Post by Emerald City on Dec 5, 2005 17:56:55 GMT -5
Taylor Made
From Louis Jordan to the Jackson 5, San Jose's Bobby Taylor has been a part of the history of R&B
By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
OLD-SCHOOL R&B artist Bobby Taylor sits over morning coffee in a near-empty Alberto's Mexican Restaurant in San Jose and talks of the magical days of Motown music in the '60s, when black pop artists from the Detroit label were vaulting over the recording race barrier and galloping through the white market. Taylor had already signed his own group with Motown: Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Now, in the summer of '68, he brought in a group of young kids he wanted to introduce to Motown owner Berry Gordy.
"I had them come live with me that summer while they were auditioning," Taylor says with an ever-present grin. "You got to understand, I was living in a white apartment building at the time, and the other tenants, they didn't want these little black kids around the place. They didn't do any bad stuff; they were just normal kids running around. But the other tenants didn't like it, so it got us all kicked out."
The other tenants at Taylor's apartment building must still be kicking themselves. The five little black kids impressed Gordy and just about everybody else who heard them--and went on to some fame as a group called the Jackson 5.
It should not be surprising that Bobby Taylor was somewhere in the Jackson 5 mix. The 63-year-old singer/composer/producer had only one big hit himself--"Does Your Mama Know About Me?" in the mid-'60s--but he seems to have hung out with practically every important R&B and pop artist of the second half of the 20th century.
As a child prodigy, Taylor sang with such legends as Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Big Maybelle and Lionel Hampton. He grew up in a Washington, D.C., housing project "du-wopping" on street corners with a long, skinny kid named Marvin Gaye; played with Louis Jordan; hung out with Big Mama Thornton; performed on TV on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour alongside good friend Gladys Knight; formed Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers up in Canada with guitarist and backup vocalist Tommy Chong (who later turned to comedy with Cheech Marin); once fired a then-unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix because "his solos went on too long, like about a half an hour, and he played his guitar so loud you couldn't hear the rest of the band"; toured for a while with George Clinton; played command performances for the Queen of England and "that guy with the big nose in France" (Charles de Gaulle); and got discovered for Motown by Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard of the Supremes. Whew.
These days, Taylor has returned to the San Jose area to catch up with old friends for a while (he graduated from San Jose State University in 1960), fight off a second round of throat cancer, perform some benefit concerts and hold some youth seminars--"So I can show these kids where rap and all this other music came from."
One of the old friends is jazz/funk/R&B singer and keyboardist Clifford Coulter. It was Coulter's show at the DoubleTree Inn the other night; at least, Coulter was the one who was getting paid. But Taylor dropped by to help out on vocals, commentary and a running conversation with the crowd. Between the two of them, they put on one of the best R&B shows the valley has seen in quite some time. Hard to believe that it was all free.
Taylor has the stage presence and enthusiasm of a man singing to himself in the shower, and despite the return of polyps in his throat, his voice remains both sweet, clear and strong--versatile, too. He did two imitations that were so good, they were on the other side of eerie. One was of Louis Armstrong's "A Wonderful World" in all of Satchmo's throaty glory; the other was Marvin Gaye's anthem "What's Going On." Close your eyes on either one of these songs, and you got chills from the feeling that maybe Taylor was channeling the originals.
After that, his selections resembled the playlist of an oldies station, with works from Chuck Jackson ("Any Day Now"), the Drifters ("Under the Boardwalk"), and Lionel Richie ("All Night Long"). As a bonus, he helped out with Coulter and two singers from the audience in an impromptu rendition of Boyz II Men's "End of Our Road" on which no one seemed to know the words, but everybody still soared.
From Louis Jordan to the Jackson 5, San Jose's Bobby Taylor has been a part of the history of R&B
By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
OLD-SCHOOL R&B artist Bobby Taylor sits over morning coffee in a near-empty Alberto's Mexican Restaurant in San Jose and talks of the magical days of Motown music in the '60s, when black pop artists from the Detroit label were vaulting over the recording race barrier and galloping through the white market. Taylor had already signed his own group with Motown: Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Now, in the summer of '68, he brought in a group of young kids he wanted to introduce to Motown owner Berry Gordy.
"I had them come live with me that summer while they were auditioning," Taylor says with an ever-present grin. "You got to understand, I was living in a white apartment building at the time, and the other tenants, they didn't want these little black kids around the place. They didn't do any bad stuff; they were just normal kids running around. But the other tenants didn't like it, so it got us all kicked out."
The other tenants at Taylor's apartment building must still be kicking themselves. The five little black kids impressed Gordy and just about everybody else who heard them--and went on to some fame as a group called the Jackson 5.
It should not be surprising that Bobby Taylor was somewhere in the Jackson 5 mix. The 63-year-old singer/composer/producer had only one big hit himself--"Does Your Mama Know About Me?" in the mid-'60s--but he seems to have hung out with practically every important R&B and pop artist of the second half of the 20th century.
As a child prodigy, Taylor sang with such legends as Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Big Maybelle and Lionel Hampton. He grew up in a Washington, D.C., housing project "du-wopping" on street corners with a long, skinny kid named Marvin Gaye; played with Louis Jordan; hung out with Big Mama Thornton; performed on TV on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour alongside good friend Gladys Knight; formed Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers up in Canada with guitarist and backup vocalist Tommy Chong (who later turned to comedy with Cheech Marin); once fired a then-unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix because "his solos went on too long, like about a half an hour, and he played his guitar so loud you couldn't hear the rest of the band"; toured for a while with George Clinton; played command performances for the Queen of England and "that guy with the big nose in France" (Charles de Gaulle); and got discovered for Motown by Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard of the Supremes. Whew.
These days, Taylor has returned to the San Jose area to catch up with old friends for a while (he graduated from San Jose State University in 1960), fight off a second round of throat cancer, perform some benefit concerts and hold some youth seminars--"So I can show these kids where rap and all this other music came from."
One of the old friends is jazz/funk/R&B singer and keyboardist Clifford Coulter. It was Coulter's show at the DoubleTree Inn the other night; at least, Coulter was the one who was getting paid. But Taylor dropped by to help out on vocals, commentary and a running conversation with the crowd. Between the two of them, they put on one of the best R&B shows the valley has seen in quite some time. Hard to believe that it was all free.
Taylor has the stage presence and enthusiasm of a man singing to himself in the shower, and despite the return of polyps in his throat, his voice remains both sweet, clear and strong--versatile, too. He did two imitations that were so good, they were on the other side of eerie. One was of Louis Armstrong's "A Wonderful World" in all of Satchmo's throaty glory; the other was Marvin Gaye's anthem "What's Going On." Close your eyes on either one of these songs, and you got chills from the feeling that maybe Taylor was channeling the originals.
After that, his selections resembled the playlist of an oldies station, with works from Chuck Jackson ("Any Day Now"), the Drifters ("Under the Boardwalk"), and Lionel Richie ("All Night Long"). As a bonus, he helped out with Coulter and two singers from the audience in an impromptu rendition of Boyz II Men's "End of Our Road" on which no one seemed to know the words, but everybody still soared.