Holliday
Johnny Mitchell left The Four
Hollidays in ‘64 to team up with the re-formed Majestics – a group that now
included Richard Street
– which Motown renamed The Monitors after signing them up.
Once sales of the Master 45 had petered out – which didn’t take long - Jimmy and
the Barksdale brothers decided they should take charge of their recordings and
start a business. A sign went up outside 11706 Livernois, at the corner of Webb,
and The Holliday Recording Company was born. Jimmy:
“It was Holliday Records and it was Holliday Recording Company and Holliday
singing group. Dale Warren – he was doing my arranging and I actually had Dale
on salary. We sold records retail at the front and had an office and a little
rehearsal room at the back.”
They were all full of ideas and energy but short on cash: the group needed $200
to pay the studio and musicians, which Robert Barksdale recalled “was a lot of
money back then”. Robert approached his neighbors - Sam McClure and his wife
Hedye Boy - for some investment as the couple had a decent income from Hedye’s
two wig shops - and they both loved music.
As Johnny Mitchell had left the group, James Shorter was recruited as the new
fourth Holliday. The group had met him at the Master studio where his friend Don
Heart had recorded a couple of songs. It wasn’t long before the foursome was
ready to cut the tunes. Jimmy:
“Joe Hunter arranged the music with Dale Warren, who was at Motown. I used the
Motown band: Eddie Willis, the horn section, you name the musicians - they
played for me - so some of our stuff has a similar sound. It was cut at United
Sound and James Shorter sang lead on the ballad, “Happy Young Man”.
Sam McClure’s name appears on
the Holliday label as one of the writers, although BMI credits guitarist John
Glover and Robert Barksdale as the actual tunesmiths. Both sides capture the
60’s sound: the pulsating “Set Me On My Feet” is the dance-floor side while the
flip is a nice slowy. White DJ copies have a much better sound quality than the
yellow issues, which for some unexplained reason have a distorted sound. This
obviously didn’t help sales, but without hardheaded promotion and slick
marketing the company wasn’t able to push the first and what proved to be last
45 on the Holliday label. It’s now a collector’s item.
Another sought-after 45 that Jim produced around this time was Ray Redmond’s
“You Don’t Know” backed with “You Say You Love Me”, which Sam Motley put out on
his Sa-Mo label.
Now here’s a bizarre twist to this Holidays story: Edwin Starr - who would soon
have a big hit with “Agent Double-O-Soul” on Golden World’s Ric-Tic label and
later sing on a Holidays’ 45 – had initially signed for the Holliday Recording
Company. Jim told me how Don used to use his Holliday Store on Livernois and
what transpired:
“Don Davis would use the studio when he didn’t have anywhere to go. Then next
thing I know, Don Davis puts out a record on “The Holidays”. I can’t believe why
he would ever do that. The lead singer wasn’t even a Holiday: Edwin Starr, who I
actually had a management contract on at the time. He came in from Cleveland and
my partner (Hedye Boy) said, ‘I got this guy - sings real good. I heard him at
the 20 Grand’. So I said ‘well sign him up’. I could have caused all kinds of
havoc, ‘cause when he came here, we signed him up. But as he got with Golden
World, we just never interfered. I just didn’t.”
Edwin Starr appeared with Bill
Doggett in the 20 Grand’s prestigious Driftwood Lounge in May 1965. His “Agent
Double-0-Soul” record was released a month later on Golden World’s Ric-Tic
label.
Continued
