John Capouya - Florida Soul: From Ray Charles to KC and the Sunshine Band

FLORIDA SOUL

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers

Florida International University, Miami

Florida State University, Tallahassee

New College of Florida, Sarasota

University of Central Florida, Orlando

University of Florida, Gainesville

University of North Florida, Jacksonville

University of South Florida, Tampa

University of West Florida, Pensacola

FLORIDA SOUL

From Ray Charles to KC and the Sunshine Band

John Capouya

University Press of Florida

Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton

Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota

Copyright 2017 by John Capouya

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on recycled, acid-free paper

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Control Number: 201793559

ISBN 978-0-8130-5452-0

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

To the late Doris Shapiro, who first played James Brown, Johnnie Taylor, and Archie Bell & the Drells for me and took me to hear B. B. King

And for Felix Hernandez, host of the Rhythm Revue on WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey, keeping the faithand replenishing minefor thirty years and counting

Contents

FLORIDA SOUL

Introduction

The Soul State of Florida

ITS A WINTER NIGHT IN AMERICA, and Monday Night Football is about to air on ESPN. First, though, comes the lead-in show, Monday Night Countdown. The inherent challenge here, it seems to an outsider, is to make more than two hours of older men sitting down, talking, and not playing football remotely compelling to watch. To keep the energy level high, the network uses brash-talking commentators, action-packed game highlights, fancy graphics, and, very selectively, music.

As the show goes to its last commercial, the camera pulls back from the broadcasters and an up-tempo song blares briefly. Its Hold On, Im A Comin, powerfully declaimed by Sam and Dave, the classic soul duo formed in Miamis Overtown neighborhood. #1 hit on Billboard magazines Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles sales chart in 1966and just about a half-century later, ESPNs producers chose it to introduce their football game.

Now its May, and thirteen-year-old New Yorker Elena Messinger is celebrating her bat mitzvah in a 6th Avenue hotel. The entertainment includes much food and a man cutting uncannily accurate silhouettes of guests out of folded paper, followed by music and dancing. A saxophonist plays over recorded music, while the DJ exhorts the throng to come on! via their wireless mikes. Smiles of recognition break out across the crowded, high-ceilinged hall at the very beginnings of Get Down Tonight and Thats the Way (I Like It), 1970s hits by KC and the Sunshine Band. Multigenerational dance gyrations ensue.

As the weather reference in its name infers, that band is from Florida, too. Originally, they were called the Sunshine Junkanoo Band, a nod to the Bahamian music Harry Wayne Casey, aka KC, heard in Miami and incorporated into their sound. Improbably, Casey still leads a current iteration of the Sunshine Band, touring and performing in his mid-sixties.

Now its autumn. Walking toward East 6th Street, Austin, Texas, main drag for bars and entertainment, passersby cant help but notice an outpost of the Coyote Ugly Saloon chain. For one thing, the smell of spilled beer is rank. For another, the music coming from the bars outdoor speakers is resoundingly loud. The college students in this contingent immediately recognize Hotline Bling, a 2015 hit by the Canadian rapper Drake. But its their old school professor (thats their term; I think they mean it affectionately) who identifies the haunting organ track underneath Drakes singing. Its Why Cant We Live Together, a plea for peace and tolerance by Florida soul singer Timmy Thomas, released in 1972. (The Bling lyrics are concerned with very different matters.)

Thomas song, born of the Vietnam War and the African American civil rights struggle, has since been covered by Sade, Joan Osborne, and Carlos Santana, among others. The songs greatest impact, however, was felt halfway across the world from Florida. Why Cant We Live Together, which contains the line, No matter what color, you are still my brother, became an anthem of the black liberation movement in apartheid-era South Africa. Thomas performed the song in Johannesburg while Nelson Mandela was in prison and returned to sing it again in 1994 when Mandela was elected that countrys president.

These Florida songs and artists all surfaced during my writing of this book, so, naturally, I noticed. My antennae for passionate vocals and funky sounds with Florida origins were up. Heres the other thing I noticed: None of these artists Florida origins were discussed or even alluded to; it never came up. Perhaps the loudest silence came when the Seattle Symphony performed its Tribute to Ray Charles. spent a significant part of his career in Seattle. There was no mention of the fact that Charles was a Florida soul artist, perhaps the greatest of them all. The late singer, piano player, composer, arranger, and bandleaderknown during his Florida decades by his given name, Ray Charles Robinsonwas raised here, went blind here, became a musician here, and made his first recordings here. At one point he even played in a Tampa country and western band, the Florida Playboys, and in 1951 recorded a composition of his called St. Pete Florida Blues.

Ray Charles circa 1949, just after he left his home state of Florida. Courtesy Joel Dufour.

In the years immediately following World War II, the talent level was so high and the pool around him so deep that, talented as he was, RC struggled to make it as a working professionaland at times, to eat. attributed his success in part to this cutthroat environment, saying, Florida toughened me up.