{"id":14415,"date":"2018-04-13T05:30:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T09:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14415"},"modified":"2023-01-10T10:41:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T15:41:41","slug":"soul-stalwart-sidney-barnes-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/13\/soul-stalwart-sidney-barnes-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Soul Stalwart: Sidney Barnes (Part 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Three<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Barnes went on the road with Deniece Williams, too, and sang the male part of the Williams-Johnny Mathis duet, \u201cToo Much, Too Little, Too Late.\u201d Initially, he did his part from backstage, but headliner Lou Rawls insisted he come out and sing at center stage with Williams. \u201cPlus,\u201d Rawls told him, \u201cI\u2019m gonna get you a Johnny Mathis mask, because too many people are coming to me after the show saying, \u2018Why didn\u2019t Johnny come out?’\u201d Luckily, Rawls never made good on that threat.<\/p>\n

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Barnes also toured with Riperton. At a Las Vegas show in which she was doing a scene from Snow White<\/i>, Riperton sang a lyric from \u201cPenny in the Well.\u201d \u201cShe sang the words, ‘I’m wishing for the one I love to find me,’ Barnes recalls, \u201cand my line was, ‘Lady, you don’t get nothin’ in Vegas for a penny.’ But nobody laughed.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Riperton wanted to take the line out of future shows. But Barnes had an idea, and suggested they try it one more time. Barnes picks up the story. \u201cThe next night, everybody\u2019s nervous. Minnie didn\u2019t even know what I was gonna do. So, she sings, ‘I\u2019m wishing for the one I love to find me,’ and she throws the penny. And I said, ‘You ain\u2019t gonna get shit<\/i> in Vegas for a penny,’ and the room erupted. All I did was add that word: Shit<\/i>.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles Stepney had plans to produce a solo album for Barnes, but he died halfway through completing Minnie Riperton’s album Come to My Garden<\/i>. Instead, Barnes teamed up again with his old friend George Clinton, by now leading Parliament\/Funkadelic. He also did work for Chaka Khan, Donny Hathaway and many other artists, while moving into making music for film, television and commercials. By the early 1990s he would be living in Chicago in semi-retirement, but continued to write songs and make demo recordings.<\/p>\n

His longtime partner died near the end of that decade, and after a period of mourning, Barnes decided he didn’t like being alone. \u201cSome guy was giving away computers, and I didn\u2019t know nothing about ’em,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cBut I said, ‘Give me one.’ I took it home and got on the internet.\u201d One thing led to another; he fell in love with his current wife. \u201cBut she said, ‘You know you’ve got to move to Asheville, North Carolina if we’re going to be together,’\u201d Barnes says. \u201cAnd I said, ‘Sure, okay.’ I had never heard of Asheville.\u201d Barnes moved from Chicago in 2000.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his retirement wasn’t working out. He had long since developed a good and successful working relationship with composer Joel Goldsmith on films like Love at First Bite<\/i> (1979) and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend<\/i> (1985). After Barnes moved south, he was contacted once again by Goldsmith, who had plans to do some collaborative recording projects. \u201cIt was always his goal to cut albums with me,\u201d Barnes says. Goldsmith soon visited Asheville. \u201cWe got together. He came up to the house, we had a good time, he went back to California, and he died a month later.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years earlier when still living in Chicago, Barnes discovered to his great surprise that a number of his early sides had become popular in England, part of the growing interest in Northern soul. \u201cI was working as a doorman at the time,\u201d he says. \u201cThis guy came up to me and said, ‘We\u2019re gonna do a video on you for the people in England.’ I\u2019m going, ‘For what<\/i>?’ He said, ‘Your records are big over there.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The interaction would eventually lead to the first of what are now more than a dozen transatlantic trips for Barnes. \u201cWe stay at fans’ houses,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cThey\u2019re like family. We made friends that we still hear from today.\u201d Some of his Red Bird singles had been rediscovered, along with his later work with George Kerr, George Clinton and J.J. Jackson. As he understands it, this new-found appreciation is built upon the fact that unlike many other pop stars of the rhythm and blues, soul, funk and rock era, Barnes not only sang his songs, but he often wrote and produced them. Today he’s far better known in the UK than he is back at home. And he enjoys performing for and connecting with his new fans. \u201cThey tell me about songs I did that I don’t even remember!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Barnes cut a new song in England, \u201cStanding on Solid Ground.\u201d At first the single went nowhere, but a remixed version a few years later was more successful. Interest in that recording \u2013 plus his massive back catalog of work \u2013 led Barnes to write an autobiography, also titled Standing on Solid Ground<\/i>, published in 2012.<\/p>\n

More recently, Barnes has teamed up yet again with his lifelong friend and collaborator, George Clinton. \u201cI\u2019d work with him occasionally on new songs,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cI\u2019m all over his last album.\u201d And now the two men have announced plans to make a motion picture. \u201cGeorge and I decided a long time ago that by the time we got to a certain age \u2013 which is about now \u2013 if we don\u2019t have any big money coming off the records, we’re going to do something,\u201d Barnes says. They decided to pursue a long-gestating idea for a movie. \u201cGeorge put it in my lap, because I’m not committed [to other projects] like he is. He’s still gigging.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Barnes describes the project \u2013 with the working title Rhythm n’ Blues: The Movie<\/i> \u2013 as an homage to the people who inspired him and Clinton. \u201cA lot of people write about that era; they use the music in movies and all that,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cThey know about Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but nobody\u2019s really made a movie that reflects what those early artists went through on the chitlin’ circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing the planned film as a docudrama, Barnes explains that it’s centered around an early 1950s radio station changing its format to play music aimed at black listeners, and the ways in which that changed peoples’ lives. The entire plot is somewhat involved, but the script features a local mobster character to be played by George Clinton himself.<\/p>\n

The irrepressible Barnes shows no signs of slowing down as he approaches his 77th<\/sup> birthday, even as he and his wife have moved from Asheville to that smaller city nearby. After a career filled with twists and turns, he shows no interest in resting on past glories; at the conclusion of our several-hour conversation in my living room, Barnes hands me a homemade CD-R. It features fifteen songs in a variety of styles, highlighted by a warmly sentimental funk number called \u201cOld School Music.\u201d With Barnes singing his own lyrics about \u201cvinyl 45s with a big hole in the middle,\u201d it sums up much of what is special about this singer, songwriter, producer, arranger and performer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Three… Barnes went on the road with Deniece Williams, too, and sang the male part of the Williams-Johnny Mathis duet, \u201cToo Much, Too Little, Too Late.\u201d Initially, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,60,69],"tags":[3262,3248],"class_list":["post-14415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-rb","category-soul","tag-rotary-connection","tag-sidney-barnes","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-60-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14415"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24699,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14415\/revisions\/24699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}