about.
He tells me that all he ever got as her manager was ten percent per performance of whatever Della got. That’s minimal when you consider that the average performance fee was $250, making his take $25. But I think it probably didn’t matter much to him. He drove a Cadillac in those days.
My thing was getting Della to where she needed to be.
There was never a situation where she was supposed to get paid money and never got paid. I wasn’t in it for that.
That’s not my style anyway. That’s not me. I don’t operate that way.
After Jack and Della split, Della’s mother took over her management. But the music business is an unforgiving place for novices. By the time Della finished high school in 1971, Jack’s connections were gone, the crowds weren’t there, the gigs had died, and opportunities slipped away. Bad times led Della to bad things: from alcohol to cocaine to walking around the streets looking for her next “whatever,” she says. This went on for a while, for years.
Jack describes it as “rock bottom.”
She went through something terrible, man. When I came to Miami my daughter knew where she was hanging out and took me there to find Della. Della was too ashamed for me to see her. But I wouldn’t leave until she came out. And then she came out and hugged me and said, Jack, you’re the best thing that ever happened to my life. And we both cried.
My daughter was like a street person too, you know. She knew where Della was.. ‘Cause Della was in the streets.
Blew my mind, man.
Jack says that Della’s family shunned her when she fell into the drugs and barred her from living at home.
Della denies it happened like that. Sure she had her addiction problem, but her mother would never have barred her from home.
They didn’t put me out. They just never would have done that. No, that’s not true. I don’t know where he got that from…, no…, no way.
When I call Jack again and press him on this, he says:
She doesn’t want you to know. There’s no reason for me to say that. This took place…It happened. I wouldn’t say so if it didn’t. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Della, trust me.
I love her to death but the truth is the truth.
Della says that Jack wanted to blame her parents.
But it was not my parents’ fault. They trusted him. My mother and father put me in your hands.
..My mom and my dad did the best for my interest. I would never ever, ever, ever blame my mom or my dad during anything that happened during my music time.
She says that Jack didn’t keep good company and that he didn’t look after her, as a guardian should.
Little by little I told [my parents] things that I would see when I was with him and different people he knew… I didn’t know them…
She pauses to collect her thoughts. She’s not comfortable bashing anybody. Then she wraps it up.
It happened. I got through it. And I’m truly grateful. I really am.
Della says she found salvation in the graces of her family, her friends, and church members and pastors from Liberty City’s Shiloh Baptist Church on NW 95th Street. Della was able to get clean and in 1975, four years removed from high school, she embarked on a new journey. To Philadelphia. Leaving Miami and the good, bad and ugly times behind. There she connected with a new scene, made new friends in the music business, and made a fair living performing at jazz clubs. And she kept her nose clean and her mind right, she told me.
Della and Jack are just two people who knew each other for a short but impressionable time. The thing that brought them together is the thing that broke them apart. But there is no acrimony. There is no regret. There is mutual love and respect. And they do still talk now and then. In fact, it was Della who called Jack to let him know that I wanted to interview him. And he agreed.[4]
Here’s Jack again:
We’ll always be who we are, Della and I. Every time I’m [in Miami], if she’s there we see each other, with love, remembrance, of the good times.
Della is still my sweet heart and always will be, as long as we have life.
And here’s Della:
Philadelphia night club, circa late 1970s
From left to right: Della, Dr. Perry Johnson (DJ), Patti LaBelle, unknown. At a Philadelphia night club, early 1980s.
Philadelphia, early 1980s
Posing before a performance at Fairmoint Park, Philadelphia, circa early 1980s.
Footnotes:
[1] Note that the R&B Anthology lists Della’s year of birth as 1956, but this is false and was likely perpetuated by her handlers to the point that its actually recorded in official reference books found at your local library. Della was actually born in 1953.
[2] Sam Moore and Dave Prater were the most famous R&B tandem to come out of Miami in the early 1960s. Eventually they broke out on their own and signed with Stax Records where they recorded the iconic soul hits, Soul Man and Hold On, I’m Coming.
[3] Clarence Reid is the irrepressible Georgia native singer-songwriter-turn-dirty rap performer (BlowFly) who if there was ever a statue built for the icons of the 60s Miami Sound, his bust would be there, alongside Henry Stone, Willie Clarke and Betty Wright.
[4] Della also told me she wanted to be on the line during the interview with Jack because “he knows quite a bit. Some of the things I couldn’t remember.” I politely said no. Ok, she said.
Additional background on Della Humphrey including a previous Long Play interview was featured here in December 2012.
I came up with this song that really didn’t fit what my idea of what KC & the Sunshine Band was. But I knew it was magic. I mean it was just magic. – Harry Wayne Casey (KC) in the upcoming documentary, Rock Your Baby.
The 1970s got off to a little shaky start for Henry Stone, head of Tone Distribution in Hialeah, Florida. For years, Stone was king of the independent record distribution business. All the major labels, Atlantic Records, Motown, Stax, came to him. He had the contacts with jukebox operators, record stores, and radio stations. Then in 1972, he was informed by Atlantic Records that they were done outsourcing their record distribution and were merging with Warner Brothers and Elektra Records to distribute their product on their own.
So what did Stone do? Well if you can’t join them, beat them.
He had already begun amassing a small group of talented music people to ’cut’ records at his Hialeah location where he had built a studio on the second floor. Mostly local acts. The records were issued on his own independent labels. And he had some success. For example, under the labels Alston and Glades, Stone had four songs that reached the upper echelon of the Billboard charts: Clean Up Woman (1971), Funky Nassau (1971), Why Can’t We Live Together (1972), and Let’s Straighten It Out (1974). These songs had soul and were each exceptional in their own way. Stone was now all-in in the record-making business.
But Miami soul music, as a whole, was beginning to lose steam. Vinyls, once limited to establishment jukeboxes or weekend house parties, were replacing live musicians in night clubs. Paying a disc jockey to play records was a lot cheaper than paying a 5-piece R&B group. Then in 1973, the drinking age in Florida was lowered to 18 years old. Kids were able to get into the clubs. They wanted to party and they weren’t too keen on mom and dad’s soul music.
At Stone’s Hialeah studio, Harry Wayne Casey (KC) and Rick Finch, two of his young protegés, had been experimenting with some of their own music, mostly after hours. They had a different sound in mind: a re-invention of the Miami soul sound, one that had crossover appeal for the tenor of the times.
KC and Finch wrote a song called Rock Your Baby. This one song captured the soul of Miami but added a groove that was catchy, simple, repetitive, and just felt good. The signature open hi-hat drum beat produced a chi-kee-chi-kee rhythm that would become a staple of dance music from Madonna to 90s house music.
KC and Finch asked one of TK’s singers, George McCrae, to sing lead vocal. McCrae hadn’t recorded anything in two years but he gave it a shot. And he delivered, even going falsetto on some notes.[1]
Released in the spring of 1974, the song simmered in the U.S. but across the pond it shot to the top of the charts in the U.K. (and France). By July 1974, the song slipped back into the States and peaked at #1 on the U.S. Billboard 100 chart. The first chart topper for Henry Stone and TK, and overall, one of the biggest hits that year. Rock Your Baby remained on the charts for about 4 months and sold 11 million copies. It’s widely considered to be the first American-made disco hit record.[2]
With the success of Rock Your Baby, Henry Stone found himself on the crest of a disco wave that was about to wash over the music business for the remainder of that decade.
A few months ago, I spoke to Stone and he still relishes in the memory of the nearly 30 platinum and gold records that TK produced in the 70s:
TK was so hot. I didn’t realize how big we were. Every country our records were #1. Hit after hit.
I had the 70s. The 70s was me… TK. I remember Berry Gordy [of Motown] calling me and saying Henry what the fuck are you doing, man?
I said, I’m doing what I’m doing, man.
Now a new film will tell Stone’s life story as it spans across five decades of Miami’s music history. It’s called Rock Your Baby – Henry Stone & the Miami Sound.
This is the second of two films currently in production that is using Miami’s 60s-70s soul/disco scene (aka Miami Sound) as the backdrop. (The first one was featured in a Long Play article recently).
Henry Stone’s son, Joe, told me that this film is an idea they’ve been kicking for years but they could never find the right director or producer. Then they were introduced to Mark Moormann, a documentary filmmaker who’s last film was nominated for a Grammy and garnered buzz at several film festivals in 2011.
Joe Stone says he liked Moormann’s approach from the outset.
Mark has a certain way of telling a story, allowing the different people to speak. He doesn’t use a general narrator. It’s a really unique style.
I spoke to Moormann this week about the upcoming film. He describes it as an “epic kind of story.”
The Henry Stone story is really the story of the history of music making in Miami. This guy’s career really parallels the whole history. And it’s also the history of record distribution. You’ll learn how records have been distributed from the very beginning.
When Henry came down here there were no record stores in Miami. There were just jukebox operators playing music. That’s who Henry distributed the music to. Then record stores came to be and 45s and LPs. And that story has never really been told.
Moormann says there are many other “characters” in this film. KC & the Sunshine Band, The Allman Brothers, etc.[3]
With this film…, there are parallel story lines; Henry’s life story, the music business in Miami, and the history of record distribution. So these are sort of interwoven and then along the way you meet these people that are part of each scene.
Moormann said he started shooting the film a year ago with initial interviews. He’ll need another 4-6 months for additional interviews. But don’t expect to see it on the big screen this year. Moormann said he doesn’t want to rush it. These things take time, he says.
We plan on making something great. Go to Sundance, or Toronto, or SXSW and play at that level. That’s the intent here. .. If you make something great, everything just sort of takes care of itself.
[1] A male voice in an upper register beyond its normal range. If you bumped into George McCrae on the streets, you would never expect him to be able to sing falsetto.
[2] Rock the Boat by the Hues Corporation may also claim this distinction. It topped the Billboard charts on July 6, 1974, one week before Rock Your Baby. But its sales paled in comparison to the McCrae song.
[3] Duane and Greg Allman made some demo recordings at TK’s studio in 1968 with a local rock band called The 31st of February. The album was never completed and was released as demos 4 years later by another Florida label, Bold Records.
To view additional information regarding this film, including an extended trailer, please ”Like” the Long Play Miami page on Facebook (see sidebar).
I am not a film buff but I know that a soundtrack is a key element of any film that accompanies a movie and provides musical context to a filmmaker’s story. Music tracks are typically added when a film is in post production. But what if the very origin of the story is derived from a soundtrack, if the music came first? Maybe that’s been done before. But it’s not common.
Let me explain.
For the last decade the Chicago based company, The Numero Group, has been mining the long-ago discarded music recordings of past independent record labels. Devoted to “dragging brilliant recordings, films, and photography out of unwarranted obscurity,” Numero has found gems from Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and reissued funk and soul music on their own label, Eccentric Soul. A few years ago, Numero contacted the only living partner of Deep City Records, Willie Clarke.
Deep City was started by Clarke and Johnny Pearsall in 1964. The two were college band mates at Florida A&M, before embarking on their venture back in Miami. The big brass sound of their marching band days looms large over many of the tracks they recorded at Deep City.
The Numero – Willie Clarke discussions lead to Eccentric Soul, the Deep City Label, the resuscitation of 17 songs released on a double album in three formats: vinyl, CD, and MP3. The songs, mostly written and arranged by Clarke and Pearsall, featured the vocals of starlets Betty Wright and Helene Smith, or the big soul sound of The Moovers or Frank Williams & the Rocketeers. The Numero record was released January 31, 2006. NPR selected it as its Record of the Year: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6567709
Not long after, as the story goes, Dennis Scholl received a copy of the album from his business partner. After one listen, Scholl was “blown away.”
This is unbelievable, high quality, emotionally resonant music. And I was like: who are these people and how come no one knows about them?
And that was the beginning of the odyssey.
The odyssey he refers to is a film in production now for almost three years: Deep City, the Birth of the Miami Sound, inspired by the Numero compilation record. Scholl is co-producing the film along with local documentary filmmakers Marlon Johnson and Chad Tingle. Its their first long feature together. They have co-produced short films, two of which have won Emmys. But the Deep City documentary is a big story, says Scholl, speaking from his downtown office at the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation where he serves as Vice President of the Arts. I met him and Marlon Johnson there last week for a discussion about the film.
These are big undertakings. They are hard. They are expensive. It is easy to make a film and hard to make a good film.
They knew this was not a film that would receive outside funding initially but they agreed to do it anyway. Tingle and Johnson invested the sweat equity while Scholl covered their hard expenses. They shot with a high-definition camera and did many hours of interviews. In the end, they knew they had something. They acquired footage from the Wolfson Moving Image Archives featuring life in Miami’s Overtown, the predominately black community, where the soul of Deep City’s music lived. Tingle and Johnson began stitching the film together and prepared an eight-minute teaser to drum up interest in the film.
Scholl said at the beginning they didn’t know what to do with it.
We didn’t want to do it as a commercial enterprise where we were trying to put the film in a theater and make money from it. So we went to our friends at WLRN (Miami’s NPR & PBS member station)… We showed them the trailer… and we played them the music. And they said, we’re doing this.
WLRN acquired the film but gave Scholl, Johnson and Tingle free reins to make the film and put it out in festivals. Referring to them as “unbelievably good partners,” Scholl says WLRN is the only institution telling Miami stories these days.
People forget that Miami’s history is very, very compressed. The fact that things happened here so quickly is great but it’s a very compressed time frame compared to the rest of the world and even the rest of America.
So we’re now starting to go back as a community and look at our heritage and look at what people accomplished here…That’s what these stories are about. They are stories made my Miamians, about Miamians, for Miamians. And in doing that, we found this story. And these are really special people.
The film highlights the stories of Willie Clarke, Helene Smith, and the late Johnny Pearsall. Singer-songwriter Clarence Reid also figures heavily in the Deep City music and thus, in this film as well.
These are people who deserve recognition, and should be paid homage to.
The partnership with WLRN allows them to consider applying to the Sundance Festival, Tribeca Film Festival,Toronto Film Festival and SXSW.
[WLRN] really understands the importance of telling this story nationally. They really want to hold off [on the television broadcast] until we have this festival run.
Fall of 2013 is the deadline to submit the film to the aforementioned festivals and they appear to be on schedule. After that run, PBS will release the film on public television.
But that’s tomorrow. For now, what they have in the works is a love letter to Deep City Records.
We just want to make sure that people know that music comes from artists and the people that made this music are really, really special.
Here’s one of the Deep City tracks featured on the Numero record: Them Two with Am I A Good Man.
Film screen shots courtesy of Marlon Johnson, Film Producer, The Johnson Administration.
Not one but two documentary films are currently in production about Miami, based on the protagonists of the soul music scene of the 60s and 70s. One film, Deep City – The Birth of the Miami Sound, is focused on the first black record company in Florida – Deep City Records – and covers the period from 1964 – 1968 when the Miami-based company produced soul recordings that still resonate today.
The second film, Rock Your Baby – Henry Stone & the Miami Sound, is a broader narrative on the life of Henry Stone, featured here last July, and his record distribution empire TK Records, which spearheaded the soul-turned-disco era of the 70s with the global success of KC & the Sunshine Band and other musical acts culminating in nearly 30 platinum and gold records.
Long Play Miami spoke to the people behind the two documentaries in an effort to raise awareness of the films but also to understand the inner workings of each. It should be noted that while some of the same personalities are either featured or mentioned in both films, there is minimal collaboration between the films, which is a little odd because the Deep City and TK narratives are really inter-connected, kind of like DNA molecules. Deep City Records shut down in 1968 and three of its key members joined Henry Stone’s company. The convergence of talent that included singers, musicians, and songwriters proved to be a blessing for the Deep City-TK collective almost immediately, and lasted well into the late 70s.
Deep City‘s film producers have reached out to Henry Stone but haven’t received a commitment. They say they would like to give Stone the opportunity to tell his side of the story about the break up [of Deep City]” but they will do their film with or without Stone’s input. And its fine, says co-producer Dennis Scholl: “When Henry brought Willie Clarke, Clarence Reid, and Betty Wright with him from Deep City to TK in 1968, that was the end of Deep City and the end of our film.” On the other hand, Joe Stone says his father prefers to do his own thing “so as not to water down the Henry Stone brand” while they’re making their film, Rock Your Baby.
So two films, not one. And its all good.
“I think it’s great that the music in Miami that was so critical to the rest of the world is finally getting some recognition,” said Joe Stone.
Yrak Saenz, all 235 lbs of him, plows into the sofa at his Miami Shores townhouse which he shares with his wife, Beth and their 7-year old son, Thomas. He kicks up his legs to the side, crosses them and lets them fall on the sofa’s arm rest. I take a seat next to him. A few minutes before he placed a bottle of 75-proof Havana Club rum on the coffee table and offered me a drink. Not one to refuse his charity, I poured some into a mug and took a swig. The rum stung my throat a little but once it reached my gut, it felt right.
Yrak (pronounced Eeh-rahk) Saenz was born in Havana in 1971. His mother, a hospital nurse, raised him and his sister. His father was an alcoholic who left them when he was only 8 years old. He died some years later. Yrak didn’t know him that well. He says he missed the simple things: tossing a baseball with him, talking about girls…, typical father-son stuff. Hardship is a given when a father is absent. Its another thing growing up in a country like Cuba, with a government that limits access to information, among other things I take for granted as an American.
Full disclosure: I am the son of parents who emigrated from Cuba to escape Castro’s dictatorship some 53 years ago. Lots of Cubans remained for reasons too many to enumerate here. And they had to find a way to survive. As a teenager, Yrak’s survival hinged on music. That was his outlet. Not the traditional salsa heard on Cuban radio. He preferred the music de la calle called cargas fed directly from Miami radio stations like 99 JAMZ and Power 96. It was the 1980s and at any time, if it was meant to be, they could get Public Enemy or Run DMC.
We had this antenna which we made out of a wire hanger and with a Selena Russian radio that was very robust we could pick up distant radio signals if we adjusted [the homemade antenna] this way or that way.
His hands snake around in front of me. His face squeezes and releases its muscles as if he can still hear the music from those days.
As isolated as Cuba was (is) from the outside world, Cubans were finding ways to get whatever bit of light through the cracks, acquiring radio signals and live feeds, ironically from the imperialistas living across the Florida Straits. In essence, one can imagine that around the same time the children of Cuban exiles were break dancing at Miami parties, this was also happening in the backstreets of Havana. The children of exiles and the children of those that remained, gusanos and fidelistas, dancing to the same beat on any given night.
Yrak’s contribution to the emerging Havana hip hop scene was dropping rhymes over a neighbor’s rhythmic clap or layered over the instrumental breaks of rap songs that someone may have brought back on cassettes after a trip to the States. Over time, Yrak perfected his delivery, his tone, and his cadence amongst friends in the barrios. And in the process learn something else.
I began to realize that I had an ability with words, how I was able to communicate, how I could not only reflect my life, but also the lives of others, and how people could change and empathize not only with me but with others too. That always made me closer to mi gente, always closer to la calle.
Gradually, Rap Cubano’s popularity began to spread in the wake of growing discontent. Hip hop was becoming not only more audible in Havana but also more visible.
The streets would fill up with kids coming out and break dancing. There were a lot of B-boys. Then the cops would eventually come around and break it up.
One of the key artistic elements of hip hop culture – graffiti – was beginning to appear on the sides of decaying buildings in Alamar, Havana, considered the birthplace of Cuban hip hop.
Then in 1995, a Cuban rap aficionado, scholar, and promoter named Rodolfo Rensoli organized the first rap festival in Havana, right in the Alamar section. In a recent interview, Rensoli said that the purpose was to “provoke an artistic revolution and take rap to a higher level.”
Yrak rounded up four friends from the neighborhood and participated in the festival. The event was a showcase for emerging rap artists. There was also a rap competition. Yrak’s group came in second, behind that year’s grand prize winner, Primera Base.
He was just getting started.
A year later he formed Doble Filo (Double Edged), a rap duo that aimed to represent the influence of two distinct music genres.
We had the ‘freaky’ which is what we called rock music in Cuba and I was the rapper. We wanted to do something unique.
At the 1996 festival, Doble Filo won the grand prize with a rap song called Al Doblar de la Esquina. The song’s message: that violence is prevalent in the streets of Havana despite the Cuban’s media refusal to report it. You don’t have to go far to find it, it’s around the corner.
They were invited to record the song at the studio of musician Silvio Rodriguez. It was one of the first official recordings of Cuban rap ever.
After that, Doble Filo went through several makeovers including experimenting with a female vocalist until 1998, when current member Edgar O. Gonzalez a/k/a Edgaro joined the group. Edgaro brought a different concept, image, and purpose to Doble Filo. He was younger (about 15 years Yrak’s junior), caucasian, stylish, had lived in the Netherlands, spoke English, and was heavily influenced by American music. Their initial colloborations took off from the outset.
At that point, Doble Filo, well entrenched in the rap scene, wanted to make a living off of their music.
In 1998 and 1999, we played concerts and we didn’t make any money. I worked in a shoe factory and I didn’t make any money… we were coming out of our Special Period* that was comiendote la vida and I wanted to earn a living.
Cuba’s Special Period (Periodo Especial) occurred following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba lost its primary ideological and economic sponsor and the Castro government initiated desperate austerity measures, including severe widespread cutbacks to the use of energy resources. Food rationing and agriculture deterioration lead to famine and other social problems.
Yrak says that in Cuba all artists have to be part of el sistema. You cannot work independently and earn a living from your craft. So he and his contemporaries worked to institutionalize rap in Cuba, to commercialize it.
I remember that at a General Assembly meeting I had an opportunity to address Fidel Castro publicly. And one of the things I said to him was that rap was the voice of a new generation, not of protest, but of speaking out for change, for a better quality of life, a better life… I thought it was important for the media to focus more on these voices than of those that dance [along with mainstream music] . All you see in the local press was baila, baila, muevete, muevete. There wasn’t a voice that spoke of change, or social improvement.
At this point in the interview, I begin to feel a little uneasy. Its the first time he invokes Castro’s name during the interview. And he does it so matter-of-factly. I think about my dad and my grandparents who are no longer here. They remained Cuban exiles until their last breath. What would they have said had they had an opportunity to address Castro?
Yrak says the Assembly discussion was an important point, a seed, if you will. Within a year or two, Cuban media outlets were all over the annual rap festival, giving rap music its due, says Yrak. Or maybe they were monitoring events for the government. Who knows? But as things go, something indeed happened.
During the 2002 rap festival a rapper named Papa Humbertico did what would have been unthinkable in prior years. He publicly rapped against the police. Fidel’s police. Calling them a nightmare, calling them criminal. “I detest you,” he cried out.
A month later, Yrak says the Cuban government stepped in.
Cuban rap got so immense. It was all over the streets. You know, when the youth have a voice anywhere in the world and they express themselves, their influence, their demands,… that makes governments nervous.
It’s not a fantasy that rap was born in the U.S. And you can’t deny that the U.S. and Cuba are not on friendly terms. With all the history of rap… of protesting, of speaking the truth,… with 4,000 people attending a rap concert and the rappers on stage rapping against the police, .. the government said, wait, wait, we have to control this.
So they created the Agencia Cubana de Rap (Cuban Rap Agency).
Yrak says that most of Cuba’s early rap groups were invited to join. Doble Filo accepted the invitation. The Cuban Rap Agency handles promotion, marketing, and some recording for the rap industry under its own label, Asere Productions. The agency also sponsors lectures and tours.
I think to myself, why would Doble Filo join a Castro-government sponsored agency? Especially knowing that they just want to control him and his peers before they get out of hand. Besides, isn’t rap supposed to be anti-establishment? Isn’t it supposed to rage against the machine?
He repeats what he said earlier: That in Cuba all artists have to be part of el sistema or you cannot work, you cannot earn a living. Doble Filo wanted to make a living as artists. Under the Agency they now had an opportunity to make some money.
Self serving? Maybe a little. But who am I to judge? I was born and raised here, not there.
In an April 2009 CNN article titled How Hip Hop Gives Cubans a Voice, Yrak is quoted as saying this about the Cuban Rap Agency: “[It] has an agenda that goes with the government’s agenda. It doesn’t limit me but it does force me to be creative in how I express my ideas.”
He also said that his generation – old school rappers – were forced to limit what they expressed about life in Cuba. The new school of rappers have a more defiant attitude.
Aldo Rodriguez of the new school group Los Aldeanos is also quoted: “Hip hop is an art form that speaks the truth about how people are living.” In what seems like indirect criticism aimed at more ‘commercialized’ groups like Doble Filo, Rodriguez said, “Our lyrics don’t always go with the standard Cuban rhetoric and often that won’t get airplay,” adding that his group isn’t allowed to perform at local theaters.
Ironically, Los Aldeanos never joined the Cuban Rap Agency and they are the most popular rap group in Cuba today, according to Yrak. He says that which is prohibited and controversial is always in demand. Their music spreads across the island faster than any other rap group’s.
I ask Yrak about being part of el sistema versus remaining underground like Los Aldeanos. He is quick to remind me that the underground rappers would not exist if it weren’t for groups like Primera Base and Doble Filo, the first wave of rappers in Cuba that introduced rap music into the consciousness of Cuban culture, spearheaded the movement and laid the groundwork for new avenues of expression. About 7 years ago, the new generation of rappers began to appear: Los Aldeanos, Silvito Libre, Eskuadron Patriota.
[The new rappers] came with a different vision. One of indifference or defiance: One of … ‘I don’t care anymore, I don’t want to be part of the system. I don’t want to be associated with anything. I have nothing to lose.
Yrak says that these groups should not dismiss the likes of Doble Filo and Primera Base. People can’t think about a future if they disregard the past, he says, adding, you have to know where you came from to know where you’re going. Back in the day, Doble Filo too voiced their opinions. But their style was more subtle, he says. They used metaphorical lyrics and selective wordplay to describe the discontent with day to day life in Havana.
Maybe I’m not like The Aldeanos. I don’t sing, ‘down with Fidel’. Maybe I don’t say that. But the people know what I think.
He says he never holds back on saying what he wants to say. (I understand that we are sitting in Miami as opposed to Havana. He doesn’t have to look over his shoulder here. But he knows this article will be published on the internet, and it will get around, maybe even reach Havana.)
I have a commitment not only to myself as an artist but also to my people (pa’ mi gente). I can’t be someone who says one thing on stage and then another thing off stage. I won’t look good.
I ask him if the integrity of his music is ever compromised as a result of being associated with the Cuban Rap Agency. Whether he ever feels manipulated?
[The Government] never says you can’t say this or that. You live in Cuba. You know what you can and cannot say [publicly]. I have never in my 20 years of making rap music been told anything like that.
But I also take advantage of whatever mechanisms are available as part of the Cuban Institute [of Music] to be able to spread our music.
One of those mechanisms is to be permitted to travel outside of Cuba. Miami is his second home. His wife and second child live here. He has another son who lives in Havana, and an ailing mother. So he returns to Cuba on a regular basis. But spending time in Miami has had a profound effect.
My music is more open, more mature since I’ve been in the U.S. because I see Cuba from outside. I see other possibilities to promote, to create, other possibilities that I didn’t have in Cuba.
In Cuba, I was limited to information. I had limited access to the internet. I was operating under one particular way of thinking and here it’s more open.
Doble Filo’s last album Despierta [Awaken] seems to reflect that. It’s their most non-subtle, opinionated work yet. And even more recent material continues the trend. A song he wrote two months ago called Clandestino contains the rap lyrics: ”My people know me well, they know that I am not lying. I don’t care if I’m annoying, I don’t depart from the context, I fought with all my strength for what is mine and what is ours. I have a thousand reasons, a thousand excuses. Why should I forget about this if I reflect the streets in my words. This is the truth, against censorship, dictatorship, against that power that breaks us and manipulates us, …”
On this day Yrak Saenz sits in his Miami Shores home, ninety miles from Cuba. He has one foot here and another foot there. His mind, present of his surroundings, turns to the future. He begins to wonder about the possibilities, about his purpose.
I have this dream, this vision,… to be able to return to Cuba and try to unite Cubans on the island, not the fidels, not the castros. I mean the simple man.. the guy who eats the bread he gets every day.
It’s what I have to do, man.
Me toca a mi hacerlo, asere.
One rap at a time, Yrak.
From within and from afar.
Here is the video for Apenas (Abro Los Ojos) from Doble Filo’s recent CD, Despierta.
In 1968, Della Humphrey was an eighth grade student at Miami’s Edison Junior High. She wasn’t your ordinary 12 year old. Nature had blessed her with a rich set of vocal chords, and her singing consistently won her trophies and ribbons at local talent shows. Her family got her a manager. He booked shows for her around town. Della was, as they say, going places.
Meanwhile Clarence Reid, the local soul singer/songwriter/producer, was writing a follow up song to Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Do [And Still Be a Lady], which was a hit sung by Miami’s own Betty Wright earlier that year. With his second song, Reid wanted to stay on message about empowering women with voice, strength, and dignity. He titled it Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad. Reid presented the lyrics to Steve Alaimo of TK Records of Hialeah, Florida. TK was owned and operated by record distributor Henry Stone and had produced and distributed Reid’s first song on their own label, Alston. But Alaimo was reportedly unimpressed. It sounded too much like the first song. Reid wasn’t happy. “He snatched up the lyrics and hauled ass,” says Willie Clarke, who co-produced most of the big Miami soul records of that time. Clarke says that Reid then walked from Hialeah to Overtown, and gave the lyrics to the talented eighth grader. Reid had been a judge at one of Della’s recent singing competitions. He knew the girl had chops.
They flew up to Philadelphia where Reid had connections with Jamie/Guyden Records and made a deal to record Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad. It was released on Arctic Records, a division of Jamie/Guyden. The song instantly soared in Miami, reaching #1 in November 1968 on local radio stations. The record also cracked the national Billboard Hot 100 charts. Della was not only going places. She was now a star.
“The song was blasting all over the radio,” remembers Willie Clarke.
Della returned home and continued performing live. She was billed as Aretha Franklin No. 2, Miami’s 12 year old Soul Sister. Soon after, Your Love is All I Need, Della’s second recording, also written by Clarence Reid, was playing on Miami radio.
In 1969, Della recorded two more songs for the Arctic label but they didn’t take off as well as the first one. Things began to slow down a little. Two years later, she went in a different direction, recording a reggae song for an independent Miami label.
And then around 1973, after her last known recording, Della vanished – just like that - from the spotlight.
About six months ago I went looking for her. I checked the internet for blogs, chat forums, news articles, any reference whatsoever as to her current whereabouts. I researched marriage licenses, traffic tickets, property deeds. My searches pointed me to towns and cities across the U.S, most of them unfamiliar to me, places like Loveland, Ohio and Florence, Kentucky. A search for death records located 12 Della Humphreys that had passed since 1973 but no definitive matches for the Della I sought, not a trace.
A former journalist who had tracked down her family a few years back told me Della didn’t want to be found. Nevertheless, I called around and left voice messages on answering machines across the country. I did this again and again. Until finally I reached someone who seemed to know everyone in the Miami music business in the 60s. An hour later he provided me a telephone number belonging to “one of his girls” who he thought could help. When I called her, she told me she knew Della’s nephew. Small world.
I spoke to the nephew and he promised to talk to his ‘auntie’ and get back to me the next day. But the next day passed, and the day after, and the day after that. Over the course of a few months, I left him messages, texted him, emailed him. He wouldn’t respond. Time slipped away. I began to forget about Della Humphrey. I figured this was not only my fate but hers as well: to be forgotten deliberately in order to keep the memory of her intact.
A few weeks ago, I received a surprise call. It was the nephew. “I have Della’s number for you,” he said. “She’s waiting for your call.”
Here is Della’s story.
———————————————————————————————————————–
Della Humphrey has no regrets. She tells me this during the phone interview. I count six times. My gut tells me it’s something she has pondered before.
The interview with Della Humphrey lasted 72 minutes. It’s only the second interview she has done in at least a decade. We start at the very beginning: her growing up in the Scott Projects in Liberty City, being the youngest of three girls. Her parents were good parents, as in, model parents – nurturing, protective, strong moral fiber. Her childhood memories are vivid; attending Lillie C. Evans Elementary and having Sidney Poitier’s niece as her first grade teacher; participating in a Cinderella play at Holmes Elementary with Betty Wright as the fairy godmother; playing in the neighborhood with her girlfriends; events at the James E. Scott Community Center. She was also the youngest in the choir at New Hope Baptist Church on 15th Avenue in Liberty City. Fond memories.
After she won a few talent shows around the age of 12, Della’s family got her a manager, Jack Corbitt. Corbitt was married to one of her cousins. He began booking shows and making connections for Della. He booked her performances in Richmond, Virginia, and Washington D.C., and at air force bases around the country. He even booked her a gig to sing before the Premier of the Grand Bahamas in Freeport. And the song that put her on the map was Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad.
All you guys out there / that can’t be trusted
these girls give you all / and you return them busted.
But don’t take advantage of us / just because you can
Cause if you make us do wrong / we may never be good again
Don’t make the good girls go bad, no
Don’t make the good girls go bad, no
If you don’t, if you don’t really love us / please don’t use us
The record is considered by soul music enthusiasts the world over as a classic. Co-written and produced by Clarence Reid and Jack Corbitt, and recorded in Philadelphia, the song cemented Della’s place in Miami’s forgotten history of soul.
We were just very happy to have sold half a million copies of that one song for a beginner artist with Arctic Records. I think at that time I was the youngest artist with that company.
I ask her about the first time she heard it on the radio.
I think one by one we were all stretched out and laid out. There were my sisters and I don’t even want to mention my mom, oh my gosh, you could hear her around the corner somewhere. We were very excited. It was a big moment in my life and one that’ll last me a lifetime.
It was a big deal for a 12 year old, she says.
In the beginning, there was a whole lot of new stuff going on for myself, just a kid playing in the neighborhood, visiting with other girlfriends and neighbors. Then suddenly there was a multi record deal, autograph signings at record conventions, touring.
The song remains a coveted piece of history. Last year, the rappers Drake and The Game collaborated on Girls Gone Bad in which they sampled Della’s original song. I ask her about it.
I was excited. I mean, [the original song] was in the 60s… This is what, 2012, are you kidding? To find a different generation … to have an interest in that song by any means.., it was exciting to me, it was a good thing. For someone else to do their own rendition, I applaud that. I think it’s wonderful.
Della could be my music teacher any day.
We talk a little about Your Love is All I Need, the B side to her first recording, which she remembers “quite well” and brush over the two other records she made in 1969: Wait Until Dark and Girls Have Feelings, songs that were written and arranged by Reid and Corbitt for Arctic Records.
In 1971, Della shifted away from the dwindling soul scene. She worked with King Sporty, a Jamaican-born artist who was married to Betty Wright. He produced her song Dreamland, previously recorded by the Wailers (Bob Marley’s back-up band) in the mid 1960s. Its her first and only foray into reggae.
It was a new style of music for me. I thought it was cool.
About 22 minutes into the interview we get to that jumping-off point. After Dreamland, Della didn’t record any more music according to my research. In fact, I found no other indication of a Della sighting anywhere. My conclusion: Della Humphrey, once a local celebrity, disappeared from the spotlight at about the age of 16, with seemingly an exciting, dynamic career path drawn out for her.
I ask her why she vanished so abruptly. I think I catch her off guard.
Yes,.. a break from the music because I was so young when I started.. everything was dedicated to the music to.. going here, going there..everything.. going places as kids and young people do., you never want to not have that moment…
Della struggles to find the right words, to explain it to a stranger on the phone. It’s not as fluid as when she’s talking about her music.
She tells me that after high school, she moved to Philadelphia. The year was 1975. She says, it was a choice “of my own.” (She draws out the words ‘on-my-own,’emphasizing her ownership of that choice.) She said she did not want to have “the music thing going.”
I wanted something different. Everything from 12 yrs old had been me, my mother, my manager. ..I kind of wanted to have a quiet time. And I did, for awhile.
Della enrolled at Philadelphia Community College and took courses in theatrical arts. She had relatives there that helped her get around. But music called to her. She couldn’t stay away from it long enough. She began meeting different people and making contacts in the music industry, securing gigs at popular jazz clubs and hotel lounges. She went back to singing as a “self contained artist” which meant she could work with whoever she wanted to. She felt, to some extent, liberated. And it was just the right scene for her too.
The [Philadelphia] environment had a lot of swag. It was flavorful. You always met people doing something that you wanted to do. And that’s what happened with me.
She got to work with artists like McFadden & Whitehead, the Philly-based duo who recorded the hit song Ain’t No Stopping Us Now, and Ron Tyson of the Temptations. It was all good, she says.
After Philadelphia, where she spent about 12 years, she moved to Minnesota in the early 1990s, traveling even further away from Miami’s tropical climate and towards the Twin City’s sub-zero temperatures. Talk about getting away. I ask her why Minnesota? She says she tried to extend her music career there but she doesn’t elaborate. It doesn’t seem that important to her.
Since about 2001, she has been living in Georgia, in a town north of Atlanta. She’s married to her husband William, an aviation mechanic, who also had a side music career as a saxophone and keyboard player in a funk band once. Della likes living in Georgia:
It’s a small county, very nice, very quiet. When I want to go home (Miami) there’s the excitement of being home and all the things to do, you know, and then I can appreciate the quiet time when I get back. I get that here.
Della still is active musically. Her and her husband built a studio at home and they’ve recorded some songs together. She also has a job working “with juveniles.” I ask her to explain but she refuses.
I return to the point of most interest in her life story: when she left Miami. She replies that after early success, well,…
Some of the things asked to do – how can I say this?
She pauses to find the right words to say. I tell her she could go off-record if she prefers.
Well, .. I don’t want to bash anybody, who am I to bash anyone? I count it all joy. It was a great opportunity and privilege and I’d like to keep it that way.
All you guys out there / that can’t be trusted / these girls give you all / and you return them busted.
Being young, and under management, things don’t always go well. People have disagreements with the management and production, things of that nature. So I was not of age, and I had no authority there. And my parents felt that if something was not in my best interest, it was just not going to happen.
I ask if she has any regrets.
No, I don’t …, if you can trust anyone you should be able to trust your mom and dad. So no, I don’t have regrets. I still have my family and lots of love and everybody else has the squabbling stuff to deal with. No, I don’t have any regrets as far as that.
But don’t take advantage of us / Just because you can / Cause if you make us do wrong / We may never be good again.
I ask her if she ever felt cheated or taken advantage of.
Oh yes, absolutely. But like again, I myself, you’ll get through it, however long it takes, you know and to come out, going in feeling one way, and to come out feeling another totally different so I have no regrets. I don’t. Now someone else on the other hand, maybe. I don’t know. But for me, I can say, no, I don’t have any regrets. I go home, often [Miami].
I didn’t owe anybody anything. I felt good waking up each day. I slept good at night.
Everybody can’t say that.
She tells me about the long, tiring nights, touring at such a young age.
That’s a lot of wear & tear, it really and truly is. It’s a lot of loneliness, the longer you stay away from home. Kids don’t always understand that.
Della’s was a close knit family and they weren’t used to it.
It just started to fall [apart] at the seams a little bit [in Miami], and pretty much, friction with management, things of that nature. So you know we stepped back a little bit.
I’ve met so many entertainers on anti-depressants. Are you kidding? For something that you love, something that you get so much joy out of? To tear it down like that. No,..I don’t have any regrets. I’m not angry and haven’t been, with anyone. And surely not my parents, no.
I enjoyed my years and the many opportunities. I count it a privilege and a joy.
Next month, the company that produced and issued her first three records, Jamie/Guyden, is hosting red carpet events in Philadelphia and New York. They want to bring back all the artists of that era for one night to celebrate their music. She is excited about that.
Until then, Della is just fine living her quiet, self-contained life in a small town north of Atlanta.
Don’t make the good girls go bad, no
Don’t make the good girls go bad, no
If you don’t, if you don’t really love us
please don’t use us
Note: A follow up post regarding Della’s relationship with her manager Jack Corbitt was published here in March 2013.
You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout, I’m telling you why.
Lou Reed is coming to town!
Lou Reed, that icon of (post) punk, performance art, and glam rock, that godfather of street cred, will be performing in Miami for the first time since… well, lets just say Bill Clinton was President and Don Shula still coached the Dolphins (if my research is correct). Plain and simple, the dude doesn’t tour.
Reed is the coolest of street cats. Never one to chase commercial success or mainstream acceptance; he just never gave a shit. Early in his music career he was too busy trying to figure himself out to worry about outsiders, and then once he did, he chose the strangest of paths: pioneering progressive glam rock (with David Bowie producing his records in 1972), toying with ‘electronic noise’ before the digital age, composing rock operas, writing “Walk on the Wild Side” and recording the most famous of background vocals by ‘the colored girls’ – doo do doo do doo do do doo .
Indefinable. Uncategorizable. Eccentric.
Most recently, he collaborated with Metallica on a concept album (LuLu) based on – get this – works by an obscure 19th century German playwright. Whatever the intents and purposes, the album, to put it mildly, bombed. (Reed said recently that Metallica fans have threatened to shoot him. But then this: “I don’t have any fans left. Who cares? I’m essentially in this for the fun of it.”).
For the fun of it. That bravado is why Lou Reed still matters.
Reed first began to matter in the late 1960s when he was rubbing elbows with Andy Warhol, the milk-white-haired grand-daddy of multimedia pop art. Warhol was also known for famous parties at his New York City studio dubbed ‘The Factory’ which regularly drew hundreds of artists, celebrities, and “it” people for festive, creative debauchery all curated by Warhol himself. It was there that Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker started The Velvet Underground which from 1966 to 1970, explored through their avant-garde music, the darker, grittier side of life (drug use, street hustling, flame ins, burn outs). Reed once said, “I put together music about what was really going on in the streets of New York and had some basis in reality”. This was in direct contrast to the psychedelic music originating from the San Francisco hippie movement in those years.
And now just as the holidays approach, Lou Reed is coming to take part in the UR1 Music Festival in Downtown Miami’s Bayfront Park on December 8th and 9th with at least 40 other musical acts including the sometimes polemic, always entertaining Kanye West, pre-grunge rockers Jane’s Addiction, and former Gun & Roses guitarist Slash.
We are in for a December treat.
Here’s the Rock & Roll Animal himself with The Velvet Underground in a 1993 concert in Paris, the last time the Velvets performed together.
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Update – November 30, 2012:
The UR1 Festival was postponed due to ‘inclement weather conditions.’ New dates will be announced shortly so we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Rock & Roll Animal. Stay tuned.
If one could get paid for giving interviews, Clarence Reid might just be a rich man.
But you have to try to pin him down, and that’s not easy. For three months I tried to make this interview happen but there was always something strange and aloof about Reid’s behavior. He’d cancel at the last-minute, or wouldn’t show, or submit an excuse through his manager, Tom.
Reid is credited with co-writing and/or arranging more than 220 songs since 1963 for (mostly) Miami record labels. As a talented soul singer himself, he released over 30 albums, singles, or EPs. This makes him arguably the most prominent contributor to Miami’s 60s and 70s soul scene. Born in Cochran, Georgia in 1945, he arrived in Miami at the age of 17 with a mind full of ideas at a time when ’there wasn’t much going on musically.’ Once established here, he would help usher in greater racial integration, black feminism, and sexual revolution type ideals through his music.
One day last week, I head to meet him at Miami Jai Alai where he spends most of his week days unless he’s recording or on tour. We grab two chairs in the main entrance area. There are large TVs all around us. Ongoing jai alai matches, a horse race, Game 5 of the National League Division Series between the Giants and the Reds.
We start in Cochran, a rural town spread across 4.2 square miles smack in the middle of Georgia.
When I was about 6 years old, all the blacks up there, they had this thing that if you’re black you’re supposed to listen to the blues like B.B. King and all of that stuff.
I didn’t like blues. Everything is wrong. The corn don’t roll, the hen don’t lay… I didn’t like it. I liked the hillbilly music. I would get [that music] and change them around in my own stuff.
Shittin’ in the morning sun / I’ll be shittin’ till the evening come / watching my turds fall in / then I take them back out again.
…the blacks [would say]…, you’re disgusting’…, and the white people loved it.
He began performing around Cochran. The white audiences would eat it up. He’d get paid for it too, sometimes coming home with as much as 90 or 100 dollars which was about 10 times what some of the workers were making in the rural fields.
On the road again / Just can’t wait to get on the road again / the Hershey highway means ass, where all the turds have ever been / I can’t wait to get on the road again.
When his grandmother found out how he made the money, she was incensed:
You’re a disgrace to the black race and you ain’t no better than a blow fly.” And I said, ‘what the heck is a blow fly?’
A blow fly is a black and red and green insect, they lay eggs on dead things, they turn into maggots.”
And so BlowFly was born. More on that later.
The interview continues. Reid tells me what he wants me to hear, at times side-stepping some of my questions. Some things I knew, the big things, … that he wrote early hits for Betty Wright, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Gwen McCrae, a trio of artists that dominated the Miami R&B scene from 1968-1974.
When Reid first moved to Miami, he instantly hooked up with über producer Henry Stone. In 1963 he recorded Like White on Rice on Stone’s Dade Label, a ballad that has been described as ‘a strong vocal performance backed with a pumping piano and some fine horns’ by at least one soul music enthusiast. Reid then worked with writer-producer Willie Clarke at Deep City Records before going all in with Stone.
He continued recording soul and funk songs for Stone’s labels, as well as, a Philadelphia based label. In 1969, Reid had his biggest hit, Nobody But You Babe [Alston]. The song peaked nationally at #7 on the R&B charts. After that, success as a frontman (at least as Clarence) was hard to come by. But he thrived in the songwriting field.
He tells me about the song he wrote for Gwen McCrae, Rockin’ Chair, which reached #9 on the U.S. pop charts and #1 on the soul charts in 1975, i.e., a monster hit.
Back in the day, … the wife would tell her daddy, hey daddy, you want me to rock you in my rockin’ chair?
Yeah.. That [song] means fucking.
Not only was Reid a major player in the Miami soul and funk scene, he was also, behind a mask and donning a cape, a potty-mouth performer of parody songs. Kind of like Weird Al Yankovic, but X-rated, triple X. Under the pseudonym, BlowFly, he was the original dirty rapper predating the likes of Miami’s own 2 Live Crew by more than a decade. Reid’s BlowFly was featured in the 2010 documentary, The Weird World of BlowFly.
As BlowFly, he released Rap Dirty in 1971, considered the first ever dirty rap recording, and continued with a string of albums throughout the 70s and 80s. They were called ‘party records’ back then because they were only played at house parties, never on the radio or at clubs. They were sold behind the counter at select record shops because of the profanity not only in the lyrics and song titles but also the cover art which often featured topless women.
Yet despite all the profane, misogynist-like rap songs he recorded as BlowFly, Clarence Reid had a deep respect for women. He wanted them to be strong. He appreciated them, protected them, pedestal-ed them. He manifested these emotions through his mainstream music.
About Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Can Do (and Still be a Lady) [Betty Wright, Alston, 1969]
.. I couldn’t understand. If you had 5 women at 1 time, you was a lover or a Casanova. But if your sister dated two guys, she was a whore. I just couldn’t understand it. So I came up with that record,. …That was big on the charts, top 10.
About Don’t Make the Good Girls Go Bad [Della Humphrey, Arctic, 1968]
People used to say about this girl or that girl… ‘she’s a whore’ and everything…, I would get mad, ‘you all made her that way’. I remember this boy would take his sister with him on dates. Then he’d say I’ll be right back and had guys give him money to leave his sister there so they can bang her. This was in Georgia back then…All the girls, they weren’t bad, [the guys] would make them go bad. .. that’s when I came up with that song.
He talks about some of those female stars like Wright, McCrae, and Humphrey, how when they reached just a taste of stardom, they got rid of him.
Someone tells them, you’re big enough to go on your own now. What they don’t understand is that I created stuff from scratch. I don’t care how good the other manager was, if you can’t create shit, you’re gone. That’s the way it was.
But don’t be fooled. Reid doesn’t have any regrets. In fact, he doesn’t even give me a chance to ask him about regrets. He’s already onto the next topic, a song he wrote that was sung by Vanessa Kendrick. He sings it. How can I do what’s right / When what I need is wrong / how can I follow the rules of love / when love won’t let me be strong. Then he parodies Christmas carols. Silent night / holy night / your p#ssy’s so loose / were it once so tight. He asks me my astrological sign and then dazzles with a dirty song about being a Libra. He turns around and sings a song to a familiar woman who is sitting at a table nearby. This is Clarence Reid a/k/a BlowFly and its the show of the day at the Miami Jai Alai.
The previous week at the Ricochet Lounge in Midtown Miami he said he performed in front of a packed house as BlowFly. (I believe it; I saw him play at The Stage back in August. He can still work a crowd.)
At the end of this month he’s headed to Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Portland. The crowds are diverse. Young, old, black, white, ‘even the Spanish’ line up to see him perform these days.
This interview was conducted in Spanish.
Then in 1995, a Cuban rap aficionado, scholar, and promoter named Rodolfo Rensoli organized the first rap festival in Havana, right in the Alamar section. In a recent interview, Rensoli said that the purpose was to “provoke an artistic revolution and take rap to a higher level.”
and purpose to Doble Filo. He was younger (about 15 years Yrak’s junior), caucasian, stylish, had lived in the Netherlands, spoke English, and was heavily influenced by American music. Their initial colloborations took off from the outset.
festival, giving rap music its due, says Yrak. Or maybe they were monitoring events for the government. Who knows? But as things go, something indeed happened.
Aldo Rodriguez of the new school group Los Aldeanos is also quoted: “Hip hop is an art form that speaks the truth about how people are living.” In what seems like indirect criticism aimed at more ‘commercialized’ groups like Doble Filo, Rodriguez said, “Our lyrics don’t always go with the standard Cuban rhetoric and often that won’t get airplay,” adding that his group isn’t allowed to perform at local theaters.
recent material continues the trend. A song he wrote two months ago called Clandestino contains the rap lyrics: ”My people know me well, they know that I am not lying. I don’t care if I’m annoying, I don’t depart from the context, I fought with all my strength for what is mine and what is ours. I have a thousand reasons, a thousand excuses. Why should I forget about this if I reflect the streets in my words. This is the truth, against censorship, dictatorship, against that power that breaks us and manipulates us, …”
In 1971, Della shifted away from the dwindling soul scene. She worked with King Sporty, a Jamaican-born artist who was married to Betty Wright. He produced her song Dreamland, previously recorded by the Wailers (Bob Marley’s back-up band) in the mid 1960s. Its her first and only foray into reggae.
