News — beach music

  “Looking back, I’m really proud of what we achieved in the 1960s” reflected the late Nelson Lemmond of The Tempests. “We made some great R&B. And played with some great talent too. We never performed with Otis or Wilson. But pretty much everybody else in between. At the end of the day though, things started to change. Otis had died, Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Civil unrest was everywhere and there was a militant atmosphere, even in the more progressive areas of the south. People ended up taking sides.” This feeling echoes previous comments made by various session...

(A book by E. Mark Windle. Publication date 15 July 2019. Pre-order facility available now). I doubt it was just a moment-in-time thing. Thirty years on, my memory of first hearing Someday echo across the dancefloor at an all-nighter and stopping this young teenager dead in his tracks has not faded. It wasn’t a recording which necessarily broke the mould upon ‘rediscovery’ on the early 1980s northern soul scene. The new open-minded approach and healthy appreciation for musical diversity had already seen to that, whether it be mid tempo, beat ballads, latin soul, early R&B or others  - and the...

It's a bit of a tradition these days for me to provide progress reports of writing projects at particular milestones, partly to inform of course but also for personal reflection on the process and to praise contributing individuals who help 'make it happen'. So then, here we have the Spring update now that The Tempests book is nearly complete. On the whole, the majority of the book is there and the main text has now been proof read. Still-to-dos include some final image copyright permissions and heaps of boring stuff (indexing, pagination etc). The manuscript will be heading to the...

True enough, in the 1960s several recording acts from the eastern seaboard embraced soul music. For some perhaps it was initially as a happy accident. Travelling African-American R&B singers on the circuit arrived in town without a backing band and needed some local talented musicians to support them. Later, musical repertoire would occur more by design. The uniqueness of The Tempests lay in the fact that this homegrown North Carolina outfit known for soulful lead vocals, an unusually large and loud horn section, tight rhythm and heavy bass lines, could claim some commercial success and much critical acclaim. It seemed...

The Chashers’ “Without My Girl” is one of the more obscure releases and not that well known even among rare soul collectors, partly due to the record being one of the more recent discoveries on the northern scene. The track may have been first played in the UK at the Middleton all-nighters by DJs Carl Willingham and Phil Shields. By the time “Without My Girl” came out in late 1968, The Chashers had evolved from a merger of earlier bands.  The two writers, Lamar (aka Tom) Collins, lead singer and Roy Thompson, guitar, were members of The Avalons, originally from...