From time to time, and more in hope than expectation, I spend a few minutes searching youtube for anything new relating to the New Jersey acapella group 14 Karat Soul (pictured above on Saturday Night Live) - not an activity which yields much in the normal way of things, but recently I found some clips of them singing in New York in 1993, including a doo wop medley which had long been a staple of their live repertoire but had not otherwise been recorded, as far as I know.
The sound quality of the clip is okay, not great, and it was recorded a few years after the early lineup with which I am most familiar, but it's an important find nevertheless, because it's one more piece of the jigsaw.
In 1983 I went to see 14 Karat Soul most nights of a week-long residency at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow, part of a recently-built extension to the reference library of that name. Their performances in that unglamorous setting still rank among the most exciting I have ever seen, rendered particularly memorable by the fact that in those days doo wop groups, whether more-or-less originals or revivalists, never seemed to include Scottish dates in their itineraries.
The closest we ever got was Showaddywaddy, an English group who appeared at the Glasgow Apollo in 1976, just before their music hall-style cover of Moon of Love was released: great showmanship, definitely; not quite so great, perhaps, in the vocal department (I still cringe to remember lead singer Dave Bartram's attempt at Chuck Berry's Rock'n'Roll Music that night).
I was already familiar with 14 Karat Soul's work when I sat down to watch their first gig in the Mitchell. At the Edinburgh Fringe the previous year I had taken a chance on an intriguingly titled double bill at the Assembly Rooms: Sister Suzie Cinema and The Gospel at Colonus. The shows were created by Lee Breuer, who had chosen the young New Jersey group, already admired in America for the quality of their singing, to star in both of them. A doowop fan, and intrigued, I managed to circumnavigate the near-somnolent Colin Welland (moving exceeding slow in an anteroom at the venue) and went into the hall where the dreamy perfection of those 14 Karat harmonies and David Thurmond's high falsetto lead immediately put me in a similar trancelike state - appropriately enough for Sister Suzie, a poetic chamber piece about young men mesmerised by the beauties at whom they are gazing on the silver screen.
If the group also played a doo wop set in Edinburgh at this time I wasn't aware of it, though I do remember thinking that if they were this good with new material in this vein they would surely be unstoppable with the classics.
And so it was to prove in Glasgow. There was a little bit of tinkering, some small developments and changes from night to night, but the standard was sky-high from the off. What I most remember most vividly is that at some point during the opening number, which was always Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, there was a moment when the blending of voices was both rough, gnarly, yet utterly beautiful: "the company jumps when he blows reveille ..." Those few seconds seemed to encapsulate everything I had wanted, and hoped for, in a live performance of this music: it felt dark, vital and alive, not the cosily nostalgiac anglicised and coarsened thing I'd witnessed at the Apollo. (Whatever had possessed me?)
Ah, but here, Brothers and Sisters, is where I made My Big Mistake.
I was in the occasional habit of sneaking a cassette recorder into gigs. The results weren't exactly hifi but they did well enough as a personal souvenir; and as I've written elsewhere, when played through the warm Rigonda amplifier back home then, subject to a fair wind, I could half-will myself back to being smack-dab back in the original experience, more or less.
So why didn't I smuggle my little machine into at least one of those nights in Glasgow? Without any instrumentation to overload the recording the tape might even have sounded halfway decent for once, sparing my memory the need to work overtime restoring all those missing frequencies.
The answer is that yes, I did consider it ... but the experience of hearing the group was so sublime, right from the first performance, that I presumed there would soon be records which would recreate what I was hearing, and probably make their voices sound even better.
I was prodded along this delusional route by one David "Kid" Jensen. Listening to Radio 1 before one of the gigs I heard him play a session the group had recorded earlier in London, confirmation that it could only be a matter of time before more 14 Karat product than any doowop obsessive might reasonably need would cram local shops, so why bother with a fuzzy simulacrum in the meantime?
Yes, I really did think along those lines; sadly, it didn't turn out that way. Although various permutations of 14 Karat Soul, led by Glenny T, would go on to record quite a few albums over the years, with the exception of the early recordings made for their manager Stan Krause's Catamount label nothing has come close to the raw excitement of their live sound: voices are treated and sound antiseptic - to these ears, anyway. You had to be there - or at least have a fuzzy simulacrum to hand.
As far as I am aware there was no one else in attendance at the Mitchell Theatre with a suitably-shaped bulge under their coat on the nights I attended, so unless the group themselves thought to make a recording then the sad probability is that those particular nights can never be summoned back whole. But over the ten years since I first wrote about 14 Karat Soul in these pages there has been the occasional discovery online, and it's now possible to - well, I used the term "jigsaw" earlier. What follows may not have all the pieces, and although the picture on the box may be similar to the fragmented contents it isn't identical ... but I suppose it'll have to do.
Here, then, in one handy post, are gathered together all the clips I've been able to find which have some relevance to that long-ago series of concerts in Glasgow. If anyone is able to fill in further gaps, or ideally proffer some more promising pieces, please get in touch.
First up is the Catamount recording of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy: studio-made, but without processing gimmickry. This was alway the opener in Glasgow - a shrewd choice, because it's a rousing number but associated with a pre-doowop era - the Andrews Sisters sang it in the Abbott and Costello film Buck Privates - as well as Bette Midler, who recorded it in 1972, so possibly this was a way of drawing in a more general audience, quite apart from the fact that's it's a rousing start anyway: once you have been attacked by this wave of energy you have a pretty good idea of what 14 Karat Soul is about.
Listening to the studio version below I don't quite get that grainy "hit" from the section of the song I mentioned earlier, but it's still pretty good. During the live rendition Reginald "Briz" Brisbon would be imitating a double bass as he propelled the group forward. Like several other members, he is no longer with us, which makes this act of partial reclamation especially important to me. What took place over several nights in the humble setting of the Mitchell Theatre was one of the great musical experiences of my life - and here, at least, is an echo of it, even if the sound here isn't particularly rich or deep:
And it reminds me that at the end of the concert they would do a cadence call, like soldiers on a March, neatly tying up the experience of the last ninety minutes - perhaps the effort of winning over a new audience every night in a strange land felt like being in combat. I can't remember how the lyrics went exactly, but the last line was something like: "14 Karat Soul were here and gone" or "14 Karat Soul are on their way." I don't have David Toop's Rap Attack 3 to hand but I believe he talks about the importance of The Dozens to doowop, and I think there may be an overlap.
The next clip is an assembly of the songs from the aforementioned Kid's 1983 Radio 1 session. Sound is better than on the Catamount side (at least as heard on youtube), with reverb well judged and Briz's bass more prominent - pretty faithful, in fact, to my recall of the live experience.
His lubricious embellishments on that anodyne ditty Sixteen Candles are especially noteworthy, reminding me that the two sides of a doowop 45 could often counterbalance romance and lust: Pookie Hudson might croon about his reluctance to end a teenage smooching session but when the Spaniels' bass, Gerald Gregory, offers to provide House Cleaning you can bet there is more than a bucket of soapy water in the offing.
The other songs on the BBC session are: Come Go With Me, Goody Goody (in the manner of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, though this Johnny Mercer lyric dates from the thirties), Destination Love (known to me only from Wynonie Harris's recording), and Lymon's Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
And now here's a chance to see, as well hear, the group, from an edition of Sesame Street, dressed rather less formally than on the stage. Picture quality is not great but sound is okay, and at least you can see how the group interact. The lead singer here is David Thurmond and the song is The ABCs of Love, another Frankie Lymon number. It's scarcely the most profound lyric, with lines like -
G - Gosh knows I love you,- but as you can see it's driven along at a rattling pace by Briz, who had been a drummer, and he seems to be guiding the others here.
H - Heaven knows it's true
Now here's a clip from Don K Reed on CBS-FM. One comment made on youtube clip suggests this may be from the seventies. After they sing a brief ident for the show they go into I Wish That We Were Married. Possibly this is the group's leader Glenny T singing but I'm not sure. I think that this was sung only at one of the Glasgow shows, and not by Glenny T, though I may be getting confused with a later performance.
And now the recent discovery on youtube which prompted me to write this post, a well-chosen medley of early doowop with the emphasis on the earthy rhythm and blues side of things - Gerald rather than Pookie, if you will. While I can't attest to all the musical snippets chosen it seems to the same assembly of excerpts as the medley I heard in Glasgow. Annie Had A Baby was definitely the opener back then, and I still recall that over the nights of the run Brian "Lamont" Simpson tried out various approaches in his lead vocal: once he really attacked the material, to electrifying effect.
But this recording was made some ten years later, in 1993, so Brian is not the lead, nor Briz the bass. According to a member of their entourage Brian left in '83 or '84, though he may have come back later, and Briz left around the same time, only returning for the odd date. The recording doesn't have much bottom either, but at least it's a rough sketch of how that earlier group might have sounded.
The songs are: Annie Had A Baby (the Midnighters); Baby Don't Do It (the Five Royales); Sixty Minute Man (the Dominoes); Money Honey (the McPhatter-era Drifters) Zoom (the Cadillacs); Little Darling (take your pick between the Diamonds or Gladiolas: reduced to acapella the differences become minimal) and it was broadcast as part of the 4th Annual Cousin Brucie Show in New York on WCBS-FM in 1993.
But let's now head back to 1983, the year of that Glasgow residency, for a clip from a Channel 4 programme called Switch, broadcast in between two series of The Tube; the announcer is Yvonne French. This is undoubtedly the single item which comes closest to my experience of seeing them live. One of the numbers is Take Me Back Baby, sung by leader Glenny T, as heard during their residency, and at one point Briz can be seen doing his imitation of a double bass, just as he did during Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.
The sound on the clip is a bit muffled, but the interaction between the leads (Briz's pulsating bass is an undoubted costar) and the overall sense of energy and drive is much as I remember. The lead on the El Dorados' Crazy Little Mama is Brian "Lamont" Simpson.
There are other numbers I remember from Glasgow - and, indeed, more I wish to say about the group - but the above example of 14 Karat Soul in their prime seems a good point at which to come to a temporary halt. Below, though I admit doesn't look very prepossessing, is the Mitchell Theatre, where it all happened for me and the lucky few who were also there.
Three members of that original lineup have now passed away: Russell Fox, Brian "Lamont" Simpson and Reginald "Briz" Brisbon. Russell's father was the minister at Mt. Olive Baptist Church, where the group came together. David Lamont is no longer in the group.
The last appearance of 14 Karat Soul that I know of was a reunion which took place in 2011 at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.
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