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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. A new film revisits the legacy of a groundbreaking record label whose artists include Godfather of Soul, James Brown to the bluegrass duo the Stanley Brothers. King Records was the name of the company and it was based in Cincinnati. It doesn't get as much shine as Motown or Sun Records, but it had a strong hand in shaping the music we hear today. The film was titled King of Them, the Story of King Records. Here's part of the intro.
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B
The history of King Records is pretty astounding in that it has the diversity.
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C
When I used to praise.
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D
When you think about the legacy of funk, particularly the legacy of James Brown.
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A
Don'T worry about a leader.
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D
Much of that was created here in Cincinnati.
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B
This is a mecca. Cincinnati was the musical mecca for being a flat farmland in the middle of nowhere.
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C
Incredible amount of music has come out of this area. And astronauts.
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A
The film takes viewers back to 1943, introducing us to a man by the name of Sid Nathan, who decided to get into the record business in the final years of the war. This was also a time when both black and white white Americans found their way to Cincinnati, Ohio. They brought a diverse array of musical traditions and King Records became one of the first racially integrated music labels. King of them all. The story of King Records premieres nationally on PBS this Friday, October 10th. Joining us to discuss the film is its director and producer, Yeme Otteredon. He is the co founder of Afro Sheen, a media collective producing films and cultural projects that highlight overlooked histories and communal narratives. Yemi, welcome to all of it.
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C
Hi, Alison, how are you? This is an honor and a pleasure and I'm extremely excited to talk to you.
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A
I'm excited to talk to you too, listeners. Hey, we want to get you in on this conversation. Do you remember King Records? Who was your favorite artist from their legendary roster? James Brown, Hank Ballard, Vicki Anderson, Bootsy Collins, the Stanley Brothers. Give us a call. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. Maybe you saw them live or have a special memory tied to their music. We'd love to hear it. 212-496-922-12433. WNYC. I see here on my notes that you are in Cincinnati now. By the way, I am.
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C
I am in Cincinnati, Ohio, the dopest town in America.
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A
It is a good town, I gotta say.
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C
It is.
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A
What made you want to revisit this label?
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C
You know, as a Cincinnati musician and a filmmaker, I always felt that king records was kind of hiding in plain sight. I grew up listening to James Brown. I'm a drummer and a musician. And one of the first drum lessons I ever had with one of my teachers was like, do you know how to play this James Brown beat? And I was like, I don't. And he kind of started this journey that took me into this deep dive. And when I moved to the Cincinnati area, I started to really learn how deeply it shaped American music. And I just knew it was too important of a story to stay buried. And, you know, it's just not a Cincinnati story. It's an American one. So I really wanted to work to bring this story to light.
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A
One of the academics that you have speaking in your documentary said, king music is not about highfalutin stuff. How did the record speak to working class folks?
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C
Well, that's. You know, it was from its very beginning, it was made for working class folks. Cincinnati's changed a little bit differently. But the railroads, you know, people were coming to Cincinnati through the railroad. So the businesses that Sid Nathan had started originally, his first record shop and the second record shop, were really near where people were getting off railroads. So it kind of gave him an opportunity to see that there was an interest from working class people that were moving to the area. So he started to see there was a lot of interest in black music, African American music, which was then known as sepia, or race music. And then he started seeing that he was selling a lot of bluegrass and then called hillbilly music. And that kind of hipped him to the idea that there might be an untapped market there, because, you know, the major companies like deca and rca weren't in that space at the time. So it allowed. It just kind of allowed an opening for Sid Nathan to kind of just walk in.
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A
Let's talk about Sid Nathan. What do we know about his life before king records?
- [04:38]
C
That's a. That's a hilarious question. Sid Nathan was kind of a knockabout. It's kind of a nice way of putting it. We might call him a little bit of a loser now. He had worked on all kinds of different things. He worked as a pawn in a pawn shop, or rather, he owned a business. It was a pawn shop. He worked as a wrestling promoter. He kind of bounced around doing all kinds of things. I think he had a shooting gallery at some point in time that he got arrested for because of how the. It was too heavily weighted in favor of his business, and that got him in trouble. But yes, Sid Nathan was Kind of just putzing around, trying to figure out how to make his way through the world. And he stumbled into these musicians who walked into his record shop who then hipped him to the idea of recording records. And that got him started and from there the rest of his history.
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A
So why did he want to actually record the records?
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C
In classic Sid Nathan fashion, it was for the money. You know, he used to joke that the Y and Sid Syd was. Was for money. Yeah, he did it because it was a business opportunity. Saw a business opportunity, saw a way to make money and survive. And he, I mean he definitely had an appreciation for the music. But you know, he got into the record business because somebody. During the major flood in Cincinnati, there was a historic flood in Cincinnati in the 30s and it wiped out this jukebox operator. And the jukebox operator had borrowed money from Sid's pawn business. And he didn't know what to. He was completely wiped out. So he said, here are the rest of my records. If you sell this stack right here, that'll make your six bucks back. And that's what got him in. You know, he, you know, had a $6 stack, actually had more than that. And he started to kind of see that there was a business opportunity there. So one thing just kind of led to another, business wise, because he was very much a consummate entrepreneur.
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A
It was interesting how he came to press the records because it was World War II. This is such a hilarious story. I'm going to let you tell how he ended up actually pressing the records themselves.
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C
Yeah, so Sid was visually impaired. So which allowed him to go to check out a setup by that was made by the Society for the Blind. And he wanted to make records because Sid had discovered that there was a little bit of some bribery and some funny business happening in the record business. Big surprise that there were distributors and the people who press records and all these, these people were skimming off the top. And Sid didn't want to have any part of that. He just was flabbergasted by it and decided that he was on his way back. Driving back from Chicago, which is where the distributors were, he came up with a brilliant idea in the middle of the night and said, I'm going to make my own blank records. And and so he did. He went down society blind and figured out how they were doing things. He took pictures and stuff and then came up to Cincinnati and worked to start to create his own press, even though he didn't even know what one. And as the first kind of pressings that they did were terrible, in the words of other people who have told me. But they got them going enough to get started. But yeah, he got into pressing because he didn't want to have to pay other people to do basically things that he thought he could do.
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A
I found that story to be hilarious. What was a story that you heard about Sid, even if you couldn't include it in the documentary that you. You just. It makes you laugh.
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C
There are several of them. I think one of my favorites is the speaks. Really its personality is there was a time when one of the. I think it was an intern and he had told me the story a couple years ago that he had taken Sid just grabbed him, was like, hey, let's go to lunch. And so they go to lunch and Sid had, I think like 15 minutes left on the meter. So they go into the car and they wait the entire 15 minutes. Because Sid insisted on getting every last penny that he paid for and wasn't gonna leave that spot until the 15 minutes was done. Which is classic. Sid Nathan.
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A
My guest is Yemi Odieron.
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C
Oh, yeateran.
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Oh, yeaterin. Okay.
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C
Yep. It's like I'm from the Irish clan of the Yterins. Lost Nigerians.
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Cracked me up. Okay. Yemi Oyedaran.
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Yes, that is me.
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A
The director and producer of King of Them, the Story of King Records. How did Sid Nathan find talent?
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C
So at the time there was a radio station still here, WLW 700am, which was the first station that was allowed to broadcast at 50,000 watts, which at the time, because there's not a lot of interference, you could hear it pretty much on the hemisphere. And it had just a massive distribution. It's the reason. It's the vehicle that brought jazz to the homes of Midwest Americans. It brought all kinds of music and all kinds of concepts into the homes. Because this again, this is at the start of radio. So WLW would have live on air talent and it was the prestige radio job to have. And all of these people were right around the corner from Sid Nathan's radio, from his shop, his record shop. And these musicians would come in looking for music and looking for new tunes to cover on the radio. And they just got to get to know Sid and Sid got to know them. And that's what got. They basically convinced him into making records because they thought they could. They weren't going to really. Some of these artists weren't going to be able to get a deal. They weren't as huge as some of the other artists. So this Was kind of an opportunity for them and just kind of was a mutual way to kind of get into the business. For everyone.
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A
Who are some of the artists that he discovered?
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C
Oh, you've got Grandpa Jones. Does anybody remember Grandpa Jones out there? Grandpa Jones used to be on Hee Haw. He dressed up as an old man. He started doing this, like, in his 20s. And then he kind of eventually aged into it, which is hilarious. Kind of like a Mom's Mabley character. Another one was Merle Travis, who is known for Travis Picking. He invented a style of playing the guitar. He's one of the fundamental people in the history of the guitar. Cowboy Kopus was another one that was there. Cowboy Kopa's family passed away in the P Plane flight that included Patsy Klein and another King artist, Hawkshaw Hawkins. So these were the first people that he was working with. And he was able to kind of get his business started off, you know, focusing first on country, but very quickly moving to R and B.
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A
Take a call. This is Roy calling in from Roanoke, Virginia. Hey, Roy, thanks for calling in.
- [11:43]
E
Hey, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to comment on. Besides, you know, Kuhn Records being diverse and it's like staff and employees and also its artists, there was also, you know, most of the artists being black and white. But I did want to chime in on about one group that was from Japan originally called the Tokyo Happy Coats. And they recorded for King Records in 1970, which is actually their 55th anniversary. They recorded two singles and two albums. But the band originally came from Japan. They came to the US in 1964, but they sort of did the lounge resort circuit. They played Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. But if it hadn't been for King Records, we would never hardly hear what they sound like.
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A
Roy, thank you for your comment. Yeme, do you want to.
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C
Thank you, Roy? Yeah, that's true. So, you know, I have a recording that I heard of Sid talking about how he focused on the amateur musicians. You know, he really wanted to find the people who wouldn't get a chance, because in there he felt that there was again, as I described, he was a knockabout who had kind of been. He's Jewish American, which at the time was a knock against you. And he was very good at being able to see other people's experiences and how that reflected with his experiences. And he wanted to give everybody an opportunity and the people who don't normally get a chance. He felt that he could find gold mining in that space. And that's mainly where he Found a lot of his artists and, you know, because they had vertical integration, they could go and invest into making a record and seeing what happens. Yeah, Tokyo Happy Coats is one of them. They're great. They're a fun band. They follow me on Instagram, which is amazing.
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A
I wanted to play a clip from your film, King of Them All. This is Philip Paul, a studio drummer for King Records, talking about his experiences as a black musician in the city and his experiences with King Records. And we can talk about it on the other side. This is from King of Them all, the story of King Records.
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D
I remember I first came to Cincinnati, and I was working in a club with a white saxophone player friend of mine, and we would play a set and go across the street to coffee shop. They wouldn't serve me, they'd serve him. But it was different at King Rikers.
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B
They wanted to have a personnel department. Sid wanted this guy, Ben Siegel.
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C
I am a man of God.
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B
Then Siegel said he'd do it, but he had to do it his way. And he wanted it to be a totally open company where they would hire, not based on race or religion or anything. He said, we have to hire the best people. And Sid said, well, yeah, I believe that too. I'm Jewish, and I felt discrimination, so I know what it's like. And he said, I want the best people.
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D
And we all got along. Maybe after we came out of the studio, we went our separate ways, but we all got along. The studios.
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A
Yemi, how unique was this?
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C
You know, in American history, African Americans and white Americans have been making music together because, contrary to popular belief, we are one people. And so it's kind of very complicated to kind of explain because there's always been an interaction between African Americans and white musicians. What separates King Records is that it was a little bit more real, in my opinion. You know, one, there's a principal character, a guy named Henry Glover, who Sid brings on, I think, in 1946, to be the head of A and R. And that is the first time you have a black music executive in American business, in American music business. And what he does is that Sid gives him stock in the company. So he now has ownership in the company as well as artistic control. And that's one of the things. And Sid did other things that were unique to the process of giving people, bringing people to the table by actually giving them not only a seat, but also a plate, a piece of the pie. And that's one of the things that made the situation a little bit more unique from the other one.
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A
You spend a good part of the film talking about James Brown and Sid Nathan and the relationship. Sometimes it was like a father, like a son. James Brown did something, Sid didn't get it. They'd go in a room, they'd fight, they'd come out with a contract. When it worked, what worked, when it didn't work, what didn't work.
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C
Yeah. So, you know, both of them were visionaries and both of them were very stubborn. You know, their creative fiction kind of sparked an evolution. They couldn't exist peacefully, but you know, their attention kind of made history. And that's kind of the beautiful things about this relationship. But, you know, James kind of came in like, like the Tasmanian devil into the recording studio to record Please, Please, Please. And Sid Nathan had no idea what was going on. He actually said that it was the worst piece of blank he'd ever heard and he had to be talked into releasing it. He actually fired the producer who had brought James Brown on right away, eventually hired him back when it became a hit. But you know, James and Sid kind of had these up and down. You know, James has a mild hit with Please, Please, Please, but then he has a six year period where he has nothing. And Sid Nathan eventually drops him and James Brown agrees to okay, I'll pay for everything. I understand. And if you just give me this one last shot. And he gave him a shot and it actually turned out to be the song Try Me, which ended up being a huge hit and really is the beginning of James Brown. But if you want to kind of you. James Brown at King Records is the evolution of. He goes from the hardest working man in show business to the Godfather of Soul. And you can't really do that without the two principal characters in his business life, which was Sid Nathan and Ben Bart, who was his tour manager. And those two characters really kind of gave him the keys to the kingdom, as it were. But you know, and that's what allows James to like really rise and really be able to take control over his, his business, his music career. But, you know, there's a lot of friction. You know, Sid and James sued each other several times. There was a time, you know, the song I Feel Good, James thought that he was off of his contract and he could go and make, make a deal with another company with Mercury. And they released for this film called Ski Party, which featured the great Annette Funicello. And Sid Nathan gets wind of this, puts an injunction on this, and then they have to go sue and figure it out. And that's kind of like the first of several lawsuits between them. But there was a very close relationship at the end of the day. James Brown was a pallbearer at Sid Nathan's funeral, and they were very, very, very close. But they're. But there was a very contentious relationship at times.
- [19:10]
A
The name of the documentary is King of Them all, the Story of King Records. It will premiere on PBS this Friday, October 10th. I've been speaking with its director and producer, Yemi Oyedaron. Thanks so much for being with us.
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C
Thank you so much. This is an honor. I've been a fan since Bryant Park Project and World News now and mtv. I've watched you my whole life. I really appreciate this opportunity to speak with you. You're a consummate journalist and professional.
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A
I really appreciate that. And I appreciate you getting Afghan wigs in there. Joan Curley, great guy.
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C
Oh, yeah, he's one of my good friends.
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A
There's more, all of it on the way. We'll talk about horror movies in the year 2000s. Stay with us.
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F
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- [20:26]
G
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