UPDATED AUGUST 2021: "Phyllis sat right in my class. I can still see the pigtails." In a 2016 interview with The Second Disc, Thom Bell shared his earliest memories of the late Phyllis Hyman (1949-1995). The songwriter-arranger-conductor-producer would cross paths numerous times over the years with his childhood friend: first via Phyllis' hit recordings of his "Betcha By Golly Wow" and "Loving You - Losing You," and later, his own productions and songs for her. "She was a lonely individual,"
Let's hear it for Deniece Williams. Since making her first big splash 45 years ago with debut album This is Niecy, the daughter of Gary, Indiana has scored 27 Billboard R&B hits and 14 Pop successes including two crossover Number Ones, won four Grammy Awards (and amassed another nine nominations), and recorded over fifteen albums blurring the lines between soul, pop, and gospel. Between 1976 and 1988, Williams made Columbia Records her home, both with Maurice White's ARC imprint and with
The Philadelphia International Records 50th anniversary campaign kicks off this Friday, May 25, with the release of Get on Board the Soul Train: The Sound of Philadelphia International Records Vol. 1 from the U.K. Snapper Music label's United Souls imprint. The 8-CD hardcover book-style box presents the first eight albums released on PIR, and the series will eventually encompass every one of PIR's LPs on CD. On the domestic front, Legacy Recordings issues its first anniversary release this
Back in late January, we shared news of Philadelphia International Records' 50th anniversary plans. The centerpiece of the campaign announced by Sony Music's Legacy Recordings was a series of CD box sets presenting every PIR album in chronological order. Now, the first of those box sets is available for pre-order with a release date of May 28. Get On Board the Soul Train: The Sound of Philadelphia International Records Vol. 1 is a product of the U.K.-based United Souls, an imprint of
Fifty years ago, the release of Billy Paul's Going East on LP and The Ebonys' "You're the Reason Why" on a 45 RPM single marked the birth of Philadelphia International Records. By 1971, co-founders Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff had already garnered significant chart success with their songs and productions for such artists as The Soul Survivors ("Expressway to Your Heart"), The Intruders ("Cowboys to Girls"), Archie Bell and the Drells ("(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown"), Lesley Gore, Dusty
Doo-wop veterans John Brown, Tim McQueen, Edward Schell, and Claude Johnson came together as New York City, hoping that the name of their new vocal quartet would reflect the melting pot that inspired it. "We feel personally that a group should be able to sing anything from the lowest, dirtiest blues," Brown wrote in the sleevenotes of New York City's 1973 debut LP, "through spirituals, right up through pop to the heaviest kind of music." I'm Doin' Fine Now, originally issued on Chelsea Records
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! Johnny Cash, The Complete Mercury Recordings 1986-1991 (Mercury/UMe) 7CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 7LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada The Complete Mercury Recordings 1986-1991 will be available on 7CD or 7LP, 180-gram vinyl formats. The box collects all six albums Johnny Cash recorded for Mercury Records during that era: Class Of '55: Memphis Rock & Roll Homecoming with Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Carl
After having previously celebrated two of his musical inspirations - Burt Bacharach and Teddy Randazzo - with their own volumes, Ace's Songwriters and Producers series is turning its attention to legendary soul maestro Thom Bell. On June 26, the label's Kent imprint will release Ready or Not: Philly Soul Arrangements and Productions 1965-1978. As the title indicates, all 23 tracks were either produced or arranged (or both!) by the multi-hyphenate musician-composer-producer-arranger-conductor who
Dee Dee Bridgewater has long defied easy categorization. The Grammy and Tony Award-winning singer-actress has fronted a jazz orchestra; worked with legends of the genre like Thad Jones, Dexter Gordon, and Max Roach; starred in two Broadway musicals; hosted a long-running NPR radio show; and served as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador as part of her fight against world hunger. Cherry Red Group's Robinsongs imprint has recently collected her first four American albums on a 2-CD set. When Charlie
MFSB - a.k.a. Mother, Father, Sister, Brother (or a rather more off-color series of four words, depending on whom you ask) - remains one of the all-time great aggregations of studio musicians, right up there with The Funk Brothers, The Wrecking Crew, and The Nashville Cats. The legacy of the Philadelphia International group has just been celebrated by Cherry Red's Robinsongs imprint on a new 2-CD, 32-track anthology entitled The Definitive Collection. The talented, versatile musicians at the
What is the sound of Philadelphia? As Kent Records' exciting compilation Nothing But a House Party: The Birth of The Philly Sound 1967-1971 readily admits, there were many such sounds - the sound of teen idols Fabian and Frankie Avalon; of "South Street" and "The Mashed Potato" and Cameo-Parkway Records; of the doo-wop of The Dreamlovers, and before that, of Italian-American singers like Mario Lanza and Al Martino. But the sound of Philadelphia referenced here is the one with capital letters -
Johnny Mathis is currently touring the U.S. on his Voice of Romance tour - and indeed, for over 60 years, that appellation has been apt. This Saturday evening, June 10, Mathis is coming to your own city, courtesy of Public Television and TJ Lubinsky's TJL Productions' popular and long-running My Music series. Yes, this Saturday is Johnny Mathis Night, because that's when Public Television stations nationwide will air Wonderful! Wonderful!, a concert film featuring all of Mathis' beloved
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring Second Disc Records' first release of the year plus another incredible slate from Real Gone Music, box sets, anthologies, and more! Various Artists, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Expanded Edition) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music are tipping off 2017 with the first-ever CD release of Thom Bell's soulful soundtrack to 1979's The Fish
Here at Second Disc HQ, tomorrow is the biggest day of basketball season - because tomorrow is when we're unveiling Second Disc Records' first release of the year! Thom Bell's soulful, all-star soundtrack to The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - featuring The Spinners, The Four Tops, Loretta Lynn, Phyllis Hyman, Doc Severinsen, Eubie Blake, and more - arrives from Second Disc Records and Real Gone Music for the very first time in a newly expanded, freshly remastered edition! Trust us: this is one
As Christmas approaches and 2016 winds down, we start looking ahead to 2017 and what will be released. We've already told you about the Second Disc Records/Real Gone Music reissue of Thom Bell's all-star soundtrack to The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh due in February, and now we're here to tell you about the rest of Real Gone's killer lineup for that month. First up are two titles with liner notes by our very own Joe Marchese. In 2015, Real Gone reissued Lesley's Gore's Someplace Else Now
Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records are tipping off 2017 with a slam dunk release! On February 3, we will be bringing Thom Bell's soulful, all-star soundtrack to The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - featuring The Spinners, The Four Tops, Loretta Lynn, Phyllis Hyman and more - to CD for the very first time in a newly expanded, remastered edition! The 1979 cult favorite film The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh featured an all-star team from the worlds of basketball and Hollywood - Julius "Dr. J"
Yesterday we told you about Second Disc Records' and Real Gone Music's July 1 release of Eddy Arnold's Chet Atkins and Lee Hazlewood albums from 1970 and now we've got the news of the rest of Real Gone's line-up for right before Independence Day. First up is a compilation featuring notes by our very own Joe Marchese: 40 Classic Soul Sides from The Delfonics. When Stan Watson introduced a group (including brothers William and Wilbert Hart and Randy Cain) he was managing to a young Thom Bell
The O'Jays quietly began their association with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff on 1970's Neptune album In Philadelphia, announcing the Ohio group's shift to the City of Brotherly Love and its burgeoning soul scene. But there was nothing quiet about the opening track of Back Stabbers, the trio's first album for Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International Records. "When the World's at Peace," by Gamble, Bunny Sigler and Phil Hurtt, imagined a time "when it's safe to walk the streets/when we learn
When The Spinners left Motown Records after nearly a decade, the vocal group had never scored a Top 10 Pop hit. They'd come this close in 1970 with the irresistible, Stevie Wonder-penned "It's a Shame" (No. 14) - one of many fine tracks recorded for Berry Gordy's empire that, for one reason or another, never crossed The Spinners over to major stardom. That all changed when Thom Bell - the multi-hyphenate musician, producer, songwriter, arranger and conductor - declared that he wished to
In just three albums recorded between 1971 and 1973, The Stylistics positioned themselves at the vanguard of Philadelphia soul, introducing future pop and R&B standards such as “You Are Everything,” “People Make the World Go Round” and “You Make Me Feel Brand New” with multi-hyphenate Thom Bell (serving as producer, arranger, conductor, and composer!) and lyricist Linda Creed. Though Bell parted ways with the group to turn his attentions to The Spinners, ending their hit streak, The
We need to go back to the songs we used to sing... - Nickolas Ashford and Valarie Simpson, “We Need to Go Back” What’s remarkable about the 19 outtakes on Dionne Warwick’s We Need to Go Back: The Unissued Warner Bros. Masters (Real Gone Music RGM-0170) is that they’re every bit as good as – and in many cases, superior to - the music actually released during Warwick’s stormy five-year stay at the label. Every one of the soulful stylist’s Warner albums is represented with outtakes save 1972’s
Dionne Warwick’s 1972-1977 tenure at Warner Bros. Records has long been a subject of much confusion. Why couldn’t the Burbank giant yield any hit records with the superstar artist after signing her to a record-breaking deal? Sure, the “triangle marriage” of Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David was breaking up, but Warner paired her with some of the most famed names in soul music: Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jerry Ragovoy, and Thom Bell among them. Bell scored a hit for Warwick with “Then Came
When Dionne Warwick signed on the dotted line with Warner Bros. Records, the possibilities must have seemed endless. The singer had embraced change, after all. A new decade was in its infancy. She had traded a feisty New York independent (Scepter) for a Burbank giant. She had even added an "e" to her surname on the advice of an astrologer. And although the exact amount wasn't disclosed, Warwick had reportedly signed the biggest deal ever for a female vocalist. What didn't change, at least
When Dick Jensen was signed to ABC’s Probe Records label in 1969, only one album title seemed appropriate: White Hot Soul. The Hawaiian-born entertainer’s stage moves earned him comparisons to James Brown and Jackie Wilson, while his voice recalled the booming sonorities of Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck. Tucked away on Side Two of that Don Costa-produced LP, Jensen included The Soul Survivors’ “Expressway to Your Heart” as part of a medley. That 1967 Top 5 hit, of course, was written by