ROGER HARRIS
THE MANHATTANS – part 4 (1980 – 1989)
As stated above, Gerald Alston embarked on a solo career in 1988, a move he had seriously been contemplating for about three years. The Manhattans carried on in the line-up of Blue, Kenny, Sonny and the new lead singer, Roger Harris.
Blue: “People knew that Gerald was going for a solo career, and we put a blitz out to find a lead singer, and Roger’s name came up from Cameo. Ron Tyson (of the Temptations) introduced us to Roger Harris. He was based out of Atlanta, and we tried him out for about two years, until December 31st in 1990. That’s when I got out.”
Earlier Roger was the lead singer for a 7-piece funk & disco band called Mantra, which in 1981 released a self-titled album on Casablanca. This LP, which remained their only one, was produced, arranged and mostly written by Cameo’s Larry Blackmon and Anthony Lockett. Larry and Cameo were also in charge of an album titled Now Appearing (on MCA in 1982) by another funk aggregation called LA. Connection, where Roger had moved on to handle the lead alongside Warren Taylor. Roger has a nice high tenor, but in the 80s he had developed a singing style with a leaning to contemporary r&b melisma to meet trends of the day, and at times it tended to sound uneasy to long-standing followers and fans of the Manhattans music.
Kenny: “When we brought in a new lead singer, we tried to keep things going. We weren’t as successful as we were in the past. It’s hard when you lose the initial chemistry. If you pull out a familiar voice and put in a different voice, you have disconnected the audience. Roger didn’t have the charisma that Gerald had, and it’s hard to replace Gerald in a group like the Manhattans.”
SWEET TALK
The final Manhattans album in the 80s, Sweet Talk, was released on Hillery Johnson’s Valley Vue label out of Van Nuys, California in 1989, and to no show on charts again. Blue: “Hillery Johnson still lives there in California. I’ve known him for years. He was with Atlantic Records, I think, when the Temptations left Motown for the first time. It may be Ron Tyson again that introduced me to Hillery.”
Hillery Johnson’s name pops up in the music business for the first time in 1966, when he became one of the founders of Brainstorm Records and Productions in Chicago together with Leo Austell and Archie Russell. They worked, among others, with Betty Everett, the Emotions, Cicero Blake and John Edwards, who later became the lead of the Spinners. After that Hillery worked with United Artists and Capitol and in 1973 was named promotional manager for special marketing for MCA Records. In 1975 he was the national r&b promotion director at Playboy Records, and indeed in 1977 he became the vice president of Atlantic Records. Those days Hilltak, a disco imprint founded by Hillery and Tom Takayoshi, was one of the subsidiaries to Atlantic. Hillery has also managed numerous artists, including Rene & Angela and Lalah Hathaway.
Besides the Manhattans, in the late 80s Valley Vue had in its roster, among others, Michael Wycoff and Lady Fresh, and later they still added Jerry Butler, Cicero Blake, Gary Taylor and Craig T. Cooper. The label was active already in the late 70s and early 80s with such acts as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers.
Tagged as the 25th anniversary album, half of the tracks on Sweet Talk was cut at Vista Recorders in Van Nuys, California. The title song was produced by our old acquaintance, Khalis Bayyan aka Ronald Bell of the Kool & the Gang. As a single this swingbeat type of a dancer stalled at # 67-black.
Three tracks were produced by Sham Boy R.D., who also created all of the music except writing, and on the first one, a contemporary uptempo number named No One but You, one of the background vocalists is Peggi Blu. Don’t Let Go is a beautiful serenade, which remotely resembles the Commodores’ Nightshift, and another delight on this album is Try Love Again, which was written by Michael Wycoff and Hillery Johnson. It’s a Wycoff type of a big ballad with good vocalizing and would have been superb with a real orchestra on the background.
WHY YOU WANNA LOVE ME LIKE THAT
Blue himself produced three tracks. This Love Is Real is a fast beater, which first appeared on Ron Banks’ Truly Bad album on CBS in 1983, and it was written by Ron and Raymond Johnson. Blue: “Raymond was my keyboard player.” The cream cut on the album is an “old-fashioned” Manhattans type of a ballad called Lady I’ve Been Waiting for You, which Blue produced and Ray Dahrouge wrote. Blue: “He was a guy I knew out of the central New Jersey, a real nice guy.” Ray fronted a doowop group called the Darchaes, and in the 70s he had a disco group named Street People. The closing track on the album is the romantic Just a Matter of Time, which has Blue – besides producing and co-writing – talking his way through the whole song in his unmistakable deep bass voice.
Gary Taylor is the third producer on the Sweet Talk set. An artist in his own right but still better known as a songwriter, before Valley Vue Gary recorded for A&M and Virgin and his latest work is available at www.morningcrew.com. Blue: “Excellent producer. Hillary Johnson knew him. Hillary’s been in the business over forty years, so he knew everybody.”
Gary produced, arranged and handled the instrumentation on Why You Wanna Love Me Like That, which as the second single landed at # 62-black. Cut at Skip Saylor Studios in Hollywood and co-written by Brenda Lee Eager, this downtempo and a bit meandering song could easily derive from Gary’s own catalogue. Blue: “It played a lot in New York, a very good song for us.”
Gary wrote, produced and arranged a very slow declaration of love titled I Won’t Stop. He also plays keys and sings background on this easy and late-night number, which music-wise again slips into the more contemporary field. As the final single off the album it crept into # 79-black.
HOT LIKE AN OVEN
There’s one more song on the album, a nice mid-tempo number called Hot Like an Oven, and it brings the Manhattans and Leo Graham as a producer and co-writer, James Mack as an arranger and Paul Richmond as a co-writer and musician back together again for one more time. Leo: “In my opinion the Manhattans are one of the premiere vocal groups of today, of yesterday and of tomorrow. It was a pleasure and privilege to have the opportunity to work with them, and hopefully again in the future. It was a Grammy-winning milestone in my career also and one I will always cherish. Thanks Blue, Gerald, Kenny and Sonny!”
Leo: “In the 90s Tyrone Davis and I were still quite active. We started a label called Future Records. We were also at some point with Ichiban Records and Malaco Records. We did Sexy Thing, Come On Over, Flashin’ Back, Man of Stone and Come to Daddy, which was basically the last one I was involved in as far as production and writing for Tyrone Davis.” For Tyrone’s full discography please visit www.soulexpress.net/tyronedavis_discography.htm.
Leo is still engaged in making a new CD of his own. Leo: “At the moment things are a little bit slow and, unless you’re doing hip-hop and rap and stuff like that, the companies don’t show a lot of belief to what I consider as ‘old school’, and a lot of this stuff is on the internet and they don’t do a whole lot of physical stuff as far as the albums are concerned.”
KENNY KELLY
He was the last original member of the musical group The Manhattans.
Of the four members of the Manhattans, Kenny Kelly was the only one, who left the music business altogether in 1990. Kenny: “When I joined the group (in 1963), I had a Bachelor’s degree in biology, so I came in already with my degree. After I left the group, I moved to New Jersey and taught in public school. After that my mother got sick and I moved to North Carolina in ’90, where she had bought a house five years earlier. First I was in the school system out there, but after that I made a transition into retail, and I’ve been in retail ever since. I left the school system, because it got too hairy” (laughing).
“I’ve just completed a short story called ‘Am I so like a tree’. It is a comparative story between the life-cycle of a tree and the life-cycle of man. All of the experiences are similar. I gave the tree the ability to think and to reason and to grow through all the stages, the same as man has. Their experiences are the same, except I used animals and plants. The basis of it is to understand one’s purpose, and one’s purpose is defined by how he wants other people to see him. The common thread to the whole story is knowledge, understanding and wisdom.”
In 1988 Gerald Alston left to pursue a solo career, and the 5th and final part of the Manhattans story kicks off by examining this particular offshoot in the
history of the group.
