More gospel on a Sunday, this time by Booker T. McGert and The Spiritual Messengers of Gibsonville, North Carolina. Slow and beautiful stuff, it’s one of many releases on the great, Greensboro-based Ken-Yatta label that was run by the late Reverend Curtis M. Carrington.

Due to space and time constraints, car salesman-cum-producer Jimmy Cheek received no mention in “Our Own Music City” from last week’s Go Triad. Cheek forged an array of hits on his Cheeco and House of Big Brother labels, but it is this 12” on the boogie-bearing Tamika imprint that brings our week of Funky Greensboro coverage to a fitting finale.

Charlie and Inez Foxx, Cheek’s cousins, cut Greensboro’s first national hit in 1963 with “Mockingbird,” an up-tempo take on the ubiquitous lullaby.  Almost twenty-five years later, Cheek took a young Melvin Washington into the studio to cut “Say You Love Me.” Nestled behind the balladeering B-side is “Mockingbird-Club and D.J. Mix,” and although it is attributed to Charlie and Inez, this modern instrumental bears suspicious little resemblance to the fabled original.

Reidsville native Fred Mills holds the honor of writing the title track, as well as arranging and co-producing alongside Cheek. Mills, who most famously collaborated with fusion muse and Durham native Betty Davis (former wife of jazz giant, Miles), used only the finest synthesizers Roland could build for these sessions. The results were most likely most evident at Rol-A-Rink in Melvin’s native High Point, where this accommodating EP supplied DJs with a banger for speed skating, a ballad for couples skate, and a futuristic lullaby for… Red Light, Green Light?

George Bishop of the Mighty Majors and producer/songwriter Walter Grady took a stab at an Otis Redding tribute song circa late 1967 or early 1968, but it likely never made it off this rare, crackly acetate from the long-defunct Robbins Recording Studios of Greensboro:

bishopgrady_-_good-bye_otis.mp3

Curt Moore and Roy Roberts must’ve beaten them to the punch:

roy_roberts_-_the_legend_of_otis_redding.mp3

Roberts wasn’t even supposed to be the singer on the session—just the guitarist—but a last-minute switch due to someone else’s hangover led to Bo-Ro #102, his first release, and the launching of a solo career that has taken him to Raleigh and beyond:

In a continued effort to give Greensboro some praise, we are posting this gospel offering from the Alston Singers, released in 1971 on Walter Grady’s Cobra label. With their uptempo testimony “I’m Holding On” clocking in at just over two minutes, this group from nearby Burlington would go on to curse Grady’s name in unison with many of their secular labelmates. No confirmations as to whether the Lord’s name was taken in vain. 

From the 1973 Greensboro phone book, an ad for George Bishop’s record shop, Mr. Entertainer, which he ran for four years starting in 1972. Busy man. What it looks like in recent times.