I had despaired of ever seeing it but 14 Karat Soul's first ever TV appearance, on Saturday Night Live on January 24th, 1981, can now be viewed online at the Internet Archive website, which is cause for celebration if you care for this sort of thing.
I saw this line-up around a year or two later in the UK, and for me this will forever be the group. They appeared in the original modest workshop-type production of The Gospel at Colonus and Sister Suzie Cinema at the Edinburgh Fringe, and I saw their normal stage act quite a few times over the next few years in Scotland and England.
I've written about this experience several times, so I won't rehash it - links below if you care to explore - but the most important point, which I never tire of repeating, is that their subsequent studio recordings were but a pale shadow of the excitement of seeing the group, propelled by the bass voice of Reginald "Briz" Bisbon, performing in theatres. Even now I can't find the words to describe adequately how I felt over the nights of seeing them during a week's residency at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow in the early eighties: there was a moment of what I can only term rough magic during their opening number, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, when the blending of their voices produced ... well, I don't know what. Their acapella single of that song doesn't have the studio effects of later recordings, so ought to be close to that experience, but isn't, at least according to my memory.
