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STAN MOSLEY - BIO Stanley was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 6, 1952, and currently resides in Houston, Texas. “My mother was a hairdresser and she could sing, but she wasn’t in an entertainment business. She was always encouraging me, because she knew that this is what I wanted to do. Had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” For a young boy enchanted by music, after momma’s lullabies church music would be the next logical step those days. “I had to be around five or six, when I was singing in the children’s choir at Greater Harvest Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago.” In Stan’s voice and music, you can hear the influence of some of his biggest favourites – Bobby Womack, David Ruffin, Marvin Junior of the Dells – but they were not his very first idols. “My mother told me that when I was a kid and on TV Elvis Presley would come on, I would jump up and try to dance in the same way. Then I started listening to groups like the Temptations, the Four Tops and stuff like that.” Today Stan puts one artist on a pedestal. “Theo Huff - my little brother” (laughing).  THE SHARPEES“I did a lot of talent shows in Chicago, but I left Chicago in 1972 and moved to East St. Louis, Illinois, where I was living with my mother’s cousins. That’s when I had the affiliation with Benny Sharp and the Sharpees. I went into a night club called the Blue Note, which was a very popular club at that time, and they were the band there. The young lady that took me there knew Benny Sharp and told him that I could sing. So he called me up on stage and I started singing there, and they asked me did I want to work for them, and I said ‘yes’.” The Sharpees was a group formed by Benny Sharp in St. Louis in 1961. Besides Benny, the very first members included Stacy Johnson, Vernon Guy and Horise O’Toole, but in the line-up that did most of the recordings for the One-derful! label out of Chicago in the mid-60s there were Herbert Reeves, who was the lead singer, Benny, Vernon and Horise, who was replaced by Stacy Johnson in 1965. Their first small hit was a dancer called Do the 45 and it was followed by a mid-tempo stomper named Tired of Being Lonely. With a strong chi-sound influence in their mostly upbeat music, three more singles were released in the latter half of the 1960s on One-derful! and Midas labels. “At the time I joined them, it was Benny, Vernon and Stacy. Herbert was murdered. I never met him, and Vernon died years ago. I never met Horise, either.” Herbert Reeves was shot in 1972 at the age of 25, and Vernon Guy passed in an automobile accident in 1998. Stacy Johnson died in May 2017 at the age of 72, after a long battle with cancer. In 1980, at the age of fifty, Benny Sharp turned to religion and ten years later his main forum became the Refuge Temple in East St. Louis. “Benny Sharp was the leader of the group. He was the one the group was named after. He was a fantastic guitar player. In our shows the band would come on and play and each one of us would go on stage as a soloist and then on the second part of the show we would all come out and sing together. We never sang any of the Sharpees’ old hits. We did cover songs.” Stan and Vernon not only sang together, but they also co-wrote at least one song, Friday’s Child for Kenny Rice released on Nentu Records in 1977. On the label the song is credited to Kenny Rice alone. “The lyrics were written by me. I’m not listed on the record, which caused a rift between Kenny, Vern and I. It was Vern that asked me to write them, because he wasn’t happy with the way Kenny handled that.” Indeed, at BMI the song is today credited to Edward Fisher, Stanley Mosley, Kenneth Rice and Phillip Westmoreland. Stan Mosley performing at Porretta Soul, 2016 FREE SPIRIT with SHIRLEY BROWN“I stayed with the Sharpees for about a year and a half, and I also worked with Shirley Brown. I was one of her background singers. I stayed with Shirley for long enough to tour the south with her, but it was just for a season. It was in a group by the name of Free Spirit, where Gus Thornton was the bass player, Oswald Peters was the guitarist and John Redmond played drums. There was also a keyboard player in the band.” The bassist Gus Thornton is one of East St. Louis’ music ambassadors. Starting out with Young Disciples, he has - besides Shirley Brown - played with Oliver Sain, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Johnnie Johnson, Katie Webster and - most importantly – with Albert King for many years both on the road, and on Albert’s records. “Shirley Brown happened during the same period, when Woman to Woman came out (late summer in 1974), and we were her actual band. It was actually during the same time that I was still with the Sharpees. I was with the Sharpees and I was with Free Spirit. Oliver Sain had his own band, and every now and then Bobby McClure couldn’t make the gigs, so Oliver Sain used me. He gave me an opportunity to work, when Bobby wasn’t able to make those gigs.” Oliver (1932-2003) was not only a saxophonist, producer and composer, but a notable bandleader in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. He worked with Little Milton and his protégés included Fontella Bass, Bobby McClure and Larry Davis.  TINTED GLASS“We lived in a big beautiful house that was called The Queen Ann, and they only had about ten in the city of Chicago, and my parents purchased that house back in the 50s. On the house they had tinted glass to keep the sun out. One day we were sitting around trying to come up with a name for the group and I looked up at the tinted glass and said ‘there it is’!” (laughing). In Stan’s next group called Tinted Glass the other three members were Billy Stevenson, Wardell Luvert and Albert Allison. “Billy was my brother-in-law, Wardell was a barber and Albert is deceased now. We were together probably for two years. We didn’t make any records - not one! - and I was really disappointed, because we had a very unique sound.” “I left St. Louis in 1978 and went back home to Chicago. I worked there as a solo artist and I was making a little noise, too. I even had the opportunity to work with the Dells as an opening act. I did not have one record, but I was very popular for a while. I had a very good stage show, and people enjoyed coming out to see me. I didn’t just do the neighbourhood clubs. I was working the elite clubs.” As a proof of Stan’s popularity and showmanship, which appealed to people, there are two Chicago Music Awards for the best male R&B vocalist hanging over his fireplace. The first one covers the period of 1982 and ’83, and the second one 1983 and ’84. “Unfortunately I wasn’t making that type of money where I could take care of my family, so I was in-between working and doing my music on weekends.”  RAY BERRYHILL AND COMPANY“Soon after that I left the entertainment business and I began to work with a gospel group. Actually it was a music ministry, Dr. Ray Allen Berryhill and Company. We had some moderate success with a live recording we did - I would say in 1985-’86 - titled simply Ray Berryhill and Company. It was an independent production, and a wonderful album. It was in the vein of the Edwin Hawkins Singers. We kind of patterned ourselves after them... or Thompson Community Singers. We worked quite a bit with them.” “We still stay in contact right now. A lot of the members have passed on. That live album was my very first recording. I had done a lot of demos, but nobody ever did anything with them, I never had anyone to market them.” “I stayed with Ray Berryhill and Company for about two years, and after that I started singing gospel by myself in churches, funerals and weddings. Then I got bit by the entertainment bug again (laughing). It was in 1989 when my interest sparked again about doing the R&B circuit. In 1992, I went back to East St. Louis with Gus Thornton, the bass player. We had already worked together in Free Spirit, and his wife and my wife were cousins.” “We wrote something like 15-16 songs together. I began to demo them, and I started sending them out to different people and I started getting some good feedback. Actually I was trying to get somebody else to record the songs, but Marvin Junior (of the Dells) told me ‘no, Stan, you need to record the songs for yourself.’ Gus did all the music and I wrote the lyrics. I took all the music and came back to Chicago, where the music was re-arranged.”  STANDING TALL“I formed my own record label, Stand Up Records, and released three of those songs on my label, but I had no way of getting the type of distribution that I needed to put the record out there.” Stan’s debut solo CD, Standing Tall, was first issued on his Stand Up label and re-released a year later on Butler Records out of Alabama in 1995. Produced by Willie Ash and arranged by Ronnie Hicks, on this EP Stan is vocally backed by Theresa Davis and Diane Madison and instrumentally by Gus and Ronnie. Ronnie Hicks has been a well-known Chicago Blues & Soul Artist since the 1970s, and he has worked tightly with Artie “Blues Boy” White and Cicero Blake. In the early 1990s, Stan was also in close contact with Cicero. “I was an opening act for Cicero. I was actually his valet. Cicero got out of the hospital earlier this year and he’s doing alright. He’s a wonderful fellow. He and Otis Clay were my buddies.” The three songs on the CD are all atmospheric, melodic numbers, which are based on Stan’s personal relationships. Together Forever is a nice sax-spiced mid-tempo floater, while Give Me a Chance is a more mellow soul ballad with some impressive vocalization from Stan. The down-tempo Thank You relays a positive message, and the instrumental track of the song closes the EP.  THE SOUL SINGERStan’s next album was supposed to be released on the JML label out of Memphis, but due to the fact that Stan didn’t receive any money from Butler Records for his debut set, he decided to wait until he could get with a record company that could actually develop his career. “I was finishing up the album that I was doing on my own again with Floyd Hamberlin, Jr. and Michael Mayberry. When we finished it up, I met a guy named Bill Payton, ‘Still Bill’ – who co-wrote a song for Tyrone Davis called Freak – and he told me ‘Stan, this is really a good album, let me take it to Malaco.’ The three of us – Floyd, Still Bill and myself – drove down there in a little bitty, two-door black Saturn with no air conditioning (laughing)... eight or nine hundred miles in a blazing heat. They took us in. Tommy Couch listened to the music and said ‘let’s go to lunch’, and when we came back there were contracts.” Floyd Hamberlin, Jr. is a producer, musician and composer out of Chicago, who has worked with Tyrone Davis, Lee Morris, Charles Wilson, Lee “Shot” Williams and Nellie Tiger Travis, to name just a few. Michael Mayberry is CEO and music producer at Da-Man Records in Chicago for the past 23 years. Stan’s debut set on Malaco in 1998 is aptly titled, The Soul Singer, and the majority of the album was recorded at Malaco studios in Muscle Shoals... plus there’s another quality factor on this record – “the majority of my album was done with live musicians.” The opener is the thumping “Don’t Make Me Creep”. “Rich Cason wrote it. As a matter of fact, it’s the last song that I recorded, when I was in Jackson, Mississippi, and they released it as the first single off the album.” Other single releases include a cover of Wilson Pickett’s # 1 single in 1971, “Don’t Knock My Love”, and a floater titled “Rock Me”, which Mosley & Johnson had recorded in 1987. “We slowed down “Don’t Knock My Love” and funked it up. That was a song that I’ve always wanted to record. First we did the song exactly like Wilson Pickett did. It sounded just like him, so that didn’t make any sense. Rich Cason said ‘why don’t you just slow it down, we’ll put a little funk to it, and you just do Stan Mosley’, and that’s what we came up with. Mosley and Johnson came down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and I did two of their songs, but Rock Me is the only one that made it to this album. David Hood created a bass line on “Rock Me” that is just classic, and Jimmy Johnson is on guitar. Until today it’s my biggest record ever.” Stan and Floyd wrote a beautiful southern soul ballad called Makes You Wanna Cry, while Rich Cason wrote the softer Why Can’t You Love Me. “It’s a very beautiful song. As a matter of fact, Rich has four songs on the album. He’s just a wonderful writer. He tailors the songs for the artist.” This Time I’m Gonna Be Sweeter is another laid-back ballad. “That’s a really nice song. It was written by Keith Stewart and Dick Fowler. They are the members of the group out of Chicago called Heaven and Earth. They did the background on it.”  SOULED OUTAs impressive as Stan’s debut album on Malaco was, all the more disappointing it was to listen to the follow-up, “Souled Out”, two years later. Now to a degree the natural sound with live instruments had been replaced with urban street beat tracks, as if they’d try to turn Stan into a hip teen idol. “The material that Floyd Hamberlin and myself had was computerised, but it was supposed to have been taken to Muscle Shoals and the Muscle Shoals Band – just like they did with the first album. The first album was computer stuff too at first. But once we took this second album to Muscle Shoals, it didn’t happen. Rich Cason didn’t want anybody to change his music.” Again, produced by Charles Richard Cason and Floyd Hamberlin, Jr. and songs for the most part written by Rich, Floyd and Stan, this time also Frederick Knight produced and composed three songs, including a powerful soul ballad called I’m Not the Man I Used to Be, co-written with David Camon. It was also one of the single releases alongside three dancers - Anybody Seen My Boo, U Can’t Keep Throwing Our Love Away and Ain’t No Woman. Ain’t No Woman was also released on Lee Morris’ latest CD, produced by Floyd. Besides I’m Not the Man I Used to Be, three other ballads stand out: Don’t walk out, I Got a Good Woman Now and a duet with Tonya Youngblood called Payback Is a Mutha. “Rich Cason did that. He suggested a duet and I said ‘I ain’t singing with Shirley Brown’, and he said ‘I got somebody for you’. He had Tonya Youngblood.” Shirley Brown was also a Malaco recording artist those days, and Tonya had released solo records in the 1990s and 2000s. She formed the Juess Right Band and has been widely used as a background singer on many southern soul CDs. “Rich Cason was one of the most wonderful, humble people that you will ever meet in your life. Rich was a very soft-spoken gentleman; very low-key, but he was just so humble and he was just full of knowledge.” Rich passed away in March 2007. “Floyd Hamberlin is one of my best friends. We didn’t always see eye to eye on things, but everything we did together, it always worked out. Every year he’s at my family reunion picnic.”  DO RIGHTThe third Malaco album, Do Right, in 2002 was a big improvement and a lot better than Souled Out. “Wolf Stephenson actually produced this album and pretty much on it there are live instruments. We did it once again in Muscle Shoals and I thought it was one of my best albums. That’s the Muscle Shoals Band – Roger Hawkins on drums, Clayton Ivey on keyboards, David Hood on bass and Reggie Young and Will McFarlane on guitar.” Larry Addison wrote and co-produced with Wolf the two opening tracks, pleasant mid-tempo numbers titled No Mistake and Kiss and Tell. Wolf also produced the cover of Aretha Franklin’s 1967 single side, Do Right Man. George Jackson wrote and produced a chugger named Perfect Timing, while Harrison Calloway’s and Rue Davis’ song, Do You Wanna Dance, is actually a catchy little ditty with a strong Caribbean flavour. Rich Cason wrote and produced half of this twelve-tracker, and among those six cuts there are three melodic and soulful ballads that just stand out: I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You, Middle Man and Your Wife Is My Woman. “We did most of the recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and also most of the vocals I did in Alabama. When it came time to mix them, they would ship the masters back to Jackson, Mississippi, and then I would just do the vocals there.”  GOOD STUFFDo Right remained Stan’s last album on Malaco. “Tommy Couch wanted another one from me, and I wasn’t prepared to do another album with Malaco. I wanted to try something else. I was disenchanted. I didn’t want to be there anymore.” Stan’s next stop was at the Louisiana-based Mardi Gras Records, run by Warren Hildebrand, and his album titled Good Stuff was produced by Senator Jones. “Senator was one of the record promoters for Malaco and he had an affiliation with Warren Hildebrand. When he found out that I was leaving Malaco, the first thing he did is call me and say ‘you need to come over here, because we have Sir Charles Jones and the Love Doctor’, and they were pretty big at the time.” “I already had the material that Floyd and I had recorded – a bunch of good songs – but they were computer generated. Sir Charles was going to redo the music so, when I sent the music to Senator Jones, he gave me the date to be down there to record. That was in Bolton, Mississippi (Hep’ Me studios), which is about a thirty minute drive from Jackson. When I arrived, Sir Charles wasn’t there. When I called him, he said ‘Senator had released that album already. He wouldn’t let me redo it.’ This was very disappointing, because he just released it the way that it was. The production sounded terrible. All the songs were really, really good songs. I had recorded my vocals in Chicago at Paradise, Floyd Hamberlin’s and Michael Mayberry’s studio.” All of the above means that - in spite of the title – the music wasn’t “good stuff” after all. The best elements are Stan’s soulful voice and delivery and potential songs, but programming tends to overshadow them. All songs - with the exception of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it on – were written by Floyd Hamberlin and arranged by Harrison Calloway. The three most soulful and touching ballads are If I Were Your Man, Good Stuff and Beat Down, and overall Stan is in a more laid-back and at times even erotic mood. The rest of the material consists almost completely of mellow mid-tempo songs. Senator Jones passed away in November 2008. “He was a very nice guy. Senator Jones was a businessman. I later found out that the reason he wanted me at Mardi Gras was because Floyd Hildebrand was actually running things at Mardi Gras. Floyd Hildebrand and Tommy Couch were best friends, and I had no idea I was jumping out of the skillet into the frying pan.” Good Stuff remained Stan’s only set on Mardi Gras Records.  STEPPIN’ OUTAs the title of the next CD, Steppin’ out, suggests, Stan is no longer flirting with southern blues soul labels but has formed his own company. “I had gotten fed up with working for somebody else.” In my 2005 interview he told me that “the CD was produced by Earl Powell, the same gentleman that produced Public Announcement and so many other artists that are currently out there. Double Duo Records is located both in Chicago, and Detroit, Michigan. I’m CEO and I own 51 % of the company along with Chuck Young in Detroit and Emmett Garner in Chicago. We also have other acts you’ll be hearing from in the very near future.” However, we still haven’t heard from them. “When you don’t have the resources to do those types of things, you just have to put them on the back burner and continue doing what it is you have to do.” Steppin’ Out is Stan’s best album thus far. “That’s because I produced it and I sang what I wanted to sing, the way that I wanted to sing it. All of the stuff they had me trying to do in other places I appreciate the opportunity that was presented to me, but I was looking for a more active role. But I didn’t do it. I just went along, because I was just happy to be in a place, where I could record the stuff that they had. I wasn’t thinking the way that I’m thinking now. I have hands on everything I do now.” Floyd wrote a catchy toe-tapper named You Gonna Make Me Cheat – cut also by Nellie Travis at that point – and a powerful inspirational down-tempo song titled God Is Alive. “The background singers on the project are Theresa Davis, Diane Madison and JoAnn Graham. I know we sound like a choir on God Is Alive, because that’s the way we recorded it, singing different parts over and over until we got there.” God Is Alive was released also as a single on Wind Chime Records in 2012. The three songs that Stan wrote with Gus Thornton for his debut EP, Standing Tall, were lifted from there and re-released on Steppin’ Out. “I decided to add the three songs, because I have a bigger audience now and they’ve never heard those songs before.” Stan co-wrote the rest of the new songs on the set. “I wrote them with Earl Powell and Ace Watkins. He’s one of the members of Public Announcement with R. Kelly. Earl is a big producer. He produced Jennifer Hudson and myself. He’s working with a lot of people.” The top notch tracks are a laid-back mid-pacer called Let’s Fall in Love and a gentle floater named This Love Has Power, plus two heartfelt ballads, I Want You and Can We Work it out. “The CD did pretty good. As a matter of fact, I released it and was getting checks every week.” Also in Japan they got excited about Stan’s music. “I didn’t know anybody in Japan knew anything about me” (laughing).  MAN UPThe CD didn’t do well enough for Stan to turn down an offer from an independent southern soul label again. “I had recorded “I Want You” (on Steppin’ Out) and Jennifer Hudson recorded it by another name. Then we did a duet together. Earl Powell wrote the music and I wrote the lyrics. Dylann DeAnna picked up on the song. He’s the editor of Blues Critic Media (https://www.soulbluesmusic.com) and he had a label, CDS Records. I won ‘The Song of the Year’ Award that year with I Want You. He sent me a message ‘are you signed with anybody? I have a label. I love your music. Would you like to be a part of it?’ I said ‘sure!’.” “So Floyd Hamberlin and I did Man Up. That was my very first album with Dylann. Wonderful songs once again... but they were computer generated. I wanted to use live musicians, but he said ‘no, this will work fine like this.’ He put it out and it was a moderate success. I wasn’t happy with it, because I like live musicians. You cannot duplicate computerized music on stage.” Released in early 2008, Man Up is almost like non-stop party music with one mid-tempo track, Mr DJ, and only two ballads - the intense You & Me and the mellow Bitter with the Sweet, which features horribly programmed horns. All songs were written and produced by Floyd, and he has used Walter Scott and Jim Simms on guitar, and the background vocalists are JoAnn Graham and Michael Mayberry.  I’M COMIN’ BACKThe follow-up on CDS, I’m Comin’ Back, was released in May 2009, and my review of the record was published soon after its release, at www.soulexpress.net/deep309.htm#stanmosley. Stan actually had some health problems those days. “Now I’m doing fine. They shocked my heart back into the rhythm, because I had irregular heartbeats. Once they put that electric thing in my heart, I haven’t had any problems since then.” “With I’m Comin’ Back it was getting better. Most of the stuff was computer generated, but we still had a live keyboard and a live guitar, because Carl Marshall played on it. Unfortunately, there weren’t any hits off the album.”  I LIKE IT!Hot on the heels of I’m Comin’ Back, they released the third CDS album, I Like It!, and once more you can read my review at www.soulexpress.net/deep110.htm#stanmosley. Four years later CDS Records still put out one twofer, consisting of Man Up and I’m Comin’ Back, but by this time Stan was long gone. “They signed a bunch of artists and became 50 % owner of everybody’s publishing, so they have a library now.” Last year Stan himself released a compilation titled The Best of Stan Mosley. “I took some of the music I did at Malaco and CDS, some that I put out on my own and put them all on a compilation. I’m selling it myself.” “The most enjoyable time that I’ve had as an artist so far in my career has been the experience I had in Porretta, Italy, and over in Spain right after that in 2016. With live musicians on stage backing you up, you can’t beat that! Now I’ve been working on this new album for the past two years. I work sporadically. Sometimes I go out and do a show in Mississippi, a show in Alabama... I’m working and staying alive, but my focus has been on completing this album. Also the lady in my life, Sula Marie Stanfield, became my manager two years ago, and everything has changed under her tutelage.” (www.stanmosleysoul.com; interviews conducted on February 10 and October 9 in 2018; acknowledgements to Stan and Sula Marie).
Soul Resurrection:
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