|
Yes oh yes it's SOS time once again – Fall Migration kicks off ten days of fun and great entertainment on September
13th this year. The Fun Sunday lineup on the 15th includes Nelson Curry & The Klass Band Brotherhood and The Pieces of
Eight Band. This is followed up the next day by another outstanding Fun Monday lineup of The Craig Woolard Band, Fantastic
Shakers and Big Joe & The Dynaflows. Don't forget about the Fun Monday Raffle, which is used to help finance the two free
afternoons of top quality bands for all to enjoy. The tickets are sold through the various Shag Club representatives with
each ticket priced at $10. The first ticket drawn in the 2012 Fun Monday Raffle was worth $7,500 to the winner!!
|
| |
|
| Duck's Beach Club |
|
|
| Fat Harold's Beach Club |
|
| |
|
DJ's will be playing Beach and Shag favorites all ten days of SOS in prime time at the various venues: OD Pavilion,
Spanish Galleon, OD Cafe, OD Beach Club, OD Arcade, Pirates Cove, Fat Harolds, Ducks, Swillies, Deckerz and more. Live bands
will perform at selected times at Fat Harolds, Ducks, HOTOs, Deckerz and the Spanish Galleon. Bands performing during SOS
this fall include: Band of Oz, Jim Quick & Coastline, Carolina Breakers, Entertainers, CWB, Holiday Band, Marsha Morgan
Band, Hip Pocket, King Tyrone & The Graveyard Ramblers, Mark Roberts Band, Steve Owens & Summertime, Sea Cruz, Tim
Clark Band and Tommy Black Band. There will be Shag Workshops with professional instructors at many of these club locations
during the day.
Ted Bell – 94.9 FM The Surf
The 2013 Carolina Beach Music Awards weekend is fast approaching. The awards nomination ballots have been distributed
to Academy members and are currently being tabulated. Ted Bell, Program Director at 94.9 The Surf will host a special event
announcing the nominations on the air during SOS on Friday, the 20th of September. Officers of the CBMA and members of the
Board of Advisory will be on hand to assist with the event. Many of the prospective nominees will be present as well. It promises
to be a great afternoon of fun for all in attendance.
Although they have only been performing and recording since the early '90's, The Holiday Band have become almost legendary
in our genre. Even though I have stated it here a few times in the past, there
is no harm in repeating the fact that the band has had more individual songs hit the Beach music charts over the last fifteen
years that any other artist or band in the business. The release several years back of The Holiday Band Yearbook 1991-2006
captured many of these outstanding songs such as Shotgun Boogie, When I Think About Love, No Time For You, Heart To
Heart, Eenie Meenie Miny Moe, Ain't No Big Thing, I'm Man Enough, You Stole My Heart, It's You, After The Lovin' and
so on. Their latest issue on the Charlotte based Green Dot label, entitled The Holiday Band Collection, contains
several of the band's more recent hits like Got It Bad For You, Motor Under The Hood, Fool If You Think It's Over, Sweet
Caroline, Your Sweet Love, Smooth Sailin' and their very latest tune, Party On Main Street. It is a purchase that is definitely worth making!
Beach Bits: One
of the breakout divas in Beach music, Marsha Morgan, will debut her new album, Rockin' The Beach,
with her band at a release party scheduled for Saturday evening, September 14th during SOS at the Spanish Galleon............Coastline
Band bass player Albert Rogers is set to release his new eleven track self-titled CD during SOS week on September 19th with
a party beginning at 4 PM at Deckerz............Sisbro Records latest compilation in their ongoing series, Carolina
Shag V, is scheduled to be released during CBMA weekend in November. Look for exciting new tracks from Lesa
Hudson, KB & The Shifters, among many others..........The Summerdaze Band just released a cool new single entitled Something
Fried, which was produced by Freddy Tripp. The band has a new album to be titled Keep Movin'
in the development stages currently scheduled to be released Spring of 2014........ The Castaways have a new album under construction
with several songs completed but it will likely not be totally finalized until first quarter of 2014. I really like their
latest single, Dreamin', which is featured on KHP's just released Beach Music Treasures
compilation.......More new albums currently in the works from Beach music artists include The Carolina Breakers and The Tommy
Black Band...........
It is interesting
that the song L'il House Big Party by the Soul Children was first released on the group's re-incarnation
album Still Standing in the Southern Soul genre in 2008. The song and
album featured original group lead singer J. Blackfoot from their days in the early '70's on the Memphis based Stax label. KHP licensed the track in 2011 and re-released it as their title cut of an outstanding
collection of tunes, winning a CBMA Award that year for Best Compilation. The song finished at #35 on our Beachmusic45.com
year ending 2011 chart. The same song just recently dropped off Fessa John Hook's National Beach Music Top 40 after spending
twenty-four plus weeks this year moving up the chart. You gotta say, that is
true staying power for any song. Unfortunately, the legendary J. Blackfoot did not get to realize all of the tunes' success,
he passed away in late November, 2011.
It will be available in a matter of days, the highly anticipated new compilation from Henrietta, New York's Forevermore
Records, appropriately titled I Love Beach Music. There are proven tracks (and Beach hits) from such stalwarts
as Jackie Gore, Russell Thompkins, Jr, Terri Gore and the Royal Drifters, plus
explosive new tracks from Craig Woolard, Susan Trexler, Jay Proctor, Legends
Of Beach, Mitty & The Followers and a previously unreleased bonus of the Legendary Dukes performing Shout.
When I wrote
the synopsis of where Beach music bands were at that point back in January of this year, I said The Entertainers are a band
that I definitely need to see more often, and that is very true. Earl Dawkins
certainly does not get enough credit for the outstanding job his does on stage as well as keeping this band booked and always
ready to perform. The original band was formed in 1980 – The Entertainers first made the Beach music charts thirty-two
years ago with Livin' For The Summer in 1981. Follow-up hits over the next several years included
Hot On A Thang, I'm In Love With You, Let's Make Love and Love
You Like I've Never Loved Before. Their 1993 album Beach Music My Music, which was
a huge success, included great Entertainers renditions of Ten Ways Of Loving You, Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel
and Who Knows How To Make Love Stay. Earl was the recipient of the Group Vocalist Award at the 1995
Carolina Beach Music Award ceremonies. In 2000, The Entertainers were inducted into The Beach Music Hall of Fame. Three years
later, Beach music legend Johnny Barker, who was the keyboardist and music director for the band from 1991 until 2005, was
also inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The Best
Of The Entertainers, a sixteen track album was released in 2003 that culminated all the band's hits over their first twenty
plus years. It included Yes Oh Yes It's SOS Again, Summer Wind, Love Letters and Perpetual
Blues Machine. Personnel changes had certainly been a part of their history (as is the case with most long running
bands) but Earl and the gang were far from being done. They had played and continued
to play outstanding venues in the Carolinas as well as up and down the East Coast. More hit tunes were just around the corner
– outstanding singles were still coming such as I Know The Inside Story, which went to #1
on the Beach charts in 2007, and Thank Goodness She Cheated,
which followed suit in 2010. These two smashes plus such stellar tracks as The Girl I Love, Good As Gold,
Anyway You Want It and They Say The Girl's Crazy were included on their most recent
album, The Entertainers – The Inside Story. Earl
Dawkins most deservedly was inducted into The Beach Music Hall of Fame in 2010.
The band's recent single Don't Stop Now has done well on the charts this year. A brand new Entertainers tune entitled Summer
Love will be on the latest KHP Productions compilation Beach Music Treasures
just in time for Fall SOS. To top it all off, The Entertainers have a new album in the works to be released very soon –
great news from a band getting it done for three plus decades and still going strong!
|
|
|
I recently was involved in helping pull together a high school reunion event in Chapel Hill, NC
– our 45th to be exact. It was the Class of 1968, and what a year in Beach music that was! Locally, the O'Kaysions Girl Watcher, which was originally recorded on Goldsboro, NC's North State label, was picked up for national distribution by ABC, going to #1. The all time Tams classic Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy was also released
by the ABC label that same year. Atlantic Records had some great songs released in '68: the first two national hits for Archie
Bell & The Drells with Tighten Up and I Just Can't Stop Dancing; and the first two for the
legendary Dr. CC, Clarence Carter's Slip Away and Too Weak To Fight. The Georgia Prophets, led
by Billy Scott, hit the Beach and national charts in a big way with I Got The Fever on the Smash label. The
Tempests, based in Charlotte NC, had a regional hit that year on Smash with Long Live Our Love. Stax/Volt Records
out of Memphis was in full swing with major charters like Private Number from William Bell & Judy Clay,
I Ain't Never Found A Girl by Eddie Floyd, Soul Man from Sam & Dave and (Sittin' On)
The Dock Of The Bay posthumously from Otis Redding.
The Brunswick label out of Chicago had a couple of bell ringers with Jackie Wilson's I Get
The Sweetest Feeling and Barbara Acklin's Love Makes A Woman. 1968 was also a big year for the Windy
City's native son Jerry Butler, who had colossal hit songs with Never Gonna Give You Up and Hey Western
Union Man. One of the longest running groups of all time recorded on the Chicago based Cadet label – The Dells
had three Top 10 Billboard hits in '68: There Is, Stay In My Corner and Always Together. More
tunes produced out of Chicago in 1968 that hit the Beach jukeboxes included Billy Stewart's Cross My Heart,
Etta James' Tell Mama, The Esquires' And Get Away and Patti Drew's Working On A Groovy Thing.
The Motor City was going strong with huge hits in '68: Smokey & The Miracles
with I Second That Emotion and If You Can Want, Marvin
Gaye on I Heard It Through The Grapevine; Marvin & Tammi Terrell
with Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing and If I Could Build My Whole World Around You; Martha
& The Vandellas on Honey Chile; and the Temptations doing I Wish It Would Rain.
The Intruders were the original group of what became the Philadelphia Sound under the guidance
of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Cowboys To Girls went to #1 on the Billboard R&B chart for the group in 1968.
The Delfonics, who were just getting started that year with Philly producer Thom Bell, had the first of their many charters
with La La Means I Love You. Two ''one hit wonders'' so to speak also out of Philly that were national and Beach
hits were The Formations doing At The Top Of The Stairs and The Soul Survivors on Expressway To Your Heart.
The British influence was already taking hold in Soul and Beach music in '68 – The English band The Foundations charted both in America and in Europe with Baby Now That I've Found You. Another
group based in England, Jimmy James & The Vagabonds had a hit on both sides of the pond with Come To Me Softly.
1968 was certainly right in the midst of a pivotal period in history for reshaping the world. It was also a monumental
year for producing great songs that would be much later known as Beach music classics. As high school seniors walking down
that graduation aisle on the threshold of heading out into
a brave new horizon, we had little concept of what the tunes we heard a young Charlie Brown and the other jocks spin on WKIX
850 AM out of Raleigh would mean to many of us as the years went by. It was a special time for sure!
Artists, DJ’s,
Club owners etc. send me your latest news for potential inclusion in Beach Buzz at nealfur@aol.com.
|
