Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic

Discoveries of a Pop Music Archaeologist

Soul Inc’s A-Side Turned B-Side?

Louisville’s Soul Inc. is another music group from my hometown’s Ohio Valley region that recorded a local hit (“Love Me When I’m Down“) on a local label (Counterpart) that had been recorded locally (at Ray Allen‘s studio in Louisville perhaps?) and played on local AM hits radio station WSAI (thus, giving further credence to Nick Clooney‘s recent statement [see below*] that Cincinnati was a uniquely endowed media market that rivaled/bettered Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles):

Love Me When I’m Down

Soul Inc. (1968)

“Love Me When I’m Down” is the A-side of a 1968 ‘rock ‘n’ soul’ Counterpart single that got picked up for national distribution by Laurie — only to have the A & B sides reversed!

A-Side

Counterpart Records

Soul Inc - Counterpart 45

B-side

Laurie Records


Soul Inc - Laurie 45

As Soul Inc. explains on its own website:

The band’s in-your-face quality was evident on Love Me When I’m Down,’ released as their next single along with ‘I Belong to Nobody.‘  More than anything else the group recorded, Love Me When I’m Down’ captures Soul, Inc.’s live sound, with Young and Bugbee’s driving guitars (the solo is by Bugbee), Settle’s aggressive vocal, and Maxwell’s pounding drums.  We always said that we wanted the drums to sound like a bag of rocks,‘ Maxwell recalls.

Interesting to note that, as with The New Lime, (a) Soul Inc’s first 45 would also be issued on Cincinnati’s Fraternity label and (2) Shad O’Shea‘s Counterpart Records would likewise help pave the path toward the band’s getting the attention of a more prominent label.

Gear Fab Records would issue 37 tracks across two CD compilations in 1999 that would also see release in Italy as a 2-LP set.

Original copies of the group’s Laurie and Counterpart 45s have sold for $125 (2018) and $71 (2009), respectively.

*

Cincinnati TV

“A Local, Live Haven”

As remembers Nick Clooney

*Cincinnati Channel 12 story (May 21, 2015) about David Letterman‘s final broadcast:

Long before David Letterman unveiled “Stupid Pet Tricks” to the world, he worked as a wacky weatherman in Indianapolis.  “I think you’ll see that once again we’ve fallen to the prey of political dirty dealings.  And right now you can see what I’m talking about.  The higher-ups have removed the border between Indiana and Ohio making it one giant state.  Personally, I’m against it,” Letterman joked in a weathercast for WLWITV in Indianapolis.

Letterman grew up watching live talk shows that were produced in Cincinnati and broadcast in Indianapolis, Dayton and Columbus by Crosley Broadcasting, later called Avco.  Former Local 12 News anchor Nick Clooney was a part of the network of shows.  “What was happening in Cincinnati was unique,” Clooney said in an interview with Local 12 News.  “It was a local, live haven.  No place in the country – including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago – all great broadcast cities. None had the local live shows as many as we did.”

Letterman started watching “The 50-50 Club” hosted by Ruth Lyons with his mother when he was in the fourth grade.  He talked about it in an interview with MoonDream Media, LLC in 2010.  “I would come home for lunch and the television would be on midday and that was rare to have it on midday.  And she would watch it and sort of know a little bit about it each day in half hour hunks when I was home for lunch,” Letterman said.

Letterman was truly captivated by Lyons.  “You got the sense that you weren’t watching a television show you were just watching a woman who had invited folks in to spend 90 minutes or whatever,” Letterman said in an interview with Local 12 producer Mark Magistrelli in 1995.  “I wish I could do that.  To me that would be the best show you could do.”

But “The Paul Dixon Show” truly inspired David Letterman.  “I loved Paul Dixon, too.  I really got a kick out of that guy. just thought he was great.”  Like Letterman, Dixon had an edge and was goofy.  His demeanor and bad toupee made him appealing to audiences.  He zoomed in on women’s legs with a binocular lens feature on the camera and gave away sausages.  “It was very entertaining and I found it endlessly gratifying that with nothing, and doing nothing the same way over and over every day,” Letterman said.

Former Cincinnati Enquirer TV columnist John Kiesewetter said Letterman studied Cincinnati television.  “I’ve talked to people who worked at Channel 5 because it was a sister station where he was the weather man at Channel 13 in Indianapolis. When he’d come to town on his off day, he’d show up in the control room at WLW and watch them do the [Bob] Braun Show or something,” Kiesewetter said.  David Letterman loved Cincinnati TV but he also loved the city.

In 1997, Kiesewetter and a Letterman fan traveled to New York City and met the talk show host.  They gave Letterman a Cincinnati Reds jersey paid for by the Chamber of Commerce with his last name on the back and the number 15 to celebrate his 15th year in late night television.  “I used to love going down there to see the Reds play.  We spent some time there just goofing around,” Letterman said.  Cincinnati and its television shows made an impression on David Letterman. And in return, he put his own spin on the talk show and became a TV legend.  “There’s something kind of remarkable about Letterman.  He is sort of the patron saint of irony and most of the young people of let’s say George’s age just gravitated toward him because he was so salty,” Nick Clooney said.

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