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Midsummer is always a special month for European lovers of Southern Soul. For the past 25 years, in a small, friendly, picturesque ‘spa town’ in Northern Italy called Porretta Terme, Italian music promoter and Otis Redding obsessive Graziano Uliani has been curating and ‘creatively directing’ Porretta Soul, probably the longest running - and almost certainly the best – music festival of its kind anywhere in the world.

My Name is Tony Rounce and I am a Porrettaholic…

…Ace’s man on the spot gives you the lowdown on the 2013 edition of the greatest soul music festival in Europe and probably the world.

Memphis Soul Legends fly in for Two Exclusive European Dates in the UK. 

GWP were the initials of Gerard W Purcell, an artist manager who had great success with country musician Eddy Arnold and trumpeter Al Hirt. He also worked with Lena Horne, the poet Maya Angelou and Dizzy Gillespie among many others. In the mid-60s he expanded the recording side of his business with Gale Garnett and several R&B acts, notably Benny Gordon and Kenny Carter. For the Benny Gordon releases he used veteran producer Teacho Wiltshire, but by the time of the Kenny Carter recordings he had brought in Larry Banks to produce and provide great songs. Other acts that fell under Larry Banks’ auspices were the Geminis, the Exciters and his life partner Joan Bates, aka Jaibi.

Originally married to R&B singer Bessie Banks, with whom he made the deep soul classic ‘Go Now’, Larry fell in love with Joan Bates, a singer with the Pleasures group, and they set up as a couple. He then cut another deep soul masterpiece, ‘You Got Me’ by Jaibi, this time for GWP Productions, who placed the record with the Kapp label. Still pursuing his own singing career (he originally sang with the vocal group the Four Fellows in 1955), he cut ‘I’m Not The One’, another GWP/Kapp deal.

GWP’s big hopes for the R&B market lay with the emotive vocals of Kenny Carter, who released three singles on RCA in 1966. Our excavation of the tape vault revealed another 10 sides, mainly big-voiced ballads, including some standards intended for an LP. Some sort of fall out between him, GWP and RCA led to the project being shelved; a real pity as the material is superb.

Success came GWP’s way when Cleveland vocal group the Hesitations came under Jerry Purcell’s management once Kapp decided to move the act away from the Detroit-based Pied Piper production team to GWP and Larry Banks. GWP had been responsible for bringing Pied Piper to RCA with singles from Lorraine Chandler, Sharon Scott, Nancy Wilcox, the Cavaliers, the Dynamics and the Metros, who managed an R&B hit and issued a full LP. However, GWP switched the Hesitations’ style from happening black music to sophisticated ballads and had immediate success with a soulful revival of ‘Born Free’, which became a major hit and led to two albums aimed at mature black and white markets.

When sales eventually dwindled, the Hesitations were released from their Kapp deal, which led to Jerry Purcell forming his own GWP label in 1969. Larry Banks having moved on, the new production team included acclaimed arranger Ed Bland, who was given young songwriters Ray Dahrouge and Billy Terrell to work with, along with superb vocalist Debbie Taylor and the Persians. The Persians arrived with New Jersey producer George Kerr, whose team was used on other GWP releases and productions, including Alice Clark’s monster Northern number ‘You Hit Me (Right Where It Hurt Me)’. Ed Bland signed up very cool jazz outfit the Pazant Brothers and recruited funky females Betty Barney and Little Rose Little.

There was immediate success when the first release, Debbie Taylor’s ‘Never Gonna Let Him Know’, became an R&B hit but, despite top quality soul records and a new subsidiary called GWP’s Grapevine, the label failed to score another hit and lost its way releasing oddball pop records and a series of orchestral LPs inspired by the signs of the zodiac.

Jerry Purcell reverted to artist management and, once he retired, was happy to set up a deal with Ace Records to purchase his R&B recordings, which included unreleased masters from Benny Gordon, Jaibi, the Shaladons, Milton Bennett, Bobby Penn, the Modettes and others. The Kenny Carter sides are still in contractual dispute but we continue to work for their release. 

Urged on by rare soul collector Gilly, who had solved the Northern Soul mystery of “What was the identity of the singer who recorded the Rose Valentine cover-up ‘When He's Not Around’?” (as played on acetate by Richard Searling in the latter days of Wigan Casino), Ace Records went ahead and purchased the tapes and rights to the work of Detroit producer Dave Hamilton. Gilly told me how Dave had been an original member of Motown’s Funk Brothers, had played guitar on ‘Reet Petite’, ‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Please Mr Postman’, had recorded the Chalfontes for Mercury and had run the Topper label. He also said there were some great unissued numbers that Dave had copied onto a reel for him to get played on the Northern Soul scene.

I was not that knowledgeable about the Wigan cover-up, but I realised it made a great story and would create much interest. After Dave’s untimely death, I visited his widow Alice and listened to some of his tapes. I thought they were worth gambling on. At the time I could identify only one full CD’s worth of material with a few spin-offs for other compilations. We shipped the tapes back to London, allowing us the luxury of time to fully explore the material.

Our first “Dave Hamilton’s Detroit Dancers” CD featured most of the tracks that had drawn us to the catalogue. In further researching the tapes we began to discover unheard gems such as ‘Who Are You Trying To Fool’ by Little Ann (the true artist on that Rose Valentine cover-up), a recording later described by Ian Levine as the best non-Motown Detroit soul production. The rare soul collecting scene continued to view Dave’s work favourably and records such as ‘Sweep It Out In The Shed’ by Tobi Lark, Dottie & Millie’s ‘Talkin’ About My Baby’ and James Lately’s super-rarity ‘Love, Friends And Money’ went from strength to strength. Then the rare funk scene exploded and Dean Rudland was able to compile a BGP CD of late 60s and early 70s grooves. Additionally Dave’s jazz productions on himself and his tight band came out as the unreleased “Soul Suite” LP he had hoped would make his name in the late 60s. Dave’s jazz background also led to several of his tracks featuring in our “Mod Jazz” series and there were some excellent modern soul recordings from artists such as of Gil Billingsley and James Carpenter.

Meanwhile, we had been sitting on many unmarked tapes. Every few years we would haul a couple of boxes up from our storage facility, don the headphones and plough through several days’ worth of recordings. These varied from poorly copied old jazz radio shows to fully produced versions of songs Dave was trying to get to Motown’s Jobete Music publishing company. Tapes for some incredibly rare 45s eventually turned up, along with odd acetates, allowing us to release a third volume of “Detroit Dancers” and a new volume of funk, followed by a general “Detroit Soul” CD.

The EU then joined in the fun with a request from the Finnish company Timmion to issue an LP of Little Ann’s recordings. The faux 60s album was a great hit, particularly among the younger soul demographic, and it led to a similar project on O.C. Tolbert, who also cut enough tracks for a very impressive Kent CD of his own.

That one mythical 1966 recording that remained embedded in an old acetate was responsible for eight great CDs and we’re still counting. From small acorns, mighty oak trees do grow, and we’ve not even started on the gospel tapes yet.