To music fans who cut their teeth on "oldies" radio, Archie Bell may be thought of as just another one-hit relic in the museum of pop. But a stunning performance at this year's Ponderosa Stomp festival in Memphis (with an under-rehearsed pick-up band, no less) reminded us that Bell has a lot more to offer than just the "Tighten Up"—though that worldwide, still-popular smash hit, one of the first crossover funk grooves, is a big enough credit by itself. Soul music aficionados know Archie Bell & the Drells exhibited an envious versatility from gutbucket to sweet crooners and all stops between. Their still-solid hits, most produced by the burgeoning production legends Gamble & Huff, also included "I Just Can't Stop Dancing," "Do The Choo Choo," "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown," and "Girl You're Too Young," among others.
But even the die-hards may not realize that Bell faced nearly every obstacle possible in his career, starting with the fact that he was drafted just as the band were about to break. There are misreported versions all over the web to this day, so we thought it was about time to set the record straight. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hamburgers down and let Archie bring it to you.
Archie, tell me what the music scene was like in Houston when you were coming up.
There were a lot of great entertainers around Houston. We had our own sound just like Motown or Philly International or Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis up in Minnesota. A group called the Ambassadors of Soul, The Fantastics... we would always get together and compete or do shows.
Were the Drells your first group?
In school. I'd sung at church since I was 5 years old. Out of the 7 boys in my family, I was the one who carried it a little bit further. My grandfather started in the church, him and his brothers sang from this book called The Little Book Sings that came over from Africa. If you've heard Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo [Graceland], it was like that.
I just kept at it, and grew up listening to different things, and when I saw Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke, I knew what I was going to be doing the rest of my life. When I was 12 years old, I told my mother, 'I'm going to go all over the world one day and make people happy.' I was just a kid talking out of his head. And it really came true. One time she came to a show in Los Angeles, and came backstage and said 'now I understand what you told me then.'
Tell me about your first manager and Ovide record label owner, Skipper Lee Frasier.
Skipper Lee was a mail carrier, first of all. And he had a radio show on KCOH, We started winning these talent shows he would promote all around Texas: Galveston, San Antonio... I think in 3 years, we won first place about 21 times. He did a thing in Sylvan Beach, Texas, we had about 1500 people there, and he said 'Y'all want to cut a record?' Everybody just jumped up and said 'Yeah!" ["She's My Woman," 1966] I guess he was as fair as he could be. There's about 12 honest people in show business—I never met one. But had it not been for him, I might not have gotten a chance. And had it not been for me, he might've been still carrying mail. We were the biggest group he ever managed, that went international, worldwide.
There are a lot of different versions out there of your history. Were you drafted before or after "Tighten Up" came out? And did you go to Vietnam?
Well, we had cut "Tighten Up" already. The way "Tighten Up" came about, I was rooming with [fellow Drell] Billy Butler [not to be confused with the brother of singer Jerry Butler]. I had gotten the 'Dear John' letter from Uncle Sam, I was about 21-22. And I was laying on the couch one day, depressed about having to go down to the local board to be examined. The radio was on, and Billy came in doing a little dance, and I started laughing and said 'What'cha doin'?' And he said, 'I'm doing the tighten-up.' We used 'tighten up' like 'word up' or 'right on,' slang. We'd say 'I'll check you later, I'm tightening up.' So I just got the idea to write the song, And a week before that, I heard a disc jockey say nothing good ever came out of Texas, because of the Kennedy assassination. So I wanted to let people know that we were good at what we were doing—"we not only sing, but we dance as good as we want." And we went in the studio and cut the song about a month later.
Then I went down to the draft board and got drafted down to Fort Polk, Louisiana. And the unit that I was in, everybody except me and this other guy went to Vietnam, but we didn't. It just happened, I got my orders to go to Kaiserslautern, Germany. They called it K-Town—about 25 miles from Ramstein Air Base. I was with the 53rd transfer unit. That was like a Godsend. I really didn't want to go to 'Nam, because my oldest brother went to 'Nam, and it wasn't nothin' pretty. I don't believe in fighting and killing people.
What year was this? I went over September '67, and I stayed there until April of '69. While I was over there, the guys were working without me, and sometimes when the promoter found out, they wouldn't pay them. So I came back first on a 15-day pass, and did some recording for Atlantic Records, then I came back two times on three-day passes and recorded in the studio for Atlantic.
You had to come back to the States from Germany on a three-day pass?
That's right, I left Germany on a Friday and had to be back Monday. I did that two times and it almost killed me. [laughs]
Do you remember what records you cut doing that?
Oh yeah. When "Tighten Up" hit, we didn't have any other songs. So I had to do some material for the second and third albums. We were in Longside, New Jersey, and Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff came to the show and told me they wanted to produce me. The only group they had was the Intruders and the Ambassadors. We were their third group. I came back and did two three-day deals with them. I did "I Can't Stop Dancing" with Gamble and Huff, "There's Gonna Be A Showdown," "Here I Go Again," "My Blues Going Up," that was all the first time. Me and Thom Bell and Huff wrote "Girl You're Too Young."
Let's back up a minute and talk about the recording of "Tighten Up." You did that with a group of musicians called the TSU Toronados,, guys from Texas Southern University?
They were in the marching band—Leroy Lewis, Cal Thomas and Will Thomas, they were on the same label, Ovide. They were all great musicians, no doubt about it. We just went in the studio, did 20, 30, maybe as many as 50 takes, and they kind of put things together. We had this guy Burt Friedlawn, he was a young kid, about 18-19 years old, engineer, he knew exactly what to do. He ended up working for Mickey Gilley. But he was way ahead of his time. We really didn't realize how great this cat was. All of it was done together on eight-track, the band was playing while we were doing the vocals. But it was fun, just like a bunch of guys getting together in the studio and having a big house party. Never dreamed that this song would sell like 12 million copies the first year.
Yeah, wasn't "Dog Eat Dog" the A-side originally?
Yeah, when they sent the thing to Atlantic Records. We sold about 85,000 units around Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, 45s. That's how we got the deal to sign up with [Atlantic]. So we sent the stuff to them, and we had another song called "Dog Eat Dog," and they put that on the A side, because I guess that's the kind of city New York was! I called the guy [at Atlantic] and said 'Y'all playing the wrong song, man. That's not the A side.' I knew that ["Tighten Up" ] was the song we got the reaction from. We were a new group, and they didn't even know how to categorize "Tighten Up." And about a month later, one guy said I'm going to flip this record over to see what's on the other side. Bam. 200,000 copies a week in New York. And it got so big they took "Dog Eat Dog" off and put on "Tighten Up Part II" [the B side]. Which was really strange because we hadn't planned it, and if "Tighten Up" wasn't long, we wouldn't have had any Part II!
In the business, R&B records had to sell about a million copies before it would cross over [to Pop]. But "Tighten Up" went directly to the Top 40, [everywhere but Texas] they were playing it on the white stations before the black stations really picked it up. "Tighten Up" kept Stevie Wonder and James Brown from getting to number one. It was really amazing the way things happened. I never complained about it, but it surprised me that the record did as well as it did.
And you were back in Germany when the record took off?
Yeah, when the record went gold I was in the hospital in Germany. I had an accident with an 18 wheeler, and I broke my leg. [note: For some reason this is frequently reported as a gunshot wound—Bell was never in combat. He worked in the mail department!] Skipper Lee called and told me the record went gold—I was in a wheelchair—I ran and went down the hall, told some of my buddies. I said 'You know that record y'all been listening to? That's me.' and the guy said 'Man, you guys from Texas tell some of the biggest lies...' [laughs] That's when all hell broke loose. Because I had a little problem, they put the CID on me, they thought I was selling drugs and pimping hos. I was the only GI at the time living off base. I got me a Mercedes and a German driver. Me and my buddies, we all went out to party and everything, but when all this stuff started showing up, they didn't know. You know, a GI making 136 dollars a month—I had to go to my battalion commander and say 'look, this is a check I got for 60,000 dollars.' But after they found out it was all legit—they did this article in the Overseas Weekly, "The richest GI since Elvis in the military'—everybody was like looking stupid. It was all really funny. When"Tighten Up" would come on the jukebox at the snack bar, everybody would jump up from the table and start dancing. That's where I got the idea for 'Let me put this hamburger down, I don't want no more, I wanna dance' in "I Just Can't Stop Dancing."
But wasn't that frustrating, your record's a hit, your band's touring behind it and you're stuck over in Germany?
That's right, I was making 136 dollars a month in the army and losing 50,000 dollars a night! It was very frustrating! Me and this guy named Chico Santiago out of New York put together a band, that took a little pressure off. The band was called the Soulsayers. I tried to get in the USO, but I couldn't. But I worked all over Germany, went to places like Turkey, France, Africa. Get a 3 day pass, and you could go anywhere you wanted in Europe when you were in the military. Anytime I wanted to go to Munich or Frankfurt, I'd go to the battalion commander and he'd say 'Bell, do whatever you want to do.' Because I was getting a lot of publicity for the unit.
"I Just Can't Stop Dancing" was one of Gamble & Huff's first really huge hits. What do remember most about working with them? Did you record in Philadelphia?
Yeah, I had to go to Philly to record. I did some of the stuff in New York and did some of the stuff down in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, at Muscle Shoals Sound.
I love your version of "Wrap It Up"—that should've been a hit.
Yeah, that was done with Dave Crawford and Brad Shapiro down in Muscle Shoals. And then after I got out of the service, Atlantic records dropped us, and first we went down to Hialeah [Florida] with Henry Stone, TK records. The producers at the time were Brad Shapiro, the late Dave Crawford—he was a songwriter from Jacksonville—and a guy named Prince Phillip Mitchell. We had cut some stuff in Muscle Shoals [together], like "Dancing to Your Music," and "Never Know What's On A Woman's Mind." When I went to TK, they were supposed to have all this material ready. I was supposed to do the cut, and I ended up helping them write the songs. with Steve Latimore and KC [& the Sunshine Band]. I told my road manager, guy named Willie Martin, 'I don't think this is going to work.' They weren't prepared.
And when [Gamble & Huff's label] Philadelphia International opened up, they were in the Schubert building on Broad Street, right over the Schubert Theatre, fifth floor. We called Kenny and said, 'Hey, man, we want to get with you.' And they invited us back. At the time, nobody was there but the Intruders, Archie Bell and the Drells and a couple other groups. But working with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, I think that's where I went to college, looking at how these guys did it. Leon Huff would play a piano and you could hear the whole band. Kenny was mostly the lyric writer, the "Message In Our Music" and, you know the titles.
Would Leon actually play the piano on the takes?
Yeah. First we would go in the office and he would play the song, sing it for me. Kenny was a singer, him and Huff would sing the song, and I could hear the string parts... they had nothing written down, just numbers. They would cut ten tracks back to back. Sometimes I would be in there when they would lay tracks down for a week, and the next week I would be in there putting our vocals down. If it had not been for them, I might have been one of those guys who were 'one hit wonders.' I really love their music. And Philadelphia has some of the finest musicians in the country.
But Archie Bell & the Drells aren't usually thought of as part of the classic Philadelphia International stable?
Well, other people started coming in like the OJays, Blue Magic, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and we kind of got put on the shelf. We got them kicked off, but I feel like they didn't do me no justice in promotion. I found out later they were using me for a tax write off... It's one thing when you scuffling and striving, everybody's pulling together. But when the money starts coming in, everybody starts looking at everybody funny. There was a time when you could sit down and talk with them, go directly to Gamble and Huff. But after the company got going, you had to see this guy and that guy, go through a lot of rigamarole.
So you're saying that song "For The Love Of Money" is autobiographical?
Yeah. 'Backstabbers,' too! Lot of backstabbing. And the promoters, maybe they liked those bands better than us. They always called us 'Bamas, being from the South. But when I would see them on the TV talking about the people at Philly International, they would never mention my name. And I was the one who flipped them in, with "I Can't Stop Dancing," "There's Gonna Be A Showdown," all that stuff. You learn fast in this business. But it was a great experience. Everything in my career was like a stepping stone. The [Atlantic] stuff is still selling real big now, and it's getting bigger than ever.
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