Chicago soul music, that weird conflation of gospel, rhythm and blues, latin rhythms and bass-heavy horn riffing, was somewhat overshadowed by its more well-known brothers in Detroit and Memphis, yet it’s no less illustrious. Rather than being assembled into one powerful city-affiliated unit, as Motown and Stax managed, Chicago’s talent was spread across numerous local labels, including Chess, Vee-Jay, Pam and the best of the era, OKeh Records. Odd then, that this conduit of early Chicago soul was a label started by a German and originally based in New York. Even odder that, in the UK at least, it planted the seeds of the strange world of northern soul. In fact, nowadays, it’s not unusual to find blokes at record fairs with moustaches, hot pot accents, darts player’s physiques and a predilection for sweet sixties soul getting misty-eyed over Billy Butler & The Enchanters.

OKeh Records, was founded in 1918 by Otto Heinemann, who’d fled Europe directly after the end of World War I, probably on account of the lack of jazz served up in the trenches at the Somme. The label – its name was originally OkeH, the strange spelling deriving from the initials of his name – initially released a variety of music, but had its first big hit in 1920 with Mamie Smith’s ‘Crazy Blues’ , which established the label’s reputation as a black music specialist, something that was cemented with a series of sides by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven bands. After being acquired by Columbia in the thirties, its profile diminished somewhat, though it did enjoy some limited commercial success in the fifties, notably Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’.

In 1958 a record called ‘For Your Precious Love’ was released on Vee-Jay Records that changed the sound in Chicago. Influenced by doo-wop and gospel groups like the Inkspots and the Soul Stirrers, Jerry Butler & The Impressions had a sweet, lilting sound that was in stark contrast to the angular and gritty local blues singers. Jerry Butler and fellow band member Curtis Mayfield had been in bands together for while, beginning with the Quails, followed by the Roosters, then, when they’d finally run out of birds’ names, the Impressions. Vee-Jay, the only black-owned label in Chicago, passed up on the chance of signing the Impressions preferring instead to hold on to Butler, thus allowing Mayfield to go elsewhere (Vee-Jay also released the Beatles’ US debut, ‘She Loves You’ before EMI affiliate Capitol got smart and picked them up for the States). Although the Impressions eventually signed to ABC-Paramount, Mayfield played a key role in the resurgence of OKeh (as a producer and writer) and his unique guitar style was aped by virtually every other Chicago guitarist.

In 1962, a Chicago producer, Carl Davis, hot from success with Gene Chandler’s ‘Duke Of Earl’, was brought into Columbia in the A&R department. The effects were immediate and, within a year, he was working full-time for its offshoot OKeh. He gathered around him songwriters like Mayfield, a group of musicians that included Jerry Butler’s younger brother Billy on guitar, Floyd Morris on keyboards, Bernard Reed on bass and Maurice White (who later went on to form Earth, Wind & Fire) on drums, alongside arrangers Johnny Pate and Riley Hampton.

The first hit was Major Lance’s ‘Monkey Time’, written by Mayfield and produced by Davis, which showcased a distinct sweet, rhythmic sound with weight lent by percussive brass stabs and the bass accentuated by trombones. It reached number eight in the US and was a club smash in UK clubs like the Twisted Wheel and The Scene. Lance followed this with a string of hits with the same writer and producer, including the onomatopoeic ‘Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um’, ‘Rhythm’ and ‘The Matador’.

Many of the artists signed to OKeh, including Lance, Mayfield and Billy Butler were not only local but came from the same housing project, the notorious Cabrini-Green (immortalised in the 1975 comedy movie Cooley High which, significantly, didn’t include any Chicago music on its soundtrack). Other Chicagoans included girl group, the Opals, who began life as backing singers for another Cabrini-Green resident Otis Leavill and the Artistics, who recorded the sublimely daft ‘Patty Cake’. Added to that were Detroit’s answer to Ian Dury, Walter Jackson (well, he had polio as a child) and the Vibrations from LA, who seemed to get through more labels than an early eighties casual.

But, like Motown, OKeh was a producer-led label and the artists were, in many ways, interchangeable. Curtis Mayfield went on to produce or write for many of the OKeh stable, Billy Butler & The Enchanters’ ‘Gotta Get Away’ and Walter Jackson’s ‘It’s All Over’, a superb beaty ballad in the Bobby Bland mould.

The demise of OKeh shows a conflict that’s been going on with major labels and black music for more than five decades now. For the most part, they still struggle to come to terms with its constantly shifting culture and when Columbia split the company into two, leaving OKeh under the aegis of newly independent Epic, Carl Davis, who had brought them so much success and prestige, was effectively forced out by head Len Levy and left acrimoniously in 1966. OKeh struggled on for the next four years, with Walter Jackson, Larry Williams and others enjoying minor hits, before finally being closed down in 1970. It was sad demise for a label that, thanks to its close affiliation with Curtis Mayfield and, indeed, Davis, had helped define not just the soul sound of Chicago, but had a profound effect on soul generally.

© Bill Brewster

Originally published on bbc.co.uk, 2001

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