SDC OmniMedia Group Magazine

THE FOLLOWING IS. . .

(C)1986,1993,2003,2006 Kenneth Howard Smith. All Rights Reserved.
From the book - Vinyl Knights: The Other Side Of The Motor City Tracks.
Publication Rights (C)2003-2006 Coleman, Kestin & Smith Publications.
A Unit of The Smith Data Communications Group.

While visiting Lee Rogers at his hospital room, his condition getting much worst, we decided that we should revive the D -Town Records label, and reissue those old records that had been abandoned. They were very much still in print, because every once and awhile, you would see a mint copy of one of Lee’s older hits on the record collectors market, a single going for as much as $35 each.

It was time that we capitalized on this and take back the company. By the end of November 1980, Billboard announced that Platinum Sound had indeed re-actived D-Town Records and had signed Lee Rogers as the the first artist and installed him as the Chief Executive officer with and all rights belonged to D -Town Records. With the help of Aaron Fuchs, the president of Tuff City Records, Fuchs managed to get a distribution avenue with CBS Records. Fuchs was also interested in the Lee Rogers Story for Goldmine Magazine. The piracy stopped and we were on our way to the commercial big time.

It was not long after that that I recorded and released D -Town’s  first record in almost  fifteen years. “Rocking Skates” backed with “It Must Be Love” written by Linda Lou Kestin , Horace Coleman, Jr., and myself.

It was the first time in my history of the record business that the black radio stations did not rally around us and give us a decent play. There excuse was that we were a major label, and we had to pay to get played.

Still being compared to Motown Records, articles from Europe, especially West Germany and France wondered why I was not following the formula laid down by Mike Hanks. After all he started the blues label, and it should remain a blues label.

I struggled for five years with D-Town. I went from MCA Music distributing to Columbia Records distributing systems. And at every turn it proved to be crazy.  I could get no one to take me seriously.

Packing up the label, I moved to Seattle, Washington to start again and anew. In Seattle, I happened to go to a concert on New Year’s Eve in the downtown area.

I met a young man who was working the show, and mixing the sound on stage. The artist was Bernadette Bascom. I remembered Bernadette from the days with Stevie Wonder’s Wonderlove group. She had replaced Denice Williams as the lead singer, and Kay Saunders-Palmer was the management for the Five Stair Steps, to which Bernadette was a member. Now. . .

However, the young man who later turned out to be her husband was named Bill Miller. As fate would have it again, I began to talk about my experiences at Motown Records. Billy had been at Motown too. In fact, he had written the hit single “I Feel Sanctified” for the Commodores. They placed it on their second album. A white disco group from Cleveland, Ohio who was called Wild Cherry recorded their rendition of “Sanctified” on the backside of their single which was called “Play That Funky Music White Boy”. The single sold over six millions records.

After awhile in Los Angeles, Bill was producing for Barbara Striesand, and he could not get her a hit. Taking his money, Bill returned to Detroit.

After a couple of months back at home, he was feeling restless, and decided to hit the road, where of all things, ended up in Seattle. On the other hand, Bernadette was with People’s Choice who had the big hit “Do It Anyway You Wanna” for Philadelphia International Records. They were ending their tour in the Pacific Northwest.

Bernadette fell in love with Seattle and left the group to stay there. It was not long before, she was recording with Thom Bell, and did a solo with Elton John on “The Thom Bell Sessions” album for MCA Records.

Joining a local band by the name of Epicenter, the group was assured success, when Stevie Wonder happen to make an unexpected visit to Seattle and play a gig with Bernadette and the band.

It was all over the newspapers and television stations. Bernadette had cut thought the crowds in Seattle, and was adopted as one of their own.

When Bill and Bernadette met, Bill had already produced a rock act called Lady on his Pac -West Records label. Bill wrote the tune, and was receiving great airplay and record sales, helping to propel the group to greater performance revenues.

When Bill introduced himself to Bernadette, he told her he had written a song for her, and he would be happy if she sings it for him. Bernadette agreed after she heard the song. it was entitled “Seattle Sunshine”, and was adopted by the City council and the official song of the city.

With Bill and Bernadette getting married, their first child was Chokise, a little girl, and the real “rock and roll baby”. It was only a matter of time that Bernadette would be ready to work on the road again.

Bill and I had to start all over from go. Bernadette needed bigger and better public address systems, and Bill and I built them on their back porch.

We manufactured hats, T-Shirts, pictures and wrote songs. We had gotten an old group that had been around the Seattle area for years, called the Reputations. They were just old boys that would like to drink and play the “pisser” bars for the door and whatever they could get.

We offered them a good salary if they what play with Bernadette and they agreed.

Our first gig was at Parker Center. For Bernadette’s return to the stage, the lines were very long and out into the rain just to get in. The owner, didn’t know if Bern could pull a good audience on a Sunday and Monday night, and Bill talked him into giving us the door. We had standing room only as Bernadette open her show. It did not hurt either that we had released Bern’s first single in almost a year called, “I Don’t Want To Loose Your Love” that was getting airplay in Portland as well as all of Canada.

One morning I was watching “Good Morning Seattle” when they had a couple of local bands on the show, I told Billy about it. I told him that I could get Bernadette on the show, and he gave me the go ahead. And I did. We began to release one single record every two months on Bernadette. By the time she did the show, we had released “Body Freaks”.

It was early in the morning that we had to be at KING Television studios, a subsidiary of ABC Television, where the show cared into Canada.

I was in the green room watching Chokise, as Bernadette began to spend her magic. It took no more then two days before we were booked solid for the entire summer.

The highlight of our tour took us to Vancouver, Canada where we shared the stage with Lover Boy and Z.Z. Top.

Coming back to Seattle, it was the opening show with Johnny Winter, then the Seattle Center with Ray Charles and Oingo Boingo. It did not stop there. Oliver Cheatman, Bill’s cousin who lived in Detroit had just signed a two album deal with MCA Records, with his first effort falling upon deaf ears. However, the second album was a different story.

Bill and I were given account to promote the album, and we did. We broke ‘Get Down, It’s Saturday Night”, the title cut from the album into the top three songs on the charts in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet, it was not enough to keep Oliver signed to the MCA contract when Al Perkins was killed by his wife. Perkins had the contracts for two of his acts, One Way and Oliver. Without Perkins, the deal was along gone dream.

It was time that I returned to Los Angeles and get on with the business of D -Town Records. So by the end of 1984, I had returned to Hollywood and purchased a recording studio, determined to get in there and fight it out.

Merrell had been in Maui for over twelve years now, and every once in awhile I would hear from him thought his agent Audrey P. Franklyn.

On this one day, I had to go to the bank and Audrey lived just down the street. While I parked my car, I happened to look down the street and saw this guy who looked very familiar. He looked like Merrell from along distances, and at first I hesitated, then I yelled out him name. This guy slowly turned around to see who was calling him, and he recognized me.

I ran toward him and he toward me. I will never forget how we hugged each other. It was magically.

I asked him would was he doing here in Los Angeles. Merrell just laughed, and began to tell me about the two Germans who had traveled to Maui to find him. They wanted to record a couple of his old albums on their label as reissues.

I told Merrell that I had reactivated D -Town was in need of a couple of great songs to get the ball rolling. He told me that he had a complete album, but lacked three songs from having it completed. I had a recording studio, and told him if he would help me, I would help him.

We recorded three songs, and released the “Doctor Fankhauser” album with John Cippolina and Jim Murrary of the Quicksilver Messenger Service and I released the album in Europe. The album debut at the number #1 spot on fifty radio stations. I signed the manufacturing rights to PolyGram of Greece, EMI/London, Virgin Records of France and Line Records of West Germany. The album stayed in the top ten for over six months, generating over 500,000 record sales.

By the end of 1986, D-Town Records had started a major cut into the commercial arena of the music industry. With its claws in the Rock venue, D-Town had overcome the label of just being a “black” record company, but a company that was artist centered. A company that was run by an artist, and a different approach to the record business.

With the surprising success of Merrell Fankhauser’s “Doctor Fankhauser” album, that was distributed worldwide on five different labels, and the generation of ten rendition albums and reissues by Merrell, it was no wonder that Merrell’s albums captured the Number #1 spot on the charts for six months and six months respectively.

Under the direction of myself, D-Town enjoyed great gains in the music business, which allowed us to invest in other artists in different categories of music, from Rock, C&W, Punk, Rap, R&B and classical music.

By the end of the 1980’s, I decided it was time to move on, and put the record company in mothballs, and moved to Denver. I guest it had to be like that, because Merrell had predicted it in a song that he wrote for me, “Don’t Give Up The Rock” which powered the “Doctor Fankhauser” album into national prominence.

In 1993, I again found myself looking back into the looking glass. My hair had a lot of gray in it, and I had not released a record in almost eight years. Time was surely flying out of the wonder.

I started recording again in the basement of my condo. My wife was getting furious at me because all I was during was recording with no direction at all.

Upon the death of one of my church, high school and college mates, I happened to call one of my old band member’s from the Purple Olive days, and was talking about how time was just getting by and I had nothing to show for it.

My ex -wife Irene Tarbell had just moved to Tucson, Arizona and was cleaning out her garage when she came upon some old pictures of me and the band - -Purple Olive in our rise to the top. And that’s when Rick and I decided that a tribute album to my old group would be the best time that I would have done it years.

The old recording equipment it the basement was analog, and not that great, considering that it had recorded a number #1 smash album for Merrell and also recorded two hit records for Toto which included “Africa” and “Roseanne”. The equipment was in good company. Still I had to make a choice.

I wanted to call the album “Quantum Leap”, by Karen decided that it was not the name for an album, and she named it “Garage Noise”.

At the top of the pile, I lead D -Town Records to a fantastic ending when I placed five single records in Billboard’s record picks and shut -out all of the major labels. I did everything that there was to do, but still I fell short of my mark and goal.

The following was an announcement that D -Town will never die, and that for once and for all, D -Town Records with all of its memories past and present will endure to the end.

The D-Town story is starting all over again with the release of The Fankhauser Cassidy Band CD called “On The Blue Road”. Ed Cassidy former member of Spirit has signed with D-Town and a second CD is in the making as of the date of this writing.

The insurance companies around the world would not provide a policy for Merrell after that 1987 medical emergency. Ed and Randy were fighting about letting Merrell tour with them on the Spirit’s Europe Package.

Everything started to heat up around the artists and D-Town Records. Gone were the years of just putting a record out. And fame offers very little security these days. D-Town’s distributors were pressing the company for a follow-up CD album before Christmas. Randy began to come unglued at Ed, as he was literally fighting to get Merrell on the ticket.

There was another issue. Without any tour, our records began to drop like a rock and all of my investors hearts and money along with it.

God, I’ve been down this road before – and OH NO – not again – damn it.

How many times must I fail – at everything that I do. Why me again. I always get the lesson right – but the again, I’m ahead of my time.

I sat in my blue bedroom with the Kennedy Honors giving away hugs and kisses as the my Elizabeth Taylor, my James Earl Jones, and other greats stand to their feet as the stage exploded with tears and salutations to my idols of the entertainment business.

The Internet is finally open through American Online. We have had their services for over three years and now, we get a change to go on the internet – behind the golden cur tom – to other lands. What a great day in America.

I create websites, and then the mighty rush of the MP3 files. With uploading compressed little files at a wonderful rate of speed, the record company became as distinct as the dinosaur, the typewriter repair man, the Maytag man and the new day of how the artist can take care of his or her own product was here –right now — start to finish.

The Fankhauser Cassidy CD was present on over 450 radio station on three continents, and yet – I started to see the sale numbers drop.

Yet our market as small as it was, I continued to promote the heck out of the CD.

Aspen Records started recording an album for Merrell with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s producer William McKuen, with Warner Bros. Records getting the go ahead for distribution. McKuen also had this new comedian named Robert Schimmell.

Record labels spend most of their money getting the artist known. You never hear about ARTISTA RECORDS, SONY RECORDS, COLUMBIA RECORDS, CAPITOL RECORDS, MOTOWN RECORDS, POLYGRAM RECORDS and RCA RECORDS.