Coming soon to a record store near you: Soul, Inc.
Some 30 years after the Louisville band rocked its final crowd of frat boys and their freshly pinned girls, it will have 2 new albums available within the next few months -- and that's only the beginning
Over the next several years, Gear Fab, a label out of Orlando, Fla., plans to release 15 to 20 CDs and LPs of Louisville music from the late 1960s and early '70s, most of which has never been available. The releases will make up the Louisville Music Series.
Bands like the Trendells, the Carnations, and Elysian Field -- which will have an album released in conjunction with the Soul, Inc. records -- will finally get the star treatment thanks to Gear Fab, which specializes in psychedelic and garage band rock by largely unknown regional bands.
Marvin Maxwell, music raconteur and former drummer for Soul, Inc., is also involved through a company called Groovy Music Inc., which is essentially Maxwell and a friend, Walker Ed Amick. They've been the liason between Gear Fab and Ray Allen and Hardy Martin, the veteran studio owners who own the recordings, and will also handle the paperwork regarding royalties.
"I'm excited, I'm cranked!" said Maxwell with typical understatement. "This brings more focus to that tongue-in-cheek thing about Louisville being a music Mecca. We can drive it home -- yeah, it's a Mecca and it always has been!"
The project began when Amick was surfing the Internet and discovered a compilation CD that included a bootlegged transfer, from a 45 rpm of Soul Inc.'s "I Belong To Nobody." Amick told the Web site's editor about the cache of recordings and was steered toward Gear Fab as a possible outlet.
Gear Fab's president, Roger Maglio, was intrigued and posted an inquiry on the label's website (http://www.swiftsite.com/GearFab) to gauge interest in the proposed Louisville Music Series.
After 5,000 responses poured in, plans quickly accelerated.
Maglio said the series will easily be Gear Fab's largest dedicated to a single city. Initial release dates will be announced next month.
"It's a pretty rare occurrence these days to find this many master tapes," Maglio said. "The larger cultural centers -- San Francisco, L.A., New York -- they've all been picked clean by some of my bigger competitors."
The master recordings have been saved by Allen and Martin, who own Allen-Martin Video Production. Thirty-five years ago they ran Sambo Studios on Taylorsville Road. They recorded the early NRBQ incarnation, the Mersey Beats.
Allen and Martin own the tapes outright, but Groovy Music will be responsible for figuring out who gets publishing and songwriting royalties, if there are any. At Allen and Maxwell's suggestion, a portion of the profits will go to the Musicians Emergency Relief Fund.
"They sat on this stuff for 30 years because they didn't want to deal with the hassle of people claiming they needed to get paid," Maxwell said, "so Ed and I formed Groovy Music to take the responsibility. Mainly, I just hope no one gets mad."
Maxwell said that the Shufflin' Grand Dads, the 1990s version of Soul Inc., will have a Gear Fab release and might also consider taking responsibility for writing the liner notes.
Life at Sambo Studios was an education in making music on a budget, using imagination instead of money.
"I can remember playing zipper on a session," Maxwell said, "Swear to God, three of us standing around a microphone zipping our pants in time to the music. That was the time of experimentation."