LARRY WILLIAMS AND JOHNNY ‘GUITAR’ WATSON ‘Two For The Price Of One’
The north will rise…
It’s 1973, it’s cold and it’s raining. It’s 11.30pm on a Saturday night and I’m waiting on the steps of Wigan’s Casino Club with a mate’s membership card hoping that I’ll get in without any hassle. Doormen with gaucho moustaches determine whether my 100 mile trek by mini-bus from Carlisle will have been worth it. In the background, I’m sure I can hear Frankie And The Classicals’ ‘What Shall I Do’, it trails off as we’re ushered to the payment booth and finally into the cavernous ballroom.
There’s a war going on in northern soul circles. Commercial success has led to interested onlookers turning up for the all night sessions at Wigan, while rival Saturday night venue, the Blackpool Mecca’s Highland Room, has embraced a funkier and sometimes slickly-stringed sound that’s edging away from the scene’s traditional stomping beats. Even the Casino’s array of DJs are dabbling in musical fields as diverse as blue eyed soul, psychedelia and plain old obscure pop music. If it’s got that beat and you can throw in a handclap it’s got to work.
The Casino’s 45 trading takes place on the balcony where numerous heavyweight cassette recorders are set out taping the evening’s fayre for future reference – you forget how big and chunky they were pre-Walkman. Speed is traded in small tin foil wraps while down on the dancefloor pirouettes and backflips look like small outbreaks of violence something that’s typical back home where the Twisted Wheel, named after the original northern haunt in Manchester, has a backdrop of small-minded violence and a soundtrack of sweet soul. At Wigan all that counts is the music and the faster it is the better.
On the opposite side of the balcony the stairs lead to Mr M’s, a second dancefloor that looks like a school hall but, more importantly for me, this is where the classics that first graced the original Wheel and The Golden Torch in Stoke-On-Trent, are still spun. Amid the essentials like Shirley Ellis’ ‘Soul Time’, The Exciters’ ‘Blowing Up My Mind’, ‘6 By 6’ and anything by Edwin Starr are a host of singles that first appeared on the Okeh label, from Major Lance, The Vibrations, Billy Butler and the genius partnership of rock ‘n’ roll legend Larry Williams and RnB bluesman Johnny ‘Guitar Watson.
The song ‘A Quitter Never Wins’ was originally the B side of ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ but it was flipped at the Twisted Wheel where it became a glorious anthem of defiance. ‘Mercy’s minimal chart success on release in the US was followed by the strident shape-throwing of ‘Too Late’, a record that immediately established itself, thanks to its breakneck speed, as an essential spin at the Torch thus confirming the duo’s status as northern legends. Both tracks are included on this one and only album by Williams And Watson, a ten track vinyl masterpiece that now goes for £30 if you’re lucky enough to find a copy.
In the flower power-tinted mid-‘60s, Williams And Watson had ended up on the west coast of the States and become fast friends and labelmates at Okeh. Williams had hit the charts as rock ‘n’ roll was establishing itself in the late ‘50s. Having been born in New Orleans he’d moved with his family to Oakland, California only to return as Speciality recording star Lloyd Price’s chauffeur.
Ushered into the studio himself, Williams had hits with ‘Short Fat Fannie’ and ‘Bony Moronie’ and can in many ways be held up as one of the key influences on the British Beat boom, The Beatles themselves and without doubt John Lennon. His 1957 success led to high times and eventually jail terms. His career was on the skids before his mid-‘60s union with Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson led them to a raucous sound that touched soulful RnB crossed with the marvellous excess of labelmate Little Richard fuelled with the rampaging energy of primal rock ‘n’ roll.
By the time of their meeting, Watson had already been a musical prodigy who’d played with Albert Collins, various jump blues bands and recorded the blues album ‘Gangster Of Love’ (the title track of which was later revived by The Steve Miller Band) in 1954. By 1967, Watson’s career could have gone any way. He was an accomplished pianist as well as a guitarist and in the space of 12 months Okeh not only released his Trio’s homage to Fats Waller, the album ‘In A Fats Bag’ but also ‘BAD’ his debut solo album for the label that saw his virtuoso playing on guitar, piano and vibes create a cool contemporary soul sound. Alongside these two albums also stood the mighty ‘Two For The Price Of One’ a whole album of collaborations with Larry Williams – who would also produce – which gave the northern scene its previously mentioned anthems and eight similarly wired three minute gems.
With the album released, the duo were ushered back into the studio to record a further single. The details of the session are at best hazy and fermented in jazz woodbine smoke. The ‘A’ side saw their soulful groove set among the spiked sitars of Kaleidoscope, a band fronted by David Lindley who also played backing on a couple of Leonard Cohen’s songs from his debut album including the gorgeous ‘So Long Marianne’. Indeed, Lindley’s Eastern music inspirations are said to have directly influenced Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and the wanton psychedelic vive of the day is indelibly etched onto the song ‘Nobody’.
That tune and its flipside completes the story of this short-lived partnership. Williams and Watson produced one monumental album containing tracks which became the pulsating, leg-shaking centrepiece for many a northern soul compilation over the following 20 years and the album itself slipped into obscurity as the commercial popularity of the northern scene ebbed and flowed.
Larry Williams’s post ’67 activities led to a criminal record and, in 1977, an incident where he tried to shoot Little Richard over a drug debt. Three years later he was found dead of a gunshot wound in his LA home aged just 44. Watson fared much better in the intervening years, his career going from strength to strength as a funky cavalier whose music charted on both sides of the Atlantic. Roundly sampled in recent times and namechecked by everyone from Etta James to The Black Eyed Peas Will I Am, his singles ‘A Real Mutha For Ya’ and ‘I Need It’ still sound positively awesome today. Watson was a master of re-invention with a voracious work appetite, so it was hardly surprising that he should die during a performance in Japan in 1996. Little else would have brought him down.
Both Williams and Watson were at the heart of numerous key performances in the development of modern music, the album ‘Two For The Price Of One’ is just one, but, oh, what a treasure it is.
Dave Henderson, MOJO
The original album 1 Two For The Price Of One 2 Keep On Lovin' You 3 Ask Me 4 Ain't Gonna Move 5 Mercy, Mercy, Mercy 6 Too Late 7 Love Is Such A Funny Thing 8 Takin' No Chances 9 I'd Rather Fight Than Switch 10 A Quitter Never Wins
Okeh single 4-7300 11 Nobody 12 Find Yourself Someone To Love
From The Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson album ‘The Fantastic Piano and Guitar Of Johnny Watson - BAD’ Okeh 14118 13 Fever 14 Coke 15 Unchained My Heart 16 Comin' Home Baby 17 Skate Key 18 Summertime
From The Johnny Watson Trio album ‘In A Fats Bag - The Johnny Guitar Watson Trio Plays Fats Waller’ Okeh 14124. 19 Makin' Whoopee 20 Ain't Misbehavin'
