Our good friend Joshua Clark Davis has just written an article that has relevance to Carolina Soul. “For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South” focuses on the history of black-owned record stores in North Carolina and throughout the South and is a recommended new piece of original research that appears in the current music issue of Southern Cultures. The following excerpt touches on some personalities and establishments of the Triangle region:

“Records is a market that can be used to brighten the future of lots of black people with jobs and higher prestige all over the country,” Jimmy Liggins announced in 1976 to the readers of the Carolina Times, Durham, North Carolina’s most prominent African American newspaper. Liggins, a minor rhythm and blues star of the 1950s, was publicizing his Duplex National Black Gold Record Pool, headquartered in Durham, which sought to “help and assist black people to own and sell the music and talent blacks produce.” With the aid of this “self helping program,” aspiring hit-makers could record and release music that Black Gold sold through mail order and at Liggins’s shop, Snoopy’s Records, in downtown Durham.

Kenny Mann (of the band Liquid Pleasure) vividly recalls his frequent trips to Snoopy’s as a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Liggins “was like a god” to Mann and other young customers who patronized the store. “Everybody knew” Liggins and his two business partners, Henry Bates and Paul Truitt. “These guys, I was listening to them talk about bringing Tyrone Davis and Johnny Taylor and Al Green to town . . . It was fun to go [to their store] because it felt like the place to be; there were girls in there, and I was twelve, thirteen years old.” Not only that, but Mann “never felt the pressure to buy something” like he did in stores in his hometown of Chapel Hill, where white shopkeepers frequently followed young African American shoppers around their businesses, suspecting they might shoplift. “They had a double standard,” Mann remembers. Chapel Hill “really was set up as if they didn’t want to do business with us black people.” In sharp contrast, Liggins envisioned Snoopy’s as “our mall”—a “hang out” where black consumers could buy black music in a record store owned and operated by African Americans. Black-owned record stores like Snoopy’s represented a crucial nexus where African American enterprise, consumer culture, community, and of course, music all met.

Many more local luminaries figure in the article, such as Curtiss “Curt” Moore, who was previously profiled at Carolina Soul here and here. Owner of three Curt’s Records Stores in and around Greensboro from the 1960s through 1980s, Moore is seen below in one of his shops circa 1966.

If you’re interested in reading more, you can:

1) Read the article for free if your college or public library subscribes to the ProjectMuse database.

2) Order a hard copy of the Southern Cultures music issue (holiday gift idea!).

3) Or download the article or the entire Southern Cultures issue for your Kindle or Nook.

Enjoy!

Wendell, North Carolina resident and vocalist Walter Moreland recently released a CD single that delves into a challenging time in his life. Entitled “Alone,” it’s nominally a pop ballad, something of a new direction for the long-time soul singer and former member of national ‘70s-era recording act Mark IV. More notably, and powerfully, it’s a document of his faith in one day reuniting with his late wife, Cynthia Moreland, who was tragically killed in Raleigh in 2006, just shy of five years ago.

Moreland originally comes from Miami, Florida. He wasn’t very deep into music there; as a teenager, he “would just mess around singing” the doo-wop hits of the day for fun by himself. After high school, Moreland served two years in the army, including one in Korea, and then relocated to New York City, soon joining a singing group known as the New System. The New System were active in the region but apparently did not make any recordings: “We did a lot of practicing. We got uniforms. I don’t think we cut a record when I was with them. We did a lot of little gigs up in the mountains of New York, ski resorts….” Before the members moved in separate directions, the New System reached a high point in the form of some back-up work for Little Anthony & the Imperials.

Along with fellow former New System member Candido “Lucky” Antomattei (baritone), Moreland (first tenor) met up with two Georgia transplants, Lawrence Jones (second tenor) and Jimmy Ponder (lead). The four started a new singing outfit that they named Mark IV. They connected with performer and Alaga Records owner Roy C., who produced their debut single “Honey I Still Love You”:

Roy C. sold the rights for this hit single to Mercury Records, and the new support of a major record company led to many touring opportunities, including four appearances at the Apollo Theater and co-billings with Wilson Pickett, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Stylistics, B.B. King, and nearly even a gig at the famous Copa. While on tour in Raleigh, playing a gig at a club near downtown, Moreland met Cynthia Wilkerson:

We were playing at the Inner City Club in Raleigh here. I don’t know, call it fate. I don’t know why we had to play here. I don’t know why she had to come because she was only like 16. We were playing at the Inner City Club, and we started singing, and there she was…standing right there in front of the stage, standing right there. I saw her, and I said “I got to talk to her,” and I started talking to her…I said “Can I have your phone number”? She said, “I don’t have a phone,” and I said “oh well, there’s another brush off.” And then she said, “But my neighbor has a phone.” And I lit up, I said “Sure, give me that.” That’s how it started. I started calling her. Every time we would go further south like Alabama, when we finished, I would stop here.

Mark IV candid photo with Walter Moreland, second from right.

The pair began dating long distance until Moreland found touring “unbearable,” leading him to quit the group and settle in Zebulon with his soon-to-be wife. Finding employment at Wake Medical Center in Raleigh, where he still works to this day, Moreland also started performing with local soul groups such as Seduction. Later known as Klass, this little-known group would release a 12”-single in 1989. Following is some rare footage of Klass doing the A-side “Body Language” on country singer/broadcaster Slim Short’s “Carolina Today” television program:

From the 1990s until recent times, Moreland was less active on the music scene and more involved with his family, church, and work. Prior to making “Alone,” he did provide the vocals several years ago for an instrumental track made by William Killinger, a physician at Wake Medical Center. The product is some jangly pop called “The Way.” Click on the player below to hear a bit of both “Alone” and “The Way.” Moreland reflected recently on how his life and his singing have changed in the face of tragedy:

When I sing now…if it wasn’t for my wife being killed, I wouldn’t be able to have sung this song. I wouldn’t be more in depth in church. I wouldn’t be going to the temple every week like I’m supposed to. In a way I think God opened my eyes to show me that…because I put Cynthia first. I put her first. He didn’t plan it, but he didn’t stop it. He just made me open my eyes. ‘You’ve got to humble yourself; be more humble. I’m first.’ If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be doing the things that I’m doing now.

While visiting North Carolina rock stalwart Stewart McLamb at his songwriting compound in Black Mountain, NC, I came across a 1969 edition of The Yackety Yak that he had recently purchased at Father and Sons in Raleigh. The Tarheel tome was a beautiful, full-color annual that, through photographs, interviews, and editorials, gave great insight into academic life, race relations, and the political climate of Chapel Hill at this time. Although the Chambers Brothers concert was a marquee event for the Student Union, the photo below was simply used to illustrate nightlife on Fraternity Court. As thousands of bands from across the country frequented the Greek circuit, there is no guarantee that this was a local ensemble. No identifying characteristic accompanies the snap shot, just the word “Hasson” emblazoned across the bass drum. Any guesses?

(Photo by Andy Tennille)

Odyssey Five’s performance last Saturday, as part of the Crossroads Concert Series at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, is the very reason one gets into the “business” of prying into the lives and related legacies of our state’s musical veterans. Only teenagers when they recorded their lone LP, First Time Around, for Brunswick Records in 1975, the ladies of Odyssey Five are far more familiar with these songs today than they were when the lyrics sheets were shoved into their hands by producer Alonzo Tucker some 35 years ago. Time has also been kind to the voices of Odyssey Five, taking on a far more mature and finessed timbre in the intervening decades. Retro-upstart Ronnie Levels and his Genius Band, having cold-called Carolina Soul with the question: “Why doesn’t someone around here organize a soul revue?” were given the mandate to become part of the solution, and rose to the occasion. We hope this is the beginning of not just beautiful things for Odyssey Five and Ronnie Levels, but other Carolina Soul combos wishing to get a little more mileage out of their catalogs. We have proven that there is both a platform and an audience for this type of affair, and hope that Saturday’s time-machine talent show is the first of many.

Preparing for Crossroads 2 at SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, if you’re nasty) has sent me scrambling across Winston-Salem, screening bric-a-brac and artifact for the exhibit that will accompany this monumental concert event. Pictured here are several players and participants from Golden-Era Winston-Salem as seen through the lens of former parks employee and nightclub owner, Rodney Sumler. These very community events, everything from voter registration drives to portable concerts aboard the Showbobile, sewed the seeds for Sumler’s legendary Dungeon Club, which showcased too many Carolina Soul luminaries to mention (one, Odyssey 5, will be performing at Crossroads 2). These collages themselves were the basis for the monthly collages found in the pages of Sumler’s enduring AC Phoenix, which has served the Triad community for over 27 years.