On Saturday, October 23, the Bachelors traveled back to Shelby, NC to watch an historic performance by Cecil P and the White Street Band, the Constellations, David Lee, and Ann Sexton at the Cleveland County Arts Council, one of the final concerts of the local Art of Sound festival. On the occasion of Ann Sexton and David Lee’s first reunion after over twenty-five years, we Bachelors were finally able to meet Ann in person.
We’re pleased to announce two upcoming concerts related to our Said I Had a Vision LP. After more than three decades, Ann Sexton and David Lee will be reuniting onstage–backed by the Constellations and Bunny Clyde!–at the Art of Sound Festival in Shelby, NC, this Saturday, October 23rd.
Visionaires, the time has finally come! We are now accepting pre-orders for Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988. The test pressings sound incredible–rich, bassy, and booming–and the first Paradise of Bachelors LP will be in our hands within just a few weeks.
Bachelor Brother Aaron Smithers curated Dreaming About Chords, the compilation CD for the annual music issue of Southern Cultures (Fall 2010), the impressive journal published by UNC Press for the Center for the Study of the American South (CSAS). He kindly included the Constellations’ “I Got a Woman,” as well as “My God Is Real” by Joe Brown and the Mellerairs.
Our repeated excuses for tardy posts are beginning to sound like a litany, but we hope that the reasons and the delayed news are absolutely justified this time. This summer has blessed us Bachelors with a marriage and a honeymoon (ironically, we recognize), publications, fruitful research projects, an NPR interview, University lectures, and a major career change, so things have been unusually busy.
On June 8, Bachelor Jason Perlmutter and fellow researcher Josh Davis spoke to Frank Stasio on the State of Things on NPR. They discussed the history of African American record shops in the Carolinas, and of course, David Lee–subject of our upcoming compilation of his songs, Said I Had a Vision–was an important part of the conversation.
To tide you over until our late summer/early fall release date–which will hopefully feature release parties both in the Triangle area and in Celeveland County, North Carolina–please accept the following recording of a Soundsystem appearance at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Saturday Night Filmmakers’ Party in Durham on April 10.
As promised, we’ve prepared a multi-media posting about the early days of Joe Brown and the Singing Mellerairs–originally known as the Melloaires and later as (The Exciting) Singing Mellerairs or Singing Melleraires–complete with scans of several great pieces of ephemera straight from Mr. Brown himself, and intermingled with choice tidbits from our afternoon interview on January 24, 2010.
The scene: Carolina legend Arthur Smith’s studio in Charlotte, c. 1961. Local teen sensations the Constellations have prepared three songs to record for release on Impel Records: a new version of “I Got a Woman,” “How I Love My Baby,” and “I Need Somebody.”
