Colin Dilnot's Page

After a few months delay, I understand that Evidence records have released a new Garnet Mimms CD.

Here is an interview with Garnet Mimms with Nick Cristiano published in The Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year:

Garnet Mimms didn’t see himself as a musical trailblazer when he cut the career-making “Cry Baby” in 1963.

“No, not really, but they told me I was,” the 74-year-old gospel-soul singer says with a laugh while sipping coffee at the Oak Lane Diner, not far from his home and the church where he is pastor.

“They” include R&B expert Robert Pruter. In the liner notes to 1993’s “Cry Baby: The Best of Garnet Mimms,” Pruter writes that the No. 1 R&B smash and No. 4 pop hit - credited to Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters - was “one of the great seminal songs in the emergence of soul music. ... The song was a gospelized production so full of the soul-saving, fire-and-brimstone ecstasies of the black sanctified church that it singularly stood apart. ... Never had the public heard anything so intense and so emotional on top 40 radio.”

Mimms is sitting and reminiscing about “Cry Baby,” which was later famously redone by Janis Joplin, because he is about to come to the attention of the pop music world for the first time in three decades with the scheduled March 25 release of “Is Anybody Out There?” on the Conshohocken, Pa.-based Evidence label. The 15-song set finds the Philadelphia singer once again rousing listeners with his gospel-rooted style on a collection that allows him to stay true to his religious convictions while also appealing to a secular audience with tales of inspiration and uplift.

“They’re great songs,” Mimms says. With most of them, “you can take and interpret them any way you want.”

The album was recorded in Nashville with Jon Tiven, the producer and multi-instrumentalist who co-wrote 13 of the selections and who has worked with such soul greats as Wilson Pickett and Betty Harris. (Other writers on the project include country-soul pioneers Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, the late Little Milton and Johnny Taylor, folk-rocker P.F. Sloan, and former Rascals leader Felix Cavaliere.)

“I was listening to one of his greatest-hits records, and I said to myself, this guy needs to be making records these days,” Tiven recalls over the phone from Nashville. “And as far as I knew, he hadn’t made a record in 30 years, which was about right.”

Howard Tate & Jerry Ragovoy

Tiven called Jerry Ragovoy, the veteran producer and songwriter - and the man behind “Cry Baby” - and got Mimms’ phone number. Mimms told the producer he was singing only gospel these days, but Tiven offered to send him some songs. When Mimms liked what he heard, the project moved forward.

(In truth, Mimms says, he had been thinking of a return before Tiven called: “I had several well-known pastors here in Philly telling me, you should be recording and going out there and being on TV and everything.")

So why did Mimms leave pop music when he did? At first he simply says, “I got saved. ... The Lord came in and saved me. It’s hard to explain, but when the spirit of the Lord comes to you, it just takes you that way, and that’s the way you have to go.”

It’s true that by the late `70s the hits had dried up. But unlike, say, fellow Philadelphia soul man and former singing partner Howard Tate, he didn’t experience any dramatic downfall in his personal life. “I never did drugs. Never smoked marijuana,” Mimms says emphatically.

Ragovoy remembers it that way, too.

“I’ve always had the fondest memories of Garnet. He’s a good human being in addition to being a very talented man,” the songwriter and producer says from his Connecticut home, adding that he’s happy about the new album. “He made a decision (to leave pop) based on his own inner feelings, and not influenced much by exterior circumstances. ... It’s a very inner kind of recognition of who you are and what you want to be.”

Mimms does eventually allow that “after my father passed in `78, I just lost the zeal for that kind of music. Disco came in, with the lights and the loud music. I was always a balladeer. I didn’t like all that loud stuff.”

He keeps busy with his ministry. Besides being pastor of the nondenominational Glory Land Ministries on West Cheltenham Avenue, Mimms ministers in various prisons and detention centers in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

To help promote “Is Anybody Out There?,” however, Mimms is ready to put together a band and play select dates. He also hopes to return to England, where, like other American soul greats, he is much more revered than he is here. (He cut a live album in London in 1967.) And yes, he would perform some of his old hits.

“The songs I sang were clean songs,” he says. Besides, “I’d have to do `Cry Baby’ and `A Quiet Place,’ or they’d stone me, run me out of the place.”

Mimms has lived in Philadelphia since he moved here at age 18 from his native West Virginia. He and his wife, Deloris, have a daughter, Tenea Lyles, of Northeast Philadelphia, who also sings gospel, and a 2-year-old granddaughter.

To see him during Sunday services at Glory Land is to see a man who finds great joy and fulfillment in what he does - preaching, reading Scripture, hearing testimony from his congregants and leading them in song. And when he takes the microphone to deliver a gospel ballad against a recorded backing track, it’s to see up close a singer who is still capable of transcendent, soul-stirring power.

Which is not to say he doesn’t look back fondly on his days in the pop limelight, sharing stages with the likes of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson - “my two favorites” - James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, and many more.

“The other life, the R&B, was a great experience for me. Even now, as a pastor of the church, I can look back over those years and say I learned a lot, I did a lot of traveling, and so it (helped me) as far as knowing things, and knowing people and dealing with people.”

He’s excited about what’s to come as he returns to the musical trail he helped blaze a long time ago.

“I’m looking ahead. I believe things are going to happen.”

Chuck Carbo Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On Snippets




Chuck Carbo The Barber's Blues Snippets

Chuck Carbo RIP

You can read a nice tribute to Chuck over on Red Kelly's A-Sides blog.

I have had a message from The Dynamites who are appearing at the festival:

We want to pass on this info from the Outside Lands organizers...

Green" your ticket in either of the following ways:

- Help reforest California

When you buy your tickets, you'll be given the option of donating either $1 or $3 to help reforest California. These donations will go to the National Arbor Day Foundation, who will use it to reforest areas of California that were damaged by the recent wildfires. One dollar plants one tree in California's damaged forestland.

- Offset your festival experience:

When you buy your tickets, you'll be given the option of donating $1 or $3 to help "green" your ticket. These donations will be used to purchase (and then retire) pollution credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange. By buying and then retiring these credits, we'll directly prevent polluting companies from buying them and using them as a "right to pollute.

So here's Bobby Byrd to help you feel firstly how the Dynamites' funk can move yo' ass and secondly why we all need to get off our asses and do something before what happened to New Orleans or with all these fires starts to seem "normal.

So here's Bobby Byrd to help you feel firstly how the Dynamites' funk can move yo' ass and secondly why we all need to get off our asses and do something before what happened to New Orleans or with all these fires starts to seem "normal."

The album featured: Buddy Rich (d), Quinn Davis (as), Ernie Watts (as/fl), Jay Corre, Robert Keller (ts/fl), Marty Flax (baSax), Bobby Shew, Yoshito Murakami, Charles Findley, John Scottile (tp), Jim Trimble, Ron Meyers (tb), Bill Wimberly (baTb), Ray Starling (p), Richard Resnicoff (g), James Gannon (b), Cathy Rich (vcl); recorded at United Recording and live at the Chez Club, Hollywood, California on February 22-25 and March 10, 1967. The Beat Goes On was recorded at United and the edited into the live cuts.

Cathy Rich (R) with Beverly Getz (L) on stage with Buddy

Cathy Rich The Beat Goes On Pacific Jazz

The track was issued by Pacific Jazz on a 45 in 1967 and it is hard to believe that she was only 12!!!

Cathy has a MySpace and works to keep her father's work alive:

The original version of the song was by Sonny and Cher and you can compare the performances by watching the video below - I much prefer Cathy's!! The song has also beeen covered by the band All Seeing I - interesting mix and an ace video!

Funkshone have dropped me a line to let me know about their video channel on YouTube. Check it out here:

Funkshone on YouTube

George Porter has been in touch to tell me of his latest tour:

That’s right folks, you read right, George Porter Jr. and the Mickey Hart band are currently on tour, blazing every stage they touch.

Check the newly designed George Myspace Page, and website and see how Mickey has quickly rubbed of on George!

If you happen to be in the Big Apple than get yourself to the Filmore by 8pm and you will catch one of the best shows you’ll see this summer.

Also, don’t forget that Porter Batiste Stoltz will be rocking Gathering Of The Vibes this year!

Now for a bit of business; if any of you wonderful George fans have pictures for any of the past shows, we would absolutely love to get a hold of them to put up on the Myspace and George’s own website, all photos will be greatly appreciated.

For full details of the tour - drop over to George's MySpace

WEVL have let me know about this year's Blues On The Bluff:

Bring chairs and blankets this Saturday night for a guaranteed good time on the bluffs of the Mississippi River in a beautiful park-like setting.

Giant shady oaks, a cool breeze from the river, outdoor sculpture garden, fantastic music, and absolutely the best view of the Mississippi in the entire mid-south!

WEVL's 20th Annual Blues on the Bluff® features a fabulous line-up of music: The Bo-Keys, with original Memphis soul men Skip Pitts, Ben Cauley, and John Gary Williams - 7:30-8:15 & 8:25-9:10; Blind Mississippi Morris & The Pocket Rockets, with blues harp legend Morris Cummings- 9:25-10:10 & 10:20-11; and the hypnotic Hill Country blues of Robert "Wolfman" Belfour, 6:30-7:15.

Gate opens at 6 pm, $15 adults, $8 kids under 12.

All proceeds go to WEVL.

Alcoholic & non-alcoholic drinks sold, plus award-winning BBQ (veggie, too) from Central Bar-B-Q.

No pets or outside food or beverages, please.

FREE guarded parking! The party goes on til 11 pm.

Directions: From Memphis, take Metal Museum Drive exit 12-C off I-55 N or Crump Blvd. Last exit in TN before you cross the river.

Get there in time to see the spectacular sunset over the river.

More info: wevl@wevl.org, or 901-528-0560.

Here's The Bo-Keys with Ben Cauley singing "Dock of the Bay" as the sun sets on the Mississippi River 7/28/07 at WEVL FM 89.9's Blues on the Bluff® in Memphis, TN: