Tree Of Life

 

Phebe Scoggins
Age 13

Tree Of Life
Daddy Was A Ole Time Preacher

H & S Music, BMI
Dobie Record Co.

1975

Reverse of this EP on a Rome, Georgia label is by her parents, Hoyt and Mae Scoggins. Another Phebe 45 on the same label was While I've Got The Chance" b/w The Last Altar Call, also issued with a picture sleeve.

Phebe (detail from the sleeve)

There's A Great Day Coming

 

 Chip Young

A: There's A Great Day Coming
B: Just As You Are
Both wr. Joe South, Joe South Music (BMI)

    Esco 200 CY
Sept. 1959

It seems that the Billboard reviewer sensed insufficient promotion from Esco for this Chip Young record ("could step out with plugs" and "could create interest with exposure").  And he was not wrong, at least regarding a national promotion. 

The Esco label (and its Escophonic sound proudly printed on all the labels) was the offshoot of Esco Artists, a local booking agency located at 112 Nathan Rd.,in Atlanta, recording members of its stable [except Joe South] to ensure a regional promotion. At  Esco, the star was Joe South, a NRC recording artist, who penned almost all the songs recorded by the label, which were all copyrighted by his own publishing company, Joe South Music (BMI). Still under contract with Bill Lowery as a recording artist, Joe South didn't have a record issued by Esco. Did he owned that booking agency ?

Guitarist and producer Chip Young died Dec. 20 2014 at the age of 76 in Nashville, Tenn., a month after undergoing triple bypass surgery at St. Thomas Hospital.

Young, a.k.a. Jerry Marvin Stembridge, was born in Atlanta, Ga., on May 19, 1938, and began his remarkable career in the 1950s, playing with guitarist Jerry Reed and singer-songwriter Joe South. In the '60s and '70s, Young lent his notable thumb-picking talents to Dolly Parton's hit 'Jolene,' Elvis Presley's 'Guitar Man,' Charley Pride's 'Kiss an Angel Good Morning' and many other fan-favorite songs.

He was a regular member of Presley's studio band from 1965 until the King's death in 1977. Young worked with other talented artists as well, including Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kris Kristofferson, Porter Wagoner, George Jones, Willie Nelson, the Oak Ridge Boys and Reba McEntire, among others.

 

 

Stranded

 

Jo Ellen

Stranded
wr. Pete Skelton

PJ Records
1966

Out of Macon, Georgia. This is possibly Jo Ellen Skelton, 13-y old, daughter of Pete Skelton, owner of the label ?

Little Willie, The Malibus and Phil Gandy had a release on this tiny label.

Tough Times

 

Marvin Ramey
and The Cama Rockers Band

Tough Times
(M. Ramey  R. Fouch)
Lupine & Cape Ann Music, BMI

RBM Records, Inc. #100
(1964)

Marvin Ramey and Romeo Fouch, both born in 1941, attended the Booker T. Washington High School for Negroes. They were two among others named the winners of scholarships and prizes, according to The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia. (June 9, 1959 issue).  The Cama Rockers came also from the same high school and there is at least one mention of the performing band led by one Clarence Chandler.  That was probably the same band who had a record on the Fairlane label in 1961, backing George Hughley.

Marvin Ramey, Romeo Fouch and Henry Anderson (b. 1920) later composed several songs which were issued on James F. Brannon Jr & Martin Haley's Lou-Neita Records and on Minnie Records, nearly all were recorded by The Bishop. Aural evidence is suggesting that Marvin Ramey is indeed The Bishop.

Cape Ann Music was owned by famous Nashville DJ John Richbourg, perhaps an indication of a Nashville recording session for this RBM record. But, little mystery, I am not able to resolve the credit to Lupine Music.

Lupine Music was owned by Robert West who had a few record labels in the late 50s and was a pioneer of R n' B in Detroit : Silhouette (1956-57), Kudo Records (1958), Flick Records (1959), Bumble Bee Records (1959), Contour Records (1959-61), and owned LuPine Records, which he operated from 1960-1969 in Detroit.  Perhaps someone involved with the RBM release had some ties in Detroit.

According to a local Georgia newspapers dated Oct 4, 1997:

Marvin Wilson Ramey, 55, a truck driver from Atlanta, was traveling west on Edgewood Avenue at 12:30 a.m. when his truck veered right onto a concrete island. The truck, traveling at a high rate of speed, jumped the curb and struck a large oak tree. The impact threw Ramey, who was not wearing a seat belt, through the front windshield. A half-empty whiskey bottle was found at the scene.

A final note : the artist named The Bishop on the "Phone Call From Heaven" LP on Michal MR-249-isn't Marvin Ramey

Billboard ad from August 1970 for a LP
which was apparently never released

Discography

As Marvin Ramey
   Tough Times / Darling I Love You - RBM 101 - 1964

As The Bishop
   You Can't Take It With You / Minnie Skirt Minnie ~ LOU-NEITA 0207 (1968)
   Roll over Beethoven / Folsom Prison Blues ~ LOU-NEITA 0211 (late 60s)
   You can't take it with you / Roll over Beethoven ~ MINNIE 1522 (late 60s)
   Minnie skirt Minnie / Honky tonk woman ~ MINNIE 1971 (1971?)            

Achnowledgments : Sir Shambling, Evil Eye (YouTube channel)

Japanese Cheese

Billy Adams

Japanese Cheese

Cannonball Records CB-101
(Another Sound On The Ball)
Fort Oglethorpe, GA 30742

[1982]

Yes, this is Billy Adams, of "Rock, Pretty Mama" fame, who left the rock 'n' roll arena in 1964 to pursue a career as a singing evangelist.

According to UPI News, Sept. 23 1982

....Adams, a 1950s singer-songwriter who became a born-again evangelist, reached the high moment of his two-week revival in this small town north of Columbia, Nort Carolina, with a record-crunching and book-burning.

More than 200 members of the Holiness Pentecostal Church -- many of them children -- turned out to learn from Adams that 'Rock has a heavy, incessant demonic beat. It's the same beat used in the rites of primitive tribes.'

'At the base of the brain there's a small gland called the pituitary gland,' he said. 'The rock beat beats on this gland. Rock music has a direct effect on the pituitary gland.
'It distorts it and sends too many chemicals into the brain. It causes a complete wipeout of the moral inhibitions.'
 

After his 90-minute sermon, the crowd adjourned to the parking lot to burn books, T-shirts and cassette recordings he said were inspired by the devil. A plan to heap rock 'n' roll and country music records into a pile and burn them in a bonfire was aborted. Instead, the albums were smashed with sledgehammers.

Adams noted that RCA records in New York had warned that burning records would release deadly polyvinyl chloride gas.  'RCA came out and said there's poison gas in these records,' he cried. 'Well, we knew that, that's why we're going to break them and burn everything else.'

He agreed that some critics would call his career as a recording artist hypocritical, given his attacks on rock music. "You'll have a few who'll say, 'Aha, look what he's done,' " Adams said. "But my big fight with rock music was when they went beyond selling records and filled it with drugs, sex, hidden messages and Satanic things."

Rock, Pretty Mama (live)

Born in Redbush, Ky., on March 6, 1940, Mr. Adams was one of 14 children and the son of a coal miner who worked in the Van Lear coal mine, the same place that Loretta Lynn sings about in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

Other songs he recorded in the late ’50s include “You Heard Me Knocking,” “True Love Will Come Your Way” and “You Gotta Have a Duck Tail.”
 

He was inspired to write “Rock, Pretty Mama” listening to the sound of trains near his home.

Billy Adams died March 30, 2019 in Westmoreland, Tenn. He was 79.

Long Necked Goose

Long Necked Goose

Endless Sleep

According to a comment from 2017 published by dbaugh1805 at 45cat/com, "Frank Clark (Clarko) was a DJ in the East back then. He lives in California now and has a streaming oldies Internet radio program on Rockhouse Radio.".  His only recording?

This Trumpet label was owned by New York born Harry Gorlin (1902-1995) who also was Vice-President and executive in charge of the "new" National Recording Corporation (NA-R-CO) in Atlanta, after the bankrupt of Bill Lowery's NRC company in April 1961. The company would re-emerge from bankruptcy in 1962, under the ownership of Frederick Storey (president of the Storey theaters of Georgia), but Lowery had left the company (he came back later).

For a list of masters produced by Harry Gorlin in 1962-1963, see HG master numbers

Lorina

Roger Rigney

Lorina

 Mashburn-Carter, Bucheanna Publishing Co

Regency 159

produced by Jay-Cher Enterprises
1969

Regency Records is a record label founded by Georgia record producer and TV/Radio syndicator Johnny Carter and North Georgia disc jockey Lamar Gravitt in 1965. Regency Records was originally a part of the C-R-Co (Cherokeeland Recording Company), based in Calhoun, Georgia near the 19th century national capital of the Cherokee Indians. The label operated as a part of Jay Enterprises when Carter moved to Tennessee in 1966, and became a part of Cherokee Album Corporation when Carter returned to Georgia in 1968.[Wikipedia]

Dark Glasses

Billy Joe Royal needs no introduction.  This is his second single for Boots Woodall's Fairlane label issued in January 1962. Both sides written by Joe South.

Billy Joe was earlier the featured vocalist with the Savannah, Georgia band of Buddy Livingston, The band once included Billy Joe Royal, Joe South and Ray Stevens.

Buddy Livingston was considered the Elvis of the Coastal Empire and played all over the area, including at the Bamboo Ranch in Savannah and the Barn.   Buddy played bass guitar and was the lead man for the band. They played almost every night at a club called "The Bamboo Ranch" and even had their own 30-minute television show on WTOC for a while.

They hired a young singer named Billy Joe Royal, and before long, the band was called "Buddy Livingston and the Versatones--- featuring Billy Joe Royal."

Perhaps

Dark Glasses

This Little Piggy

J.C. Wilson

This Little Piggy

Starjo Records 1711
StarJo Music distr.
108 Chicamauga Ave.
Rossville, Georgia

1972

The flip is a country weeper.

J. (Joe) C. Wilson was from Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is about five miles from Rossville, Georgia.
Other artists on the same label : Billy Starr, Aileen Starr and Eulle Simmons.

Billy Brown

Ray Willis
(The Piccadilly Hillbilly)

Billy Brown

Pic 3019

1967?

Ray Willis had a long association with Atlanta's Pic Records, as all songs on this label, excepted the one by The Frantics, were written or co-written by him and all published by DeLong Pub. Co. owned by Pete DeLong, who was also probably the owner of the label.

Ray Willis was associated with RCA's Jerry Reed and managed his Vector Music publishing company during his big hits "Amos Moses" and "When You're Hot You're Hot".   He also wrote several songs with Ronnie Sessions. In 1974, he was V-P and general manager of World Music Corporation whose board of directors included Faron Young and Porter Wagoner.  

Probably not to be confused with the country singer and copper-miner who came from Colorado (LP on Alshire Records), nor with the rockabilly singer on Jan Records ("Whatta Ya Do", 1958), nor with the songwriter of "Beatnik's Wish" (Patsy Raye & The Beatniks, Roulette Records, 1959).  But who knows? 

Still, I can't find any explanation for the "Piccadilly Hillbilly" billing on label.  Did he came from London before moving to Georgia?

 
Pic Records

DeLong Pub co.
1112 DeKalb Ave., N.E. Atlanta
1199 Arbor Vista Dr. N. E.  Atlanta

62 —2069/70  Ray Valenti & The Queens Men
For You, My Love / Fire Beneath The Snow

64 —3001/2 Lee Duncan 
Millie Gets The Willies / Cargo Of Tears

65 —3005/6  The Frantics
Why /  (Do The) Jack-Knife

66 —3007/8  Charlie "Chuck" Waggon
So Near, Yet So Far Away / Gonna Stick To You

6x —3016 Charlie "Chuck" Waggon  
Wishy Washy Love / ?

6x —3019 Ray Willis (The Piccadilly Hillbilly)
Billy Brown / Mary, Oh Mary
     

Laundromat Blues

Rose Carico

Laundromat Blues
Johnny Carter Music Co., BMI
Regency Records R45-177 

Fairmount, Georgia,

 Arr. & prod by Johnny Carter

1969 or later

Regency Records was founded by Georgia record producer and TV/Radio syndicator Johnny Carter and North Georgia disc jockey Lamar Gravitt in 1965.  

Rose Carico had another single on MKB (Tobaccoville, N.C.) : I've Got Countryitis / Woman Fever, and that's the sum of my knowledge here.

Let's Make Love

Little Buddy

Let's Make Love

NRC 010

1958

James B. McKnight (Little Buddy)  was born in Durham, N.C., in 1943.   This is his first record, probably brought to NRC by John C. Greene, Jr., a Durham, North Carolina radio station manager (WSRC) and record label owner (Joy Records).  Buddy McKnight relocated later to Orlando, Florida and had two singles released by the local Pine Hills Records (1967-1968)

In the mid-sxities, he played organ for the Mighty Dee-Jays, a band formed by Jimmy (Dee) Dudley (see sirshambling). 

He died in 1996.  According to his obit, McKnight moved to Central Florida in 1969. and was a truck driver for a cement company, He was a member of St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church. Survivors were : wife, Georgia; son, Corey, Orlando; daughters, April Henson, Orlando, Dee, Ocala; five grandchildren. 

James Benjamin McKnight

Scratchin' On My Screen

Feelin' Joyous

Scratchin' On My Screen

(new link)

Ric Cartey-Larry Handley

Lowery Music

El Rico 069 1/2

1962

A reworking of the song recorded four years earlier by Ric Cartey on NRC.  Feelin' Joyous is quite possibly Ric Cartey himself.  The song, written by Cartey, was loosely based on the old country blues "Diggin' My Potatoes".  The P.O Box on label is the address of the Lowery Music Company. 

Carole Joyner and Ric Cartey

Ric Cartey will be remembered as the co-writer of "Young Love". Few songs have charted in so many different versions. Alongside the chart-topping renditions of Sonny James and Tab Hunter, there were hit versions by The Crew Cuts (# 17, 1957), Lesley Gore (# 50, 1966), Connie Smith & Nat Stuckey (# 20 country, 1969), Donny Osmond (# 25, 1973) and Ray Stevens (# 93, 1976).

Ric Cartey was a protégé of the Atlanta-based music publisher and record producer Bill Lowery, who launched the Stars label in 1956 with Cartey (and his group the Jiv-A-Tones) as his principal artist. Ric's debut single, "Ooh-Ee", was reviewed in the C&W section of Billboard (November 24, 1956) and scored a 90, a rating rarely given. "A unique listening experience", wrote the reviewer. Hidden on the backside of this rockabilly number was a ballad in a completely different style, "Young Love", which Cartey had written together with his girl friend, Carole Joyner.   

http://www.rockabilly.nl/references/messages/ric_cartey.htm

Little Brad Williams

Little Brad Williams

Clips only (thanks God!)

 Perfection Sound Inc. Smyrna, Georgia 

1982

Brad performed his first song, "Just a Little Talk With Jesus" when he was 20 months old.  Brad's mother and father [Becky and Ricky, 110 Windy Hill Road, Alpharetta, Georgia], travels with him wherever he goes.  Brad's father plays the piano for him.  Who knows where a 5 years old with Brad's "talent" can go ! !  

 

J.J. Waldroup

Chairman, Youth Variety Show, 

Georgia Mountain Fair

Brad Williams is still into music these days.  See Southern Accent

She's The Lovin' Kind

The Jades

She's The Lovin' Kind

Homer Chasteen, Albert Dailey, Charles Marlowe

 

Fevre MLFP 651

Albert Dailey formed the Jades in 1966 in the Peach State. The Jades played together for 25 years. Surviving members still gather once a year for a reunion performance.  In the late 1970s, the Jades became the house band at the J&J Center on Commerce Road in Athens, playing behind a host of traveling country music stars.  The Jades played anything from country to Elvis to old school.   They recorded only two singles.

The Fevre label was an imprint of  LeFevre Sound, a recording studio formed in Atlanta, Georgia by The LeFevres, a Southern Gospel singing group. 

 

Rock and Rhythm Boogie

J.C. Arline

Rock and Rhythm Boogie

Friendly Records

1957

James C. Arline taught piano in Phoenix in the ’50s and ’60s, according to a listener who called in a couple of years ago to Bob Corritore’s weekly Sunday KJZZ radio show, “Those Lowdown Blues”.

All other releases on the Friendly label are gospel, mainly by The Gospel Light Singers, a group directed by Madam Sophie Reed, who had a previous release on Dootone Records of Los Angeles (1956).

Not related to the Elvitrue label, despite some sources says so.  Elvitrue Records was a vanity/custom recording operation,  odd somehow and not far from a scam in my opinion.  That was certainly not the case of Friendly Records.

 Curiously enough, the same Friendly logo design has been used by Ray Bell And The Dixie Rhythm Ramblers in 1960 on their Starday custom release out of Milan, Tennessee.  

The Valdosta Daily Times

VALDOSTA — Bishop Sophie Brinson Reed Davis departed this life on Monday, Oct. 31, 2011 at the residence of her sister, Ms. Dorothy Williams who had been her caregiver for the past year. Bishop Davis was born on Dec. 6, 1919 in Montgomery County, Georgia to the late Rev. Daniel J. Brinson and Mrs. Bessie Beamon Brinson.

She began her journey with God at an early age. Long before she became a minister, she traveled around the country with the group she organized: The Gospel Lights and sang on programs with many groups and singers that had become famous over the years in the music field.   She was trained and ordained in the CME Church in Moultrie.  In the 1960s, she was the Founder and Pastor of The Hope of Salvation Holiness Gospel Temple Church, Inc. of Moultrie.  The church was later moved to Douglas.  From the 1950s until the last year of her life, when her health began to fail, Bishop Davis had written the words and music for more than 2,000 songs. She wrote "I Need You Lord, Yes I Do," (copyrighted in 1950, published by Jerico Music Co.). Continued with "One More River to Cross" and "Some Christians Talk Too Much." She attended public schools in Coffee County, Ga. (Douglas), Colquitt County, Ga. (Moultrie) and Paine College in Augusta, Ga.

Come Back and Love Me

Judy Tolbert
(11 Years Old)

Come Back and Love Me
(wr. Jerry Reed)

Stars Records

1957

This is the flip of "I’m Wise to You Now " available on, at least, three compilations, and indeed on YouTube.

Judy Tolbert's second single for one of the many labels owned by Bill Lowery out of Atlanta, Georgia. According to Rockin' Country Style the age reference on the label of Stars 543 is inaccurate, Judy was born in 1943 in Gadsden, Ala. Claudette Tolbert wrote "I'm Wise" and may have been Judy's mother ?



.

Crying The Blues in My Dreams

John Bennefield With The Hollaway Sisters

Crying The Blues in My Dreams

A.Benjiman - J. Bennefield
Stars, Inc. - Lowery Music Co., Inc.

Stars 553

1957

John Bennefield started his own radio show when he was only 14 in the early fifties. In 1964, he was on WGUS, Augusta, Ga. He was then married and had three children.

The Hollaway Sisters remains ungoogable, unfortunately.

The Stars label was the first, or one of the first labels, launched by Bill Lowery in 1955.



.

Waiting At The Station

Hoot Gibson

Waiting At The Station

(H. Gibson - W. Maxwell, Lowery Music BMI)

Peach Records

Not the rodeo champion and cowboy actor (1892-1962), I assume.



Update : the following info is provided by Westex.

Hoot Gibson was- for a time- an Odessa boy. He ran Coronado Sound Studios and released at least 3 45s on his own imprint including one by Johnny "Peanuts" Wilson, another by Eddie Williams, and an Orbison-styled rocker by Jan Lessard. David Box worked in his studio a bit as did Ray Rush and Ted Grobel. The venture was short lived.

I'm not sure anyone really knows where Hoot came from... just that he was from down south, as in south Texas... and he moved out this way in the early 60s.

Weldon Rogers, also from this area of Texas, also had a release on Peach at around this same time.

.

I Tried

Howard Boone
and
the Rhythm Five

I Tried

Tifco Records

The flip side, "Baby Please Don't Go" by Jimmy Jeens & The Rhythm Five is readily available on the net.

Second issue. Was first on Bomac as by The Rhythm Five feat. Howard Boone. See Rockin' Country Style. website.

Tifco Records discography HERE



.