bit of a weakness when it came to club music. They had a little bit of that Las Vegas, lounge kind of sound. It was all in the production, especially Norman Whitfield’s stuff. So yeah, I was a little disappointed.
would rub your nose in it: “You didn’t go last week?! You didn’t get...?” whatever it was. And when we’d go there, it wouldn’t be one or two records; it would be a stack. Albums, really limited promo 12-inches. This next record is a good example of that. If I wasn’t there that day, I wouldn’t’ve gotten it.
Did you ever do an edit of this?
D.J. Rogers “Love Brought Me Back” (CBS) 1978
There was an edit done of this, just before I started editing. I really liked it, except I thought it got a little busy in the middle. So I never actually did it, though I was thinking about it; I just used that one. It’s got a great extended outro. It was a yellow [label] 12-inch, very long. [The original version] was typical of a lot of records: the producer deliberately made the record climax, and then it just fades out. It’s supposed to fade out with energy. But on a dance floor where people love the record, they’ll just look at the DJ like, “Why’d you fade it out?” This, [Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’] “The Love I Lost,” there’s a bunch of records like that. So this guy edited the ending really well: it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but he extended the outro a couple minutes where it was really a few seconds on the record. It really helped a lot. Dexter Wansel Life On Mars (Philadelphia International) 1976 “Life On Mars” b/w “The Sweetest Pain” (Philadelphia International) U.K. reissue Krivit: I used go to the record store all the time and impulse- buy based on the jackets. I saw this cover and just got lost in this picture. I had no idea who or what it was, I just had a feeling that this was a record I was going to like. Back then, I would not only go to the store and get lost in the picture and buy the record, but I’d go home and listen to it. And the deepness of the sound would make me look deeper into the record, just get lost in it and imagine... With this LP, as I listened to the rest of the album, I thought it was all good, but then when I heard this song [“Life On Mars”], it really blew me away. Dexter Wansel had this way of mixing his synthesizer with the drums so it would just make this smooth hit, really thick but together. You couldn’t separate them. It was a trademark sound; all his stuff had it, and after this, whenever I’d see something with his name on it, I’d be like, “Ooh, let me check this out.” Was this ever issued on 12-inch before this reissue? It’s very possible, but I haven’t seen it. I’m still learning about some of these radio/disco 12-inches that were given out at the time and were really limited. When I used to go to record companies every week, one of the key stops wasn’t in Manhattan; it was all the way out in Queens, which was kind of a trek and hard to get to. But there were guys like me who were out there every week, and I got to know them. The thing was, if you didn’t go that week, you know you’d suffer, and somebody
This was soul stalwart Rogers’s biggest chart success, getting to number twenty on the Billboard R&B charts in 1978. The big-budget Columbia production allowed the band to include such topflight session musicians as Keni Burke on bass, James Gadson on drums, and Patrice Rushen on keys. Maxayn Lewis and Deniece Williams also sing backing vocals. Krivit: I played this recently with Joe [Claussell], and he’s someone who’s very hard to stump. He had Dance Tracks [famous East Village record store run by Claussell] over the years. I’ve got fifty thousand records; he probably has seventy- five [thousand]. He knew he didn’t have this, and it was killing him. I don’t see this around. I’m sure people have sold it, whatever, but you just don’t see it. It’s rare. There’re a lot of 12-inches like this. One, very well known, is “Family” by Hubert Laws. People want it, and [if they have it], they don’t give it up. I know Joe had one, and it got stolen or lost in the airport or something. If you see that, it’s probably $400.
Crown Heights Affair “Say a Prayer for Two” (De-Lite) 1978
This single, drawn from the 1978 LP Dreamworld , adds about half a minute to the album version in the form of a flangey bass interlude. The 12-inch mix also adds a three-bar tape-edited drum break and a dramatic stop- start intro. It’s a funky and soulful disco tune with a horn line reminiscent of De-Lite labelmates Kool and the Gang. Like K&TG, the Crown Heights Affair was a fully self-contained band, horn section and all. Krivit: Steve D’Aquisto did a reissue series on Elektra in the mid-’80s that he included this on. I usually play that pressing, because I like the mastering, and the quality is great; they’re pressed at 45 rpm. This is an original; I usually keep this one in storage! The intro is great. There’s a lot in this that’s just special when it’s loud. I liked this label a lot back then; at this time, I was already in a record pool, but I was still individually going around to all the record companies. Certain companies were powerful all the way through; certain ones had their moments. Just like the spot in Queens, you really felt you had to go there
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