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Welcome to TooDarnSoulful.com. This website features a number of articles I have written on aspects of rare soul music - so you’ll find articles on obscure artists, long defunct record labels, plenty of reviews of records, and tales of some times of old hunting for elusive vinyl in L.A and London! |
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I have written regularly for a selection of magazines over the years and have a pretty good collection of vinyl as well. When I write an article I try to be factually accurate; avoiding compromises or cutting corners with supposition or guess work just to join the dots in the easiest way. I’d rather miss something out than make something up that later proves to be wrong. I have never lost my enthusiasm for hearing a new song either.
Rare soul by definition is itself steeped in mystery – and that is what attracted me to it in the first place. The key thing is that no one knows it all, and no one ever will. If I wanted to know about Clarice Cliff pottery I could find definitive information on every design made, the quantity, when it was manufactured, who worked on the design etc. Much the same exists if I wanted to find out about the career of a famous Actor, or a Film Studio. With rare soul there is no definitive book on every release ever made, and all too often only patchy information available, and with each passing day less of this survives.
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The US record industry in the 60s and 70s was simply phenomenally busy. Few people really understand just how busy it was! To put it in context, there were usually more than 1,000 new releases every week in the 60’s. For every hit record that made the Billboard Top 100, there were dozens that failed.
- Hopeful artists that came in off the street, made a record, got paid (if they were lucky!), then left, never to be seen or heard of again.
- Records that were often pressed up in pitifully minute quantities - hundreds of copies (rather than thousands), and which were then trashed when they didn’t sell.
- Unscrupulous label owners and agents that appeared when success seemed possible, and then disappeared just as quickly (often with what money there was).
- Songs that were made in small towns, but which were hampered by a complete lack of distribution (as well as a chronically overcrowded marketplace), and were unheard beyond the town’s limits.
- Releases that were literally only ever sold out of the trunk of the band’s car at their gigs.
Of course every record made was someone’s attempt at fame and success and in every small town in the United States people were having a go at making the next hit record. This was multiplied many times over in the major Cities with short lived record labels springing up on every block. Unwanted in the USA, many millions of these records have been shipped over to the UK and Europe over the years – and thank goodness that they were. Equally ironic perhaps is the fact that a number of the artists, unknown in their own country, find an enthusiastic reception once they set foot abroad.
A lot of the information captured in magazine articles just quietly disappears. What do I mean by that? Well I was talking to someone the other week who asked me about a group and I said to them “Did you read the article on them?”. Not only did the person in question have no idea that there was an article written about the group, but on enquiry they learnt that the actual magazine was out of stock anyway and not going to be re-printed. That got me thinking that information in magazines isn’t really very hardy at all – it doesn’t really extend beyond the actual purchasers of the publication and only survives as long as they keep it. More importantly a lot of this information is at real risk of being lost of course – and without sounding overly morbid - the situation isn’t helped by the fact that many of the lesser known soul and funk acts of the 60s and 70s are either already dead, and those that aren’t are in the process of dying like flies.
So in an attempt to redress that loss of knowledge, I decided to publish a number of the articles that I have authored in the last few years (including a handful that have never been published) for anyone who likes rare soul music to enjoy.
You are at liberty to re-use the information, it is for sharing - but please remember to give credit.
Steve Guarnori |
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