Fact #75822
When:
Short story:
Full article:
Lester Chambers (The Chambers Brothers) : We were dirt poor sharecroppers (in Mississippi) and my father was an excellent cotton grower, so the white landowners would periodically trade us to other owners.
Church was our saving grace. We won every church contests as The Little Chambers Brothers. Church was the only acceptable outings for the blacks in the south. We loved singing in church and getting this positive attention.
My father moved us to L.A in 1953 and again we sang in our church and eventually going to folk clubs at the beaches.
L.A in the 50's was quite a culture shock for us. We could go anywhere we wanted and have jobs out of the fields. And school was interracial. The predominately white folk clubs in L.A seemed to accept our gospel a cappella singing. This is before we all learned how to play our instruments.
I started to teach myself to play the harmonica and one night at the famous Ash Grove in Hollywood I asked Sonny Terry to give me a harmonica lesson. He said if I could cook him a meal. I cooked a wonderful southern meal and he spent hours with me.
After doing the first season of (US tv show) Shindig!, ABC Paramount signed us to a three record deal but sold our contract (without our knowledge) to Vault, who never paid us a dime for five albums, overseas sales, etc for the next thirty years.
Our style of music scared all the executives at Columbia because we were crazy hippies playing an unusual style of funk, blues, rock, and gospel all combined. We were told by the president of Columbia Records (Clive Davis) that we weren't going to even think about recording Time Has Come Today and that we must sell it to a white group on Columbia.
Time was such a hit with our audiences and we refused to stop singing it, so the producer took us to Hollywood out of Clive Davis's control and we recorded it on one track.
Remember this was 1965 in the middle of the black uprising and the record companies was all white and not used to even dealing with anyone powerful that was black.
Clive Davis is such a phony. Don't get me started with him. Believe me he only likes us cuz we make him big bucks. Did you ever read a good book on the record industry called Hit Men?. The first 125 pages deals with his embezzling of the artists funds on Columbia and how the feds brought him up on six counts of embezzlement.
It also tells how all the labels screwed us and had 'roasts' boasting about never paying their artists a penny of royalties. This book sure answered a lot of questions about what happened to us three months before his fall.
Imagine our predicament, we were not doing the 'acceptable' black act like The Impressions, Temptations, etc. so we were a problem and refused to put our instruments down and we also had the courage to buy a home in Stamford, Connecticut, that had no blacks.
Our career really suffered from our refusal to do what the white man said we could do.
We went twenty two years without receiving a dime from Columbia even though Time Has Come Today was used in thirty films and TV, overseas sales, etc.
(Source : not known)
Tweet this Fact
Church was our saving grace. We won every church contests as The Little Chambers Brothers. Church was the only acceptable outings for the blacks in the south. We loved singing in church and getting this positive attention.
My father moved us to L.A in 1953 and again we sang in our church and eventually going to folk clubs at the beaches.
L.A in the 50's was quite a culture shock for us. We could go anywhere we wanted and have jobs out of the fields. And school was interracial. The predominately white folk clubs in L.A seemed to accept our gospel a cappella singing. This is before we all learned how to play our instruments.
I started to teach myself to play the harmonica and one night at the famous Ash Grove in Hollywood I asked Sonny Terry to give me a harmonica lesson. He said if I could cook him a meal. I cooked a wonderful southern meal and he spent hours with me.
After doing the first season of (US tv show) Shindig!, ABC Paramount signed us to a three record deal but sold our contract (without our knowledge) to Vault, who never paid us a dime for five albums, overseas sales, etc for the next thirty years.
Our style of music scared all the executives at Columbia because we were crazy hippies playing an unusual style of funk, blues, rock, and gospel all combined. We were told by the president of Columbia Records (Clive Davis) that we weren't going to even think about recording Time Has Come Today and that we must sell it to a white group on Columbia.
Time was such a hit with our audiences and we refused to stop singing it, so the producer took us to Hollywood out of Clive Davis's control and we recorded it on one track.
Remember this was 1965 in the middle of the black uprising and the record companies was all white and not used to even dealing with anyone powerful that was black.
Clive Davis is such a phony. Don't get me started with him. Believe me he only likes us cuz we make him big bucks. Did you ever read a good book on the record industry called Hit Men?. The first 125 pages deals with his embezzling of the artists funds on Columbia and how the feds brought him up on six counts of embezzlement.
It also tells how all the labels screwed us and had 'roasts' boasting about never paying their artists a penny of royalties. This book sure answered a lot of questions about what happened to us three months before his fall.
Imagine our predicament, we were not doing the 'acceptable' black act like The Impressions, Temptations, etc. so we were a problem and refused to put our instruments down and we also had the courage to buy a home in Stamford, Connecticut, that had no blacks.
Our career really suffered from our refusal to do what the white man said we could do.
We went twenty two years without receiving a dime from Columbia even though Time Has Come Today was used in thirty films and TV, overseas sales, etc.
(Source : not known)