Remembering Harvey Fuqua: The Man Behind the Music

special to NewBlackMan

Remembering Harvey Fuqua: The Man Behind the Music
by Bob Davis

Born in Louisville, KY in July 1929, Harvey enjoyed considerable R&B and pop chart success with his group The Moonglows in the mid- to late-1950s, with popular hits for the Chess label that included "Sincerely", "See Saw" and "Ten Commandments of Love". Harvey and The Moonglows also can be heard singing back-up vocals on classic Chess hits including Bo Diddley's "Diddley Daddy" and "Diddy Wah Diddy" and Chuck Berry's "Almost Grown" and "Back In The USA". The Moonglows were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

After leaving The Moonglows in the late 1950s, Harvey became a key figure in the development of Motown Records, working with legends including Johnny Bristol, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, The Spinners and Jr. Walker & The All-Stars, co-writing and producing hits such as "That's What Girls Are Made For" (The Spinners, 1961), "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, 1967), "My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)" (David Ruffin, 1969) and "Someday We'll Be Together" (Diana Ross & The Supremes, 1969). He enjoyed further chart success in the 1970s and 1980s, working with disco/funk acts including New Birth, Sylvester and Two Tons O' Fun/The Weather Girls.


If you look up Harvey Fuqua online or read a book on the history of American Popular Music from any angle you want to take it from, you will be able to pretty much piece together the idea that he was important person. Here is an example from a short bio that someone sent to me soon after I announced Harvey's passing

At Chess Records not only was he the lead singer of the Moonglows, he also is the person responsible for bringing Etta James to Chess (despite what you may have seen on the silver screen in Cadillac Records.) He was a great songwriter and producer, responsible for bringing both Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to Motown, as well as Jr. Walker, Shorty Long and the Spinners. Pre-Motown, he was a record executive with his own label, Tri-Phi. Post-Motown, he gave us New Birth, Weather Girls and Sylvester.

What you could never piece together is the impact that he had over American Popular Music. If I had to make an analogy, Harvey Fuqua was like Pete Rose or Magic Johnson. He could play any role that you wanted him to, onstage or offstage. He was a great singer, but he also put together & managed a tour. He wrote hit songs, but he also managed record companies. For the past 10 years or so, I have had a chance to be around Harvey Fuqua quite a bit and to observe how some of the most important historical figures in the history of American Popular music behaved when they were around Harvey. He gave me the chance to be "the fly on his wall." Here are two examples.

--MARY WILSON OF THE SUPREMES: While I was in the middle of interviewing Mary, Harvey walks in the room and Mary says; "that's who you need to be interviewing, not me, he's the guy who knows it all and did it all."

--PAUL SIMON OF SIMON & GARFUNKEL: I was standing next to Paul Simon, while the Moonglows were rehearsing at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. Paul Simon was completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing next to him. He was so mesmerized by the strength of the Moonglows performance that he started talking to himself and said; "this is what rock n' roll sounded like when it first started."

--MICKEY MCGILL OF THE DELLS: "Harvey is the one who taught the Dells how to sing."

I could easily quote another dozen artists...suffice it to say that Harvey Fuqua was a larger than life character. Not only should a movie should be made about him, there are quite a few people in the music business who should be quite happy that Harvey never made a movie and that he has taken their secrets to the grave with him :)



Whenever he would enter a room everyone would stop doing whatever they were doing and say, "there's Harvey." He was a big guy, physically imposing, who when he spoke, sounded like the "voice of God." You might not know who important he is, but take it from me, everything that we think that we know about American Popular Music, would be different, if not for Harvey Fuqua.

Despite being placed on such a lofty pedestal by his peers, Harvey always impressed me as being a very humble person.

For example, Harvey was the victim of one of the most scandalous episodes in the history of American Popular Music, when he was forced to allow Disc Jockey Alan Freed's name to be recorded as "co-writer of the Moonglows song "Sincerely." In exchange for securing airplay on Freed's radio program. Allan Freed of course wasn't satisfied with gaining ½ of the royalties Moonglows hit song. He also had the song re-recorded by the McGuire Sisters and it became a hit all over again, creating more profits for Alan Freed.

When I asked Harvey how he could allow something that he created to be stolen in this fashion, his response was: "all I cared about in those days was hearing my song on the radio and if that is what I had to do in order to be on the radio, then so be it."

What Harvey didn't say (cuz he didn't have to) was that what Alan Freed did is quite literally the definition of something called PAYOLA, for which Alan Freed ultimately served jail time for. So in reality Harvey actually got the last laugh on Alan Freed.

Back in the early 2000's, I was able to cover the RRHOF induction ceremonies for the first time because of Harvey Fuqua. While I was in the press room, a woman from VH-1 was walking around the room, basically looking for people to kick out. She checked my credentials and once she was convinced that I was legit, she then questioned me about the "legitimacy" of all of the other Black people in the room, looking to kick them out if need be. She pointed to each one and asked me to identify them. When she pointed to Harvey, I told her who she was and she replied; "oh I thought that he was a janitor."

A few weeks later when I wrote about this incident, Harvey told me; "never stop writing about stuff like that, till it stops happening...." In fact it was Harvey who told me; "Make sure that you continue to write about more than just R&B music or else they will try to marginalize you and keep you in the ghetto..."

I could write a whole lot more about Harvey Fuqua, and I may do it in the future at some point, but I am not going to do it right now. Harvey Fuqua was a good friend to both me and to Soul-Patrol during the years when we were just getting off of the ground. He opened many doors to me that would have otherwise been closed. He cared very much about the idea of the website and helped me as much as he could in taking that idea and making it into a reality.

In closing out this piece, I would like to quote Harvey himself. He wrote the following back to me in response to the essay that I wrote about him a few years ago entitled "The Ten Commandments of Harvey Fuqua." Harvey sent me back the following in a short email:

"THANKS BOB YOUR ARTICLE IS WONDERFUL, I'M PROUD OF YOU AGAIN, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, BLESS YOU MAN, MR. QUAZ. (Harvey Fuqua)

One last thing I will say about Harvey....

Harvey identified, saw potential in and mentored Marvin Gaye. He did the same thing for me. He did it for anyone that he thought was deserving!

IMHO, a big part of what is wrong with America today, is that we don't have as many men in this country anymore who are like this as we used to.

And now you have an idea of just what Harvey Fuqua meant to Bob Davis…....

RIP

--Bob Davis That is pretty much what you would be able to piece together.
earthjuice@prodigy.net
Co-Founder www.soul-patrol.com
Blues, Hip Hop and Soul Music Director www.radioio.com

First I sincerely pray that Mr. Stein (whom I assume is a Jew from his name) who could be put out of harm way from his own missus for poking fun at her world saving eco-car. Enjoy:-

Joel Stein on his wife's Toyota Prius

I am not one of those people who sit around rooting for product recalls. That's because those people don't exist. But I got excited when Toyota recalled the 2010 Prius. It's not that I dislike the Prius. My lovely wife Cassandra has one, and it is an excellent vehicle. Except for its need to constantly tell you how excellent it is. There's a screen in the center of the dashboard with an animation that shows how much energy the car is recycling as you drive it. If one of your employees were really efficient but throughout the day kept standing up in his cubicle and yelling, "I am really efficient!" you would fire him. Or punch him in the steering wheel. The car on Knight Rider wasn't as arrogant as the Prius. You know why Priuses don't make any noise? Because they'll only talk to other Priuses. 

When we moved to Los Angeles five years ago, Cassandra bought her first car ever — a totally badass 2005 black Ford Mustang with silver stripes. She looked like Starsky, if Starsky were hot and a woman and drove really nervously. The only bad thing about the car was that she spent a lot of time talking to young Mexican men at traffic lights. But two years ago, she inexplicably decided that she didn't trust Ford and wanted to get rid of the car before something went wrong. So she bought a used Prius — which now has something wrong with it.


The problem is that I can't rub this in, because she won't acknowledge it. I forward her every article about the car's problems, but she keeps saying, "It's fine!" as if this were some kind of Salem witch trial for liberals. Even though Toyota's website says to immediately remove the driver's-side floor mat because the accelerator can get stuck, she won't do it. In a car we drive our baby in. This is a woman who won't give our son nonorganic blueberries. 

Admitting there's a problem with her Prius would imply there's something imperfect about her entire Whole Foods lifestyle. The Prius has made her feel so superior that, when I drive it, she tells me I'm driving it wrong. My primitive method of accelerating to speed up and braking to slow down does not maximize miles per gallon, as she can show me on an annoying bar graph on that center screen. Prius owners work very hard to get as many miles per gallon as they can to win a game they like to call Getting in an Accident While Staring at a Screen with a Dumb Graphic.

Prius owners act as if for every mile they drive, they prevent a coral reef from turning into a tidal wave that will hit Manhattan. (Most of my knowledge about global warming comes from The Day After Tomorrow.) Even though I drive a tiny Mini Cooper, I have been subtly shamed by all my friends in Los Angeles, a town that is one big river of Priuses. On Friday, I was shocked when a friend came over to dinner and he wasn't driving a Prius. It turned out he was driving his converted 1980s Mercedes that runs on vegetable oil and had left his wife's Prius at home. Nearly every time we drive Cassandra's metallic-green Prius, at some point we are either behind or in front of another metallic-green Prius. There are three Priuses on my tiny cul-de-sac. If this brake problem isn't repaired quickly, my neighborhood is about to be jammed up by some ugly Prius-on-Prius violence. 

The worst thing about the Prius is that it has given people in Hollywood a way out of the natural order of status competition. If you want your friends and associates to think you're more successful than you are, you should have to waste $130,000 on a Maserati. These days, no one owns any other kind of hybrid, because you can't tell from a distance that they're hybrids. If GM made a car shaped like a crying planet, it could give our government all its money back.

For a while, Prius drivers in L.A. even got to park at meters without paying and drive in the carpool lane without a passenger. You don't get to drive in the carpool lane without a passenger the day you give blood. You could save every child in Haiti, and you would still have to feed the parking meter. And yet we could not thank Prius owners enough for their sacrifice in driving a really nice car that costs less to fill up. If Mel Gibson had been in a Prius, the cops would have set up a motorcade for him to weave behind and yell out his window about the Jews. 

I'm hoping that the Prius malfunctions don't lead to accidents, because the odds are I'd get run over. But I also hope they point out to Prius owners that their lives aren't perfect. So for now, I'm going to make fun of how their vehicles of the future can't figure out how brakes work. The only thing better than this would be if they recalled yoga.

Let's A Go Go! — Singapore & Southeast Asian Pop 1964 to 1969

Various
  

CD  Silver Tortoise, Mid 60s

Weird and wonderful work from the Southeast Asian scene of the 60s — very cool grooves that show a heavy influence from American rockers of the time! The lyrics here are often sung in English, and the music is filled with the same sort of jangly guitars, driving drums, and mod-styled rhythms you'd find in US rock and roll from the mid 60s — but the overall sound is quite unusual, too — given the Asian origin of all these cuts! It's almost like hearing the 60s through some sort of odd prism that distorts the familiar — which makes for a fascinating set of tracks you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere! Titles include "One To Nine Walkin" by Patrina, "Sudi Sudi Kah Dikau" by Ismail Haron & The Guys, "Swim Swim Swim" by The Spacemen, "Lonely Heart" by Rita Chao, "Flamingo" by The Bees, "Mr Twister" by The Crescendos, "The Second Spring" by Hai Fei, and "Just Because" by The Dee Tee's. 

Get it from : http://www.dustygroove.com/

 

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

By THOMAS SOWELL  

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.
But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."
If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."
Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

 

BP Says Oil in Gulf Must be Changed Every Six Months

 

Bad Situation Gets Worse

GULF OF MEXICO   – At a time when many thought that news out of the Gulf of Mexico couldn’t get any worse, BP announced today that the oil in the Gulf needs to be changed every six months.

“The oil will need to be changed every six months or every 15,000 lies,” said the BP spokesman.  “Whatever comes sooner.”

The announcement about the oil change came on the heels of BP’s decision earlier in the week to separate the Gulf into two sections, full-serve and self-serve.

Sensing that the company was staring down a deepening public relations disaster, BP CEO Tony Hayward attempted to sound a compassionate note: “If this sort of damage were being inflicted on my yacht, I would be devastated.”

According to experts, the BP oil spill is now the second-worst leak in U.S. history, after Michael Steele’s mouth.


The Borowitz Report

Mistresses Blamed For China Property Bubble

HONG KONG - Prostitution is illegal in China, but the police crackdowns recently launched across the country indicate that the "world's oldest profession" is doing as well as ever. In Beijing, there are reportedly so many xiaojie (mistresses) that state media claim their numbers have driven up housing prices.

After efforts to "physically and spiritually" cleanse Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, prostitution has made a big comeback, so much so that municipal police launched a citywide "strike hard" vice crackdown in April entitled "Operation 4.11".

Coincidentally, in line with central government policy, the municipal government has also began taking measures (so far in vain) to bring down the city's skyrocketing housing prices.

The two crackdowns, one on social vices and the other on housing prices, seem unrelated. But a May 14 editorial in the Beijing Evening News, a sister publication of the Beijing Daily - the mouthpiece of the Communist Party's Beijing municipal committee - made an imaginative link between the two.

The article argued that a (downward) turning point in Beijing's property market could be achieved if prostitutes were driven out of the city. Skeptics say the article's flawed reasoning suggests that Beijing authorities are scrambling for a scapegoat for their failure to bring the property market under control.

The editorial, entitled "Turning point will come when all mistresses are driven out of Beijing", estimated that there were 200,000 xiaojie or "mistresses" in Beijing - xiaojie is a face-saving term for prostitutes as the trade is illegal. The article argues that if Beijing police kept up their "strike hard" crackdown, these mistresses could be forced out of the capital within three months. As a result, an extra 200,000 rental flats would be added to the property market. With the sharp increase in supply, "a genuine turning point" would be seen in housing prices.

The article's first confusing premise is that the "more than 200,000 mistresses" working in Beijing could be cleared out of the city within three months. (The assumption that each xiaojie rents a flat is already problematic, since most likely share flats to reduce living costs.)

Since the start of "Operation 4.11", Beijing police have smashed about 400 small prostitution rings, usually working out of hair salons, with some 1,100 suspects detained, according to local media. The operation has been hailed as a "great success", with even high-class night clubs raided, such as Tianshang Renjian or Paradise on Earth, which is rumored to be owned by a Hong Kong tycoon and senior Chinese officials.

However, if after a month such a high-profile crackdown has only been able to net some 1,000 working girls, then it would take 20 years to clear Beijing of 200,000 mistresses. This also doesn't account for newcomers arriving. It is also hard to believe that if mistresses were forced out of the city they would stay away - past experience tells them such anti-vice campaigns are usually short-lived.

Another mistake made by the Beijing Evening News article is that it confuses rentals and sale prices. The two are related to each other - in the long term - but rents do not rise or fall immediately with sale prices, especially when the property market is highly speculative, like Beijing's. One of this author's friends bought a 70-square-meter flat for nearly 1 million yuan (US$146,443) four years ago. It is now worth more than double that, 2.1 million yuan, but the monthly rent has only risen by 30%, from 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.

Most prostitutes come from poor rural areas and use their income to support families at home, they are unlikely to be involved in the sector that has seen the greatest price hikes - luxury housing. While the average price of an apartment in Beijing within the city's Third Ring highway is around 30,000 yuan per square meter, luxury downtown apartments sell at 70,000 yuan per square meter. The average per capita monthly income is only 2,000 yuan.

It is difficult to see how removing prostitutes from Beijing would affect the property market. Moreover, if the owners of flats who rented to "mistresses" wanted to sell their property for profit, they could do so at any time. Why would they wait for the police to scare away their tenants?

Skyrocketing housing prices are an emotive issue in China, particularly in Beijing. Fresh university graduates make about 2,000-3,000 yuan a month if they are lucky enough to find a job. Their total income in a year (without spending) is not even enough to buy a toilet in an average-priced apartment.

Fully aware that high housing prices could become an issue that threatens social stability, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged that his government would keep housing prices in check until March 2013, the end of its term. The State Council has launched tough measures to curb rising prices, such as tightened restrictions on mortgages for second homes, a ban on unauthorized state-owned enterprises investing in the property market, and threats to punish local officials if local housing prices were not brought under control.

However, as many analysts point out, keeping housing prices high is in the interests of local governments (to boost revenues from land sales) as well as for local officials (to collude with developers for kickbacks). Reducing housing prices may be impossible unless the central government finds a way to rein in local governments and officials.

The Beijing Evening News seems to have chosen an easy target. As prostitution is illegal, the women cannot respond publicly to the attack, only accept it in silence.

Marvin Gaye's Mentor Harvey Fuqua, dies at 80

Harvey Fuqua, 80, a singer, songwriter, record producer and early mentor of Marvin Gaye, died of a heart attack Tuesday at a Detroit hospital, according to Ron Brewington of the Motown Alumni Assn.

The Louisville, Ky., native founded the R&B-doo-wop group the Moonglows, which signed with DJ Alan Freed. The group's first single was the 1954 hit “Sincerely.”
Fuqua added Gaye and others in 1958 to a reconstituted group Fuqua called Harvey and the Moonglows. It had the 1958 hit “Ten Commandments of Love.”

Fuqua started Tri-Phi and Harvey Records in 1961, recording the Spinners, Junior Walker & the All Stars, and Shorty Long.

Motown Records founder Berry Gordy later hired Fuqua to develop recording talent.


-- Associated Press


From Wikipedia:- 

Harvey Fuqua, (pronounced /ˈfjuːkwɑː/, born July 27, 1929 in Louisville, Kentucky - July 6 2010), was an African-American soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and record label executive.

He is noted for having been one the key figures in the development of the Motown label in Detroit, Michigan: his doo-wop group gave Marvin Gaye his musical career a start, and he and his wife at the time, Gwen Gordy, distributed the very first Motown hit single, Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)", on their record label, Anna Records. Fuqua later sold Anna Records to Gwen's brother Berry Gordy, and became a songwriter and executive at Motown.

Fuqua founded the seminal R&B/doo wop group the Moonglows with Bobby Lester, Alexander Graves and Prentiss Barnes.

Mentored by Alan Freed, the group's doo-wop harmony style achieved great success on the national R&B charts in the mid 1950s. Recording on Chess Records, Fuqua initially shared lead vocals with Lester, but eventually asserted himself as the leader of the group. This changed in 1957 when he, in effect, sacked the other members and installed a new group, previously known as the Marquees, which included Marvin Gaye. The new group, billed as Harvey and the Moonglows, had immediate further success, but Fuqua left in 1958. The Moonglows reunited temporarily in 1972, and in 2000 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Fuqua left the Moonglows when Leonard Chess suggested that he join Anna Records in Detroit. At Anna Records, Fuqua began working with Anna Gordy, Billy Davis, Lamont Dozier and Johnny Bristol. He also introduced Marvin Gaye to Anna's brother, Berry Gordy, and married their sister Gwen Gordy. In 1961, he started his own labels, Tri-Phi Records and Harvey Records, whose acts included the Spinners, Junior Walker and Shorty Long. However, tiring of running a small independent label, Fuqua welcomed the opportunity to work at Motown, and was hired to head the label's Artist Development department and meanwhile worked as a producer for the company. Fuqua brought the Spinners and Johnny Bristol to Motown, and co-produced several hits with Bristol. He was also responsible for bringing Tammi Terrell to the label, and for suggesting and producing her duets with Marvin Gaye, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Your Precious Love".

Around 1971, Fuqua left Motown and signed a production deal with RCA Records, having success particularly with the band New Birth. He also discovered disco pioneer Sylvester, and "Two Tons O' Fun" (aka The Weather Girls), producing Sylvester's hit singles "Dance (Disco Heat)" and "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" in 1978 as well as his album StarsSmokey Robinson's road manager. In 1982 he reunited with Marvin Gaye to produce the singer's Midnight Love album which included the single "Sexual Healing". In 2000 he set up his own "Resurging Artist Records", and also acted as a trustee of The Rhythm and Blues Foundation. in 1979. He also served as

Fuqua resided in Concord, North Carolina until his death on July 6, 2010.