{"id":14950,"date":"2018-08-07T05:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T09:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14950"},"modified":"2018-08-07T08:45:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T12:45:43","slug":"the-ru-jac-records-story-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/07\/the-ru-jac-records-story-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ru-Jac Records Story, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Something Got a Hold on Me<\/i> covers 1963-1964, the earliest years of Ru-Jac, ones that featured the Kay Keys Band, Little Sonny Daye, Brenda Jones, Parker, the Teardrops Band and several others. Most names won’t be familiar to most outside the Baltimore soul scene of that era, but the quality of the music is undeniable.<\/p>\n

Owing to both the passage of time and Rufus Mitchell’s sometimes less than meticulous record-keeping, the Omnivore team would be unable to identify the provenance of some of the Ru-Jac tapes. As a result, two of the cuts on Something Got a Hold on Me<\/i> \u2013 \u201cTrash Can\u201d and the song that provides the set with its its title \u2013 are credited to \u201cUnknown Artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite Omnivore’s best efforts, that lack of information would sometimes extend beyond the name of the artist. Several songs across the Ru-Jac compilations are missing writer’s credit. And session information \u2013 recording dates, personnel \u2013 would be even more difficult (and sometimes impossible) to come by.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s nothing you can do,\u201d Pawelski admits. \u201cThe songs are so great that you can’t say, ‘Well, we’re just not going to include them.’ So we have to just admit that we don’t know who it is; there’s just no information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sides from Holt, Brenda Jones, Butch Cornell’s Trio and Parker predominate on Get Right<\/i>, the second volume in the new Ru-Jac series, this time covering 1964-1966. Two more volumes, Finally Together<\/i> and Changes<\/i>, take the Ru-Jac musical chronology up to its end in 1972, adding a final single released in 1980. Access to the Ru-Jac archives included discovery of a number of demo recordings, instrumental backing tracks and alternate takes, and whenever possible Omnivore has included these on the new collections.<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that the Winfield Parker and Gene & Eddie tracks on The Ru-Jac Story<\/i> discs aren’t repeats of cuts found on Omnivore’s earlier CD releases. \u201cWe had some alternate recordings,\u201d Pawelski says, \u201cso that even after doing something comprehensive on both of those artists, we’d still have some nuggets to add.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"And nuggets abound. \u201cI love the Rita Doryse stuff,\u201d Pawelski says, referring to the five cuts that open Finally Together<\/i>, the volume covering Rujac’s 1966 and 1967 output. And she gushes that Marie Allen \u2013 a highlight of the first volume \u2013 \u201cjust rips the head off the songs she sings. Kitty Lane was a super awesome singer, too.\u201d None of those singers would become a household name beyond Baltimore. \u201cThey were all either regional, or didn’t go very far,\u201d Pawelski says.<\/p>\n

Cheryl Pawelski readily admits that when she first dug into the Ru-Jac archive, she was unfamiliar with most of the artists. Serious Northern soul aficionados, however, have long known about the Ru-Jac label. Pawelski says that she discovered that some of the highly collectible 45s from Ru-Jac sell for more than $1500. \u201cOr more,\u201d she adds. \u201cSometimes a lot more.\u201d Pawelski credits some \u201chigh level collectors\u201d for helping compile the complete picture that The Ru-Jac Records Story<\/i> represents.<\/p>\n

Pawelski stresses the musical and historical importance of the body of work chronicled by Ru-Jac. \u201cSomebody said that it’s a sort of alternate universe Stax\/Volt,\u201d she says. The venerated Memphis label had its own stable of in-house writers, including Isaac Hayes, David Porter, Mac Wright and Betty Crutcher. \u201cAnd in a similar way, the Ru-Jac folks had Arthur Conley and Sir Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n

And employing a practice common at the time, writers would often have their songs cut by more than one artist, in hope of increasing the chances for a return on investment. Pawelski says that in that manner, Ru-Jac followed \u201cthe way that a bigger publisher or label operated.\u201d Referring to the new compilations, she points out that \u201cyou’ll see that Winfield Parker would release different versions of songs. There’s one \u2013 ‘Days May Come, Days May Go’ \u2013 that he tried two different ways with two different arrangements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkably in light of Ru-Jac’s limited output, the six CDs released so far by Omnivore don’t represent the whole story. \u201cThere could be one more package that comes out of the Ru-Jac tapes,\u201d Pawelski says. \u201cArthur Conley’s songwriting demos. He was writing a lot at the time,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd some of the songs came out on Fame and other labels \u2026 but not all of them.\u201d So the demos in Omnivore’s possession represent a cache of Conley songs \u201cthat nobody’s ever heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"But the challenges involved in that potential project make the difficulties with the previous Ru-Jac recordings seem small. \u201cFor some reason, the signal on most of the demos I have by Arthur Conley is so low that there’s a lot of hiss,\u201d Pawleksi says. \u201cWe’re working right now to do our best to marginalize that.\u201d She remains confident that Michael Graves of Osiris Studio \u2013 the man responsible for the audio restoration on all the Ru-Jac material \u2013 will \u201chave it singing to the best of his technological capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Cheryl Pawelski believes that the music deserves the effort. \u201cThe songs are amazing,\u201d she says. \u201cI don’t even care about the occasional audio anomalies, because the songs are beautiful.\u201d Listeners interested in a preview of the demos of which Pawelski speaks can hear \u201cHiding Out in Blue Shadows,\u201d the final track on Get Right: The Ru-Jac Story Volume Two<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If all that’s not enough, Pawelski remains on the lookout for more lost nuggets from music’s past. Making the point that as special as Ru-Jac was, it’s merely one of a large number of local and regional labels that cut songs worthy of rediscovery. \u201cIt\u2019s insane, the amount of music that was recorded,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are labels all over the place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lifelong pursuit,\u201d Pawelski says. \u201cYou keep learning, and your listening aptitude grows and changes. To me, it\u2019s massive amounts of fun. Because it\u2019s endless.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Something Got a Hold on Me covers 1963-1964, the earliest years of Ru-Jac, ones that featured the Kay Keys Band, Little Sonny Daye, Brenda Jones, Parker, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,41,49,64,69],"tags":[3514,1622,3513],"class_list":["post-14950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-interview","category-new-release","category-reissue","category-soul","tag-cheryl-pawelski","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-ru-jac-records","cat-19-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-64-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950","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=14950"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15014,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14950\/revisions\/15014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}