News — northern soul

Joe Simon was without a doubt Sound Stage 7’s greatest national success. Joe Simon (b. 1943) was Louisiana born though moved to California with his family as a child. He came from a church background, and sang with the Golden West Gospel Singers as a teenager, this group undergoing a name change to try the secular market. As The Golden Tones they had a couple of 45s on Hush label, but the label owners wanted to push Simon as an artist in his own right. His first solo efforts on Hush for the secular market came between 1960 and 1962....

WLAC DJ John Richbourg’s decision in the early 1960s to extend his experience and to move into other areas of the music industry was timely. He had amassed a fan base through playing blues and gospel on his radio show. Taking advantage of his audience’s enthusiasm and the radio station’s facilities he started recording artists himself and airing these on his own show. Initially around half a dozen 45s appeared on Rich, which ran from the very late 1950s to the early-mid 1960s. Nashville and Detroit singers would feature. Bobby Hebb’s output was recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New...

Little is known of the very early days of Robert Odell Marshall Sr. other than he was born in Greenwood SC, circa 1938 and was the son of Eddie and Sara Marshall. His first recording was made in 1962 for the (Washington) DC label with an instrumental called “Ain’t No Big Thing” (DC 0433; unrelated to the often covered Radiants’ classic). Within a couple of years, Bob Marshall and the Crystals were regularly performing at popular venues throughout Virginia and North Carolina. One of these spots was Nags Head Casino, on the Beach Road near Jockey’s Ridge. It was the...

Music historians will argue over the exact origins of the music industry in Nashville, although any stance depends on the genre under discussion, and how far back one is willing to go. The predominance of country music is undeniable, with its roots planted in Celtic and European folk songs and associated instrumentation brought to the US by early immigrants. In the 1920s, Nashville’s first radio station WSM cemented the city’s country music status with Grand Ole Opry broadcasts of mountain songs and hillbilly music. These styles would later contribute to what is now known as the ‘third’ generation of country...

Located on 17th Avenue, North and Jo Johnston, Pearl High School (now Martin Luther King High) was a rich source of black sports and musical talent. In the early 1960s the Bard sisters Francesca (“Fran”, b. unknown d. 1991) and Beverly (now Bard-Smith, b. unknown) formed their group, The Avons, along with schoolmate Paula Hester. Their recordings should not be confused with at least two other groups with same name who recorded around the same time outside of Tennessee. The Avons first taste of the studio was an initial one-off hire for budget label Hit, providing uncredited backing vocals to...