25th Anniversary of the Volume 25 Issue 3 September, 2019 Old School Shag History Inside This Issue Page Submitted by Dennis Brumble The Presidential Corner 3 The Valentinos Election Notices 6 The Valentinos (also known as The Wom- ed SAR Records and becoming a crosso- ack Brothers) was a Cleveland, Ohio- ver solo sensation, Cooke made good on based family R&B group, mainly famous his promise signing the teenage act to the for launching the careers of broth- label. The group arrived to California in a DJ Throwdown 7 ers Bobby Womack and Cecil Womack, beat-up Cadillac prior to Cooke signing the former brother finding them. bigger fame as a solo artist Still going by The Womack ShagTraxx 8 and the latter finding suc- Brothers, SAR cut two gospel cess as a member of the singles the group recorded in husband and wife team 1961 and 1962 including BeachMusic45 12 of Womack & Wom- "Somebody's Wrong" and ack with Linda Cooke. "Couldn't Hear Nobody The foundation of the Val- Pray". After the singles failed Mini Meetings 13 entinos started in church to chart, Cooke advised the where the five Womack group to go brothers (Friendly, Jr., a secular direction. Upon this, Member Playlist 15 Curtis, Bobby, Harry they changed their name to the and Cecil ) performed at their father Valentinos and while both Bobby and Cur- Friendly's church located from the East tis continued to switch leads, Sam Cooke 85th & Quincy area of Cleveland. The reportedly favored Bobby and while some Classifieds 20 group started out around 1952 when eight- SAR singles featured Curtis in lead, the year-old Bobby Womack played guitar for Bobby-led singles would garner the most his father after he had broken a string. Fol- airplay. lowing this, he discovered that all five of Shortly afterwards, the group under its New Applicants 21 his sons could sing, forming the Womack new moniker, recorded "Lookin' for a Brothers. Love", which was a pop rendition of Attracting a gospel following, in 1954, the "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray". The song group, under the name Curtis Womack and would peak at number eight on the R&B the Womack Brothers, cut a single, charts and number 72 on the Billboard Hot "Buffalo Bill" with the Pen- 100, going on to sell two mil- nant label; both Curtis and lion copies. The hit landed them Bobby Womack were only an opening spot on James ten years old at the time of Brown & The Famous Flames' the recording. In 1956, Sam national tour. Cooke discovered the group In July of 1963 SAR Records performing while he and his released the Valentinos’ "She's then group, the Soul Stir- So Good To Me" , a nice little rers, were headlining and song, but enterprising DJ’s was so impressed with the flipped to the “B” side and be- brothers that he promised to gan playing the monster old help the group advance in their careers. In school shag classic and floor-filler "Baby, 1960, a couple of years after he found- (Continued on page 2) Page 2 ABSCDJ Update (Continued from page 1) March of the following year, Bobby, who had just turned 21, Lots Of Luck"! Also around this time The Valentinos released married Cooke's widow, 29-year-old Barbara Campbell. Wom- another shag classic in "I'm Gonna Forget About You". ack, his family and friends later say that Barbara fell in love with In early 1964, the group issued their next hit, "It's All Over Bobby and convinced him to marry her. Womack even wore one of Sam's suits to the wedding by Barbara's request. Now", which was co-written by Bobby and sister-in-law Shirley. Prior to them releasing it, however, word got around that the The marriage angered many of Cooke's loyal fans due to the fact Rolling Stones wanted to cover it. Despite Bobby's initial pro- that Cooke's death was still being investigated at the time. In re- tests, the Stones were eventually allowed to sponse to the negative attention, Bobby chose to release it and their version became their first leave the Valentinos and start his solo career in national hit in the U.S. Bobby's anger cooled 1965, first recording for Him Records and later after he received his first royalty check for the the Chess Records subsidiary, Checker. But due single following the Stones' release of the sin- to the Cooke scandal, radio deejays refused to gle. play his records and onstage, he was often re- Around 1963, Bobby Womack began touring as ferred to as "the kid that married Sam Cooke's Sam Cooke's backing guitarist. Bobby added in wife". Womack settled on session work for the instrumentation to several of Cooke's albums time being as a rhythm guitarist, beginning in including Night Beat and Ain't That Good News. Around the 1966, while the rest of the Valentinos, who had same time Bobby was one of the first people to hear Cooke's initially disbanded following Cooke's death, were urged by Bob- chilling anthem, "A Change Is Gonna Come". In December 1964, by to regroup. the Valentinos' career was put in jeopardy when Cooke was sud- Following Cooke's death, SAR Records folded and the remaining denly shot and killed while at a Los Angeles motel. Valentinos auditioned for several record labels before Chess Rec- Struggling to deal with the sudden loss of Cooke, the group tem- ords picked them up. In 1966, they recorded two singles, "Do It porarily broke up. Not long after Cooke was buried, however, in Right" and "Let's Get Together" but both singles failed to chart (Continued on page 5) General Membership Meeting 9:30AM Saturday 9/21 Ryans—NMB The ABSCDJ Newsletter is the official publication of The Association of Beach & Shag Club D.J.’s. It is normally pub- lished five times a year in accordance with the following schedule: Late-February, prior to the DJ Throw- down Early April, Prior to Spring SOS Mid-July Early September, prior to Fall SOS Late-November, Early December ABSCDJ Update Page 3 Fall SOS membership meeting will be at 9:30AM on Saturday, September 21st at Our Ryan’s Steakhouse. This is our “annual meeting”, so we have a little more on our agenda. But we’ll try to move through it with minimal delays. It’s is a good time to look back at our year and consider our accomplishments. I’ll list a few of them, here: • We held a meeting at Mid-Winter for the first time ever (to make up for the one we missed last September) • We published the entire year’s mini-meeting schedule in advance, for the first time. • We hosted another successful DJ Throwdown event. • We supported the kids (the future of our dance) via Junior SOS • We participated in the SOS Parade • We updated many of our organization documents • We improved the layout and user friendliness of our web site and added some pages • We have encouraged 60 ACSC Shag Clubs (so far) to join our Association and partner with our efforts • We started selling tickets for our reverse raffle in July, for the 2020 drawing (earlier than ever before) • We created and implemented the first ever membership survey • We documented survey answers, and responded to member input and took action to make the Association more representative of what members want. • We’ve created plans for an exciting, updated, bigger and better DJ Throwdown event. • We’ve updated membership status information and created a new “Subscriber” option. • We’ve created liaisons for junior shaggers, competitive shaggers, the music broadcasting industry, etc. • We’ve raised the level of enthusiasm and cohesiveness of our membership. • Etc. Getting the ACSC shag clubs to join our Association is a big step forward. Right now about 60 of them support us and what we are doing as Corporate Members. I’d like to welcome them all, and encourage the remaining clubs to join. It will help make us stronger and more capable of perpetuating the music and the dance that we all love. I’ve mentioned before that reverse raffle tickets are on sale. We need YOU to help sell them. Buy some for yourself, too. If each of our 250+ DJ’s would buy or sell a mere three or four tickets, we would be sold out. As a member of this organization I hope you will think about that. Just a little help from each member would make selling all of our tickets very quick and easy. Please contact Dennis Brumble ([email protected] or 803-312-2895) as soon as possible to get some tickets and let’s com- plete this effort ASAP. It would be great to be finished long before Mid-Winter. Remember, top prize this year will be $8000. There will also be twenty $100 prizes. So, a lot of people are going to win some cash! Approximately two years ago the decision was made to eliminate Associate Membership. But there has been a group of guys who are in that category that have continued to pay their annual dues and support our efforts and directions. Most, if not all of them joined as “Associates” because they did not have enough play times or upcoming play dates booked to meet Full Member require- ments. But over time, they have fulfilled and exceeded those expectations. The Board has looked at this group of about a dozen individuals and recommends that, based on the facts noted above, we accept them into our organization as full members.