|
Keeping up with "The Joneses"
>>
Old-schoolers S.O.U.L. restart the heart of Cleveland
by SCOTT C
It constantly boggles my mind just how many funk and soul bands came out of the United States during the '60s and '70s with bass, drums and horns blazing. What's even more puzzling is that these groups are still being discovered and rediscovered by enthusiasts from all over the world. New funk bands from New York to Berlin are keeping the seven-inch alive with 45s popping up all over the place, while globetrotting crate-diggers have made an international pastime of hunting down rare and hard-to-find vinyl in America's nooks and crannies.
Jazz Fest audiences are in for a treat this year as the annual event welcomes one of Cleveland, Ohio's best-kept soul-funk secrets, S.O.U.L. The Mirror spoke to founding member and man in charge Gus Hawkins over the phone from Cleveland.
Mirror: So you're on your way to the big Jazz Fest in Montreal. Have you been up here before?
Gus Hawkins: I was up there about a year ago for a show I was playing with the Robert Lockwood Blues Band. We did a show at Café Campus. But I was there a long time ago with Edwin Starr and we played at the club where you play right above the bar. It's on St-Laurent, but this was in the '60s.
M: That puts me out right there.
GH: That's before your time, I guess (laughs). I was Edwin Starr's band leader. We were billed as Agent Double-O Soul and the Soul Agents.
M: Double-O Soul?!
GH: Yeah!
M: Hot.
GH: That was Edwin's first recording, then he went over to England and I started playing with Wilson Pickett and Gene Chandler.
M: Really! Who else did you play for?
GH: Aw, man! I backed up the Coasters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Sensations. We used to be the house band at the hottest club in Cleveland in the '60s and early '70s. They used to bring in the entertainers, and we would read their charts and back them up. Marvin Gaye, Billy Stewart, Lou Rawls, the O'Jays, Johnny Nash--
M: So you guys would come in and play just like that? How long would it take you to learn how to follow someone like Marvin Gaye?
GH: We'd come in during the afternoon to rehearse, run it down and then do the show later that night. I was like 17, 18 years old at the time.
Message in a battle
M: How old are you now, Gus?
GH: I'm 59--no, 58! Look at me, adding a year (laughs).
M: There's no rush, man! You've been playing music for a long time.
GH: Well, it almost didn't work out that way 'cuz I got drafted and went to Vietnam in the medical corps. But I managed to take my flute with me. This Vietnamese captain brought me some of their traditional music and I learned how to play this one song. I went all over playing that song with only my flute in my pocket, no gun.
M: So when did S.O.U.L. start to happen, before or after you came back from the war?
GH: I came back to Cleveland and got with Peewee and Lee in a band called Dynamic Sound. We got into a battle of the bands in 1970 that was sponsored by a record company called Musicor and Channel 5, the local T.V. station, and won first place. We won $1,000 and a record deal where they flew us into New York, where we cut What Is It. It was actually supposed to be called What It Is, but they didn't get where we were coming from so the first one stuck.
M: Was Musicor willing to stick with you for a while after that first record?
GH: Yeah. We went on to cut Can You Feel It and then, after that, we floundered around a bit 'cuz they didn't have no money. Musicor couldn't compete with a major-label budget to put us in all the markets, but they did get us a Jackson Five, Kool and the Gang show in Miami in 1975 and a show at the Apollo.
M: Tell me about "The Joneses."
GH: Larry found a copy of that today on 45!
M: I've got it, too!
GH: That song got us the Jackson Five show. The big percussion break in part two made the song number 1 in Miami, but it never went west of the Mississippi and never really broke anywhere else. Very frustrating. You think we should play that in Montreal?
M: Hell yeah! If you don't, I'm not comin'!
GH: Well, I'm glad you told me that! We got three new guys in the rhythm section who haven't learned that one yet!
At the General Motors outdoor stage on Friday, June 29, 9 and 11pm, free
|
